Now, those who know me know that sometimes, not often but every now and then, I can be a bit stubborn and I set out to justify all the time and money I had spent getting the Duck built. This Duck WAS going to fly. So development began. The forks were swapped out to CBR900 items to lower the front and the rear was lowered as well. Holes were drilled in pretty much everything and eventually, nitrous oxide was added because despite now having learned how to launch the bike properly, it just wasn’t going much faster.
The nitrous made a big difference. Looking back, it was never really set up that well. The kit was bought second hand and jury rigged into the carb bellmouths. Bear in mind nitrous was a complete unknown to me but with advice from other racers, we did manage to get it to have some effect. Unfortunately we suffered power loss after the eighth mile (this turned out to be detonation, something I knew nothing about at the time) but times were starting to come down. However, it wasn’t enough and I decided at that point I wanted a supercharger. I’d seen it done on a VFR800 in America and decided that I could do it on the 750. A supercharger was purchased via evilbay and it sat in the box for two years until a friend, Pete Ford offered to sponsor the build. Pete owns a supercharged SRAD 750 which is an eight second bike and was built by himself so he knows a thing or two about boosting.
Three months later, the supercharged Duck fired up for the first time. I was ecstatic. It sounded epic and looked damned serious with it. Then the problems really began. Blowing through CV carbs apparently is the hardest way to boost an engine. In some opinions, it is not even possible but hey, I’d spent all that money doing it just this way so as far as I was concerned, it was going to work.
Over the next couple of years, a LOT of time was spent trying to iron out the issues that arose. Cure one problem, five more arise, but eventually we started having some success. A new, longer swinging arm was fitted (after being properly braced before welding…) Times were coming down but still, not enough for the power we were apparently putting out. Then one day, the Duck cried enough and melted a piston. This was down to an error (and bad eyesight) on my part. It was decided to fit a complete new engine but with some differences. The heads were mildly ported by SuperfinishingsUK who also polished the cams, the gearbox was modified to allow proper gear changes and the compression was lowered. Suddenly, the bike seemed a lot more lively. Gone was the power loss after mid track and in its place was enough grunt to pull the bars out of my hands on launch more than once. BUT, there was still something not quite right. Times fell. Low ten second runs were now par for the course but we wanted nines. Then one day, on the first run of the first meeting of the year, the carbs flooded for no apparent reason. They were stripped, cleaned and replaced within 90 minutes and the bike back out ready to run. Something felt different, like it wanted to go but wasn’t being allowed to. Adjustments were made to the jetting and holeeeecrap!