Round 5: The Bolt Problem

September 14, 2026

When I was a kid, I used to take these wooden side tables we had in the living room, pair them with a foot stool, throw a pillow on top, and lay a baseball bat across the front to create a makeshift motorcycle for myself. After throwing a leg over my Chestnut 1000 with cool Easton clipons and Oak rearsets, I’d practice leaning over as far as I could while imitating Jim Goose’s heroics in the original Mad Max film. I could imagine ripping up the asphalt at dramatic lean angles while chasing down the Toecutter in acts of silverscreen glory. Somewhere in my essence, I’m still that kid and so, even on weekends where it seems like nothing is going right, I still leave the racetrack happy when the dust settles and I have time to think about the big picture. Thanks to modern machinery and tires, I get to do things on a racetrack that Jim Goose never could have dreamed of on his MFP KZ1000. That is a great privilege, no matter how you look at it.

Quick aside: how cool is Jim Goose’s bike, even today?:

Mad Max - Goose Hammering His KZ1000 at Speed

You’re welcome.

Note to self: Add Goose replica bike build to retirement project list. I digress..

During Round 5, we were to be running the HPR West course.

***High Plains Raceway West Layout, September 2026***

By any objective measure, Round 5 was a failure for me. I had a great time at the Legion trackday on Saturday and was feeling pretty good about racing on Sunday. Riding was going well in that ‘speed feels natural and good’ sensation one gets when things start to click. I even got to experience a moment of growth in the famously difficult turn 6 when I pushed myself one entire braking marker further than usual which fixed 90% of the problems I normally experience there. The back of the bike was squirming all over the place, the front end stayed compressed from corner entry to apex, and the bike tracked exactly where I wanted it to all the way through corner exit. It was great. Apart from possibly figuring out turn 6, though, the mojo this weekend was weird. I went through 2 pairs of gloves in 3 sessions, one of which got snagged on the clutch lever during the entry to turn 1, which is not a fun place to be distracted by bad riding gear. There were also a collection of small, but nagging issues with the bike that seemed to be amassing toward something strange. To top off the atypical wave, I literally fell asleep in my chair after my first session of hard riding, which is not a great sign. Fatigue from something in life was with me. Maybe I’m just getting older.

The fateful moment that ended up unraveling the weekend came after the Legion day had concluded while I was trying to pull off my front wheel to get fresh tires ready for Sunday. Everything was standard until, on the very last caliper bolt, I completely rounded off the head. This was on one of those pre-drilled titanium caliper bolts that you see sometimes which, as I now know, have a limited lifespan and are very mechanically weak on the head.

***Round 5 Nemesis, Predrilled Titanium Caliper Bolt***

Within a simple 1/8 turn that any Tom, Dick, or Harry would make while trying to loosen up a bolt, the head was gone; nothing for a socket, vice grips, or Magneto’s own mind to grab on to. The standard tricks that I’ve learned in my 40 years of turning wrenches just made things worse because the heads of these bolts are cottage cheese.

Fun engineering asides about these fasteners:

The titanium typically used in fasteners has a yield strength (the value that matters when you want to know when something may start to fail due to peak service load) that is about 14% lower than a typical grade 10.9 steel fastener from a hardware store —> a titanium caliper bolt head is more likely to yield under peak load (like loosening or torquing down) than a grade 10.9 steel fastener
The hardness of a titanium caliper bolt (the value that matters when you want to drill something out) is typically about 5% higher than a grade 10.9 fastener —> a titanium caliper bolt, once failed, is harder to drill out than a grade 10.9 steel fastener
A titanium caliper bolt is, maybe, several grams lighter than a steel counterpart —> what the hell is the point??
Do you see the problem?

Back to the story: to get this thing out, the only remaining options were to grind the head down to a point where the bolt would lose preload and could be loosened with a punch or to grind it down to a flat with the possibility of getting a drill bit to it. I didn’t have the tools to do either but, luckily, Kori was still at the house with the boys and would be able to bring some of the critical things I needed to fix the problem whilst dropping off the munchkins.

Bearing this is mind, I walked away from the issue to set up camp for the boys so that it would be ready to go when they arrived. That process ended up presenting a few of its own time-consuming issues and put me on the back foot by the time Kori showed up with the kiddos. When the boys arrived, I prioritized the family, as one should, and spent the next few hours getting them fed, jammied, set up in the family tent, and going through their bedtime routines. I finally got back to the bike at around 8:30 - 9:00 PM. I was tired and didn’t have access to my garage sweet of tools to experiment with different tactics. I had only one method at my disposal: grind away. Not ideal.

If you ever want to feel uncomfortable and highly judged by your racing peers, grab an angle grinder and start going to town on a caliper bolt in a paddock the night before a race. I promise you will feel both things by the time you’re done. For the next 1-2 hours, I very carefully and slowly ground away the head of the bolt in search of a loss of preload or a drillable flat. Since it was just the boys and me, my process consisted of grinding for 5-10 minutes, getting up and checking on the boys to make sure nothing was awry, then returning to the evening grind. With the excitement of tent camping in a paddock combined with the standard noises of a race eve, my ninos were having a lot of trouble getting to sleep. With each passing visit to the tent revealing that they were not sleeping, my internal stress was ramping up. I knew that a bad night’s sleep would result in an unruly Sunday for both of them. Eventually, my internal guilt took over and, even with the bolt problem unresolved, I felt that carrying on later into the night would have been irresponsible parenting. I threw in the towel and went to bed with the boys fully aware that I may, in fact, be conceding defeat for the weekend.

***Goofy Hour with The Boys, MRA, Round 5, HPR Paddock, September 2026***

I woke up the following morning at 6 AM, went through the standard wakeup routine with the boys, and realized very quickly that I wouldn’t be doing anything on the bike until help had arrived. Our youngest is a dense ball of energy during waking hours and is usually on overdrive when he first wakes up. After pulling my unruly children off each other for the 3rd time within their first 10 waking minutes of the day because one, the other, or both started wailing about whatever type of roughhousing was going on, I surrendered my first 1.5 hours to 100% Dad mode. When childcare help arrived around 7:30 AM, I turned my attention back to the bike and carried out the rest of my tedious plan which did, in fact, extract the bolt without ruining anything, or so I thought.

***The Bolt, MRA, Round 5, HPR, September 2026***

Within minutes of getting the caliper removed, I realized that, in my prying, I’d bent something. Given my level of caution in such a critical area, I was pretty surprised. Equal to my surprise, however, was the obviousness of an issue of some kind. As of this writing, I now know that, without realizing it, I’d accidently caught the brake rotor hat with my prybar. What a stupid mistake.

***Weekend Ender, Miller Garage, September 2026***

At the time of judgement, I was looking down the barrel of a mystery mechanical issue on the front end of the bike at around 9:45 AM. I’d missed morning practice, the root cause problem was unknown and unresolved, and I was slated to run a front tire compound I’d not run in years an a mission of tire pressure experimentation to get some front end feeling back on straight line braking, presumably now during races. Even if I could have snapped my fingers and had a fully functioning bike in that moment, the variables in the equation were giving me a null set. I had to make a call and the only responsible thing to do was to stop. I’ve never been to AA, but I’m familiar with the Serenity prayer, which offers some pretty good general wisdom for everyone “…grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Carrying on in an attempt to do some racing that day seemed stupid, so I stopped trying. In my opinion of my own efforts, it was a failure and I still don’t feel good about it. Even so, I think that calling it a day was the right decision and I like to flatter myself by thinking that I’m getting wiser with age. I imagine that as recent as 2 years ago, I’d have kept banging that drum until the I’d completely exhausted all of my options OR until the last race of the day had sounded over the loudspeakers. Upon reflection, the weekend feels like a moment of personal growth of the kind that goes beyond just riding the bike, albeit one that resulted in great disappointment.

So let’s find some positives from the weekend. I got a very generous offer from Jay to share his reserved carport spot which made the weekend 100% easier with the kiddos in tow. Huge thanks to Jay for that! I had some clutch help with spare parts from our paddock neighbor Josh, to help offer a path to repair. Even though I couldn’t make it all work, the gesture of assistance is always much appreciated. I’ve said this before, but it can’t be understated: the sense of community in the MRA is second to none; best club I’ve ever raced with in that sense, by far. Regarding the kiddos, given the right conditions, they’re starting to get adept at the camping routine, which continues to give me hope for the future. On the riding front, even though I didn’t get to race I did get to participate in the trackday with Legion and had some pretty encouraging feelings about turn 6, which has long been my Achilles heel at High Plains Raceway. I don’t have the data to prove it right now, but my intuition tells me I’m getting closer to breaking through some personal barriers at HPR. I also managed to avoid ruining anyone’s season during the last round of racing, which is nice since I wasn’t challenging for anything this year… you never want to be “that guy”. Thanks to a crappy bolt situation, I definitely wasn’t. It’s also nice to end the season without major bike damage, which means I’ll get to work on my Galant this winter AND show up to Round 1 next year. I also found a new paddock helper with some volunteer work from my oldest, Emerson.

***My Little Helper, Miller Garage, September 2026***

Finally, last but not least, my wife deserves some credit. While packing it all up I was staring forlornly at middleweight riders approaching pre-grid, then glancing from my downed machinery, to a flat tire on my truck, to a large section of sheetmetal peeling off my trailer and, when you’ve been with someone for over a decade, sometimes they can just sense what’s going on inside. I felt very dejected and disappointed. Kori could sense that and offered some much-needed support in that moment. Ladies, sometimes your big, strong man just needs a hug. Kori gets it.

If you know anything about me, it goes without saying that I’ll be back next year. I’m unbelievably stubborn about my passion projects, and I’m completely nuts about motorcycle racing. THIS is not how my story ends. It was a weird year because of how much time, money, and effort it took to rebuild my bike after the big crash at PPIR in ‘25, but this brings everything about full circle. In equipment and riding acumen I’m about back where I started just before my crash a year ago. I get to spend this winter under relatively low stress conditions, have some winter project fun, then knock off the rough edges and show up rearing to go in Round 1 of 2027. When the lights go out on race 1 next year, you can bet the farm that I’ll never lift!!!!!!!

2026 Supporters

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