'62 Norton in BEARS race @ Barber Motorsports Park 10/20/07

'62 Norton Featherbed Special in BEARS race at Barber Motorsports Park, Birmingham, AL October 20, 2007. This was Saturday's BEARS race at Barber, with AHRMA. Right off start you'll see SUPERFAST Tim Joyce (#309) on his Triumph jump in front and disappear into the sunset. I've tried and tried, but I'm not fast enough to catch Tim just yet. Nonetheless, I managed to hang on to 2nd in this one and weed my way through the grid of Vintage Superbikes that started in the wave before. I held onto 2nd through the race. However, at 4:27 you'll see a very fast Honda come by from the Sportsman 500 class also gridded on the track with us. He was blowing so much oil it gets on the camera and my faceshield and I was leery of riding behind on his line! Didn't matter, as a lap later at 6:47 I blew a shift and stomped it into gear and the bike began lurching and revving erratically. If you listen you can hear the revs spike unusually all the way down the back straight. I knew I'd broken something - probably the gearbox (not to be messed around with) - and I was forced to pull in. I threw up my hand and that was that. Oh well. Turns out I'd torn the teeth off my countershaft sprocket - repairable in the paddock that evening. This forced my lazy self to change gearing (lower = much better). If you listen in this video you will hear I only use 2 gears throughout the whole track - 2nd and 3rd. With the lower gearing on Sunday I was able to use top gear and my times were 2 seconds a lap faster! More video to come.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• Norton
• AHRMA
• vintage
• race
• Featherbed
• Commando

[rigd49]

Boy that Red bike is fast.Nice work

[Andrewsteam2009]

I'm the same age as that bike but I don't go as well ;)

[waspfarmer]

Thanks nyc! That made my winter.