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A question for racers/former racers
I started racing motorcycles in 1971 and I still do so now and then. I've designed, built and raced my own chassis and I'm pretty well set up with machine/fab tools. This year I've been seriously thinning the project bike herd -- 9 bikes gone in the first half of the year and I think I'm going to let 4 of the 6 remaining ones go too. No more dirt bikes, no more vintage bikes, and hopefully no more rented warehouse space to store "stuff" at SF Bay Area rental prices!
But there is a question of "what do I do next?" to satisfy the build it/compete on it urge.
I'm thinking that I might make the switch from building for speed to building for efficiency, and I was wondering how many other car/motorcycle/boat/airplane/other vehicles with engines racers/former racers here have done that and been happy with the change?
The hypermiling riding style doesn't appeal to me but I think I could be interested in a "real world transportation" project to see what kind of fuel efficiency I could get with chassis/aero mods on something like a 300 Kawasaki or Honda twin/single street bike. There are some folks here at the forum who've built streamliners for the street and they are getting some amazing mpg numbers that would give me a target to shoot for.
Craig Vetter is still having his efficiency events, but I'm pretty much limited to out and back "same day" riding so I doubt I'd be able to attend one.
With a street-legal bike I could fiddle with it and then head out for a standard test loop without having to deal with all the stuff related to going riding on a race bike. I think I could design and build and evaluate and get a lot of the same technical fix I've gotten from racing though the "I'm racing against this person next to me" thrill will be absent.
Has anyone else made a similar change of focus?
I do have a Honda CTX700 project that I'm doing a Gurney Alligator-style FF (feet forwards) conversion on. The Honda seems to easily get 70-75mpg in stock form but it is meant as a general street ride, so the smaller bike (but still with decent power to stay up with traffic) would be obtained for an efficiency project.
cheers,
Michael
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