Spring Training With Factory Connection's Geico Powersports Honda MX Race Team

Near the day's end Eli was very happy with his bike, and that's when Ziggy sent him out on the second bike. With a lot of radical geometry changes but the identical fork and shock settings, the team was surprised when Eli came back without much of a differing opinion. But it did give Ziggy more conviction that the suspension internals must have found a very good place. The different geometry was something that would have been tested prior to the supercross series, had there been enough time. As it was, six months later, the machine got seven laps then got reshelved. Ziggy will try out all sorts of experimental bike setups on his racers. Some are pretty radical and don't work; others offer large strides forward. Ziggy's happy if his "crazy" ideas can bat .600, or a three out of five success rate.

Ponies

Ever wonder how many engines and chassis a huge effort like this works with? Try 30 engines and 10 complete chassis, then add in a few more of each for dyno testing, product fitment and more of Ziggy's wild departure attempts.

Each racer has his race bike that lives at the shop (and on the road) and a practice bike that lives with him. Race bikes are assigned three complete race engines, and each practice bike also gets three full-race engines. The outdoor race bikes are fully replaced every three races, with the motors getting a full teardown every two hours (the run time for one MX event), even though the motors are designed strong enough to give a 100 percent survival rate if they were to be run for a full season (24 hours). The practice engines are kept in near-constant rotation as one will be in the practice bike, one being rebuilt at the shop and the third at the racer's home base awaiting the motor in the bike to hit that magic replacement interval time-five to 10 hours for an inspection, 15 hours for each "major birthday" full rebuild back at the shop. The practice bike's chassis is given until 100 hours before it's retired. Much of its race equipment is destroyed by that time since, even though you or I might think differently, it is junk. Try not to think about that, though.

When developing those motors, power quality and delivery is equally important to output. Here Factory Connection partners with several other companies, including on-track rival Pro Circuit. Working with Factory Connection's specs, Pro Circuit handles the motors' porting and top end parts. But don't think Pro Circuit has a handle on everything inside those motors. During assembly back at the secret Factory Connection race shop the heads are mated to Factory Connection's flywheel, crank counterbalancing, gearing, ignition, clutch pack, fuel injector and cam degree tweaks. But more so than with the chassis/suspension settings, most of the engine results can be predicted. It's more about math, less about feel, and an engine's character can be well understood before it leaves the bench and dyno. Of course, how each rider will respond to that engine requires...testing. Also, power delivery is another variable that can knock some of the suspension/chassis settings out of their acceptable compromise range. Those limited test days really seem short now, huh?

Metty is free to run anything, but the team tries to keep the 250F guys to the same engine specs. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but with so many engines swapping and shipping and being rebuilt, it's a logistical consideration. A lot of people think Justin Barcia, with his wide-open (even in the air) style, would require unique engine specs, components or service time limits. That's not the case. Tapping at the bike's electronic rev-limiter sounds like it's tearing the engine in half from the inside out, but that noise is the motor preserving itself by cutting spark. Barcia is hard on transmissions and shift components, but the engines on this schedule don't mind the howling so much.