Bike maintenance consists of what you need to maintain your machine and repair anything that might happen to it. Hopefully when you leave for the track you have an assembled and running bike that moves under its own power. Trying to finish assembly once you arrive can be difficult, so do that kind of work at home. All your safety wiring should be done when you get there too. You'll need to Tech before you can get on the track so having this already done allows you maximum time for the other details like fuelling and checking practice and race times and organising your pit area.
You will have to finalise your carb set-up at the track so you will need a good selection of jets, mostly mains and pilots. A gas can is a necessity and don't forget your pre-mix oil. You do not fill up two-stroke bikes at the trackside pump so a mixing device of some sort is a must. There are funnels made just for this like the Ratio-rite, or the Accu-mix gas can which makes life real easy.
Spark plugs are the most frequently replaced item you'll deal with. RD350's will need B8HS and B9HS and 400's use the E series plugs of the same heat range. Bring a box of both heat ranges with you.
Crashes and weird stuff happen with great frequency when you are racing. Be ready to replace the parts that get mangled most commonly. Bars, pegs, and levers are the first victims. Fancy bodywork looks great but gets shabby fast. Look at my pictures section and you can see the progression from newbie fancy paint and 'glass to working racer with no 'glass to flat black with just a number plate and finally to nice paint and 'glass once again as I got help from a friend at a local bodyshop. If you are going to run some kind of bodywork either have spares or have a way of attaching number plates of the bodywork gets smashed to bits. Zip ties are our friends. So is duct tape.
As I said elsewhere, you do not need an eight foot long Snap-on toolbox, but you do need all the basics and a few speciality tools. Make sure you have the tools you need to remove and replace EVERY fastener on your bike. A small selection of the most common fasteners is a good idea too in case one breaks or strips. If there is air for tools available where you race, an impact wrench is a great thing to have. Countershaft sprocket and clutch hub nuts are a breeze with air tools.
A bike stand of some sort is a must have. It does not need to be expensive. I used a home-made steel one and it worked as well as the $100 jobs did. It is best if it is made so you can put the bike on it by yourself. A nice luxury is a table of some sort the bike can sit on when not being ridden. We used one of those metal and chipboard tables like you used at your school bake sale. They are just long enough for an RD and you can do engine rebuilds on them and serve dinner as well. A ramp will be needed, but you'll probably have one of those anyway. A table like this makes maintenance much easier on you and affords you a better look at all of the bike.
Get a good tire pressure gauge and use it. Keep it safe.
Get in the habit of wiping the whole thing down between practices and races. A rag and a can of WD-40 will keep it clean, but the real reason for doing this is to find loose things and cracks before they bite you. I did this all the time and it paid off.
I think of bikes like aircraft. If something goes wrong at speed you have very little you can do about it, so preventative maintenance is 100% necessary. Safety wire comes from the aircraft industry and this is no coincidence. Only once in my trackside career did I neglect a critical procedure and it will stay with me for the rest of my life.
We had installed a new motor and swapped our Daytona gearing for the NHIS set-up in the shop
the week before. Normally I did all that type of work by myself, but this time I left installing
the chain to Pete. I had put the countershaft sprocket and nut on, but had not done the final
torque as this is easier with the chain on. Peter hung the chain later, assuming quite naturally
that I had tightened that nut. That weekend at the track in a race I see Pete slow to a stop
after exiting turn three heading up the hill. He and a cornerworker dragged the bike off the
racing surface to safety, and Pete walked back to our garage. I had assumed the bike had seized.
Nope. That nut had backed off, locking the chain and the rear wheel, and pulling the clutch lever
did nothing to release the locked wheel as Pete had slid to a stop.
Luckily for us he was on a relatively slow section of the track, was upright, and was
heading uphill, so gravity helped slow him down. Nobody was right behind him either. If that had
happened on the straight it might have been a different story and I might have been driving his
wife Linda to the local hospital instead of pushing the bike back to the pits upset with myself
while Linda was left to cheer Pete up. I had always been thorough in my prep work, but that one
detail had gotten by me that one time, and it could have cost my friend his life. That will never
happen again.
Personal maintenance is what keeps you going. Racing means long long days at the track. If you can possibly find somebody to come along as an assistant grab them and do not let go. You will have a lot to do, and extra hands and minds help.
First thing is your personal equipment, meaning helmet, leathers, gloves and boots. Forget any one of these and you either go home or buy new from a trackside vendor, which is often no bargain. You need a helmet to even tech your bike. Find a way to store these all in one place, like a big bag, and keep them all together. That saves time hunting for things in the van or at home before you leave, which gets very frustrating.
Second is food and water. Lots of it. I won't go into a big lecture here, but I have studied sports physiology and nutrition enough to know that even a mildly dehydrated racer will perform at less than peak abilities, so drink water! Same goes for caloric intake. Even if you have a nervous stomach at high stress times like at a race, eat many small things and often. Energy bars are great and will not spoil even in a 100deg van in a box all summer. That same heat really puts a stress on your mind and body, which will spend a lot of time wrapped in sweaty hot leathers and an equally hot helmet. A cooler full of water, energy drinks, and any perishables you might desire is real handy. As we got more sophisticated, we brought along a portable gas stove or grill so we did not have to survive on peanut butter sandwiches and the like.
We'd even make our own coffee in the morning, which was a real luxury. A few of us were famous for our high octane go-juice. Track food is usually expensive so providing your own save moneys which buys race gas later.
Some sort of basic first aid kit is needed. If you fly into a tire wall and don't get up the safety crew will take care of you, but if you snag a finger of some sharp safety wire it's up to you to bring the Band-aids. Cuts and burns happen, so be ready.
Chairs. As dumb as it sounds, a place to sit is great. Your legs will thank you.
Figure out where you're going to sleep and bring what is necessary. Tents on the grass are very common. Sleeping in the van is as well. I've slept in the backseat of my car at the track before, but it is not much fun. We always envied the guys with the motor homes. No school gym type showers for them.
Watch the weather forecast and pack and dress accordingly & jet the bike accordingly!!!!
That, in a rambling way, is the basic survival plan you'll need to make your time as efficient and enjoyable as possible. Like I said, everyone organises differently, but we settled on large plastic tubs to organise our stuff. Spare parts were grouped by bike system (brake box, gearing box, etc.) and packed that way.
Cooking gear in one. Protective gear in its own. You get the idea. It made life easier for us by saving time scrambling through boxes and crates looking for whatever loose part I needed. If I needed a brake lever I looked in the brake box and had it in seconds. And do not forget to replace whatever spares you use once you get home. That will bite you next time if you forgot.
This is from our earlier days. We were using Spectro oil boxes to organise, along with some other containers. Our race van was an old ambulance, which gave us lots of storage for stuff that could just stay in the van all summer. Also provided a place to sleep. You can see my home-made trackstand too. Cost about $20. The flat black paint came after my original red and white TZ bodywork was wrecked. The shiny black paint came later. Typical overcast cold spring NHIS weather. Oh yeah, the ambulance would let us "make good time" on the highway. People tended to get out of the way.
A few other items don't fit either category but are a big help. A good stopwatch with multiple lap memory will tell you if you are improving. This takes somebody to run it and that is where a helper comes in. A notebook to record your "settings" like jetting, tire pressures and the atmospheric conditions during practices and races is a big help.
You don't need a weather station, but basics like temp and humidity are good to know. Look around at the other guys racing two strokes, especially modern TZ's and I'll bet you'll find a fancy weather rig that will give you all you need to know. Once you have a log of these settings you can refer back to them in the future when the conditions are the same and you'll know what worked and what did not. These are often sold by race suppliers or you can cook up your own. Here is an example of notes I kept. That was a good race!
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 © Geo of K.G.B. of T
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