ciaociao

well, i don’t think there is any way i could write up how awesome the first polini cup weekend was even half as well as fellow hry racing teammate columbus josh (aka cuffs) did in his blog, so i’m going to go ahead and send you guys there instead!
check out the rest of his blog while you’re at it, tons of rad info on all sorts of awesome two-strokey things!
team nerdspeed
he is also documenting our “plan b” build, a cobbled together vespa si racer! some of you may remember the si i picked up forever ago for the wheels and other random bits, well that bike is finally going to good use!

in the world of ciaociao, it looks like old boy is going to be my dedicated racer until i can get my actual race bike build off the ground. since pretty much all i think about these days is racing anyway, i think this is a good turn of events for ciaociao. it’ll get way more attention than it was before!

i’m pretty happy with the performance, but i’d like to do something about my pipe. it’s still all dented and banged up from when ciaociao v1 got ran over by that moving truck at the creature rally forever ago. dents are not an expansion chamber’s best friend, that’s for sure.
i have a few different ways i can go about this. option #1 is i could try to pull the dents out of the pipe i currently have and try to salvage it. option #2 is buying a new pipe all together, and option #3 is trying to replicate my pipe and build my own.
eventually i’d like to build my own pipes.. the more i read and learn about two stroke tuning, the less crazy building my own pipe seems to me. it’s really all just a matter of knowing what you want and doing the math.. and it helps to be good with a mig, hah.
seeing as the next race is two weeks away, i think i may bite the bullet and buy a new pipe. maybe someone will be into buying my old pipe from me at like half cost or something. it obviously still preforms really well, seeing as my ciao beat out most of the bikes on the track the first weekend, but i want everything to be perfect next time around.

i also need to fill the forks with oil, i ran them empty last race and it was super sketch at first, but i got used to it pretty quick. bravo forks are good forks, they just need to be topped off is all.

so other than a new pipe, and some fork oil in my forks i think ciaociao is ready to go! i CANNOT wait for the next race!

and, as promised, some of my favorite photos from the weekend, with some of me and ciaociao thrown in to keep everything on topic.

there are soooo many more on flickr.. just type in polinicupapril09 and you’ll get them all.
by the way, yes i was racing in jeans and a hoodie with skate knee and elbow pads. i am actually shopping around right now for some leathers, so leave me alone! haha.

oh, and number 8 in all the pictures is columbus “cuffs” josh on naz’s 50cc pug. hopefully in two weeks josh will be on plan b and naz will be on that pug!