Elvington 17/07

After a weekend of running the Punisher in it was back to the serious stuff of loading up again and heading to Yorkshire. This time it was with Oxo running shotgun with me and in the van with Si, pit crew Milly and Josh. Si nearly imploded at the last event not being able to have a go, so there was no way he was going to be spectating this time around. Loaded in the back was his '17 Blade !
A pleasant and uneventful trip to York was completed and we rock up at the Travelodge York Hull Road for stay No.2.
After the now mandatory breakfast at the pub we headed to Elvington. Last time we were as green as the grass and hadn't taken or thought of loads of stuff. We do learn though and this time we looked proper professional with Si's new gazebo (looks more like Billy Smarts circus has rolled into town !!).

Soon it was time for scrutineering for the bikes and kit.

 The weather was good with a tailwind and we managed to get some good runs in before lunch. I spent the morning session gradually building up until I hit around 130 mph. With the trike being fresh out of the crate it was a case of making sure everything was doing it's job.

Over lunch we were given permission to take some photos out on runway 26, thanks Trevor.

After lunch I tried removing the wing to see what reduction it was causing. In the end it proved to be 1.5 mph but was a lot more skittish. I'm really pleased with this as it proves all my sums have paid off for the road.

The big unknown all along had been what gearing to run. With so much conflicting information I ran the highest gearing the top speed guys recommend. Standard for a ZZR1400 is 17 front 42 rear. I changed to 18/39 which is a change of 6 teeth overall. It proved to be too tall and would only pull 4th gear. However this still meant topping out at a very pleasing 137.65 mph. Si managed a cracking 184 mph which was less than 10 mph less than Guy Martin managed on his Blade SP2.