Life on Two Wheels Part 3
All of this had me thinking of another project - AMA Superbike racing. I thought I could qualify for the pro license required and a 750 cc engine would fit in the frame since the 900 was just a bigger bore/stroke version of the 750 and we could hit the big time...all we lacked was money. We found some from the same brother-in-law who enjoyed watching his Moto Guzzi go around the track at speeds he could only dream of.
Our money-man also had one of these. I'd driven him up to the California bay area to haul it back to SoCal and spent plenty of the drive talking up our chances in the Superbike category. This MV Agusta was declared off-limits after he'd dumped his rare Ducati 750SS fooling around in the Malibu canyons. Yours truly went down to ride it around for him whenever it needed exercise, including a photo spread on the rare machine in Cycle News. It was fun being kind of a curator as I kind of talked him into the Moto Guzzi, Ducati 750SS and the MV..vicarious fun.
Brother-in-law wasn't rich and while he did spend plenty on his exotic Italian motorcycle collection he'd hand over a small portion of his periodic trust-fund payments. Those limited funds meant our effort was limited to California events. Luckily for us there were usually three each season, one at the famed Laguna Seca track in Monterey (a track most club racers couldn't use as it was restricted to pro events most of the time) that I'd raced on with the Moto Guzzi while the Riverside and Willow Springs tracks were our "backyard" along with the recently closed Ontario Motor Speedway.
Number 20 in the photo above is yours truly, likely holding-up better riders like #34 Ricky Orlando, #27 Rich Oliver (who would go on to be national champ in the 250 GP class) #31 Harry Klinzmann and #88 Roberto Pietri, coming down out of the infamous corkscrew in practice. We had a rocket-ship motor courtesy of local turning wizard Kaz Yoshima. It wasn't exactly legal though, Kaz refused to put the time and effort required into building a legal engine, figuring my meager talents didn't warrant all that effort and I'd be so slow nobody would ever question the legality of our machine.
He was wrong! While I did get lapped around the (then-short Laguna circuit with lap-times barely over a minute) the speed of this thing down the straights raised eyebrows. A top-10 finish didn't help. The last thing I wanted was to be caught cheating, but Kaz still refused to build us a legal engine, instead swapping the camshafts to some that would reduce the power down to what the other competitors had, with their (presumably) legal-sized engines.
Years later I learned from some reliable sources how "legal" many of these machines actually weren't with the various motorcycle factories and distributors lobbying the rules makers for strict definitions of what was legal in a class that was supposed to be like the original NASCAR, modified versions of road-legal cars off showroom floors. Once they had those definitions in writing they set about working every angle they could, eventually leading to Honda selling factory built racing machines that were never street-legal machines off any dealer's sales floor or even out of a standard shipping container - they were purpose-built racing machines crafted to be barely legal according to the rules.
We tried to buy one of the limited number available but our request was rejected, as was our request to buy some of the remaining special (but legal) parts Honda had produced and sold for their earlier Superbikes like the one we had. So we went to Willow Springs with what we had and hoped for the best.
There best was on a practice lap, when a group of the top guys came past me into a high-speed turn, one that opened onto the main straightaway. As they went by I got into their slipstream and was sucked along at a speed that scared me! But I quickly thought why not try to hang in there? We entered the turn so fast that we were sliding...both rear and front wheels! Wow! I'd slid the rear wheel plenty of times, helping to get the bike turned, but this was the first time both wheels were moving like on a fast dirt oval, something a few of these guys (like Wayne Rainey, who would clinch the championship this day) had a lot of experience with. But not me!
One of those "light-bulb" moments for sure. Now I understood how they could go so fast. In the previous race at Laguna Seca they went by so fast I never could follow, but once I could it was a revelation. I didn't get any closer to the top qualifier's lap time than 2 seconds but that still put me on the second row on the starting grid! I was starting to think I was getting hang of this!
Another reason for this were some other modifications we made. We didn't have those trick parts that would have made our inline 4 cylinder engine narrower, so too often I was scraping it on the track. Not good since if you lean too hard that way you lever the rear wheel out of contact with the racetrack! Something had to be done and in desperation one afternoon I started looking at the rear of the moto as it sat on a prop stand with the rear wheel off the ground.
I unbolted the two shock absorbers, which let the swingarm/wheel assembly drop to the ground. I decided to try something and had our welding shop friends add some extra metal to strengthen it and had some shock/springs made for this new swingarm position. The idea was to raise the entire motorcycle so it would be harder to drag the engine on the track.
Now we had more ground clearance with an additional benefit. Jacking up the rear of the motorcycle changes the steering geometry. A steeper angle improves turning but usually at the expense of stability, so street bikes of the time tended to have slack angles to keep unskilled riders out of trouble. Now the angle was much, much steeper, helping me get the bike turned into the corners. Stability wasn't much affected as we had a steering damper fitted. It just needed to have its damping setting increased.
With these backyard modifications, the moto became much more responsive, more like the specially-built factory models. Honda sold at least 10-12 of their customer racing machines and there were usually more than half of them at any race. Add their two factory-backed entries along with two from Kawasaki and getting a top-10 finish was quite the prize for a totally private entry that started out with an actual off-the-showroom floor, street legal motorcycle.
Meanwhile, we played around with an off-the-showroom floor VF750 the V4 powered motorcycle Honda's limited-edition "for racing only" was based on. I hated it! It was slow since they were so new few tuners had played with them and few hop-up parts were available. Ours had a racing exhaust system, custom rear shock, racing slicks and not much else. Worse, the 16" (vs 18") front wheel made for some touchy steering. I described it as trying to go 100+ mph on a roadracing bicycle.
Superbike was run in two races like motocross. Best combined score wins. Race 1 saw me get my usual not-so-good start as the really fast guys got going but within a few laps disaster struck - the leader Honda's Mike Baldwin crashed on the back straight, banging himself up enough to need an ambulance ride to the hospital while his factory-built Honda ended up laying in the middle of the back straightaway...on fire!
I expected a red-flag to stop the race but it never came, so each lap was a choice of which side of the burning bike would you choose? Right or left? There was no room for side-by-side racing. A crucial choice when you were racing with someone as yellow caution (no passing) flags waved but a good decision here could set up a pass once beyond the yellow flag zone.
We had another top-10 finish with a bit of a brag since the only machines ahead of me were a half-dozen of Honda's factory specials behind rival Kawasaki's two factory-backed entries. So I was the best finisher on a motorcycle created by genuine private effort. We were very excited to see how Race 2 would turn out for us.
Race 2 was halted after only a few laps and then eventually canceled by more crashing, oddly enough again by riders on Honda's special machines. I made a snarky comment about why the race was being canceled...just because the Honda boys couldn't stay on their motorcycles? That crack probably sealed the idea that we'd never get any assistance from the Honda importers. In the combined scoring I was awarded 8th place. All of us were ecstatic and thinking of the 1984 Superbike season.
In 1984 I would achieve one of my dreams, a national ranking as a pro #39. I don't exactly know how this was done as some of the top-ranked riders kept their favorite numbers but they'd just given me #20 in the past season as nobody was using it. But the big news for me was that finally Kaz accepted that I was good enough to finally deserve his efforts to build us a legal engine with enough horsepower. Our goal was the spring Superbike race at Riverside. The engine was only finished a few weeks before with not even enough time to run it on the dyno long enough for full break-in.
We also needed to try it out on the track we'd be facing-off against the pros very soon so the idea was to do the break-in at a local club race at Riverside two weeks before the big show.
I ran it around in practice, keeping the RPM's at the suggested limit with the deal to gradually increase during the race. That race never came as during the warm-up lap I slipped and crashed on oil dropped by another competitor's machine. Turn 6 at this track is where the above photo was taken but it's actually 6A while 6B turns back the other way. 6B was where the oil was.
So no race, no engine break-in. A smashed fuel tank also had to be replaced after being quickly painted but otherwise we were ready two weeks later. In practice I was still trying to complete the engine break-in but still ended up with a decent grid position. My usual poor start (I had fears of doing a big wheelie at the start and the wet clutch in this modified street bike wouldn't tolerate much in the way of practice starts) had me further back than I wanted to be.
The engine was finally starting to break-in and I gradually moved up, eventually getting past a group of riders and solidly into the top-10 until I saw a barely waving "oil on the track" flag. Where else but going into turn 6B of course! I really didn't want the group I'd just gotten past in 6A to catch me, but how slow to go? How much oil was there? Enough. Enough for a replay of the club race crash two weeks earlier. But this time there was no red flag stopping the race so things could be cleaned up like at the club race!
Riders went down like bowling pins, one after another. No red flag, just like when a burning motorcycle was laying on the back straight at Willow Springs the previous season. Finally I and a couple of other riders who had crashed walked back onto the circuit with arms waving, hoping to get the race stopped. The track was so slick it was hard to stand up on it! They finally stopped the race but my motorcycle was too badly damaged to make the restart or race 2.
Worse, our sponsor had now seen "his" entry crash two times in two weeks in the same turn at the same racetrack, each time caused by something out of our control. He was finished as a sponsor and I was finished as a AMA pro racer. I was so mad I wound-up and threw my custom painted helmet into the sky! I didn't care what happened to it, though someone managed to catch it before it hit the ground. Pushing 30 years of age, nobody was interested in a rider like me.
That was the end of my brief "pro" racing career though they say how "pro" is it when the equipment, etc. costs more money that you could ever possibly win with it? Since we finally had gotten an engine that complied with the rules and I was still running in the top 10 of every race I felt less guilty about using the illegal one, especially as I accepted that only after begging for a legal one and being denied until our engine builder thought I merited the work.
I kept the job at the Honda dealership, but didn't race much other than an endurance race at the Willow Springs track, partnering with a customer. I think we were leading the 400cc class before he was taken out by a faster rider making a too-close pass. Talk at the dealership started about taking part in a WERA 24-hour race at Willow Springs. I wasn't invited to be part of the team. "You're too bossy!" my friends said. I asked if they'd let me ride a few stints on their brand-new, right out of the box Honda VF500 (a motorcycle that had just been released) if I kept my mouth shut and just rode? They said OK, but reminded me this was THEIR effort, I was not in-charge!
It didn't take long before I was doing a lot for a guy not in charge, but they really needed help with this effort. One of the two guys whose idea this was decided to add a fourth rider, a friend of his with no particular ability that I knew of. I started thinking if they're adding riders 5 might be even better, the race was 24 hours, right? A friend of a friend was a pretty fast racer, but had no money to get a decent motorcycle so a guy named Doug Toland was added to the roster despite there some grumbling. It was also decided that everyone would take equal turns rather than trying for better overall results with the fast guys doing more riding. I was not in charge and had to admit they were more interested in riding than winning, no matter what I said.
Off we went one Monday to sort-out this brand-new motorcycle once we'd got it set up for racing though it was in the "showroom" stock category. This 500cc bike was so new to the market there were no hop-parts available anyway - I had to measure and provide specs to a custom sprocket maker just to get some choice in gear ratios. Back then one could rent the Willow Springs track fairly inexpensively if you were willing to share it with others. I remember one time a guy was there testing a Chevrolet Camaro racing car.
We had the Superbike back then and alternated our time on the track. Lap times were very similar though the car was slower in acceleration and top speed, but with four fat racing slicks on the ground it was a LOT faster in the turns. The driver came over to look at our motorcycle and I couldn't help teasing him. "You're very brave strapped into that car! How 'bout you cut a hole in the roof, extend the steering wheel and see how fast you can go on top of the car instead of inside it?
He laughed, shook his head and went away saying "You guys are nuts."
Our testing for this endurance race went well, everyone got a turn riding it, the guess we'd made on the gearing was pretty close and we could see who was fast and who was not. The two guys whose idea the whole thing was were the slowest while Doug Toland was the fastest with yours truly and other guy close behind. It was all great until the "other guy" suddenly sat-up and went off the track in a high-speed curve! Miraculously he managed to stay upright and had to be hauled in to the pit lane - the motor was dead - seized-up, locked solid and only "other guy"s quick grab of the clutch lever saved him from a certain wipe-out.
We hauled the thing back to the shop and started tearing it apart to see what happened. The alternator AND the tip of the crankshaft it was attached to, fell out as soon as the engine cover was removed. That turned out to be after-the-fact damage, the engine had seized-up due to bearing failure! Brand-new and fairly carefully broken in, the engine failed with very few miles on it. Did we do something wrong?
Nope. There was something wrong with the bearings and that batch of motorcycles was recalled by the Honda company. It turned out ours was just the first major failure. Honda wanted to see first-hand the engine but we wanted to race! A honcho from Honda came out to look at it and new bearings, crankshaft, etc. were provided and the engine carefully rebuilt and broken-in. Would it last for 24 hours of racing? We'd soon find out and remember I was NOT in-charge.
I had fun with this, there was a lady friend at the track who joined us and we'd sit around in lawn chairs when I wasn't on the track while various press people and spectators came around to ask questions..of me, since I was usually in-charge, but not this time. I'd made a request of my lady friend - when anyone asked, I pointed to her and she would she say "He's not in-charge, he's just a rider."? We had a lot of laughs all through the 24+ hours. I'd rented a motor home as a base of operations but it was so full of our crew, etc. and yours truly and galpal spent a lot of the nightime huddled under blankets in the back of my van.
Meanwhile, once that sun went down, Doug Toland on our showroom stock VF500 (though we did put a higher power bulb in the headlight, which blew-out while I was on track, making things interesting and requiring an unplanned pitstop) was the fastest bike on the track! Faster than all the big-bore, hopped-up machines with experienced riders on them. This was real fun as more and more people came by when the word got around, only to hear "He's not in-charge, he's only a rider." from my lady friend.
Based on his performance here Doug Toland went on to ride for the team who won the event and eventually won the Endurance Racing World Title a few years later while I didn't do much more other than try to help some customers sort-out one of their race machines, at one time having the thing start bucking like a bronco, leaving black marks on the track before my wrestling with the unruly beast caused my arm to be pulled out of my shoulder enough to go numb! Amazingly, without my input the thing straightened up enough for me to just ride off the track safely. Some who saw this came over later to describe this as a "great save!" I couldn't help but admit the truth.
I then started working for another Honda motorcycle shop, again as parts department manager. The owner of this dealership forbade any of his employees from racing. I bought the CB400 back from my brother, mostly as transportation vs the gas-guzzling van.
I lent my van out to the friend who'd so kindly let me live at his house but my racing was done. I spent a lot more time running and riding my bicycle, even giving bicycle racing a try (the dealership owner never said anything about racing bicycles) before admitting I was no good at it. Excellent endurance, but no leg speed when it counted. One Sunday I got up early and rode my bicycle to Riverside Raceway, around 100 miles. My friend was there with my van so I'd stashed some clothes inside and made sure he understood he would be giving me a ride back!
A lot of my former competitors were startled to see me there - on a bicycle! After reaching another goal or two in running and giving up on bicycle racing I gave observed trials another try, but soon ditched that when I found the sport had changed to being about gymnastics as much as riding a motorcycle. I had zero interest in the weight-lifting needed for the gymnastics so it was time for something else on two wheels for playing in the dirt, a mountain bike.
