Hey Bro,

I'll tell you what mate, its hard to feel home sick when the weather's consistantly as wet as it has been just lately round these parts!

Regarding the crash protection; well to be honest my plan was to just let the fairing take the abuse if i dropped it! Though the paint job and bodywork on my track bike are expendable and i carry a couple of spare sets of all the levers, footpegs, bars, cables and bits that would likely get broken in a crash so i can fix things whilst still at the track. My fairing still has most of the battle scars from the Cadwell crash on it actually, i had to replace the Tyga top fairing which smashed after the handle bar snapped, but all the other plastics are just as they were before i left England. I bent the Tyga top fairing bracket straight again and re-used that too. The worst thing was my expansion chamber got bent over the gull-arm but this too has since been fixed.

I've never looked too close at crash protection on other bikes but i'll make a point of checking it out when i next go up to Manfeild in a couple of weeks.

I know on my Dad's 929 Fireblade its got bungs mounted off the main engine hangers near the head but those hangers are very short and massive looking with big meaty welds and they sandwich the engine between the frame spas, rather than the way the NSR engine hangs way beneath its frame. You can see the area is easily strong enough to take a BIG impact - probably helped by the fact that its a semi-pivotless frame so the engine is a fully stressed chassis part.
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After years of moaning about immigrants now i am one...