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The Daytona 200 has been the national motorcyclist's rite of spring, but it's more than just the 200--for much of the country it's the first sign that riding weather returns! Kevin and Mark talk about Daytona from early days at the beach, moving to the Speedway, and with lots of anecdotes thrown in. Mark was there for the race weekend this year, celebrating 50 years of AMA Superbike racing with BMW, which won the first superbike race at Daytona in 1976 and won the first championship that year, with its R 90 S, built by Butler & Smith. History was also made in the 200, as Kayla Yaakov became the first woman to finish on the podium, and she rode an absolutely excellent race to do it.
The Daytona 200 has been the national motorcyclist's rite of spring, but it's more than just the 200--for much of the country it's the first sign that riding weather returns! Kevin and Mark talk about Daytona from early days at the beach, moving to the Speedway, and with lots of anecdotes thrown in. Mark was there for the race weekend this year, celebrating 50 years of AMA Superbike racing with BMW, which won the first superbike race at Daytona in 1976 and won the first championship that year, with its R 90 S, built by Butler & Smith. History was also made in the 200, as Kayla Yaakov became the first woman to finish on the podium, and she rode an absolutely excellent race to do it.
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00:00:00Welcome to the Cycle World Podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer. I'm with Kevin Cameron, our technical editor.
00:00:05Right out of the gate, you can find us on Patreon. Thanks for all the new subscribers.
00:00:10We've been up a week and we've got a bunch of folks in there doing $5 or doing supporter tier,
00:00:16which is less than that, but $5 gets you everything that we do without commercials,
00:00:20plus the additional content that we do for Patreon subscribers only.
00:00:24So there's a link in the description. You can go check that out, see if it suits you.
00:00:28And we'll be adding more content there.
00:00:30I'm going to convince Kevin to grab one of his sons with a smartphone and make a video tour of
00:00:37his shop
00:00:38and show us the UVO lathe. I'm doing that on camera, Kevin, to make that promise to our Patreon subscribers.
00:00:47So thanks for that. This is, of course, YouTube and we're doing it for everybody.
00:00:50But if you don't like those commercials, by all means, join us over on the other side. Thank you.
00:00:56Today, we're going to talk about the Daytona 200.
00:01:00I just got back from the Daytona 200, had quite an experience there with BMW.
00:01:05Super bike racing in America is 50 years old.
00:01:09The rules are written on the floor of an empty apartment by Steve McLaughlin and John Ulrich.
00:01:16John Ulrich recently told this story to a large assemblage of BMW fans who were gathered for the three BMWs
00:01:24campaign
00:01:25by Udo Giedel and Butler & Smith in the 1976 race.
00:01:29And that was Gary Fisher, Steve McLaughlin, tuned by Udo Giedel, and Reg Pridmore, of course.
00:01:36And Stephen McLaughlin barely took it at the line by six inches, they said, after they developed the film of
00:01:43the photo finish,
00:01:44which took 45 minutes, and there was no podium.
00:01:48But 50 years of super bike racing, it kind of all started there.
00:01:52It reminded me very much of bagger racing because most street bikes of the time were absolutely unfit for purpose.
00:01:59They were not made to race.
00:02:02And everything that got changed had to get changed.
00:02:05The rules were written suitably loose to allow for things to happen.
00:02:11Repositioning of the shocks, for example, and the Butler & Smith BMWs, two of those bikes, not Reg's.
00:02:17Reg preferred the twin shock.
00:02:18I think someone said he didn't want to be protested.
00:02:21He was sort of like, no, I'm going to keep those shocks.
00:02:23I like them.
00:02:25But the other ones were converted to single shock.
00:02:27And Udo's joke was, I repositioned one of them to the shelf in the shop because the rules were repositioning
00:02:35was allowed.
00:02:36So there was a lot of interpretation.
00:02:38It was pretty good stuff.
00:02:40Kevin's seen a few Daytona 200s.
00:02:42And, of course, it evolved from beach racing and a dirt track.
00:02:47There was a dirt track, a 200-miler that was somewhere local down there.
00:02:51But, you know, it finally made it to the Speedway and turned into 200 miles.
00:02:56There was a contingent at the beach who really wanted to stay at the beach, but they moved it into
00:03:02the Speedway to some protests.
00:03:04But after a few years, it caught on, and it became huge.
00:03:08So you should transition here.
00:03:10I've set the stage probably too much, as usual.
00:03:16Tell us about your Daytona days, Kevin.
00:03:20Well, the early times were the period in which flathead or side valve engines were given 750 cc's displacement
00:03:36because they were less able on a specific basis than overhead valve engines, which were given 500 cc's.
00:03:47So the Triumphs won Daytona in 66 and 67, I think.
00:03:58And Harley Davidson replied in a big way.
00:04:04And it was quite an accident, really, because there was a group of people in Axtell's, C.R. Axtell's shop
00:04:13in SoCal,
00:04:15and they were shooting the breeze, and they were talking about flatheads.
00:04:23And it turned out that there was one belonging to a rider whose name is not of record.
00:04:32And they said, why don't we have a look at this?
00:04:35So they took off a cylinder head, and two of the guys are looking in there, and they say one
00:04:42of them had worked with Hudsons,
00:04:44which were big straight-eight flatheads when the NASCAR first started.
00:04:52300 cubic inch sixes.
00:04:54And he said, well, it's nothing like what was developed by Hudson.
00:05:01And the other fellow chimed in, and he said, well, I've seen the Auburns.
00:05:05And it's nothing like them either.
00:05:09And so there was more conversation.
00:05:11Finally, somebody said, really, what's going on here is that the roof, the head, is too close to the cylinder
00:05:19deck,
00:05:20where the valve pocket feeds across to the cylinder and then down.
00:05:28Well, why don't we make a quarter-inch head gasket for this and test it?
00:05:34Well, Axdell's bandsaw welder didn't work right then.
00:05:39So one of them gets in the car and drives off to somebody whose bandsaw welder is working.
00:05:48He takes a couple of these blanks that they'd made with holes drilled so they could feed the end of
00:05:56the saw blade through there
00:05:57and then weld it together, put the blade on the big bandsaw wheels,
00:06:01and then they'd be able to saw out the inside shape of the piston and the two valves in the
00:06:06side valve pocket.
00:06:09Well, they get the head on there, and it made as much horsepower as the engine with much higher compression
00:06:20ratio.
00:06:20Imagine what a quarter of an inch spacing the head up towards space, a whole quarter of an inch, means
00:06:28like no compression.
00:06:31Hardly puffing at all.
00:06:32Yes, but because they had increased that slot where the flow went from the side pocket to the cylinder,
00:06:41they gained as much as they lost from compression.
00:06:45At that point, they thought, they sort of looked at each other like, we've got something here.
00:06:52This is something.
00:06:54And so they put in a call to Dick O'Brien at Harley.
00:07:00He had been the race manager since 57.
00:07:05And he got on a plane with the foreman of the race shop.
00:07:14Harley not only had a race shop, but the race shop had a foreman.
00:07:19Now, that's real 1940 stuff right there.
00:07:22So they get there, and they make a lot of changes.
00:07:28They find out, they go to Daytona with 58 horsepower versus Triumph's 49 point something.
00:07:38Well, it's a bigger motorcycle, but not 10 horsepower bigger.
00:07:44And old Calvin just left him for dead.
00:07:49It was clear that the Triumph was dumpster material so far as Daytona was concerned.
00:07:55Lots of people left their Daytona 500 twins.
00:07:59But there's nothing as old as last year's bike.
00:08:04And, I mean, vintage bikes are new in our minds.
00:08:08They're gleaming with dealer fresh surface finishes.
00:08:13But in this case...
00:08:16Or the promise.
00:08:17That's what seduces us to buy them when they're crusty.
00:08:21It's like, oh, but how wonderful it could be.
00:08:23Yes.
00:08:24And soon.
00:08:25So in a few years.
00:08:29So the new motorcycle, they took the thing to the Caltech wind tunnel.
00:08:34They developed the infamous whale.
00:08:39That's what Buell's customers called it when he put that highly effective fairing.
00:08:44This is a fairing that made 250s faster than the little narrow fairings where the rider's knees bulged out on
00:08:53the two sides.
00:08:55Just about every motorcycle that fairing was ever put on went faster.
00:08:59So Calvin just blew him away.
00:09:05And that was the end of an era.
00:09:09Because at the 68th pro comp board meeting, Triumph said, we want a 650cc formula.
00:09:20Same for everyone.
00:09:22Hmm.
00:09:24You do, huh?
00:09:26The Harley guys stood up and he said, well, you've got a 650, but we've got a 750.
00:09:31So let's make it 750 while we're at it.
00:09:35And they voted and it went through.
00:09:38And what happened because of this was that because bigger motorcycles were just catching on in the U.S.
00:09:46And I mean really bigger, that what happened next was it was the fastest motorcycles in the world, on the
00:09:58fastest racetrack in the world,
00:10:01ridden by an international field of the fastest riders in the world.
00:10:06And that happened in 1972 when Suzuki and Kawasaki brought their three-cylinder two-strokes to town.
00:10:14And in 1970, Honda, with a CB750-based racer, won the event by the narrowest margin because the motors were
00:10:29eating camp chain tensioners
00:10:32and turning them into friction-reducing powder in the oil.
00:10:38Well, I had dinner with John Long and a bunch of these other retired road racers who were there.
00:10:46And John was regaling us with stories about how they did rebuild that.
00:10:51They were the ones who rebuilt that engine.
00:10:54And the other guys who were running it didn't.
00:10:56Yeah.
00:10:56And suffered the consequences.
00:10:58They suffered the consequences.
00:11:00But you know what?
00:11:01There's no asterisk like barely made it.
00:11:03Right?
00:11:04You won.
00:11:05That's it.
00:11:06History says you won.
00:11:07Yeah, because Dick Mann was a money rider.
00:11:15He had grown up in that whole money situation where if you didn't finish in the money,
00:11:22you were going to have to borrow something from people you're going to be racing against next weekend.
00:11:27And they probably would lend it to you.
00:11:29But how does it feel?
00:11:30Well, so then he won again in 71, this time on a PSA, three-cylinder, four-stroke.
00:11:46And in this case, they told him this is an 8,250 RPM engine.
00:11:52And in his own mind, he thought it feels like a 7,800 RPM engine.
00:11:57And that's how he rode it.
00:11:59And one by one, the great names fell by the wayside with all the ills of the internal combustion engine.
00:12:09And he won it a second time.
00:12:12What could be better?
00:12:14So then next year, the 750s are there, but they couldn't win because the tires all flew to bits.
00:12:19The race was won by little dinky 350 Yamahas, both years.
00:12:25And then the 750 era, the TZ 751 in 1974.
00:12:31And it went on winning until 1982, which was the last time.
00:12:38But that was, from 72 onward, was the two-stroke era at Daytona.
00:12:46And remember this, it was not the TZ 750 that sent the four-strokes home.
00:12:52It was little 350 twins.
00:12:57Not only were they easy on tires, they were also easy on riders.
00:13:05So that was a, first time I went to Daytona was 1969.
00:13:11And I had a, my rider was a junior.
00:13:14And I was not eligible to be in the speedway on Sunday to watch the 200.
00:13:20So that meant that I crept under the sleeping platform and pretended to be a toolbox.
00:13:28A toolbox was pushed up against me so that it was assumed that there were other toolboxes and so forth
00:13:34in the space I was occupying.
00:13:37And as soon as we got past the geezer guards, we were in.
00:13:41And I was free to walk about.
00:13:42Now, it is of note that Kayla was third after putting a move on another rider on the last lap
00:13:55in classic Duhamel fashion.
00:14:01Well, that was really remarkable.
00:14:05Kayla Yakov is 18.
00:14:06She's riding a Rahal Ducati.
00:14:09And she hooked up with the lead group in the beginning of the race.
00:14:12Six riders, blanket over them, as they say.
00:14:15But slowly, you know, some of those folks lost the draft.
00:14:17She was one of them.
00:14:19There was a lot of drama at the race.
00:14:22You know, Josh Heron won again.
00:14:24But it was Heron and Jacobson were pitted, you know, one, I think it was one slot apart.
00:14:32Jacobson is leading.
00:14:34Heron comes in.
00:14:35They both pit at the same time.
00:14:36They're filming Jacobson leaving the pit.
00:14:40And the Moto America film crew is on the hot side of the pit.
00:14:44And as PJ is pulling out, the cameraman starts stepping back.
00:14:48And Heron is exiting the pit.
00:14:51And suddenly, a cameraman is backing into his line, leaving the pit.
00:14:55He lifted the back wheel, hit the brakes, did not solve, did not crash.
00:14:59And I was able to rejoin.
00:15:01But obviously frustrated.
00:15:02And he lost something like at least four seconds, maybe more.
00:15:09PJ crashed out of the lead, passing a lapper, as you might be rushed, as you feel like an angry
00:15:15Josh Heron might be coming.
00:15:16But all the while, it was Darren Bender and Kayla Yakov in third and fourth.
00:15:22Yakov was fourth.
00:15:23And she closed the gap and caught up and then passed the lap before the finish and drafted and I
00:15:33think got the line.
00:15:34Everyone was cheering.
00:15:35But it wasn't over.
00:15:37And you would think that Bender could have witnessed what happened on that lap and done something about it the
00:15:42next lap, but didn't.
00:15:45And it was, Kayla just did a really expert, professional draft pass to take third and get the podium as
00:15:52a first woman on a Daytona 200 podium.
00:15:55And in wonderful fashion, I think actually seeing her on the interview, it was great because she was, you know,
00:16:05being a female in the paddock at all, I think historically may have been somewhat challenging.
00:16:10And to show up in leathers and race, like there's a lot of supportive people, but there's plenty who are
00:16:14not.
00:16:15And so to be an 18-year-old in that situation, and she's still, she's trying to not, I think
00:16:21she was really trying to not be emotional because she just didn't want to be emotional, right?
00:16:25She didn't want to be, you know, the 18-year-old crying.
00:16:30And then she, she teared up.
00:16:31She's like, oh, I've been trying so hard to, you know, keep it together.
00:16:35And I'm like, she got to cry.
00:16:37I mean, I'd cry.
00:16:38Like if I could get on the podium and watch me weep, buddy.
00:16:41So it was cool.
00:16:42It was really, it was really neat.
00:16:43And she just did it out of pure grit, talent, and determination.
00:16:46And, you know, she's had an incredible support crew like Ben Spees has been helping with Ray Hall, of course,
00:16:52as the manager.
00:16:52Well, she did it right.
00:16:55She did it right.
00:16:56She did the things she knew were effective at that racetrack.
00:17:01Yeah.
00:17:02Be second off the chicane.
00:17:05Yeah.
00:17:06And then do it to them.
00:17:07Right.
00:17:07Yeah.
00:17:07Being thoughtful about it, really.
00:17:09Well, relevant to this is, after Daytona in 69, I went to the AMA National in Annapolis.
00:17:20And I brought a woman with me, and she was not allowed in the paddock.
00:17:26She had to go and sit in the spectator seating and read a book.
00:17:33Well, it wasn't too long after that, that a woman in the state of New York had applied for a
00:17:40license, AMA license, and it was sent to her.
00:17:46She showed up at the races, and she was told, oh, you're a woman.
00:17:51You can't do this.
00:17:52Go out of here.
00:17:54She went straight to the legal profession and said, do you fellows want to join me in an easy one?
00:18:04And the AMA was summoned.
00:18:08Sit right here.
00:18:09We will now read you the law, which basically said, yes, you can create a private club and so forth
00:18:17and so on.
00:18:18But if you're going to exclude women from this sport, you will not do it in the state of New
00:18:25York, because it's not legal here to do that.
00:18:29So just think about it.
00:18:32So there was an important precursor, and I'm sorry that I don't know her name, but somebody did what Americans
00:18:43have done when they are wronged.
00:18:47And they took it to law, and the law updated the interpretation, rather than saying, well, I'm a man.
00:18:57These are all other men.
00:18:58We live in a society of men, and this is the way it's always been.
00:19:02So get back to the kitchen and mind the kids, and I'll see you in church Sunday.
00:19:09What is it?
00:19:10Kinder, Kuchen, and Kirche.
00:19:14So that was a good thing.
00:19:16Back then.
00:19:18And I'm a person whose mother, when I was 10, was called upon by circumstances to put a roof on
00:19:27the porch, three sides of a big old 1826 house.
00:19:33She put the roof on there.
00:19:35The flooring in the bridge had been there too long, and the boards were starting to go.
00:19:41So she organized that there should be trees sawn in the woods, that they should be sawn into planks, and
00:19:51she and another person were down there with sawhorses, creosoting all this stuff to put a new floor in the
00:19:57bridge.
00:19:57So I am accustomed to capable women.
00:20:02People getting done, yeah.
00:20:03Yes.
00:20:04My mom was like that too.
00:20:05Get it done.
00:20:07So hats off, so to speak, to Kayla.
00:20:15No, it was awesome.
00:20:17It was very cool to be there.
00:20:18And I was sitting, you know, I was sitting with, watching a race with Thad Wolf, who's a, you know,
00:20:24retired racer.
00:20:25He was around quite a bit in the 80s.
00:20:28Oh, he phoned yesterday.
00:20:29Yeah, he was at Cycle, and he, you know, he did racing, and he was around Cycle and all that
00:20:36stuff, and came up and raced TZ750s and all that.
00:20:40We were watching that with Curtis Adams, who is my hometown as Whittier.
00:20:45And I always admired Curtis because he was 6'4", 6'6", really tall guy.
00:20:51So he was tall, and I'm 6'2", but I was like, oh, wait, I got a chance.
00:20:54Curtis can road race and win.
00:20:57So I was covering him when I was at Cycle News back at Willis Springs, and he was racing Chuck
00:21:02Graves on a 7'11".
00:21:05We just watched, we were watching the 200, and we're like, well, PJ's raced to lose at this point, and
00:21:10he did.
00:21:11And then we watched Kayla hunt down Darren Bender.
00:21:15He was racing on the MotoGP stage fairly recently.
00:21:19So Daytona's a unique track, and it was really something.
00:21:26Well, Daytona is a place where the advice is, don't run your new bike.
00:21:32You don't know much about your new bike, and you know last year's bike really well, so you might have
00:21:39a chance at Daytona.
00:21:40Because a lot of people called it Daytona, because a lot of people had to reduce their compression ratio there.
00:21:50Because the engine holds a high note second after second after second, just keeps on singing.
00:21:58And so in that sense, it is like a destructive dynamometer test.
00:22:05And once you've got your engine right, you know how to make it run at Daytona.
00:22:10That is a valuable piece of information.
00:22:13And that's why they say, don't run your new bike at Daytona.
00:22:19But, of course, that doesn't apply today because we have computers so that we can analyze everything and know the
00:22:24future in advance.
00:22:26Good luck.
00:22:27Yeah, all right.
00:22:29Good luck.
00:22:30Ask AI.
00:22:3160% chance of being right, maybe.
00:22:34Yeah.
00:22:35You never know.
00:22:37So, Thad has raced there.
00:22:39And I think everyone, Ella Dreyer, young road racer coming up, she is 16, and she's the youngest racer to
00:22:48participate in the 200.
00:22:51And Thad knowingly went over and said, you know, I think the best advice I can give you is just
00:22:56finish the race.
00:22:57And everybody else said, everybody already told her that.
00:23:01But finish the race, you know, experience it, get across the line, and she did.
00:23:06So, it's pretty neat.
00:23:09Definitely.
00:23:09And Heron, you know, Heron, that's four in a row for Heron, which is damn remarkable in five total.
00:23:14So, he's joining Russell on the Mr. Daytona list, Scott Russell, who did it five times.
00:23:21Duhamel was always really good.
00:23:23There's that epic win back in the day when he was fairly injured and they had to kind of lever
00:23:27him onto the bike.
00:23:30Off of his cane and put him in the saddle.
00:23:33And then he went off and rode 200 miles and finished and won his amazing drive up to the wall.
00:23:41I don't know if that was the same year.
00:23:43It's a little foggy.
00:23:44But that was amazing how hard he stayed in the throttle as he was drifting up toward the wall.
00:23:49And you just thought, oh, man, he's going to splat.
00:23:51And he didn't splat.
00:23:53It was really impressive.
00:23:56That's the thing about Daytona is over the years, it is such an experience.
00:24:00It was an interesting and unique track.
00:24:02And then we had international folks for so long.
00:24:05And I think, you know, there's been the lull.
00:24:08They didn't want super bikes to be doing, you know, 213 miles an hour or whatever.
00:24:13So, now we're doing next-gen super sport, which you're running, you know, mid-180s.
00:24:18Baggers are running mid-180s, by the way.
00:24:21Yes.
00:24:21185-5, 186.
00:24:24I don't know.
00:24:25I had breakfast with Kyle Wyman.
00:24:27He mentioned offhandedly that he thought they might break 190 this year with the off-season gains.
00:24:35But it looks like we stayed under that.
00:24:37That's a lot of air to crush on a bagger.
00:24:39That's a lot of air to crush.
00:24:40It is.
00:24:41It certainly is.
00:24:44That big refrigerator in the front, that big obstruction that they have to push.
00:24:50Yeah.
00:24:50I understand the bags are not, you know, you would think maybe the bags, bags could be good or the
00:24:55bags could be bad.
00:24:58Only the tunnel knows.
00:25:00But it turns out, you know, from what I understand from talking to a few folks is that they aren't
00:25:04really hugely detrimental.
00:25:06And they aren't a benefit.
00:25:09And I don't think, you know, it'd be nice if you could sort of fill the gap with the bags,
00:25:14you know, make them a little bigger.
00:25:16Get them to try to enhance the continuity between the faring over the rider and off the back of the
00:25:23bike.
00:25:23But it's outside the rules.
00:25:26Contrary to the spirit.
00:25:28Yes.
00:25:28Another big change that occurred at Daytona in 69, I drained the gearbox oil on the two new Yamahas that
00:25:38we had, a TD2-250 and a TR2-350.
00:25:46And I'm walking around with the drain pan.
00:25:50And finally, somebody in a AMA shirt let me catch his eye.
00:25:58And I said, what do we do with this?
00:26:00And I showed him the oil.
00:26:01And he said, well, I know what everybody else does.
00:26:06See that ditch over there?
00:26:08He said, you just kind of amble over there and pour it in.
00:26:14And so that's what I did.
00:26:16And today, of course, the next thing that would happen would be the black arrow of an environmental group would
00:26:23be sticking out between your shoulder blades.
00:26:26Naughty behavior mustn't.
00:26:28Mustn't.
00:26:29So now they have little cabins, at least two little cabins.
00:26:35And each cabin is staffed by an older, experienced gentleman, of whom there are a good many in Florida.
00:26:44And there is a barrel for unwanted fuel, a barrel for oil, a barrel for coolant, a barrel for brake
00:26:53fluid.
00:26:55So we're doing things right now.
00:26:57Yeah, we got that out at the airport, too.
00:27:00I've been going out to my local airport working on vintage aircraft and messing around.
00:27:04And we make the run over to the big brick, the cinder block shed.
00:27:09It's run by the county.
00:27:11And away we go.
00:27:12We've got a great big giant drain.
00:27:13We can take our ashless dispersant oil that we've just drained out of a Taylor Craft or Cub and put
00:27:22it in the right spot.
00:27:22Hopefully we get it used for something else.
00:27:26There's the classic old popular science.
00:27:29It's an illustration from, I don't remember the year, but it's say it's 50s-ish.
00:27:37And this is how you dispose of your oil.
00:27:40And it showed you to dig a pit and fill the bottom with gravel, make it of this dimension, and
00:27:46then you can pour your oil in this pit that you dug in your yard.
00:27:51From the earth.
00:27:52From the earth, ye arose to the earth, ye shall return.
00:27:58Yeah, except when you want your groundwater to not taste like 2050.
00:28:02Yes.
00:28:03So I think we've done pretty well to pick that up and put it somewhere, put it in a barrel,
00:28:09send it somewhere.
00:28:11Maybe we can do it again.
00:28:12And I know there's some very thrifty people who use oil for the oil furnace that they built for their
00:28:20garage.
00:28:21And they, you know, I could see that happening in the colder clime.
00:28:28Yep.
00:28:29It's been known to happen.
00:28:30There are people that will come by and take your barrel of unwanted liquid away.
00:28:35You wonder where they're going with it.
00:28:41There was one company that had an unfortunate reputation for botched fuel stops.
00:28:49And I won't mention their name out of natural restraint.
00:28:56And I worked it out.
00:28:58I saw them practicing one day.
00:29:00And basically what the management was saying to the payones who were performing this minuet.
00:29:13Realize that the slightest error by any one of you could make the difference between winning and losing.
00:29:22I want you to be really tense.
00:29:25I want you to be worrying about a misstep and not paying attention to what you're doing.
00:29:34So in comes Paul Smart.
00:29:38I think this was Talladega.
00:29:40And with decisive motions, the team manager stepped forward with the hose.
00:29:49This was overhead hose refuelers in this time.
00:29:53And you had to twist lock them on.
00:29:56There were three lugs on the connector.
00:30:00And then you pulled a lever and the poppet valve was pushed into your tank and the fluid rushed in.
00:30:06And he pulled the thing and you can imagine him counting inwardly one and two and three.
00:30:14And when he got to about 15, he's looking all around.
00:30:23And he's trying to, he shut the valve by this time and he's trying to get the thing off and
00:30:30it won't, won't come off.
00:30:32He put real effort into it so that the rear end of the tank began to rise up off of
00:30:38its rubber cushions.
00:30:40And Smarty is revving the engine as if to say, could you snap it up?
00:30:48We're losing time here.
00:30:51And I'm counting seconds.
00:30:52I'm a bystander.
00:30:55Finally, with a tremendous effort, he gets the thing, breaks the thing off of the tank.
00:31:01There's no leakage.
00:31:05Paul smokes the clutch all the way down the pit lane and loses the clutch.
00:31:13And I saw one in, at, oh, what's that?
00:31:20Paul Ricard in the south of France.
00:31:23And similar, similar business.
00:31:26It could all be bad luck, of course.
00:31:28And one time it definitely was.
00:31:30Rider comes in, they hook up, nothing comes out.
00:31:35Nothing is happening.
00:31:37So they disconnect it.
00:31:39They send the rider out.
00:31:40Frantically, they're draining fuel from the overhead can and putting it into their B unit.
00:31:47They had a B, a second tower.
00:31:50What had happened was that the hose structure is, it has a wire, a ground wire in it,
00:31:58because you don't want to spark when you're handling fuel.
00:32:02It has layers of fabric.
00:32:06And it has an inner liner.
00:32:08The inner liner, somehow, a section of it detached and went across the neck of the thing
00:32:17and blocked the flow completely.
00:32:20But because, by this time, of course, they were expecting trouble.
00:32:25They were expecting to drink deep at the font of bad luck.
00:32:31And they were able to refuel them with the second tower.
00:32:36But that's what those high-speed tracks do to you, is they, you have to carry out these rituals.
00:32:43You have to do all of these things right.
00:32:47And there are people who can't get in step with that, because what I told people when we were doing
00:32:55fuel stops was,
00:32:56the rider hates to stop.
00:32:58The rider wants to stay in his rhythm.
00:33:01That's the safest place for him or her.
00:33:06And so making a fuel stop is a bore.
00:33:09Let's just do it step by step and get it over with and get them out.
00:33:14And the teams that were always successful would run a couple of false fuel stops.
00:33:21They would actually transfer fuel.
00:33:23It was a live stop.
00:33:25But it was just practice.
00:33:27And then the attitude was, there, we can do that.
00:33:30You see?
00:33:30It worked.
00:33:31Okay.
00:33:32We're ready for Sunday.
00:33:36And good stuff.
00:33:42Daytona is not a place for experiments.
00:33:45Daytona is not a place where you go to try stuff.
00:33:50And when Rich Schlachter, rider, East Coast guy, and I were given the use of a TZ250D in 1977,
00:34:04in first practice, we got a baseline.
00:34:07And then I pulled the ignition timing back to 1.8.
00:34:14And that was better.
00:34:17It tacked up.
00:34:18Same gearing.
00:34:19Pulled it back to 1.6.
00:34:21We picked up 300 revolutions on those two changes with no change elsewhere.
00:34:28Same gearing.
00:34:29It's just going faster.
00:34:32What Kevin means is on the top end.
00:34:35Yeah.
00:34:36So they're in six.
00:34:38When you're on the banking and the tack is over here,
00:34:42and the tack, of course, is banging, bouncing all around in its rubber mountings,
00:34:49it's quite a, it's not exactly efficient information transfer.
00:34:56But we're not looking for, you know, we're not saying like, oh, my top speed was 131 miles an hour.
00:35:00When you're, you have the bike, you have the tack.
00:35:03And if you're in top gear and your gearing is the same and you pick up 300 RPM,
00:35:06that's a huge positive because you're going faster.
00:35:10It's a biggie.
00:35:11So that evening, I widened the exhaust ports and raised them a millimeter and polished the edges.
00:35:19Another 300 revolutions.
00:35:22Same gearing.
00:35:23And we just kept doing stupid stuff.
00:35:26We put on 36 millimeter carburetors and got them dialed.
00:35:30I can't believe how lucky we were.
00:35:33I can't take credit for any of this because we are two crazy guys that went to Daytona to try
00:35:39experiments.
00:35:42Schlapper says, I'm going to go over to the AMA office and see where we're at.
00:35:47So he goes off.
00:35:50After a while, he comes back and he said, we're third on lap time.
00:35:56He said, we're third.
00:35:58And that was the moment when he made the transition from being a talented clubman to being something else, you
00:36:05know, to be announced.
00:36:11It was a great day, but that's naughty.
00:36:17You can't count on being that lucky.
00:36:25Those 250Ds, they had, of course, steel tube frames and horrible cracking tubular steel braced swing arms.
00:36:34They looked right, but they had certain problems.
00:36:41And we just had that wonderful experience.
00:36:47In 1982, Honda decided they were going to make this big push at Daytona.
00:36:56They brought 1,000 CCV4s called FWS.
00:37:00And everyone is being sort of, oh, Honda's bringing a super weapon.
00:37:08And Freddie Spencer on one, Mike Baldwin on the other.
00:37:12And I don't know what Roberto Pietri was riding.
00:37:16Maybe another one.
00:37:19But at any rate, they went tremendously fast through practice.
00:37:23It was just stunning.
00:37:24And they were equipped to change tires during the race.
00:37:28They had Suzuka eight-hour stuff.
00:37:30And that transformed Daytona.
00:37:33Because before that, the tire companies were saying to themselves,
00:37:37we have to make a tire that will go 200 miles at the speed with the extra load of the
00:37:43banking.
00:37:44Just make something, you know, out of stone.
00:37:50Well, in the race, Honda had tire trouble.
00:37:55And so they were pulling in and getting a tire and going back out and going fast
00:38:00and earning their way forward again and then having more tire trouble.
00:38:04And meanwhile, here's Graham Crosby plugging away on a bike built at the last moment
00:38:12in the parts department out of no longer wanted 0W31 parts.
00:38:22And that thing was designed to win Daytona.
00:38:25And it did.
00:38:26It just kept chugging.
00:38:27It didn't have any exceptional tire trouble.
00:38:31But Freddie was second.
00:38:36And Mike was in there, too.
00:38:39So they were, of course, horribly disappointed because they wanted to make this big splash.
00:38:46But it was a big splash, even if they didn't win, because it changed the nature of the undertaking.
00:38:53And that was cool.
00:38:57And, of course, we knew that Daytona was going to turn into a four-stroke race eventually,
00:39:02that the manufacturers were saying, oh, AMA, you tell us what rules you want.
00:39:08Then we comply.
00:39:12But that wasn't really true.
00:39:14It was sort of like, I'm in your country, so you rule.
00:39:16And 1985, it became a superbike.
00:39:22But the thing was that when superbike first came to Daytona, or when it first became a national class,
00:39:29that the AMA had the good sense to make the races very short.
00:39:35I'm sure that the sense was talked into them by certain persons.
00:39:40But, you know, a 50-mile race.
00:39:44And the rules said that front forks and swing arms may be altered or replaced.
00:39:55And that was a good one, too, because it meant that put on real stuff.
00:40:00Because, as Mark noted earlier in this diatribe, duotribe, that those bikes weren't built to be raceable.
00:40:14They were built by engineers who had been told, USA has a 60-mile-per-hour speed limit.
00:40:20Put in plenty of power, 1960s chassis, tires, and suspension, thumbs up, okay.
00:40:28And they weren't.
00:40:30And the AMA had the sense to realize, or it was explained to them.
00:40:37And so those bikes, those first era superbikes, the sit-up jobs, had to be completely re-engineered.
00:40:47All new suspension, all new wheels, tremendous reinforcing of the chassis.
00:40:56In 1978, Goodyear had had enough being told that their tires were causing a certain other manufacturer's motorcycle to weave.
00:41:08And so Goodyear picked up the phone and dialed Goodyear Aerospace.
00:41:15And they sent over people who said, yeah, we'll put strain gauges on this thing.
00:41:20And you go out and run a practice.
00:41:21And then we'll make a wireframe model.
00:41:25And we'll animate it with the motions revealed by the strain gauges.
00:41:30And they showed, on the screen, they showed the chassis going, it was wonderful.
00:41:39Wow.
00:41:40And it shut the complaints up.
00:41:47The manufacturer went away and attended to their own knitting.
00:41:53Yeah.
00:41:54Well, those 76 BMWs, you know, I was there in Daytona with the three that BMW brought down, the R90Ss,
00:42:02built by Udo Geedle.
00:42:03And it was so wonderful to talk to Udo because you just got a lot of the backstory.
00:42:09Like, what happened to Fisher?
00:42:11And the rear stand on the axle goes into the axle, holds the bike.
00:42:16Like, the pipes are just above it.
00:42:18And Udo's like, yeah, he had gearbox problems.
00:42:20Somebody bounced on the back of the bike and bent the pipes.
00:42:25And it jammed his linkage.
00:42:26And he was able to get through most of the race.
00:42:28But then it hung up between fourth and fifth.
00:42:32And it over-revved.
00:42:33And it hurt it and ended it.
00:42:35So it's just, you know, and talking to Udo with all the changes about lifting the engine and moving it
00:42:41forward.
00:42:41And if you looked at the cylinder, I think it's the left cylinder, it's up against the frame rail.
00:42:47The twin loop coming down, it is like pushed up and forward as far as it'll go until the cylinder
00:42:54basically hits the frame.
00:42:56It was remarkable.
00:42:57And it was cool because those early Kawasaki's, they were incredibly powerful.
00:43:05They had plenty more power than the BMW R90s, but they couldn't make them turn or get off corners.
00:43:12They just were not working.
00:43:15So it took a few seasons.
00:43:16And, of course, everything changed.
00:43:18And suddenly, you know, ripping 1025cc four-cylinders were doing all the biz.
00:43:23Well, this is the thing about handling.
00:43:26And that is that it's like the explanation was made to BMW people during the time of their S1000RR when
00:43:45it was eating tires.
00:43:47And Marco Malandri said, in Formula One, where BMW had tremendous experience, in Formula One, you work to censor data.
00:44:00But in this kind of racing, you have to work to what the rider says.
00:44:06Because if the rider doesn't have confidence, a choir of engineers singing the praises of their algorithm will have no
00:44:16effect.
00:44:19And so this kind of experimental handling amelioration is necessary.
00:44:28There is no computer that will just give you a good one.
00:44:34When Honda had to make a proper superbike out of the CB900F, the first thing they threw away was that
00:44:47lead flywheel of a front wheel.
00:44:50And they put a little 16 in there, sweet little 16, and a tubeless slick tire, and lots of other
00:45:01changes.
00:45:02Because riders could haul on the bars, and the whirling flywheel, Daytona, really spins those flywheels.
00:45:13It doesn't want to steer.
00:45:15No, I don't have to, and I'm not going to.
00:45:18So they had to put little stuff on.
00:45:21They had to make huge changes to convert a beach cruiser into a road race bike.
00:45:31And this is why the bagger's experience is so wonderful.
00:45:36Because it shows that the things that work in racing will work on a bagger.
00:45:44And I think that's so wonderful.
00:45:47Because I watched carefully at Laguna, and those things change direction at respectable speed.
00:45:57They aren't heavy and slow, like the McGrath Highway in Boston at rush hour.
00:46:06They are nimble.
00:46:08And further, they slide rather than high side.
00:46:12It's really quite a control mechanism.
00:46:17Instead of having the terrible fear of the two-stroke era, as it slips and grips, and one of those
00:46:29times you're going over the top, it just goes into this lovely slide.
00:46:35But maybe it has something to do with the 620-pound minimum weight with standard road race weight, wheels, and
00:46:44brakes, and tires underneath it.
00:46:47Good unsprung weight ratio.
00:46:49Keep those pieces of rubber kissing the pavement.
00:46:56So, I think the bagger's experience has a lesson to teach us.
00:47:01And those McCandless brothers in Northern Ireland who developed the featherbed frame that was adopted by Norton, a frame that
00:47:11was the model for so many frames in the years that followed,
00:47:18that's how they developed that chassis, was by constant testing and changing, so that they got a feel for what
00:47:28was possible with this chassis.
00:47:31Good stuff.
00:47:33Real good stuff.
00:47:35Yeah, Kayla Yakoff was talking about the banking as a place where currently people are suffering about 2Gs.
00:47:45She says it's hard to breathe.
00:47:47You know, you really got to get off the banking and then you catch up on your breaths because it's
00:47:51a pretty good jamming situation.
00:47:55But, yeah, the baggers in the early superbikes, that's 76 here especially,
00:48:02and that flexibility of rules allowing just enough creativity to make the bikes work
00:48:08and evolve to what we got in, you know, 83 with interceptors and stuff where it was actually handling became
00:48:16a marketable trait.
00:48:18You know, prior to that, it was all, it was all like, yeah.
00:48:22Quarter mile and top speed.
00:48:23Quarter mile and top speed, man.
00:48:25That was what we were going for.
00:48:27Because one way of looking at the magazine business is that it provides young, hot persons with bar talk about
00:48:38their favorite subject.
00:48:40Or social media talk at this point, too.
00:48:42Well, that's a later development.
00:48:45Yeah.
00:48:45One of the things at Daytona you have to look out for is fuel starvation.
00:48:52In 1972, we brought our barn job, homemade H2R, 752 stroke, down there.
00:49:02And my rider went out and he said, the cut's dead at 8,500.
00:49:09He said, I thought it had seized, but then the tack needle went down.
00:49:13When it got to six, pop, it cut back in.
00:49:18So that told me that I had to get everything out of the way of the fuel.
00:49:24No quick disconnects, no filters, bigger float valve in the carburetors.
00:49:30And when I had fuel flowing from taking the bowl plugs out of all three carburetors into a trough that
00:49:39debouched into a jar,
00:49:43when I had 50% more than what I had calculated to be the likely fuel consumption on full throttle,
00:49:51it sang its song all the way up to the little let's stop here number, which was about 9,200
00:50:00in those days.
00:50:03So always something to think of.
00:50:05On other racetracks, your motorcycle, the float bowls, might have enough fuel in them for you to do everything without
00:50:14running it dry.
00:50:15But the moment you get to a place where it has to sing that dulcet song, for all those seconds,
00:50:24it will pump the bowls dry and cut.
00:50:27Oh, it's one of my favorite things that you've repeatedly talked to me about over the years.
00:50:33It's pounds per horsepower hour.
00:50:35Oh, yes.
00:50:36Well, 0.5 pounds per horsepower per hour is a rule of thumb for four strokes and 0.65 for
00:50:47two strokes.
00:50:51And we ran our, I don't remember what year it was.
00:50:56It was an 80s 250 Yamaha on the dyno of the former snowmobile expert out in Buffalo.
00:51:09And when that thing was working really well, its fuel consumption was like 0.595 pound per horsepower per hour.
00:51:24And, of course, where did the rest of the fuel go?
00:51:26Out the tailpipe.
00:51:28I always wanted to put a spark plug in the tailpipe.
00:51:30See?
00:51:33It could discourage drafting.
00:51:36It could be a safety issue.
00:51:40It's common to blow a lot of fuel out the tailpipe on a two-stroke.
00:51:44There's not...
00:51:45Yes, because when the...
00:51:47The door slams late.
00:51:48The mixture is innocent.
00:51:51It's brushing up these transfer ducts.
00:51:53It makes...
00:51:54Some of it makes the turn.
00:51:56And it enters the cylinder.
00:51:58Where do I go?
00:51:59Some of them go to the exhaust port because it's over there sucking away.
00:52:03The pipe signal from the exhaust pipe is saying,
00:52:07This way.
00:52:09This way, little darling.
00:52:12And, of course, you'd like to talk sweetly to that fuel and have it all go to the back of
00:52:17the cylinder and perform the loop.
00:52:19But they were wasteful.
00:52:22Well, I have a question for you that's barely related.
00:52:26We used spark plugs at Daytona, right?
00:52:30Just to confirm.
00:52:31Okay.
00:52:31It's connected.
00:52:32Great.
00:52:34Did you spend time indexing spark plugs in your career?
00:52:38I never got to that.
00:52:39I always had something to do.
00:52:42Yeah.
00:52:43Because you can buy these washers, right?
00:52:44So, indexing the spark plug is aiming the open part of the positive and negative.
00:52:51Toward the oncoming mixture.
00:52:52Yeah.
00:52:52So, the spark is just unshrouded.
00:52:57It's just pure spark.
00:52:58Here's the mixture.
00:52:59Let me have it.
00:53:01Let's go.
00:53:01Let's light this thing up.
00:53:02And Paul Dean, the great Paul Dean, has been involved in sprint car racing for a very long time.
00:53:08And he said that indexing the plugs on their 500 or 800 horsepower engine picked them up something like maybe
00:53:165% to 10% aiming them all at the intake.
00:53:21So, that's a lot.
00:53:23I mean, that is a huge amount.
00:53:24And you just buy these washers of different thicknesses.
00:53:27You mark the plug, you know, where the opening of the electrode is, and you thread it in and torque
00:53:32it down and just get it into that ballpark.
00:53:35I've considered it.
00:53:36You know, it's easy to do on a single cylinder.
00:53:39I could probably start with that and see how that goes.
00:53:42Dare I say Belisette.
00:53:43I don't want to.
00:53:45There are plenty of other singles in the world where you could index your plug.
00:53:49You know, I kind of want to do that on the XS650, too.
00:53:53Well, there was a day when I saw a difference in between ways of thinking about spark plugs.
00:54:02Gary Nixon was asked to ride his 1976 Irv Kanemoto C&J framed Kawasaki KR750 in a demo at Loudoun,
00:54:17New Hampshire.
00:54:18And I had a box of the plugs that we used then.
00:54:22So, that's what I put in it.
00:54:24And after practice, he said, thing don't pick up real good off the corner.
00:54:32You got some of them spark plugs that stick out?
00:54:36Yes, in fact, I do.
00:54:38Because that was the last spark plugs that we were using in TZ750s as the 80s got underway.
00:54:47You could even see the insulator sticking out and then the fine platinum iridium wire and the side electrode.
00:54:57And I put a set of those in there and he told me that was way better.
00:55:05Yeah, the P and the NGK plugs, it's the B.
00:55:08You know, you might get your B8ES or your B7ES and your Norton or whatever.
00:55:13But you can also get the P model where it protrudes that stuff out.
00:55:17And, you know.
00:55:18Projected tip.
00:55:19They called it.
00:55:21And when we started out with TD1s in the mid-1960s, they called out B10EN, which was a spark plug
00:55:32that had the cap down inside the shell.
00:55:36And finally, I asked, oh, Bobby Strawman.
00:55:44Bobby Strawman.
00:55:44Who was the champion man.
00:55:47I showed him his little monocle.
00:55:50His little monocle, yes.
00:55:52And I showed him a set of those.
00:55:53I said, this is what we used to run.
00:55:55He said, today, that's a top fuel plug.
00:55:58They got the plug gap down inside where it's partly protected from the firestorm.
00:56:06So, that projected tip spark plug, by the way, had a heat range similar to what you'd put in a
00:56:12Triumph 650 if you were going on a long trip on the interstates.
00:56:18Didn't want to burn things down.
00:56:21And it worked a treat in TZ750s.
00:56:24It was certainly better.
00:56:26Oh, yeah.
00:56:28Well, you know, if we're in the 70s era, I have to bring up a story you told me about
00:56:33an unnamed road racer who was growing recreational crops, such as perhaps marijuana, on freeway interchanges.
00:56:42Yes.
00:56:43And so, I had the audience of all these road racers who were racing in the 60s and through the
00:56:4870s and into the 80s.
00:56:50And I said, oh, yeah, you know, that Kevin Cameron told me about this guy.
00:56:53Because they were all talking about how they funded their racing.
00:56:56And John Long is talking about winning a race in Italy.
00:57:00And he's driving to Imola for the next thing.
00:57:02And he's got to earn his money.
00:57:03And he's driving a van.
00:57:05And he pulls in.
00:57:05And he's like, I don't know the difference between benzina and whatever else was on the side.
00:57:09But he's like, there was fuel that was cheaper.
00:57:11I'm like, well, I'm going to get that cheap stuff.
00:57:13And he said he put it in his van.
00:57:14And he didn't have a lot of money.
00:57:16So, he just put a little bit in.
00:57:19And he got like a mile down the road.
00:57:20And the van stopped because it was diesel.
00:57:24And he's like, oh, no.
00:57:25You know, it's diesel.
00:57:26They were on fumes.
00:57:27And he bought something like five gallons of it.
00:57:29And so, you know, he barely used it.
00:57:31And he's like, drains it out.
00:57:33And he gets some like last bit of gasoline that he had for his race bike.
00:57:37And he gets in the van.
00:57:38They go back.
00:57:38He sells the fuel that he drained out back to the station.
00:57:42And then he buys the right fuel.
00:57:44So, they're trying to get money together.
00:57:45So, there are a lot of these stories.
00:57:47And then he won this big race in Italy.
00:57:48And he said, you know, he had a suitcase full of cash.
00:57:51Millions of lira.
00:57:52And he's like, his wife, Theo, is like, he's like, yeah, you can buy whatever you want at the Gucci
00:57:56store or whatever.
00:57:57You know, it's very cool to hear these stories living in the van racing.
00:58:00And I asked all of them.
00:58:02I was like, yeah, do you know anybody, you know, who did that?
00:58:04Who was growing weed in the freeway interchanges in Georgia and stuff.
00:58:08And they're like, wow, that could have been this guy.
00:58:10It could have been that guy.
00:58:11It could have been that guy.
00:58:13And there's that other guy who was a coke dealer.
00:58:15So, it was pretty interesting insight into that era.
00:58:19Pretty cool.
00:58:20One time, I was at the fence.
00:58:26And I looked over and Bud Axlund was there.
00:58:29And Nick Rikiki goes by.
00:58:32Nick Rikiki was a New York City kid from Queens, I think.
00:58:39And he advanced really rapidly in road racing.
00:58:46He was spending everything that he could make.
00:58:48Like, he got up at 5 o'clock in the morning and delivered orange juice in his van.
00:58:53And he was doing everything he could to scratch up the money, you know, 600 bucks for cylinders, 600 bucks
00:58:59for cranks.
00:59:01Because the two strokes ate those things up.
00:59:03They lasted about 900 miles apiece.
00:59:06So, he goes by.
00:59:11I think he was being timed at that point.
00:59:14And he went probably 183, which was good going in those times.
00:59:19And I could hear Bud Axlund saying something next to me.
00:59:23He said, what he was saying was, now, who is that?
00:59:28Going about a million miles an hour.
00:59:32Looks to me like one of those black and scrungy East Coast bikes.
00:59:38I think.
00:59:39Didn't Miles Baldwin get called that, too?
00:59:42Oh, probably.
00:59:43Because, you know, he broke all the fairing off his bike.
00:59:47And he didn't have a lot of money.
00:59:48And so, he raced one whole season with no lower on.
00:59:52Didn't make any difference.
00:59:54Because.
00:59:55Pretty full behind the fairings on a TZ.
00:59:58John Britton told me about testing his bike, the bike that he built, including the engine, with a carbon fiber
01:00:09frame.
01:00:11On this 20-mile straightaway, famous place in New Zealand, where the white helmet people, the people who tried to
01:00:21outdo one another in craziness.
01:00:24And he said, let's take the lower fairing off.
01:00:28Bike went faster.
01:00:30He said, it only made sense because here's the narrow engine.
01:00:34And the foot pegs are out here.
01:00:36The rider's feet are here.
01:00:37And there's this big space.
01:00:39Just let the air through.
01:00:43Well.
01:00:45Might not be theoretically right.
01:00:47But if it goes faster, isn't that what you want?
01:00:52Because.
01:00:53Have to remember.
01:00:55Daytona or Bonneville, anywhere else.
01:00:57Two strokes.
01:00:58Went fast.
01:01:00Motorcycles go fast by just cramming themselves through the air with brute force.
01:01:05And that's why I love the winglets.
01:01:08That's because I know a lot of people are upset about winglets.
01:01:13So they wish that they would stop looking that way.
01:01:19But imagine that you're nearing top speed and the front wheel is coming up.
01:01:26Now, you don't have control.
01:01:29Are you going to go 200 miles an hour on one wheel?
01:01:31Well, you might feel caution was necessary.
01:01:36But the winglets gently push the front end back down, restoring rider control so that acceleration can continue.
01:01:48Now, an anti-wheeling system cannot do this because it works by closing, by squeaking the throttle towards closed, just
01:01:58enough to let the front wheel come down and touch.
01:02:01Removing torque.
01:02:03Yeah.
01:02:03So you're just reducing power until the front wheel comes down.
01:02:08What you want is a helping hand from above.
01:02:12That is, arrow downforce.
01:02:16It's free.
01:02:17Well, mostly free.
01:02:18There is lift over drag, after all.
01:02:21And you attach all this stuff to your motorcycle.
01:02:25The old timers are shielding their gaze or averting it altogether.
01:02:30But it works.
01:02:31Keep on accelerating.
01:02:34But at the same time, there's a small but vocal group in MotoGP who would like to see what 600
01:02:42cc's would be like.
01:02:46So, live long and learn.
01:02:54Well, if you're managing two world championship series, World Superbike and MotoGP, how do you want it to turn out,
01:03:03I guess?
01:03:04Who's going fast?
01:03:06Who goes faster?
01:03:08Production bikes or prototypes?
01:03:10One of the tales told to me by Cook Nelson, who was editor of Cycle at one time.
01:03:20He's the one.
01:03:20Well, and also, he was part of the West Coast contingent at AFM who was racing, basically, superbike production Ducatis.
01:03:29They were there.
01:03:31Udo Guido had no tuning background in road racing.
01:03:34He was just a clever electrical engineer who loved motorcycles and was willing to test things and try things and
01:03:41think about them.
01:03:42He was not – he did not come out of, you know, Germany somehow, tuning BMWs his entire life.
01:03:50Father Smith said, hey, we got these 750s.
01:03:53See what you can do.
01:03:54That was it.
01:03:55And he just started messing with them.
01:03:57And then it became time to do 900s.
01:03:59And that, for BMW, saved the company.
01:04:02If you need spare parts, go to the warranty department.
01:04:06You can have anything you have in there.
01:04:10Anyway, but Cook was there.
01:04:11Cook, that's the point.
01:04:12Oh, yeah.
01:04:13We were, you know, California Hot Rod.
01:04:16And they were calling them California Hot Rods.
01:04:18Like, that's what these production-based superbikes were.
01:04:21And, you know, Cook and Phil are out there, like, trying to squeeze this new Nucati 750 into, you know,
01:04:28something else.
01:04:29Proven by Paul Smart at the 1972 MLA 200 that it can go and that it will rev 9000 and
01:04:35it may not scatter.
01:04:37Amazing.
01:04:38Anyway, tell your Cook story.
01:04:40Well, he knew that Mike Baldwin from the uncool East Coast was making waves.
01:04:51And so he asked Kenny, what about this Baldwin kid?
01:04:56What about him?
01:04:58Well, I mean, is he for real?
01:05:01And Kenny said, I can tell you this.
01:05:06Of the three things it takes to win races, he's got one of them.
01:05:11And what's that?
01:05:13He's fast.
01:05:17And this is a very important thing.
01:05:21Kenny is not just playing with you when he says these things because he knows that you have to have
01:05:30a way of getting along with the people who are paying.
01:05:35He knows that you have to bring your judgment with you.
01:05:39Do not cast it to the wind.
01:05:44And it's a complicated thing.
01:05:47Nicky Lauda said that half of what's involved in racing is getting on the starting line with a running car.
01:05:57And, you know, the crazy stuff, the racing and remembering everything about the way the tires and the pavement and
01:06:05all this stuff are changing.
01:06:09That's essential, too.
01:06:11So Kenny was telling it straight.
01:06:14Well, he's got one of them.
01:06:15He's fast.
01:06:18Just reminding everyone that, as Kevin Cameron has often said, 100% doesn't make the grid.
01:06:24And fiercely prioritizing what does get you to the grid, they may not be perfect, but making those choices on
01:06:32the way is probably part of Nicky's, Nicky Lauda's conversation as well.
01:06:37One of the interesting stories from the fellas I was eating with down in Daytona, John Long and McLaughlin and
01:06:43all those guys, Gary Klinsman was there.
01:06:47They were testing tires for this 200-mile race.
01:06:53And he said they were trying to do it without a stop, I think.
01:06:58They were looking into whether they could get it done without a stop.
01:07:01But the pavement at the speedway at the time was kind of weathered, so it had a lot of points
01:07:08on it.
01:07:09And he said they were throwing tire chunks out, and it was just tearing them up, and then eventually it
01:07:15got paved, and away we went.
01:07:18But it was a lot of fun.
01:07:21It's really fun to hear about the paddock, hear about the life.
01:07:25You've talked about it so many times, about being there, where you had, you know, on the fast end and
01:07:33the eventual factory end, your Irv Kanemotos and Kelka Rothers, who were no strangers to the hacksaw.
01:07:40You know, just whatever it was.
01:07:42Cut the pipes.
01:07:43Cut the pipes.
01:07:44Cut the steering head.
01:07:46Reangle the steering head overnight.
01:07:48Overnight.
01:07:49Do.
01:07:49Well, 1976, we had a KR-250 that was going pretty well.
01:07:58And I think the reason was that I'd made a little weir around the two four-inch gears that joined
01:08:05the two crankshafts.
01:08:06It has two cylinders, one ahead of the other.
01:08:10And I'd made a one-millimeter hole to let oil in.
01:08:15And so the gears were throwing it out, and the one-millimeter hole was letting it in.
01:08:20So instead of drowning in solid oil, the gears were able to do what gears do, transmit power, run out,
01:08:28eat it.
01:08:30So Ron Pierce qualified on pole, and Kel must have said to himself, oh, shit, I've got to go do
01:08:39it.
01:08:39Which meant what I described for the 250, widening, raising the exhaust port, taking 20 millimeters out of the head
01:08:48pipe, raise, push, and compression up.
01:08:52There, that ought to do.
01:08:54And my bike was out with a water pump driveshaft failure.
01:08:59How can a water pump driveshaft fail?
01:09:01Anyway, that's what happened.
01:09:03And Kenny prevails.
01:09:11So in those days, I wanted to go to Daytona and live there and just try stuff.
01:09:19But I remember hearing Gene Romero say, why do we have to be here all week?
01:09:27I want to just get in, race, and go home.
01:09:31And I thought, I am not sympathetic to this viewpoint.
01:09:34I mean, but people come to Daytona for different reasons.
01:09:42Well, you know, it got popular because it was, there's so much of the country that's still suffering the death
01:09:49grip of, you know, Arctic biting frost, you know?
01:09:53And it's always the place where we, you know, people got, got to be set free.
01:09:57It wasn't the cool West Coast, you know, all those East Coast people, you were, you among them, getting in
01:10:03the van, slogging through the slush to the beautiful sunny climbs and slightly humid spring air of Daytona Beach.
01:10:12Remember Phil Schilling, the late Phil Schilling, arriving on a flight from California, wearing his puffy jacket.
01:10:21And he would wear it all week because he was never warm.
01:10:27And Daytona, we, you know, we're, we're basking in this wonderful sunlight and he's in his, in his puffy jacket.
01:10:36I always thought that was another take on Daytona.
01:10:42Yeah, you mentioned Ron Pierce.
01:10:44He was down there as well.
01:10:45Was he?
01:10:46Yeah.
01:10:46Yeah.
01:10:47Ron, Ron was there.
01:10:48He's got a big winery that he makes wine at.
01:10:50And the Trailblazers, yeah, the Trailblazers dinner is, is this week.
01:10:55And Ron's going in, Ron always brings the wine.
01:10:58He's driving down with 25 cases apparently for the Trailblazers.
01:11:02It was really cool.
01:11:03Well, I, he, they had signature, like, uh, autograph cards at the tent where everyone was sitting around talking to
01:11:10people.
01:11:10And I picked up one because if you look at this, this photo here, he's with Pops Yoshimura.
01:11:15Sure.
01:11:16And that's Ron Pierce.
01:11:17And he's got his Team Cycle World shirt on.
01:11:19So we had a little chit chat about, you know, the days and Joe, Joe Parker's love of racing and
01:11:24all that.
01:11:25It was, it was pretty remarkable.
01:11:26Another thing about Daytona, of course, is you can expect the possibility of tire trouble.
01:11:32You can, the rider comes in, says, thing's vibrating in a funny way.
01:11:37And you look at the rear tire and it has Pops pimples that have burst.
01:11:42Black rubber Pops pimples.
01:11:45That is blistering.
01:11:47Components of the tire tread compound are vaporizing at temperature and erupting.
01:11:56And the other one, of course, is chunking.
01:11:59Failure of the bond between the tread rubber and the fiber carcass of the tire.
01:12:07Barry Sheen had his bad accident in 75 with chunking.
01:12:13The motorcycle and the tire and everything about that whole episode just disappeared in a twinkling of an eye.
01:12:20But news?
01:12:21No, nothing happened.
01:12:22What?
01:12:24And so when Michelin tires were being put on some bikes at Daytona, you could count on the Michelin people
01:12:34being there to make sure you had, I don't know, some tremendous pressure, like 42 pounds in your tires.
01:12:41Because one, the one thing, just as the AMA wanted to avoid being criticized in cycle news, Michelin didn't want
01:12:52bad Daytona luck.
01:12:55And so the riders responded to these Michelin guys stationed at the entry to pit lane with air bottles and
01:13:05gauges, airing up every Michelin shod bike as it goes through the,
01:13:11The riders had their men down at the end to let that pressure back out so they would have some
01:13:17grip.
01:13:19And Michelin carries on that tradition to this day with the tire pressure rule in MotoGP that you could be
01:13:26fined by people who work in offices because they're going through sheets and sheets of tire data.
01:13:33And if your tire, if your tire is below a certain pressure for a certain percentage of the race, you
01:13:40are sanctioned.
01:13:43But the riders are tempted to begin with a lower pressure just because when you're drafting other bikes, your front
01:13:55tire pressure will go up, up, up, and your footprint, nice and healthy, will dwindle away.
01:14:01And you'll find that the front is locking when you're braking.
01:14:05So you're caught between contrasting goals.
01:14:15I picked up a bike from our office one time in R1 that had some DOT race tires.
01:14:22I think they were Michelins.
01:14:23And I didn't know the correct pressure.
01:14:25And it's hard with race tires.
01:14:26Sometimes it's hard to find that info unless you get that info from the tire person.
01:14:31It's not normally, you know, it's not like on the swing arm where you just say, oh, 42 at the
01:14:39rear.
01:14:39Let's go a little below that or whatever.
01:14:42And I just was like, ah, you know, we'll go with 30, 32 or something.
01:14:48And it took three corners to figure out that that was absolutely wrong because it lit up.
01:14:54It spun like crazy.
01:14:57And so I'm like, okay, let's tiptoe back to the pits, go back in the pits.
01:15:01And I talked to a couple people.
01:15:02And, you know, I was at Chuck Walla.
01:15:04I talked to a couple people and did some more research.
01:15:07And I found it was meant to be 22.
01:15:10So I was 8 to 10 pounds over, depending on what my final decision was.
01:15:14And, boy, when I put it at 22, what a great tire that was.
01:15:17Yes.
01:15:18It was superb.
01:15:19Got some footprint now.
01:15:21Yep.
01:15:22Well, that's the Daytona 200.
01:15:24A little bit of this and a little bit of that.
01:15:26It walked down memory lane for us, plus recounting this year's very exciting race and a lot of history going
01:15:33on.
01:15:33It was great to be there and see it again, be down in the spring in Daytona.
01:15:38And it's been a long time since I did that.
01:15:40I got to ride Steve McLaughlin's bike on a parade lap, you know, around the banking.
01:15:45We did a lap.
01:15:46I lined up with Sad Wolf and Jason Uribe, who's racing the Orange Cat factory-backed BMW in Moto America.
01:15:54So he was there on a, essentially on a, you know, press deal.
01:15:58He wasn't racing.
01:16:01And, yeah, it was fun.
01:16:03It was cool to check out one of those.
01:16:05I raced a BMW in Arma.
01:16:06So it was a fun connection to make for me personally.
01:16:09And to be honored with Steve's bike.
01:16:11And Steve was there.
01:16:12And he's, I believe he's as much Steve McLaughlin as he ever has been.
01:16:17So, and he was, he was a little wound up because they were getting headlines in Germany about 80-year
01:16:22-old Steve McLaughlin rides his old super BMW super bike again.
01:16:27Because he did a parade lap himself.
01:16:29He's friends with Jim France.
01:16:31And Jim France asked him to do it.
01:16:33Moto America said, please don't cross the stripe.
01:16:35We need, we have, we don't have very much time.
01:16:38Go out pit lane, do the lap and don't cross the stripe.
01:16:40Come into the pit.
01:16:43And Steve said, you know, this was Jim France's idea.
01:16:46Can you take that back to the people telling us not to do this?
01:16:49Jim would like me to cross the stripe.
01:16:51And so they took it back and said, hey, this, when they came back, hey, that worked.
01:16:55So he got to, he got to do his lap.
01:16:58Well, I just thought of something, you know, Kayla being 18 reminded me of a photo, one of those dim
01:17:09looking black and white photos from World War II that show the King of England bestowing some medal upon 19
01:17:20-year-old John Cunningham.
01:17:23A, an experienced night fighter pilot who went up every night in a twin engine airplane with his radar operator
01:17:33kneeling on the deck plate behind him with two scopes, one for X and one for Y.
01:17:40And he's calling out, left a bit, yeah, that looks good.
01:17:46Okay.
01:17:47You should just about be seeing his exhaust flames now.
01:17:51And there's nothing wrong with being young.
01:17:55And there's nothing about being young that means that you're necessarily inexperienced or lacking in judgment.
01:18:02It just depends on the path you've drawn to that age.
01:18:08John Cunningham later became chief test pilot for, a chess pilot, I think, for de Havilland or one of the
01:18:15biggies that they used to have in England making aircraft.
01:18:19Well, self-confidence, people, people helping you, people not telling, you know, people telling you you can't do it.
01:18:26No.
01:18:26Or if they do, you, you must be self-possessed enough to, uh, to overcome that.
01:18:32And great confidence to someone like Kayla, who obviously would have faced a lot of challenges to get where she
01:18:39is.
01:18:39Yep.
01:18:40So, um, mad respect to, uh, a really great and interesting career path to follow.
01:18:47We have a story by Maria Gudotti on, uh, secondworld.com just live today at this recording.
01:18:54And, uh, Kayla gave a really nice, it's a really nice interview and she's, it's, it's a great read.
01:19:00So go check it out.
01:19:01Yeah.
01:19:02Thanks for listening, folks.
01:19:03We'll catch you next time.
01:19:04Definitely go check us out on Patreon.
01:19:05We'll see you down in the comments.
01:19:06We love the comments.
01:19:07Um, somebody said, do a swing.
01:19:09You guys have ever done a swing arm podcast and I'm not kidding.
01:19:14Kevin and I recorded it that day or the next day.
01:19:16So we're listening.
01:19:19We're listening.
01:19:20All right.
01:19:21Thanks.
01:19:21Catch you next time.
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