I was out testing at QR on Wednesday, in the wet on slicks, went for the brakes a little to late going in to turn 4 to avoid braking in a puddle. Was going about 170-180 kph, remember popping up and touching the lever, hearing a loud bang and sliding for a long time. Damaged the leathers I had borrowed from Phil at Highside (big rap for those guys, thankyou!), and left some nice big long scrape marks down the track at QR.
After picking myself up and finally getting the bike back to the pits, I gave the rear peg some hammer relief and rigged up a less-broken clutch lever I had in the tool box with some hair ties and took it out for the last session.
I have hurt my shoulder, but it is healing OK so no medical intervention is needed, but the bike has some damage:
Broken clutch lever,
broken gear lever,
bent n grinded peg,
quite a lot of fairing and rear cowl damage,
broken fairing mount,
bent and sorta broken race stand pickup,
grinded rear axle,
bent left bar and bar end,
some scrapes on the tank,
and some bent fairing bolts.
However the worst thing is, I just pulled of the top triple-clamp and I think the forks may be a little bent. I had to really bang it off with a slide hammer and a nylon hammer, and when I finally got it off (15mins of effort later) I tried to dummy fit it and found that one of the fork legs is mis-aligned from the hole in the triple-clamp by about 3mm. Sound like a fork problem?
I am going to try and just get it back together for the race meeting next weekend, and then sort it further after that. It seemed to travel in a straight line for the last session, so should be ok I hope. I do have a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it.
What fun!!!!
