I had a chance to do a cou­ple of trail rides with the Elka this week­end. I was absolutely blown away. It is by far the best shock I have ever rid­den. I usu­ally would just describe the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the shock. With the Elka it is so adjustable that you can change the shock to get any char­ac­ter­is­tics you like. A few clicks and it truly feels like a  dif­fer­ent shock.

I am not one of the peo­ple that was ter­ri­bly unhappy with the per­for­mance of the RP23. That shock is hard to tune on the Tracer but I cer­tainly felt like I had it as good as it was going to get. That being said I also felt like there was some per­for­mance left on the table with the Fox. The biggest ben­e­fit to the Elka is what it doesn’t do. It com­pletely cured the the ten­dency of the RP23 to move exces­sively through the mid stroke. The bike is a totally dif­fer­ent ani­mal through G-outs and burmed cor­ners. It stays nice and high in the travel. It is more plush in all the set­tings I tried and ped­als pretty well to boot.

Out of the box the shock felt like a mod­ern DH rac­ing shock. The LSC, HSC and rebound were all pretty heav­ily damp­ened. I am sure it would have just eaten up a gnarly rocky and rut­ted course. The prob­lem is that this is my trail bike. If I am rid­ing any­thing where I would want a full face or flat ped­als I take my other bike. Time to play with the knobs.

One click on any of the three damp­ing adjusters makes a big dif­fer­ence. On top of that, each has a bunch of clicks. There is a wider range of adjust­ment than you could use on any one bike. I backed off the LSC a few clicks and the HSC a click or two. I also sped up the rebound a cou­ple of clicks. I ended up with the per­fect set it and for­get it ride. The bike was super plush on the lit­tle stuff and the spring curve seemed per­fect. It was still poppy on the lips and ped­aled well. The travel felt deep when it should and didn’t when it shouldn’t. Very nice.

Nor­mally, I would have stopped there and just rid­den but I wanted to see what the pos­si­bil­i­ties for this shock were. I backed of the LSC, HSC and rebound a bit more. All I can say is that it was a magic car­pet ride. All trail chat­ter was gone. The odd thing was it still felt really con­nected to the trail. I could tell exactly what my tires were doing in terms of trac­tion but I couldn’t feel the bumps. There were some down­sides in that the bike did tend to flat­ten lips in this con­fig­u­ra­tion and it was a bit mushy when sprint­ing. It is really nice to have this option for a long days in the backcountry.

All in all, I was super impressed. I am sure there are other coil shocks that would sim­i­larly trans­form the Tracer. I haven’t tried them so I can only com­pare it to the RP23. All of the con­fig­u­ra­tions were a huge improve­ment and the abil­ity to choose your ride is an added bonus. Wow.

__________________
It never gets any eas­ier. You just go faster.

 Rob Cun­ning­ham

Pres­i­dent
3D Visual Concepts

 July 21, 2009

Thurs­day morn­ing, after a big first ever day at Mosport Inter­na­tional Race­way with Pro 6 Cycle, Raphael was all ready for the Round 4–5 of the SV 650 cup 2009 serie …
 
At the end of the day 1 of Parts Canada Super­bike Cham­pi­onship, we saw that the track day paid off by being first in both prac­tice, with a time of 1:34.00.
 
But the day after was the qual­ify and we knew that we had to beat  Rob Buzby, Jéremy Hade-Precourt, Philippe Masse, etc. Finally, after 20 longs min­utes of exchang­ing the pole, between Jéremy and me, luck was with him with a time of 1:32.662 and me 1:32.722 …
 
Sat­ur­day morn­ing, the last prac­tice before the race:

About the race, It went really good, I had a good start and then I took the holeshot, in lap 2, Jéremy fell down in the cor­ner #2 and Rob Busby was not close to me, so I just tried not to make any mis­takes, win the race and beat Cody’s lap record ( 1:32.281) with a time of 1:31.807 ! »
 
Sun­day, Round 5, It was going to be a really tight race, because Philippe Masse, Jody Green­ing did the same lap time then Raphael and Rob and Jéremy was back on his bike …

« I still took a good start  but this time Rob took the lead in cor­ner 2 in the last lap, but I passed him at the end of the straight  and won .

I’m so happy for my cham­pi­onship !!! »
 
We would like to thank our spon­sors … Picotte motor­sport, Elka sus­pen­sion, Sunoco Race fuel, Hin­dle exhaust, Per­for­mance fric­tion brakes, Hot­bod­ies, Dezo air brush, Pirelli and Suzuki
 
« … and a spe­cial thanks to Pas­cal Picotte for help­ing me when I had ques­tions, for my bike, etc. »
 
Team Archam­bault Rac­ing.
www.archambault-racing.piczo.com

For more infor­ma­tion on the Cana­dian Super­bike series please visit their web site.
www.cdnsuperbike.com

July 24–25 Course VTT Ste-Séraphine Qc. (ATV) www.coursesvtt.qc.ca/calendrier.html

July 23–25 Coupe du Monde MTB Ste-Anne Qc. www.montsainteanne2010.com/program

Aug. 1–2 Coupe du Monde MTB Bromont Qc. (MTB)
www.canadian-cycling.com

Aug. 7–9 Course VTT Chénéville Qc. (ATV) www.coursesvtt.qc.ca/calendrier.html

Aug. 15–16 Course VTT Ste-Véronique Qc. (ATV) www.coursesvtt.qc.ca/calendrier.html

Aug. 20–24 12 hrs PDV Pont-de-Vaux France (ATV) www.pdvracing.com/france/index.html

Aug. 22–23 NEATV MX207 (ATV)
www.neatv-mx.com/

sept 5–6 Couse VTT La Tuque (ATV)
www.coursesvtt.qc.ca/calendrier.html

sept 26–27 NEATV Walden MX (ATV)
www.neatv-mx.com/

oct 3 Mon­treal SuperMX

oct 11 NEATV Jolly Rogers (ATV)
www.neatv-mx.com/

What a race week-end in Saint Mamet, France for racer Romain Cou­prie who won this gru­elling race in front of 36 other rac­ers. This podium pro­vides him with a com­fort­able lead and he is only one race away from earn­ing his 5th con­sec­u­tive title in the France Quad-Cross Cham­pi­onship series.

STAGE 1

Romain man­aged to take the holeshot and dis­tance him­self from Adrien Mang­ieu and Greg Lassaigne.

1. Romain Cou­prie
2. Adrien Mang­ieu
3. Grégory Lassaigne

STAGE 2

Romain didn’t have as easy as stage 1 because of a bad start, but nonethe­less he was able to catch the 5th spot.

1. Clément Jay
2. Grégory Las­saigne
3. Matthieu Bonnard

STAGE 3

Cou­prie con­tin­ued to be as agres­sive as when he started and won the final battle.

1. Romain Cou­prie
2. Adrien Mang­ieu
3. Clément Jay
4. Matthieu Bon­nard
5. Matthieu Ternynck

Cou­prie will now be able to take it easy for a short while before the final race of the sea­son which will be held in Antagnac.

Elka’s momen­tum will reach another level as we can con­firm to all of you that our Sup­port and tech crew will be at the next Dune Fest which will be held from July 28 to August 2^nd. — This 5-day event draws thou­sands of ATV enthu­si­asts to Win­ches­ter Bay, the heart of the Ore­gon Dunes. This event won the Ova­tion Award for THE BEST SPORTING EVENT  IN OREGON 2008

Look for the Elka booth to learn how to fine-tune your sus­pen­sions as our crew of tech­ni­cians will answer all of your ques­tions and give you prac­ti­cal advice about our prod­ucts. Our rep­re­sen­ta­tives will also be on hand to pro­vide you with the lat­est infor­ma­tion about what’s going on at Elka Suspension.

For this spe­cial occa­sion you’ll be able to save 15% for a brand new set of Elka shocks and our sup­port crew will be there to help you dial-in your new shocks accord­ing to your weight and rid­ing style.

Many other indus­try heavy­weights will also be there.

Con­tact Infor­ma­tion:
Reedsport/Winchester Bay Cham­ber of Com­merce
P. O. Box 11
Reed­sport, OR 97467
Email: reewbycc@charterinternet.com
http://www.reedsportcc.org/
Phone: 541–271-3495
1–800-247‑2155

This great title says it all, and it comes from Freida Rozelle who is the Youth Con­tin­gency Pro­gram Direc­tor. She has been work­ing hard for the last 3 years with the ATVA and Racer pro­duc­tions in mak­ing sure that the future of the rac­ing scene can be assured for our younger rid­ers. In a few years, these young rid­ers will become pros and ambas­sadors of our sport.

Freida also spoke of the advan­tages many par­ents should real­ize when they get involved with their kids in rac­ing. Instead of play­ing in the streets and increase their chances of hang­ing around with oth­ers you would not rec­om­mend, the fam­ily can get together dur­ing race week­ends and have fun.

Freida quoted « We want to see the ATV youth classes grow each and every year, we are not pro­mot­ers of any kind and only want to help all youth rid­ers. This will be the 3^rd year of the pro­gram as last year was a great suc­cess with us rais­ing over $60,000 in prizes for our 12 youth classes. Each child that attended the last race was put into a draw­ing and won a prize along with each child receiv­ing a bag of mer­chan­dise at the end of the night. — We would like to make the last National a spe­cial race for the youth classes, Make it the SUPER BOWL of the ATVA. Our goal is to have busi­nesses send us prod­ucts or gift cer­tifi­cates to be given away on Fri­day night  to the dif­fer­ent youth classes. We hope to bring more youth rid­ers back to the rac­ing cir­cuit and to let all youth rid­ers have a chance to win some won­der­ful prizes whether they come in 1^st or last place at the races, every­one will win an awe­some prize»

Elka rep­re­sen­ta­tives said: « We at Elka Sus­pen­sion are proud to be a spon­sor of this event. Elka will be there for many years to come and some of these young rid­ers will surely ride one day on Elka’s . As an indus­try leader we value this event and I encour­age every player of the indus­try to give strong sup­port to the Youth Con­tin­gency Program.»

For more infor­ma­tion please contact:

Freida Rozelle

If you have any ques­tions feel free to email me at lilbuddy7@charter.net or call 1–931-260‑9856 or 931–853-0388

Many ATV and Side by Side enthu­si­asts feel intim­i­dated when they want to prop­erly fine tune a new sus­pen­sion kit. Elka Sus­pen­sion staff is aware that it can become a chal­lenge for non expert rid­ers. This is why Elka Sus­pen­sion con­tin­ues to offer free tech­ni­cal train­ing and sup­port at cer­tain events like the last Sand Fest that was held in the Ore­gon Dunes National Recre­ation Area.

Vis­i­tors and crowds gath­ered around the Elka booth dur­ing these 15 days and learned how to dial-in their Elka shocks so that they can take advan­tage of the ben­e­fits a pro­fes­sional grade sus­pen­sion kit can pro­vide in dif­fer­ent rid­ing con­di­tions. A few clicks clock­wise or counter clock­wise can dra­mat­i­cally improve the way your machine will feel and handle.

Eric St-Louis of Elka Sus­pen­sion quoted « These events really give us a unique oppor­tu­nity to teach to our cus­tomers every­thing they should know about shocks. We have built our rep­u­ta­tion by pro­vid­ing this free ser­vice and it is greatly appre­ci­ated by our users. Once they acquire the knowl­edge to really fine-tune their shocks accord­ing to the way they ride, they always come back to give us 2 thumbs up. It’s quite reward­ing for us to get this pos­i­tive feedback».

6th July 2009
Scot­tish Quad Rac­ing Cham­pi­onship 2009
Round Six Leuchars

John Mitchell took the over­all win this week­end as he made a sur­prise return after nine weeks out with a shoul­der injury. Rac­ing in round six of the Quad Rac­ing Scot­land SACU Cham­pi­onship, John was com­pet­ing against some of the British Cham­pi­onship con­tenders at the Leuchars track.

It was the first time this fan­tas­tic track was being used to race quads and it had been pre­pared to a very high stan­dard. John was rid­ing his ATV World Yamaha YFZ450R Fuel Injec­tion to a stan­dard setup. Feel­ing a lit­tle appre­hen­sive, John rode steady in race one and started from the back. Work­ing his way round the track, John still didn’t feel 100% fully fit and was very pleased with his fourth place finish.

In race two, John decided again to start from the back and began to find some race pace, work­ing his way through, John said that he felt lucky as he crossed the line in first place. In the final race of the day, John had the con­fi­dence to push hard from the start. Unfor­tu­nately his shoul­der became so painful he had to stop, stretch it and re-join the race. John still man­aged an incred­i­ble sec­ond place fin­ish and first place overall.

Clearly delighted with his per­for­mance John explained that he found the days rac­ing hard going and very sore but had given him the con­fi­dence on the bike to push harder for the next round of the British Cham­pi­onship in two weeks time. John also wishes to thank Paul Gow­land for help­ing pre­pare his quad for this round.

Nor­folks ATV World Youth rider Tyler Soar made the trip to the ACU South­ern area cham­pi­onships round 6 this week­end which showed him back on form with an 11 sec­ond lead win in race one with a best lap time only 3 sec­onds of his 450cc cham­pi­onship class counter parts.

His win­ning ways were cut short in race 2 when a fail­ing spark plug ham­pered his progress, but his dogged deter­mi­na­tion paid off to bring home a sec­ond. With a new spark plug installed it was out for race 3, where a poor start, which is some­thing that Tyler has suf­fered with all sea­son left him hav­ing to bat­tle through the slower race run­ners and after 2 laps get up to the race leader and apply the pressure.

At this point it turned in to one of the most elec­tri­fy­ing races of all the classes all day with posi­tion changes in the final laps by both rid­ers. The race was unfor­tu­nately short­ened due to acci­dents in pre­vi­ous races so when Tyler and his rival George Call­away came over the final jump on to the fin­ish line together you can imag­ine the ten­sion in the crowd and the cheers. unfor­tu­nately there was point 1 of a sec­ond sep­a­rat­ing George and Tyler so Tyler had to set­tle for another sec­ond place.

Changes to Tylers bikes gear­ing will be car­ried out this week in prepa­ra­tion for a long trip to the Scot­tish bor­ders this com­ing week­end where he will com­pete in round 5 of the ACU North East cham­pi­onship, where hope­fully poor starts will be made a thing of the past.

Story cour­tesy John “Doo­gie” How­ell of Quad
http://quad.transworld.net/2009/07/02/project-whirl-is-finished/

Pop­Sci staff photographer/madman John Car­nett has real­ized an unholy dream long in the mak­ing: an ATV pow­ered entirely by a jet tur­bine. And then he took it to the woods and pushed it to the limit; to the edge of logic, con­trol and sanity.

As if intent to cement his inter­nal rep­u­ta­tion as the res­i­dent DIY crazy man, Car­nett told me last year that his next project was going to involve a jet tur­bine and some­thing he could drive. Unsur­pris­ingly, Car­nett didn’t feel the least bit ham­pered by the fact that he lacked a tur­bine, a vehi­cle, and any real knowl­edge about how to put a tur­bine on a vehi­cle. But after ten months, untold thou­sands of dol­lars, a big hand from our bud­dies at QUAD mag­a­zine and the equiv­a­lent of a col­lege degree in jet-power gleened from dozens of grizzeld old shop guys around the coun­try, Carnett’s turbine-powered ATV, dubbed the Whirl, ripped up some ground in upstate New York last week, reach­ing speeds of 60 mph and torque that would launch it over an obsta­cle like the Duke boys escap­ing Boss Hog.

The vehi­cle is built around a donated Polaris RZR, a two-person quad that’s been stripped of its engine, roll cage, sus­pen­sion, shocks, bat­tery, drive axels, wheels, tires and elec­tri­cal sys­tem. When Car­nett tried to buy a new tur­bine and explained why, man­u­fac­tur­ers hung up on him, but he soon dis­cov­ered the gray mar­ket of jet-power enthu­si­asts. His tur­bine, a for­mer mil­i­tary pow­er­plant man­u­fac­tured in the 1960s, came from a guy who’d been using it in his Honda CRX and was trad­ing up. The rest of the parts were either fab­ri­cated in John’s Philadel­phia shop, cus­tom made by some­one sym­pa­thetic to the project (like the shocks Elka whipped up just for him) or acquired from the far-flung reaches of the Inter­net (parts for a 40-year-old tur­bine being typ­i­cally out of stock at Lowe’s).

Beside the obvi­ous logis­ti­cal chal­lenges of cram­ming a jet tur­bine spew­ing 1300°F exhaust on a small plat­form inches behind the driver’s head—throwing off the weight and bal­ance of the entire vehicle—and account­ing for an entirely new set of mechan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal sys­tems, is the fact that small sin­gle stage tur­bines like to run at 102 per­cent of power 100 per­cent of the time, but it’s a lit­tle hard to steer a four-wheeler going balls out through the woods (well, for very long any­way). Carnett’s solu­tion (and a good por­tion of the ten-months spent build­ing it): install a hydraulic drive sys­tem in between the tur­bine and the built-in gear box. A sin­gle axis joy­stick style con­troller, like those that con­trol mas­sive min­ing equip­ment, acts as an accel­er­a­tor, adjust­ing the cur­rent flow­ing to the hydraulic pump, which reg­u­lates how much of the turbine’s power makes it to the drive shaft.

After an ini­tial cop-taunting run around the streets of Philly, Car­nett took the beast to the woods for its ini­tial off-road run last week, and sent back this note, which pretty well sums it up: “This past Sat­ur­day I took the WHIRL to a 14-acre area for R&D. The machine exceeded my dreams, scared a few peo­ple and made me smile so hard that it hurt. It’s rather like stand­ing next to a 114db hot dog cooker that could explode at any time: tens of thou­sands of RPMs by your head, 8,000 RPM by your ass. The dan­ger seems to defy the logic of the device. You get into an adren­a­line rush that is unlike any­thing you could imagine—faster thru the woods, mud fly­ing– at the very edge of con­trol; then still faster; you get to the point of almost crash­ing prior to slow­ing down. Lim­its appear; the blurr stops; the tur­bine whine slows; you get out then fall to the ground with a body bruised yet feel no pain…