Gearing
I have not been able to run it in an actual race yet. One of our local series, the one I actually built it for, cancelled the entire season. There is another local series I intend to run that had a race scheduled last Saturday, but it rained out. All I have been able to do is race my son, who is running the new O.S. TR.12 in an otherwise identical NTC3. The four stroke has better acceleration down low and at the first part of its second gear, but the two stroke still pulls it on top speed. I'm running 22/43 for first and 26/39 for second; he is running 20/54 for first and 26/48 for second. It should be interesting in a real race. On our local parking lot tracks, the two strokes almost never even shift into second because none of the straights are long enough. From what I understand, this new venue has a much bigger track than I'm used to running, and the two cycles spend a great deal of time in second gear. We'll see, but it might be too big of a track to take advantage of the four stroke's low to mid range acceleration. If that's the case, I'm stuck. Because of the relationship between the flywheel, pinion, spur, and brake disc diameters, I can't run either a bigger pinion or smaller spur for second gear. In other words, it's geared as high on the top end as I can manage for now. Our next race is scheduled for the 30th, so hopefully I can find out then where I stand against the two stroke heathens.