BETWEEN ROUNDS
Heat 4: Bigger Still
Jimmy had spent three days thinking about the collector.
Not the head pipes. Not the strange, welded flange CJ had spotted. Not even the three changes in tubing diameter that had everybody standing around Cal Mercer's Road Glide staring like they had found something illegal.
The collector.
It was bigger than his.
That was enough.
By Wednesday night Jimmy's bike was back on the lift at Deke's Speed Shop. The muffler was off, tools were spread across the bench, and a new section of tubing sat beside the bike.
Deke walked out of the office carrying a paper cup and stopped.
"What are you doing?"
"Fixing it."
Deke looked at the motorcycle, then at Jimmy.
"What's broken?"
Jimmy pointed at the tubing. "Collector is too small."
"Says who?"
Jimmy didn't answer immediately.
Tyler did it for him.
"Cal."
Jimmy turned. "Cal didn't say anything."
"Exactly."
CJ was working at the other end of the shop. She looked up from the bracket she was cleaning.
"You saw one bigger collector and decided that was the secret?"
Jimmy shrugged. "Air has to get out."
CJ wiped her hands on a rag. "That's your engineering analysis?"
"It's exhaust. Bigger pipe, more flow."
Rooster was sitting in his usual chair near the roll-up door.
He didn't even look up.
"Then put a sewer pipe on it."
Jimmy ignored him.
The logic made sense to him. His motor was built. Big throttle body. Cam. Head work. Compression. It made power. More than Tyler's bike. More than Erin's. More than most of the motorcycles they ran against.
If the exhaust was holding it back, the answer seemed obvious.
Make the exit bigger.
Deke took a slow drink from his cup.
"Who made that collector?"
"Guy I know."
"Did he ask you anything about the motor?"
"He knows what's in it."
"That wasn't my question."
Jimmy stared at him.
Deke walked away.
That should have been the warning.
CJ picked up the new tubing and turned it over in her hands.
"You know, my dad used to make me measure everything twice before he'd let me touch the saw."
Jimmy looked over. "Your dad?"
She pointed at Deke, who was disappearing into the office.
"Unfortunately."
Rooster chuckled.
Deke called from the other room. "I heard that."
CJ smiled, but kept examining the tubing.
"When I was twelve, I thought he was just trying to keep me busy. Sweep the floor, sort the fittings, measure the same header six times. Took me a while to realize he was teaching me to see what the parts were doing."
"And now she thinks she knows everything," Deke called back.
"No," CJ answered. "Now I know how much there is to figure out."
She had spent the last year studying exhaust modeling software and engine data whenever she could find the time. Deke trusted what he could measure, weld, and prove on a running engine. CJ believed those same lessons could be taken further with the right calculations. They rarely argued about the fundamentals, only about how to get to the answers.
She set the tubing down.
"You're changing one piece of a system you don't understand."
Jimmy picked it back up.
"Then I guess we'll find out."
CJ looked toward the office.
Deke appeared in the doorway.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't have to.
Friday night, the bike sounded different.
Not bad.
Different.
Deeper. Harder.
Jimmy liked it.
The first hit of the throttle inside Deke's shop rattled a socket off the workbench.
Tyler smiled.
"That sounds pissed."
Jimmy grinned. "Exactly."
CJ didn't.
She stood behind the bike listening as Jimmy rolled the throttle again.
"Do it slower."
Jimmy looked back. "What?"
"Roll into it."
He did.
The engine climbed through the rpm.
CJ tilted her head.
Then she looked at Deke.
He had heard it too.
"What?" Jimmy asked.
Deke shrugged. "Take it to the track."
That answer bothered Jimmy more than criticism would have.
Saturday night brought good air, a decent track and enough motorcycles in the staging lanes to make everybody forget about work for a few hours.
Jimmy made his first pass against Tyler.
That should have been easy.
Tyler's Low Rider S was quick, but Jimmy's Road Glide had more motor. Everybody knew it.
Jimmy left hard.
For the first sixty feet, nothing looked wrong.
Then Tyler stayed beside him.
Jimmy shifted.
Tyler stayed there.
Another gear.
Still there.
At the finish Tyler was ahead.
Not by much.
Enough.
Jimmy coasted around the return road and pulled into the pits without taking off his helmet.
Tyler followed him in.
Rooster was already smiling.
Jimmy shut the bike off.
"Track's junk."
Tyler removed his helmet. "My side seemed okay."
Jimmy glared at him.
Erin walked over with the time slips.
"You want the good news?"
"No."
"You had a better sixty-foot."
Jimmy took the slip.
Then he saw the rest.
The bike had slowed where it usually pulled hardest.
Not at the top.
In the middle.
Exactly where a heavy bagger needed it.
Jimmy stared at the numbers.
"That doesn't make sense."
A motorcycle rolled into the next pit.
Cal Mercer.
Same plain Road Glide. Same exhaust everybody now knew came from Burns Stainless. Same rider who never seemed particularly interested in proving anything.
Jimmy looked at Cal's bike.
Then at his own.
Cal noticed.
"How'd it run?"
Jimmy handed him the slip.
Cal studied it for a second.
"You changed something."
"Collector."
Cal looked at the bike.
"Why?"
Jimmy laughed once.
"Because yours is bigger."
Cal handed the time slip back.
"That's not why mine works."
Jimmy's expression changed.
It wasn't anger this time.
It was irritation mixed with curiosity.
"What does that mean?"
Cal leaned against the bike.
"The collector isn't a part by itself. Neither are the head pipes. Neither is the muffler. Change one thing and you change what everything else sees."
Jimmy pointed at Cal's exhaust.
"So that size doesn't matter?"
"Of course it matters."
"Then I went bigger."
Cal nodded.
"And you went slower."
Rooster laughed from behind them.
Nobody had noticed him walk over.
Jimmy turned.
"You enjoying this?"
"A little."
CJ crouched beside Jimmy's bike and looked under it.
"What did I tell you Wednesday?"
Jimmy said nothing.
She stood.
"Look closer."
The same two words she had used when everybody first inspected Cal's bike.
Only now they meant something different.
The stepped head pipes weren't there because they looked trick.
The merge angle wasn't there because someone liked welding.
The collector wasn't simply larger.
The pieces had been designed to work together.
Jimmy looked again at Cal's exhaust.
For the first time, he stopped looking for the biggest part.
He started looking at the spaces between them.
Cal pulled on his gloves.
Jimmy looked over.
"So what size should mine be?"
Cal smiled.
"You're still asking the wrong question."
Then he rolled toward the staging lanes.
Rooster watched him leave.
"That boy's going to drive you crazy."
Jimmy stared down at the time slip.
"No."
He folded it and put it in his pocket.
"He's going to make me faster."
Across the pit, CJ was gathering her tools when Deke came over.
"You knew that collector was going to hurt him?"
"I suspected it."
"Why didn't you stop him?"
She looked at her father.
"Would you have?"
Deke smiled.
"Not a chance."
CJ laughed. For a moment she was twelve again, standing at his workbench with calipers in her hand, waiting for him to tell her what she'd missed.
Then Deke looked toward Jimmy's bike.
"You were right about what you heard Friday."
"I know."
"Don't get used to it."
He started walking away.
"Dad?"
He turned.
"Those modeling programs I've been talking about. I want to try one on an actual build."
Deke considered that.
"Bring me something worth testing."
CJ watched him go.
That was as close to permission as she was going to get.
