That’s right folks, the first track day of the year is getting close.  The first for this year will be held at Putnam Park Road Course, with Midwest Cafe Racers Association.  We will be heading out on Friday, April 19th, for the weekend.  The preparations already began a few weeks ago, actually over a month ago.  This year I am not only prepping my track bike, but also my friends track bike.   The best part is, I am learning more and more about his bike, and the bells and whistles that it has.

One of the many parts to prepping the bike for the track was changing out the coolant to a non-glycol based coolant, changing the tires, removing all glass / plastic from the bike.  Not to mention drilling and safety wiring the oil filler cap, oil drain plug, and oil filter.  Those are simply the necessities, we have taken it a step further and changed out some other stock parts for nicer track ready parts.  The main obstacle has been that he elected to go with a non-branded rear set foot control.  These were copies of a very large name brand rear set foot control.  Everything seemed to fit together until I went to install the shift linkage.  The linkage length should be 9″ long, the one they sent with the new set was actually 9-5/8″ long.  Because of this it actually placed the shift lever about 3″ too low and will not work.   Luckily, I have the knowledge and ability to modify things like this.  After cutting the extra length off and re-tapping the hole, the linkage is now to the correct length on the bike, and ready to go racing.

The point to the story is this:  my friend went with the company who said they were just as good if not better than the big name brand, yet considerably cheaper and not made locally.  In the end the quality of the product was not what they made claims of over the internet and they don’t have near the level of support that the brand name does.  After some fixing, the units will work but it could have been a costly replacement as the manufacturer of these doesn’t stand directly behind their product.

Here at EXAIR we have instilled quality into our product and customer service.  If you were to receive a part that doesn’t work, we will be here to help figure out why, and then make the correct actions to remedy your problem as fast as possible.   So don’t always believe what you read on the internet about how great some products are when they are so much cheaper than a well established, market leading brand.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF