2001 Pre-season Notes

2001 is to be the deciding year for the CD-1a and our approach to 50cc racing. Over the Winter we corrected many problems, added many new parts. As the 2001 season approached I realized that the bike was reaching the point I'd always hoped for as far as tuning goes, with all the special parts and modifications that I though would be necessary to win races. If we couldn't win with the bike in this state of tune then we would have to reassess our race program.
       After much consultation with Richard at Ardjuna Racing we found the correct parts I wanted to add for the 2001 season, namely the Kitaco race Clutch and Kitaco CDI race ignition. We also moved to a larger 20mm carb. That's a lot of changes at one time and I underestimated the time that would be required to sort things out.
         We also made changes to our chassis set up which included new rear shocks, changes in the front forks which gained us an inch or so of travel, and new Michelin race compound M20 Comp tires.
        I was hopeful that the bike would be fast "out of the box" without much retuning... I was very wrong and we had a lot of problems during our initial testing of the parts and during the first race.

	For 2001 we have a new race rig consisting of my little GMC Sonoma truck, our pop-up camper and my home-made enclosed trailer. This photo was taken as we camped in the infield section of NHIS paddock area.