I am certain that the disappointment that Brian felt as he picked his bike up out of the mud was an order of magnitude more intense than the excitement I felt by seeing him there. An unforeseen problem with forced air systems is that when a float sticks open, the fuel pump opportunistically fills the float bowl vent tubes, which feed into the air box, which soaks the filter and can even fill the cylinders with uncompressible liquid. Needless to say, we inherited an undeserved second place which we held to the finish. Not counting slow riding we had completed an eight hour race with only 6 seconds worth of mistakes taking sixth overall and second in class. Our best finish to date.
People smile when they run eight hours without blowing a fuse .
When I informed Tim of this situation he didn t completely understand the ramifications until I explained that in order to secure a good finish at Summit we were going to need more bhp. Tim had Forrest Kerns weld up the exhaust ports so Tim could reshape them to his whim. He also necked down the intake tract a bit in an attempt to increase the velocity in the port. The shiny spots on the edges of the pistons suggested that the clearance between the piston and the head was resulting in a bit of alloy to alloy contact. Tim added an extra base gasket to move the head a smidgen further from the piston's grope.