we have all suffered in racing, mine came early in life in the third grade when racing motorcycles against my friend I laughed when my new motorcycle was faster than his, as I turned to look forward I saw a huge hole that took my front wheel and forks launching me 50 feet in the air. I ripped open my chin and arms, but couldn’t feel it because of the shock. an old man in a rocking chair was laughing and said “you flew like a bird”. just then my friend walked up and had the most scary look on his face. I asked what? he grabbed my chin and said hold that up. why? he said because I can see your chin bone and its freeking me out, we need to get to a hospital, your Dad is gonna be pissed. an hour later a drunk country doctor was sewing me up with the rocks still in my wounds. If you want to fly we can help you but always remember to not push it further than you need to win. never show all your speed or the tech guys will take apart your engine and you’ll spend until wednesday putting it back together.
Get the lead out
we had delivered one of our favorite customers in the world a new engine. the dad had called me one night wanting to know which way the arrow on the piston pointed, I said the exhaust port. we became good friends and his son won us the california state championships. Eddie had grown up in the drug neighborhoods of LA and had left, found a great wife and built a successful business. we did tons of testing together because his son Cruz was so consistent. he received a new engine from us and was so excited he sent him out to test without thinking. he called frantic and said he’s out on the track but I didn’t put the oil in the gas, what do I do. Shut it off, run on the track I said, thinking it would snap any second. but it didn’t and that lead us on a journey to find a speed trick. many things you find are from failures. there was one thing that saved his engine that day, it is rare but if you understand octane you might guess it. we didn’t need 104 octane, in fact our engines ran faster with low octane that is much more explosive than race gas. our top teams were testing with AV fuel for old planes that came in an 80 or 85 octane. We ran it on test days right before qualifying to psych our top competitors because we’d run 3 seconds a lap faster. then they would need to change things, that didn’t need to be changed, so we wasted there final test laps and worried the drivers and dads. the moral of the story the story, have you guessed it? why didn’t that 12,500 rpm motor seize up with no oil in the 2 stroke? oh the title gave it away. aviation fuel has lead in it, lead is a lubricant that is not recommend for paints or cars anymore but old planes still need it. So you can run without oil or with much less oil if you have certain metals in the fuel. Do not use lead! it is a neurotoxin and no amount of it is ok for you or your child.
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