Word from Warren




So progress has all but halted over here at the Coconut Customs garage. With spirits and bank accounts at an all-time low, due, in part, to the long and cold Montana winter and several employers who have a unique ability to crush self-esteem; yet we will press-on.
Phone calls and emails have been exchanged and a plan is emerging. Recently I had the chance to look under the hood of a few dirt-track cars and midget racers. What I found was, on-average, hundreds of pounds of ballast strapped to the frames and under carriages. The same was found on the faster bikes out on the salt. And after a few short conversations with the pit crews I have come to learn that if there is a system for figuring out how much a car or bike needs to weigh for a particular track surface, these dudes either have no idea past a wild guess or they don’t want to tell me. Either way, what was evident is a need to have a ton of weight available and then just go with one’s gut. Fair enough. Hopefully the traction issue has been adequately addressed with the addition of 87 pounds of dead weight. This was made possible through a generous donation made by work’s scrap bin and a 3 phase welding machine.
Then came the task of finding a place to stick my head, it needed to be much lower in the bike. And considering the un-detachable nature of my melon, something needed to go away. So the stock tank was removed and tubing was ordered. What I came up with still needs to be finish welded but allows my noggin to dip totally out of the wind. Seeing the track will be an issue but I have gotten this far without knowing where I was pointed so I feel somewhat adapt at pinning it blindly towards the timing traps.
Outside of those two things, there is still much to do. An exhaust has been designed but not rendered; I still need to do a little more homework on the construction of that. New fenders also need to happen because the old ones got pretty thrashed but that task seems easy enough.
Peace out for now.