Day two of the meet began at 0600. The liner was given a going over, tightening all the nuts and bolts. Hartmut got a marking pen somewhere, so as the bolts were checked they received a mark, so none would be overlooked. There are 10 to 15 times as many fasteners on the liner as on a normal Vincent, so this is time consuming. I gave Hartmut and Marc, his friend, the chores of the co2 system. Ron Peers was tires and wheels, John MacDougall was chains, spark plugs and valve lash, Mike Shea parachutes and had a helper, can't remember who. Then there were crew members who continually cleaned the salt off the bike and kept gas in the generator, charged the batteries for the starter and the on board battery, and so on. Lots of stuff to do. So the crew was kept pretty busy. Hartmut found three leaks in the co2 system which were fixed. But the most disturbing thing was that John found another bent push rod. If you recall two push rods had been replaced earlier. I had forgotten the spare push rods were 1/16 of an inch longer than the bent ones they replaced. The bent push rod problem had to be solved, as we only had two spares left. Sure you can straighten a bent push rod if not bent too badly, I've done it many times, but it's not my preferred method in dealing with it. I had brought a rotary file. We had a vise. We had a generator and an electric drill, so a makeshift machine shop was set up. John MacDougall and Mike Shea began giving the rocker caps more clearance. Each rocker was put in it's most extreme opening position.. The degree wheels were marked. For those who don't know, both engines have permanently attached stainless steel degree wheels. The rocker caps were done one at a time; the engines were rolled backwards until the valve was closed, then the cap was installed without a gasket. The engines were then rolled forward to the marked degree wheel position; then the cap was screwed home until it hit the rocker adjusting screw. A measurement was taken of the air gap between the gasket surface of the rocker cap and the head. This measurement had to be a minimum of .040 smaller than the thickness of the gasket. This was done on all eight rocker caps, taking about four hours. This taken care of, it was off to the tech tent to try to capture an official to observe a tow up. An hour later I returned with the famous "Dale". I won't get into this one, but if there's anyone out there who knows Dale you know what I'm talking about. We loaded everything up and went back to the tow up area. Don had to put on his fire suit for the tow up (that's Dale) so a runner was sent back to the pits to get the suit. We strapped Don in and towed him up to speed. He released. He got it up on it's wheels the best ever and rode the liner for a full 2 1/2 miles without touching the skids to the salt. Don reported later that the wheel alignment and the fact that he was wearing his fire suit made a world of difference. He said, "With the suit on you're tighter in the cockpit. You feel like you're part of the bike and it's a piece of cake to keep it up on it's wheels. Everybody was happy except Dale. He wanted to do it again for what reason I will never know. We did it again, same results. Dale was happy and if Dale was happy I was on cloud nine. He's one of the hardest officials on the salt in my opinion.

The liner was taken back to the pits. The day was gone. It was around 7 o'clock by the time we tidied up the pit. So again back to the digs after another 13 hours. Boy! Isn't this fun? And we were all getting a tan. It just doesn't get any better than this. To quote Brian Chapman, "A bad day at the race track is better than a good day at the office." I might add, by far!