| Author | Message | ||
     Doerman |
I had the privilege to help Liberty Waves with their 1125R in Moto GT in Daytona and Higbee at Fontana this past weekend. When you work in the garages from daybreak to past sunset you pick up on some impressions. The volunteer work for these two teams was very interesting and I will carry many fond memories from both. That is in and of itself a long story. Suffice it to say that I am thankful to Slaughter for putting me in touch with Liberty, which got this whole thing started. This post is about Buell racing support and how real that is for those fielding a Buell in the AMA races. It is public knowledge that Buell has put up good contingency money. It is the trackside support I want to bring up here. When Liberty waves qualified for the MotoGT the crew chief was worried the machine was over the 130HP limit so he had it dynoed. It turned out to be right at 130 and that is a risk not worth taking. One phone call, and ten minutes later a guy from Buell showed up with a laptop and dialed back the spark advance to get us under 130. The crew chief asked to put it around 126. Laptop plugged in and adjustments made. The dyno verified it at 126.5. A little later the same day, the rider wanted a quick shifter put on which requires another hook up to the ECM and toggle off the bank angle sensor and toggle on the quick shifter. Laptop guy was there in no time and got the job done. By the way, the Buell race ECM is an amazing thing. You can tune just about anything! I also noticed that Buell employees of the highest rank came through the garage often to see if we needed something. Great support and I chalked it up to be Daytona, the season opener and premier event. I helped Higbee’s team out this weekend at Fontana. Shawn has two bikes that will run in two events each. That was quite a feat to get them ready even if there were no problems. After Friday’s practice, the rear shock on the DSB did not work the way Shawn wanted it. Again a cell phone call and a guy shows up. Shawn and the guy discuss and we have a direction to go with regards to the shock. Shawn wanted changes to the SB fueling and the laptop guy shows up and makes the proper adjustments. After Saturday's DSB race, the motor was very noisy and there’s obviously something wrong. Mitsu and I tear into the motor (more Mitsu than I) to find out that there is a problem with the charging rotor. Just at that time a guy from the Buell demo truck shows up and he gets right into helping to diagnose and work on the bike. Since this problem occurred on the DSB, Mitsu wanted to check the SB as well. All three of us worked on the bikes to verify and fix these problems and get the bikes race prepped for Sunday’s races. We didn’t have all the parts and the right tool and the Latus team lent us theirs. Latus needed some parts for their bikes that we had. It was just perfect cooperation all around. The bikes were finally ready at midnight. The Buell Demo Truck guy stuck with us until all the work was done! During all of this, a couple of other guys from Buell came by repeatedly to check on our progress and see if we needed something. The support was just incredible. The Buell folks were also open with information to a lowly wannabe tech like me. To contrast this, Walt Sipp on his R6 had ECM problems and he had no-one from Yamaha to help him. He got a stock ECM from a local guy. No support from Yamaha. It is just amazing to meet the elves in person, see them in action and work with them. Buell people has a work ethic I thought disappeared years ago. They symbolize the American spirit of independence and entrepreneurship. I have kept their names out of this to respect their anonymity. If you ever consider racing a Buell in AMA, you can be sure of one thing: Trackside support from Buell. (Message edited by doerman on March 23, 2009) | ||
| Fresnobuell |
Ozzie, that's a great post. I wish I knew what was going on so I could have stopped by and said "hi" | ||
| Court |
"Elves" is capitalized.  . . . . it's a beautiful thing, eh? Thanks for starting my day off wonderfully! Court | ||
| Patrickmitchell |
This is a great tale! I'm really enjoying watching the racing evolution of the 1125. What a cool company! | ||
| Pariah |
Thanks for posting this... awesome. | ||
| Neb25 |
Lap top guy is Bob Sweeny. | ||
| Slaughter |
You folks can't believe the level of support for ALL the privateers "out here." It doesn't matter that I'm DFL (recently) or podium (4 years ago) in Club racing, we all can count on help, support, advice - emails/phone/shipping - even though we're "only club racers." One side of me is hoping that Buell doesn't grow so large that they forget us "little guys" - but the other side of me knows that with people like Sweeny, Hurda, Ashkenazi, Rasmussen, DUGA - and their "hired help," Erik Buell/Jon Flickinger - we're ALWAYS going to see true ENTHUSIASTS keeping Buell (MoCo) pointed in the right direction REGARDLESS of how big they get. Those of us in the cheap seats are MORE AND MORE enthused as time goes by. | ||
| Doerman |
Thanks for the positive feedback guys. Maybe this is the new Elves... the Ambulatory Elves  Or maybe it was you, Court, that was the first Ambulatory Elf - with the Lap of America excursion? Neb25, I kept the names of the Buell folks out of it to let them keep the anonymity. They would want their anonymity if they were posting here so I figured they would want the anonymity when referred to here. To help in the garages and in the pits is incredibly hard physically, especially for a guy like me that spends his day doing office work. I would highly recommend it though and it is a way to help your favorite racer out in substantial way. If you want to do this you will need an AMA Crew Membership ($100 annually) and the weekend pass ($70 pre-race and $100 at the gate) (Message edited by doerman on March 24, 2009) | ||
| Slaughter |
The names of the people who help us are not names of anonymous posters here - those are people who HELP the racers! Nobody is being "outed." Don't anybody jump to conclusions... besides, none of us knows who the anonymous posters really are anyways. | ||
| Court |
Part of what, after 20+ years, continues to amaze me is that these folks are genuinely enthused. Erik, who wishes he were more deeply involved cough . . cough . . like RIDING has done the most amazing job of infecting some very talented folks with the dream. Buell outgrowing the privateer racer can't happen. It's been tried, lots of money was offered. The answer was a non-hesitant "no" and the reason would amaze you. Remind me to tell you sometime. I predict that Buell will continue, one step at a time, to pursue more and more racing and that their guiding principle will be to see racing made more fun and more accessible to more people. Court | ||
| Davegess |
Erik, now and always has charged the MC company to treat EVERYONE as a VIP. This is no more evident than in racing. There is little that will get Erik more excited than talking about his racing days and how tough and unfair it was to go head to head with the factory guys. There will be a longer post later today on how I see the various levels of racing support but for I will leave it "the factories use specail parts and money to reward those who are in favor with them. the withold these things if you are out of favor. It is very much about POWER". Erik see it differently. First off he is at heart a struggling privateer. He will never forget those days and that mindset. That is why Henry is at the race track. Buell will ALWAYS help you guys out to the best of theri ability. Second Erik sees no difference who races on a Buell, everyone on one deserves support and the results of all of them reflect on the company. He has no need to show how powerfull Buell is by only letting a slect few get the cool stuff. More later; back to work! |
