Two-wheeled life Part 2

Two-wheeled Life Part 2

I'd sold the little CB400 to my brother and could easily buy it back, but I knew it would never be competitive - I'd finally learned that lesson. 

I chose the smallest displacement class (410cc) in the American Federation of Motorcyclists' (AFM) "boxstock" category, meaning you could do very little to the showroom stock motorcycle other than tape up the lights, remove the turn signals, kickstand and license plate, bolt on your number plates and race. My idea was to limit the effects of the motorcycle and find out if I was any good as a rider when all the machines were more or less the same. No excuses, either I was good at this or I wasn't. I wanted to find this out as inexpensively as possible since I was still making monthly payments of the Moto Guzzi after all. I still wanted to play around on non-racing weekends.

Most everyone competing in this category (there were none for ability - seasoned pro or beginner, you raced in a category based only on the displacement of your machine and how much you'd modified it) were racing on Yamaha's venerable two-stroke, twin cylinder RD400, so off I went to buy one, finding a new but year-old model at a good price, having a leather suit made and taking out a racing license.

My first race (at Willow Springs) went pretty well. After passing the new rider's instruction class, where seasoned racers rode around observing our techniques after some sit-down classroom/chalkboard talks it was time to take some real practice laps where I could go as fast as I dared.

I no longer remember where I finished that day, but I raced in two categories, the "boxstock" and in "modified production". My stock motorcycle was hopelessly uncompetitive there, but it was extra track-time and a chance to see how the more experienced riders went around. Turned out I was faster than a few, despite their heavily-modified machines. Maybe I was good at this?

I started thinking about racing for the category championship after some high placings. This was given to the racer who scored the best over the season's races. including ones at Northern California's Sears Point Raceway. But there were two obstacles to this idea.

Obstacle one was getting to all these races, the northern California ones being 500 miles north of where I lived. Obstacle two was the fastest racer in the class, a fading pro trying to restart his career. How would you restart a career in this lowly category, you might ask? This fellow's idea was not to ride a ubiquitous Yamaha RD400 but one of Honda's new 400cc 4-stroke twins called the "Hawk". If he could win on this (inferior) bike he figured his career would be restarted.

Since I had friends at the Honda dealership I'd considered racing one of these, but really didn't want to go down the road of struggling with a lesser machine. I'd learned that lesson. But now there was a pro rider on one, out to prove something. I solved obstacle one by selling my mini-pickup truck, something that would be a real chore to drive 1000 miles up and back to Northern California with no air conditioning. Next on the block was my Moto Guzzi to scrape up the funds to buy a full-size van to haul everything around in. I was ready to contend for the championship against "obstacle two" despite still being a real rookie.

I came up short winning a few times but finishing 2nd to the champ. Near season's end I filed a protest against the champ to inspect his engine to make sure it was indeed "showroom stock". It was and the champ sort of thanked me for giving him the chance to prove it and with the protest fee money buy a new gasket set to use when rebuilding the engine, which would get a (legal) freshening-up in the process.

I knew he'd be gone the next season so I made plans to be champ in 1979, buying a second motorcycle (RD400F Daytona) with a "one to crash in practice, one to race" idea.

Part of the strategy was also to be in better physical shape. Too much motoring and not enough pedaling had resulted in weight gain. I'd been fat as child and realized my tendency in this area so more pedaling was the answer. My idea was that while motorcycle roadracing didn't require a lot of physical strength, having a good supply of oxygenated blood flowing to my brain would at least let me get the most out of my mental capacity. I'd decided racing was mostly a brain exercise after finding that after doing what I thought was a perfect lap or perfect race I'd have a splitting headache.

The running boom had hit the USA so I soon added that to my training program, eventually training enough to run a marathon in under 3 hours and a 10K in under 40 minutes. The boom even hit the AFM racing club as one Sunday at Sears Point they had a running race during the midday break! I'd brought shoes and shorts and lined-up for the one lap (a couple of miles?) event. Everyone else sprinted off like the finish line was 100 meters away while I ran my normal long-distance pace. Halfway around they'd all pooped out and I won the race with ease, following it up with winning my motorcycle race as well.

Up until this point, training for roadracing (unlike MX) was for most drinking beer and smoking cigarettes along with as many laps of practice as you could manage or afford. Plenty laughed at me for doing all that running and cycling, but it was fun and I thought it let me make the most of my abilities as well as fit into a smaller leather suit. Of course today cycling's the training of choice for top riders in MOTOGP, one of whom got good enough to actually get a spot on a pro cycling team when he hung up the leathers.

That smaller leather suit came courtesy of a sponsorship from a local Yamaha dealership. I needed a source for parts and my friends at the Honda store couldn't help much with parts for a Yamaha so I bought that second Yamaha with a sponsorship pitch. Each time I came in for a part I'd chat up the sales manager and owner, eventually getting the leather suit (with their shop name on it big letters) and a super discount on the parts I needed.

With a reliable van, a lighter frame (my own) and one bike to race and one to crash I was ready to go. What could stop me? I'd been second to the pro the previous season and he'd moved on so who could stop me?

Then "JAWS" came on the scene, a guy from Northern California riding the same Yamaha motorcycle, who looked to me like another experienced pro trying to make some sort of comeback. Unlike the previous pro, who'd always raced me clean, "JAWS" (which was lettered on his racing suit) thought of himself as an intimidator-type, maybe like a famous NASCAR driver of the time? 

This guy was pretty fast at his home track, Sears Point but I seemed to have better luck against him at the three Southern California venues. But that didn't stop him from trying, polishing my front fender with his rear tire in some close overtakes. I wasn't happy.

I wasn't happy either when I was called in by the racing club management. Seems my "one to crash in practice, one to race" strategy was rubbing some the wrong way. While I tried to race everyone cleanly, in practice it was "see how fast you can go in this corner" quite often. If/when I crashed (often) I figured I'd just dial things down a bit in the race,

OK, until you take someone else out with you, which happened too many times. I was told to mend my ways or my license would be torn-up. The next challenge was the new moto, this was the end of 2-stroke motorcycles in the USA so this one had a "smog-control" device that made it horrible to race on. The throttle response was just terrible! It was easy enough to disable but would the rules makers see that as an illegal modification? This thing was a real dog on the straight sections of the racetrack - I'd pass competitors in the turns only to be re-passed on the straights, so the smog device was disabled with a simple plug in a vacuum hose.

"JAWS" was another issue. At his home track we battled for the lead while he was up to his usual antics. I decided to put a stop to it - as he tried to go to my left on the main straight, with the pit wall on that side of the track I boxed him in, then gradually moved over to the left. His choice was to back off and try to go around the other side or be squeezed into the wall. He could tell I wasn't fooling around and wisely backed off. I won the race and never had an issue with his bully-boy tactics again.

We traded first and second in the points chase but I finally got my championship trophy. There was a scare about the smog device though, race stewards started asking questions about whether mine was disabled, but never said if it was I'd be DQ'd. I danced around the issue with them until they lost interest, but I was sweating bullets for awhile, seeing my title going up in smog you might say.

Season ended and I was the 1979 AFM 410 Boxstock Champ. 

Mission Accomplished, but what next?

I'd had fun and decent placings running my stock bikes in the modified category, despite how slow they were in comparison. Extra track time on a bike I had to ride the wheels off to keep-up didn't hurt so I figured why not do some modifications and see how I could do in that category on a competitive machine?

I found a tuner who would help with the engine modifications, tore the bike(s) down and rebuilt them as modified production class entries. You couldn't do a lot - no racing exhausts or huge carburetors but you could update and backdate components from the same make/model to optimize the bike's performance. I spent more time on physical training as well, both running and cycling. I also raced this motorcycle in the "super street" category, an anything goes class as long as you started-out with a street-legal motorcycle. I was fairly competitive in this category, again using skill to make up for lack of horsepower.

The Yamaha dealership was happy with the promotion. I started with one motorcycle with the second one used to try some ideas I had for further (but legal) modifications, turning my parent's garage into my personal racing shop.

That might have been too much because Mom decided it was past time for her oldest son to get out of the house! My younger brother and sister had already left but no rent, free food and a garage to use as my personal racing shop was just too tempting for me to leave. 

Motorcycle racing wasn't inexpensive even at the low-level club racing scene so there wasn't going to be any money left after rent and food once out from under my parent's roof, so the Yamaha bikes were sold-off, garage cleaned-out and I moved-in (temporarily) with a racing friend. He sort of felt sorry for me I think and soon proposed I join him (a guy already racing, starting in the same boxstock category but now racing a big-bore boxstock machine) in an endurance racing effort.

I supplied the van and the gasoline to get to/from the races, but spent none of my own money otherwise. This arrangement worked well, even when I finally had to get my own apartment. I still got to race, even on a Moto Guzzi like the one I sold that belonged to his brother-in-law. We won one race and ran second in another of the Battle of the Twins series (in the stock class) and then began a new endurance racing project with a Honda CB900F based machine. 

The endurance racing was kind of fun, though complicated with arranging help with refueling, wheel changes, etc. I'd done some before with smaller machines, teaming up with various racers in the small-displacement categories looking for a fast guy to partner with. We did OK, but never won anything.

It was going to be the same with this big-bore endurance project, we'd just be going faster, my first taste of real speed beyond fooling around on the public roads with my Moto Guzzi which probably ran out of power at maybe 120 mph. Luckily, I was never caught and cited for silly stuff like that, though chased once or twice.