Malang round run and won

Monday, 14 December 2009 10:01

poster We woke up for the Powercross day on Saturday and after a mango smoothie and cookies and cream smoothie we headed up to the event. By 10am before practice had even started there was roughly 10,000 people crammed into the tiny area and spilling out on to the roads. It was crazy seeing so many people there but the local Malang residents would have hardly ever seen something like this before.

bikes-at-malang We got to work and started putting our bikes together. Clinton had an 04 YZ250 which was a bit of a nugget and we just hoped his suspension with fit, airbox and side plates also. Luckily it did and the YZ’s haven’t changed much. Sheeny had an 06 CRF 250 which was a pretty good bike except for a massive flat spot in the bottom of the rev’s, so he spent a fair bit of time fixing that up and I had a brand spanking new KTM 250SX-F. It was all looking like peaches and cream for me, brand new bike and the best part was all my suspension and airbox fit onto the 4-stroke from my KTM 2-stroke at home. I had a win. Because my bike was brand new I had to run the motor in, so I let it idle for 10 minutes and then cooled it off. Then rode it around the track at half pace and cooled it off. Kept idling it for a while longer and then it was fine to start riding. Although Freestyle MX doesn’t really push the motor to its limits like racing does.

After working on the ramps that were given and doing some fix ups, we finally got to do some practice. Well it has been a long time since I’ve ridden a 4-stroke and the motor works completely different to the 2-banger. You can’t just get a sudden boost of speed on the 250F so it needs more speed on the run up. It had a 13-48 gearing which I thought would be able to give me plenty of top end speed, rather than more power which is what’s used in racing. I got a speed check off of Sheeny for the 75ft ramp as he rides a 250F also and I could gauge how fast I needed to go. When I was following him into the ramp he was leaving me for dead and I had second gear absolutely pinned. I didn’t think that was right, but it must have been the speed. I hit the ramp and made the downramp pretty spot on first go, but geez I had that bike on the limiter. And a 250F on the limiter on ramps isn’t a good thing.

It came time for the first show and because there was some lighting problems and it was raining the show was delayed which made it difficult to organise. We were waiting and waiting and waiting and we finally did our first FMX show at 9:30pm. We arranged to build up the show, so obviously doing smaller tricks and then bigger tricks for the end. We started out just doing nic-nacs and click-clacks, goon airs and carrying-on, we were starting to get the crowd into it and we had to finish the show quickly as it was late and had to get the 250F guys racing. Not a worry really. malang-track2

The good thing was we actually got to watch the race. Normally when I do FMX shows I miss all the other events because we’re so busy doing stuff. The Indonesian racers were actually pretty damn good, they were putting up a fight with the Aussie riders including Lewis Woods and also NZ rider Mason Phillips who had just arrived from racing in Canada and the USA. What I thought was going to be cruisy racing because of the bad lighting was anything but. Lewis and Mason absolutely went nuts and their KX-F’s were deafening when they were backfiring into the corners. It was a tight battle for the 4 x 5 lap races they had to do, the same as the SuperX series in Australia but Lewis would eventually take the cake and Mason was a close 2nd place.

Our second FMX show was straight after the racing and with the crowd eager to see the backflip by Sheeny and Clinton it was always going to be a big finale. The crowd actually came inside the arena somehow and were getting photo’s and standing all over the ramps and downramps and it took the police and security guards to get the area clear before we could ride. The show was really good, we were all riding good, and after 10 jumps in on the four stroke, I noticed there was more than a lot of steam and smoke coming up from the motor. I dismissed it thinking it was simply overflow from the radiator which I knew was very full before I started and had done it earlier and kept on riding. 2 more jumps and Blake who was building the track pulled me aside and said the steam and smoke was actually going with me from the start of the run up, throughout the jump and until I landed. Yep, that was it for me for the night. The big girl had overheated and boiled over, there was no coolant left and a couple more jumps would have meant I had seized the engine.

bike-stand Meanwhile while I was worrying about my bike croaking it on the jump, Sheeny and Clinton had more important things to worry about and that was performing a backflip on the ramp which had just had just come apart. The bolts holding the individual segments of the ramp together had come loose and the ramp was moving a lot each jump. Just as well someone noticed because the lack of light made it hard to see if there was anything wrong with the ramp. So with some minor fix-it’s the boys finished with the flip and the show was done. Round 1 was taken care of, Lewis Woods had won the racing and we had finished the Freestyle with no hiccups. Oh, except for Sheeny doing the end of night celebratory waving to the crowd and fell off over one of the doubles!

Now that's a bike stand - perfectly done so the chair leg holds the bike up and the other chair leg stops the back wheel from rolling forward. Clever haha.

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