Description
Ron Lewis – Race Preparation Series – Parts 7 to 13
The first rule about preparing a bike to go racing in vintage or classic events is – do it. You’d be surprised at the number of people who drag a bike from under a haystack or out of the garden shed and risk their necks on it with scarcely more than a wipe over to remove the birds’ nests and mouse droppings. The same thing applies, more frequently, to new owners of recently-purchased racers – of whatever age. So many of them assume that because the tank and fairing are freshly painted and the alloy rims are nicely polished, they’ve bought a ready-to-race model. Nothing could usually be further from the truth. Even if it’s a bike that you saw running at the last meeting, how do you know that it didn’t finish its last race with a valve on the verge of dropping in, or a brake shoe spring just about to break and lock up the front wheel? You don’t – yet people willingly ride completely unknown quantities because they can’t be bothered or don’t know how to strip and prepare the machine properly.
