[UPDATE: unfrotunately I was notified by the organisers that the 28th even will be cancelled, and apparently there will be no more drag events at Dakota for the rest of the year. When I asked why the carefully worded response led me to believe someone got hurt (or worse) at one of the events, but that is purely my speculation. Santa Pod have a whole series of dates in October so I will hopefully be running at one or more of those. I was already planning to be at the October 19th one but given Dakota’s cancellation may add another date in, depending on what I can manage].
I am looking for additional sponsors: If you have a Thing to promote and are interested in sponsoring my looney bike racing adventures and getting views on youtube then there is sticker space to be had on my personal bike, which is currently the fastest one and the one likely to be setting ‘records’ (if any) for the moment, so that’s probably where you’d want stickers anyway. Ideally I’d need assistance with entry fees and fuel costs getting to and from the events (since it’s a long way from Devon). If your target market is CBT/L-plate/young riders, and anything R125-related (other than ECUs) then that is exactly my audience and you can just drop me an email and we can work something out. This is all pretty informal and laid back and we’re not talking huge sums of money here, but I only work part time (because bikes) and racing is expensive, so every little helps. Decal space for small decals can be had starting from £20 per event (see I said it was reasonable didn’t I?)
I’ve just booked my 180cc bike into the RWYB at Dakota on the 28th sept. With the new RPM increase and some other changes I have yet to make I’m really curious (and excited) to see whether we can finally break 90 (i think yes), and if so how close we can get to 100mph.
Currently she’s capped at 11k which should put us at a geared max of 96.7mph, but so far I’ve not really seen the power band finish yet even with the 11k limit, so I’m thinking of adding another 500rpm and just praying i don’t melt the engine, which would potentially get us geared to 101.1mph.
Whether she’ll have the power to push that far I don’t know, whether I’ll end up melting everything and be left with no local transport and lots of new bills, I don’t know either. There’s gonna be a lot of “i don’t know”s in this experiment, some of them potentially quite expensive if they go the wrong way, but hey, life is risk, right?
So far with the local riding I’ve done she’s felt really good right up to the limit but I’ve not had chance to actually see about top speed, only in lower gears so far.
Also Dakota is an old runway and from the look of it is large blocks of concrete and definitely a “no prep” track/event. Apparently “they sweep it sometimes if they feel like it” which is very different from the fully-prepped (smooth as glass and glue on track for extra grip) Santa Pod which is the only other strip I’ve raced driven on.
Personally find no-prep more interesting/fun/dangerous since you have to actually take into account the track surface, lane choice etc rather than just twist the thing as hard as you can, so it’s actually more about rider skill than just who has the most ponies and money, but I suspect that it being less-than ideal conditions will affect achievable top speeds.
There do look to be a lot more small-cc bikes there so I’ll hopefully not stick out and feel as much of a wally there as I would on my little R125 at santa pod among the scoobies, skylines and superbikes.
Tbh if we can convincingly break 90 I’ll already be pleased, but if some of these new ECU tweaks pan out as hoped I think we might be able to do a little better than that.
Bear in mind this is still a 180cc with a stock head and valves, so we’re still using the small valves from the 125cc but trying to squeeze 40% more air in and out (80x/second!), and I’ve done *nothing* at all to the intake tract yet – stock throttle body, stock airbox etc, and no valve timing adjustment either, and all of those could make considerably more power.
So if we don’t hit 100mph this time, we’re certainly not out of things to still improve to get there, and if we DO get there, then we may well be able to push further than I’d ever hoped. And that’s before we even start down the road of forced induction, whether NOS, supercharger or turbo.
Given the rough surface at Dakota I think I won’t be switching to the “track” wheels with the sport demon tyres on and will just run my current combo which is a dualsport/all-terrain tyre on the back (Heidenau K60 Scout 130/80) and a winter tyre on the front (Heidenau K66 100/80). Somehow Heidenau tyres are unbelievably sticky but really hard-wearing. I don’t know how they do it. Both tyres have incredible grip in sketchy conditions, and ngl I sorta like the idea of rocking up to a drag strip on what are essentially dirt tyres on a somewhat “farm use” looking bike 😉 (especially if I’m then somewhat fast).
I was going to get all the newly painted plastics out of storage, and even had the boxes open and was looking at them, and whilst I’d love her to be in the right colours, looking as intended rather than the mishmash of random panels she’s wearing currently, the environment here is pretty brutal for a sportbike and until I have the facilities to repair/refinish them, I’d rather not trash my nice new panels amid the muck and gravel where my workshop is based, so I guess for now, patchwork bike on farm tyres ftw ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Fastest R125-based bike?
I don’t know what the world record is for an R125-based bike (whether 125cc, 150cc or 180cc) – the fastest similar bike I know of is the Tuneboss Thailand one which has a turbo (but still somehow only makes 24hp??). They looked to be hitting 180kmh (111.8mph) but that was on a dyno with no wind resistance, so whether that would be the same on track I don’t know. Some dynos can calculate wind resistance and factor that into their power calculations but we didn’t see that, only the speed reading on the speedometer, which showed (an indicated) 180kmh.
It sure takes off though and as far as I’m aware, that’s currently the fastest…whether it’ll stay that way, remains to be seen.
If you know of another fast R125-based bike then please do let me know.
The only other thing I could find re fastest R125s was this video below on youtube which also shows the TuneBoss one as the fastest but also has another one which looks pretty spicy:
But those two are the fastest I can find and whilst I don’t think mine makes quite as impressive flames (though tbh I’ve generally been focussed on where I was going at the time so don’t actually know) I wonder if we might be in the running for at least being in the top 3 fastest R125s in the world, which would be awesome.
I was chatting briefly to a guy in france (or belgium, idr which) who had an R125-based bike apparently with hp in the 30s. He’d managed to squeeze a 250cc cylinder in there somehow but apparently he had to do quite a lot of work to the crank cases to make the cooling work (I’m not surprised!), but he wasn’t super communicative so I don’t really know much more about it than that. Pics or it didn’t happen.
Either way, I’ve just spent money which was earmarked for urgent drainage pipework for my workshop/living space, to go drag racing instead, so it’s pretty clear where my priorities lie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
p.s. I just found this guy (Abhinav Bhatt) the other day and whilst he’s having the work done rather than doing it himself, he explains what’s going on really well and he’s doing some really interesting things with his later R15 which has the VVA engine and a 180cc kit. There’s a really good video of the (top end) engine build for that bike. With ~25hp it would also have to be in the running for fastest R125/R15 and he’s had quite a lot done to it. Check out his channel 🙂
