Round 7: DNS

September 26, 2023 Adam Miller

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my riding lesson with Mike Applehans last year. One of the constructive criticisms he gave me is that I’m a very impatient rider. Unfortunately, this will always be a problem for me because I’m a fundamentally impatient person. That quality has made this year very difficult. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE being a dad, and I try my best to be a good husband, a good friend, and a skillful engineer. These things are all important facets of my existence, but my inner fast is not a happy camper right now and he’s clawing to get out and ride. The issues to overcome are not complex, but they are difficult to resolve. I need time, money, and a complete bike to ride. Given enough advance notice, I’m pretty sure I can find the time. By accepting some overhead compromises, I can figure out the financial aspects. The bike has been a bit of a problem, though. I’ve been juggling available resourced to fix some common failure points in my engine; primarily the main bearings. The established solution is to upgrade the 848 mains to the more reliable 1098R bearings and to reshim the crank preload to values less likely to cause a main bearing failure. It sounds like a simple upgrade, but it’s not a dirtbike engine. Ducati has all kinds of special tools and procedures that stray from convention and drive up timelines for simple tasks, tremendously. I started in early May with hopes that we could use the bike for Round 4 Endurance; that didn’t work out (Round 4 Update).

For fun, I’ll walk through the process. You have to start by devising a way to hold up the bike so that you can strip everything down aft of the triple tree. I didn’t have hundreds of dollars to buy a central stand so my solution was home brewed and cost me $30 in steel and an afternoon or two of cutting and welding:

Engine Removal Setup, Miller Garage, May 2023

Next you have to strip everything off the bike that gets in the way of removing the engine. This creates a large collection of parts that all have to be catalogued in some way for reassembly.

Bike Teardown, Miller Garage, June 2023

Finally, you can get the damn engine out of the bike only to realize that the process has only just begun.

Engine Out, Miller Garage, June 2023

Once the engine is out, you have to devise a way to get it on a build stand. I didn’t have cash to dish out for any special Ducati equipment, so I had to improvise with a universal engine stand and some all thread.

Poor Man’s Build Stand Setup, Miller Garage, June 2023

There are so many steps in a main bearing replacement that the best summary is a flash round of photos showing the process. Unfortunately, I didn’t take photos of my 5-6 trips to Boulder Motorsports for parts, advise, and occasional help with special tools I just couldn’t foot the bill for. Everyone at Boulder Motorsports gets extremely high marks from me. Good business with good people. If you own a Ducati and you’re not as dumb, poor, or stubborn as I am, take it there for any and all work you might need; you won’t regret it. As with last year, I’m not officially supported by Boulder Motorsport in any way, but I still think they’re top notch. Back to the engine build photo summary:

(Thanks, Vale)

(Torque the flywheel nut to 330 Nm with one arm; calculates out to ~170 lb force with one hand)

By the time I had the engine back together, the hour was late and it was crunch time. Although my prospects looked bleak, I’d put every spare moment outside of prime responsibility time into having Duc Prime ready for Round 7. I had to keep trying. Much like Forrest Gump, I had reached the end of the road and figured I might as well keep right on going. It was the wee hours of Wednesday night, the engine was mostly together, but the bike was still in pieces. With the plan being to practice on Friday and race on Sunday, there was no room for error.

The second I was done with work on Thursday, it was go time. I hit the garage and started turning wrenches. Unfortunately I was off to a bad start because I had to backtrack a few things on the engine right off the bat. Best to get it right than to pop an engine but, damn, the time consumption was not helpful. With the engine fully sorted I shoehorned it into the frame and started assembling the collection of parts in the garage to start turning Duc Prime back into a bike. I hammered, wrenched, routed, zip tied, connected, and finagled for hours at a constant, purposeful pace and eventually realized somewhere near midnight that there was no way I was going to get the bike back together in time to get some sleep and then make it to the track for Friday practice. I looked at Duc Prime and felt a sense of defeat, beginning to realize that maybe the lift was just too heavy and that burning the candle at both ends in all walks of life was really starting to take a toll on my overall energy.

Penultimate Prep Lap, Miller Garage, Late Thursday Night MRA Round 7 Weekend 2023

I woke up Friday morning resigned to the fact that racing seemed unlikely and decided to deliver some takeoffs to Joey B. at HPR in the morning. As I rolled up to HPR and saw the bikes sweeping through turn 6, I felt a pit in my stomach. After dropping off the tires with Joey and chatting for a few minutes I ran into my ‘22 NovU partners in crime, Rick and Ben, and we chatted for awhile. They were both bemused that I’d shown up without a bike or racing gear. Before leaving I stopped to chat with Clem at the Pirelli carport for a bit which is always fun as Clem is not only my favorite tire guy, he’s a full time Ducati therapist, or, ehem, technician. My engine assembly error story had already been making the rounds in the pits, but I think a little humility is probably a good thing in these situations. By the time I left the track, my plans to go back home and take it easy were blown. I had to give it one last go to see if I could do practice sessions on Saturday and Sunday and then race on Sunday. I practically jumped out of the truck while it was still moving as I approached the house, swapped into my garage clothes like Superman in a phone booth, and got busy. I wrenched away with zeal stopping only for food, water, and the stuff that happens as a result of eating and drinking. Energy was bolstered in the early hours of the afternoon when I fired the bike up again for the first time in nearly a year to discover that, yes, I can still rebuild an engine. To the peanut gallery: the engine was warm and this was not my first startup.

The Devil’s Trumpet, Miller Garage, Friday Afternoon MRA Round 7 Weekend 2023

On top of simply putting things together, I had to reweld the bracket responsible for holding the fuel tank in place and flush every fluid system on the bike.

Splash and Dash Welding, Miller Garage, Friday Evening MRA Round 7 Weekend 2023

I got everything together to a point where a test ride around the block was feasible, but I had to check one last thing before I went. Ducati has a special shift mechanism adjustment tool required to get the shift drum and linkage synced up exactly right. When I was assembling the engine, I’d neglected the tool under the assumption that if I used some logic and a feeler gage and could get everything adjusted well enough to row through the gears by hand, that it would be good to go. Now, at the final hour, I put the wheel on, fired up the engine and tepidly rowed through the gears while Duc Prime sat eagerly on the stand.

The 1 Yard Line, Miller Garage, Late Friday Night MRA Round 7 Weekend 2023

There’s 1st, there’s 2nd, a little sticky but keep going, there’s…. there’s………. nope, no 3rd. Everything above 2nd was locked out. I glanced at the clock, thought about trying to show up on Boulder Motorsports’ doorstep the second they opened on Saturday morning for help, contemplated about asking around for the tool, considered RTV cure time, and did inventory on what still had to be done. It was game over. It would be wreckless to keep trying. Even if I could get the bike together, I’d be showing up for Sunday morning practice and going straight to an AmU race on scrub tires after literally a year since my last time riding Duc Prime on a track. With my impatient riding style and a personality that knows nothing other than full brakes or full throttle, it was time to stop. I was gutted, but can honestly say that I gave it absolutely everything I had. I was so tired Friday night, I felt like throwing up. Kori, who’d helped tremendously with the boys when she saw the resolve in my eyes Thursday night, put it best, “No one can say you didn’t try your hardest”. And so it was.

Sensing my dejection, Kori and the boys came to the rescue and made the weekend pretty epic in spite of the lack of racing. We took a Saturday morning hike, flew kites on Sunday, and Kori and I shared some Blue Moons on the back porch while the boys napped on both Saturday and Sunday. Not a bad way to spend some time.

Family Hike, Lair o’ the Bear, Saturday MRA Round 7 Weekend 2023 (note the wrist band)

Kite Flying, Coyote Gulch Park, Sunday MRA Round 7 Weekend 2023

So where do I go from here? I knew in September of last year that this was not going to be a big racing year for me. I’m grateful that I got to do endurance in Round 4, which was crazy fun. I’m grateful that I poured myself into making it to Round 7 because it reminded me that the passion is still there. I’m grateful that Duc Prime is now a built bike which should be capable of giving me many trouble free miles on the track without gambling on a bearing failure. There still, however, remains a void inside because I have yet to put together a championship season. I still believe I have another step to take on the Duc and I still believe in my mind, body, machine approach to racing. All of the ingredients needed for success can be laid out once more and I have every intention of doing just that as soon as I possibly can. However, there is one critical thing I’m going to change.

In the winter of ‘21-’22, I was possessed by the idea of winning a championship. It was an idea that compelled me to train hard, ride hard, crash hard, wrench hard, spend hard; do everything with that central motivation in mind. I can’t deny that it was effective. I did some of the best riding of my life. I won my first race in a competitive class and I did pretty well in a championship series. However, flying so close to the sun year after year is going to burn me, eventually. It is alright to maintain lofty goals like winning a championship, but I want to start thinking of a championship as a potential bonus at the end of a well executed year rather than the only thing that matters.

The next time I go to a track, my focus will be on constant improvement. I want to look at the turn I’m in, then the next and the next, lap after lap, race after race, and build success as a collection of effectively implemented steps. I want to have fun embracing a growth mindset and then, hopefully, the results will fall into place. This is the new plan for mindset in the mind, body, machine approach.

I leave my fellow MRA racers, supporters, friends, and family with a few final thoughts as we all retreat to our caves for the fast-approaching winter. Nothing ever goes according to plan. Ever. You can work hard, train hard, perform at your peak, and even see your efforts bear fruit sometimes, but the summit of success is always temporary. The attribute that makes individuals exceptional is how they respond to adversity. When things get tough do you pack it up and go home, or do you dig in and forge ahead?

See you next year, folks!!