G'day all. Weather's starting to come good, here's a story that's very
similar to my last one, but it's feel-good stuff, anyhoo.
Last week, I bought some tyres. I actually had to get some that were
narrower and less tall than the ones that were there - beautiful Yoko's that
when new, gripped like scared monkeys, but were now quite hard and needed
serious work to get warm, and were very, erm, marginal in the wet - because
they were hitting the front guards on bigger bumps or dips.
First try on a good road ("good" meaning more curves than straights) I
noticed they were quite squirmy feeling. Stuck well enough, but the car
seemed to move around on them when cornering hard. An extra 10psi fixed
THAT problem. So off I went to my favourite blast: A piece of nasty,
twisted blacktop with 20kph advisory signs, sharp off-camber curves with
minimal space between the asphalt and long drops, and a 100kph speed limit
(heh, as if...). IOW, my idea of what the roads in heaven will be like.
Well, got to the start of the challenging section, just in time to use the
final safe overtaking location to blast past a family sedan, and then brake
hard for a left hander, 2nd gear, squeeze her out of there, back off the
throttle to enter the right hander following - mmmmm, new 2 inch exhaust is
going "pop, crackle" - and WOT for a shallow S - 60mph just before braking
hard, back to 1st for the first REAL hard left (damn this thing has tall
gears, 35mph just as I change up to 2nd on exit), axle skittering on
corrugations, a tiny bit of opposite lock, snatch 2nd, up to 4500rpm or so,
back off, right hander - camber bad, here, a guy went off on this one last
week, I guess his '80s Pulsar showed him the real meaning of "terminal
understeer" - got to play safe here, there isn't really enough bitumen to
hang the tail out even if you needed to. Another easy S section - you can
see the road for long enough to take it *allllmost* straight, providing
no-one's coming the other way - WOOHOO, 3rd GEAR!!! whoops, just went
illegal for about 2 seconds, BRRAAAAKE! 2nd, 1st - POPpoppop, squirt - tail
squats (teeheehee! :) ) a little, 2nd coming out of that left, ease for the
right hander, blast again...
Well, that road does more of that for another couple of miles. Followed by
a short open section which is 5th gear stuff. Then a run through some
rainforest - 2nd to 3rd gear, often RIGHT on the speed limit, and gunning
hard, unless there's water on the surface, even the new tyres slipped a bit,
the rainforest road has a VERY smooth surface.
Then it's over. Back to major highways, and cruise home.
Anyone else feelin' like a blast?
Cheers,
Steve
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