The Motorbike Archives

THE LAST TIME

MARCH 1971: DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY

►Squinting narrow-eyed through his clear shield, Bugsy Mann has finally outlasted the stylists, the jackrabbits and the two-strokes. On lap 41, he takes over the lead in the Daytona 200 from Paul Smart, whose Triumph Trident begins puking out a plume of blue smoke. No one could tell—even then, at age 37, Dick Mann didn't show much emotion on the racetrack—but Bugs must have smiled at the thought. He was going to do it again. Two in a row. Last year-1970--he'd won the race on a Honda 750 Four, shaking up the roadracing establishment that had expected Harley-Davidson or Triumph to win. This year, after his TT victory on a BSA twin only weeks before at the Houston Astrodome, Bugs is about to win Daytona one more time.

The last laps of the 200 are clicked off in classic Mann fashion: even, fast, smooth. He looks a little awkward on the BSA Rocket-3; whereas the Englishman, Smart, hangs his entire body off to the inside of a turn, Bugs sits up a bit, leans the other way and sticks his knee out into the breeze, foot sideways. The style costs him once, too, when he tangles with a pylon, losing ground but not his foot. He ain't purty, say the insiders, but he damn sure is Bugs. Which is to say: grimly determined, fast and always there.

When the checkered flag drops, there is out front. Smiling faintly now, Bugs wheels the silent red BSA into the winner's circle. Following him are Gene Romero and Don Emde, Triumph-and BSA-mounted respectively. It's a wild scene: a Brit-bike sweep, sans the vaunted Europeans who were going to show the dumb Yanks the right lines. No Hailwood. No Smart. Not even Aussie Kel Carruthers. It's a BSA-Triumph day, the first of many in 1971. But it would have taken a clairvoyant to know that this scene of pride and joy was the last that a BSA, Triumph, Harley, Honda or any other four-stroke roadracer would enjoy at Daytona. After 1972, they would be competitive no more. The Rocket-3 would be the last four-stroke to win the 200, and Dick Mann—in 1965 the first rider ever to win an AMA National on a two-stroke—would be one of the last to win a roadrace National on a four-stroke.

But from victory circle on a certain perfect Sunday in March 1971, who could tell that?

PLIMPING IT

JUNE 1980: LIME ROCK, CONNECTICUT

The clutch is going to mean trouble at this tiny little racetrack. Real trouble. I squeeze hard and the beat-up chromed lever gives grudgingly. Half an inch. I look questioningly at Dave Roper, Team Obsolete's chief pilot.

"Is this the .normal clutch pull?"

Roper grins and ambles over from his G50 Matchless. Even on this sunny Tuesday in the green splendor of Connecticut, I see Roper in sepia tones, as though he were from an old book on Thirties racers. The same laconic expression, the same lanky, fluid gait. Skinny as a rail, tough as nails. Big, scarred hands. The classic racer. Perfect for Rob Iannucci's Team Obsolete.

He pulls the lever, gently, firmly. Nods. "Yup. It's a little stiff. Gets easier on the track. When it warms up." He smiles shyly.

Ah. When it warms up. I stand back to take in all of the red-and-white BSA Rock et-3. What will it take, I wonder, to warm this thing up? Talking to Paul Dean about this bike, Dick Mann has said that it was one of the most reliable racing machines he ever rode. And yet… and yet, even for Triumph race-wizard Doug Hele to, squeeze 84 bhp at 8500 rpm out of this three-cylinder pushrod motor, even fat American team chief Danny Macias to keep that power available all the time, the 750 must be stressed to within an inch of its now-decade-long life. Twelve-to-one compression ratio, sans squish bands. Cast Hepolite pistons, polished and lightened. Polished crank, opened-up oil passages. Steel-tipped pushrods. Titanium spring retainers atop stock springs. All the indents—all the standard tricks, really—of a heavily breathed-on OHV motor. It was good for 165 mph in 1971, even in this 370-pound configuration. Indeed, what will it take to warm this thing up?

Rob Iannucci joins me in contemplating the bike. For him, this machine isn't just a ride, it's a way of life. Back at his shop in Lodi, New Jersey, Iannucci has the makings of a classic-bike dreamworld. He's decided that his law practice isn't as important as what he calls his obsession. To wit: British racing bikes, their collection, restoration to race-ready status and ultimate use once again on the racetrack. Hence Team Obsolete. And hence his red-and-white Rocket-3 standing here on pit road at Lime Rock.

Iannucci says he started looking for the bike in 1976, that it took him a year to find and acquire. Why this particular bike? Many reasons—it was British, it was the last four-stroke to win Daytona and… and it is certain to become gold-plated investment. Iannucci won't disclose the price he paid for it when he bought it from Les Edwards and Ed Coyle of San Jose Cycle Imports. He says that the bike sat for a long time in the West Coast Triumph HQ in Duarte after being retired from factory battle in '73. Then Triumph's Bob Tryon sold it, along with a great deal of other race-shop equipment, to Edwards.

Whatever Iannucci's reasons for rescuing this milestone motorcycle from a lesser fate, I'm glad he had them. Because they have given me a chance to stand here in the warm Connecticut sunshine and touch the past, a little, and maybe to see whether there's a basis in fact for the optimism of the four-stroke freaks' assertion—fervently made, every year—that next year will see a revival of the type e maybe even at the Daytona 200. If so, there'd be a fine irony in it, since in that event exactly a decade will have passed since the last of the breed owned the winner's circle.

The BSA looks the part, anyway. I've loved the famous Lowboy Letterbox Triumphs and Beezas since I first ran up against them racing in England in 1971. Then they seemed the leading edge, in every way save valve operation. Consider: They were the first factory racers with triple-disc brakes, the first with a collected exhaust system (just like you've got on your Honda Four, no doubt), the first to ram cooling air through a nose-cone-mounted oil cooler (hence the "letterbox" nickname), the first to sweep the swing-arm-to-steering-head frame tubes around the engine (a la Moto last Laverda, TZ750 and a host of others) one of the first to feature extremely wide-based triple clamps (eight inches, center-to-center), and among the first to use quick-fill gas tanks at Daytona. The original frames, says Iannucci, were built in a single batch in England by Rob North, but later, similar versions were manufactured in California under BSA/Triumph auspices. Wind-tunnel tests at CalTech helped finalize the aerodynamics, and such elaboration illustrates well the determination BSA/Tri-um ph had between 1970 and the '71 Daytona event, to win all the marbles.

Today's TZ750 pilot would probably scoff at the result. He'd look at the short-travel fork and shocks (four inches fore, three aft), the tubular swingarm and, of course, that great architectural lump of a motor, and he'd write the thing off. But as track owner Jim Hanes clears the circuit for us, I'm not so sure. I've ridden TZ750s, Kawasaki KR750s, the works, and this thing still looks plenty serious to me. In the screening room of my mind, I keep hearing that awe-inspiring moaning howl these machines made as they rocketed around the racetracks. They sounded then like a cross between a Formula Two car engine— a DOHC 16-valve screamer—and a Grand National NASCAR stock car, with a hint of Honda Six thrown in. Jody Nicholas, commenting on the sound at the Daytona 200 in 1971, said that when he was behind one of these triples the noise caused him physical pain. You don't scoff at a machine like that. Not if you're about to ride it. And not if the clutch lever feels like it's welded to the handlebar.

Suddenly our time is up. We have to bump the BSA into life and use up the single hour Haynes has given us. We've only run the bike a few moments, back at the Lodi HQ, and then only after a full morning's frustrating work trying to track down an ignition gremlin. Dave Roper bumps it off—it fires instantly—and gently raps the throttle a few times. The familiar haunting moan booms out across the verdant hills of Connecticut. In nearby Sharon, seat of the elite, they must be eyeing one another and wondering what sort of monster makes that kind of noise. The Formula Atlantic cars, the fierce little sedan racers, none of the traffic on the course up to then has been quite so… eerie. Roper nods, flips down his visor and scrunches down familiarly in the BSA's high-back Daytona seat. He raises the gear lever gently and rolls off, the monster rumbling. Halfway up the pit road, he clears it out and accelerates smoothly away.

In the quiet afternoon, his progress around the short course is easy to follow. The howl rises and falls and then he's past, tucked in and clean, right up to the final braking mark for the infamous Hook, the endless righthander that unseats so many racing egos every year. Boom, blat, boom again. Suddenly he's in the pits. It's my turn.

"Feels fine," he shouts into my helmet, "track's okay. Have fun." He smiles as I work myself awkwardly onto the seat while Iannucci blips the throttle.

All at once I know why people looked so odd racing this bike. The wide triple-clamps set the clip-ons far apart. Between your knees is a huge alloy tank, tall enough to rest your chest upon. The footpegs are set just aft of the swingarm pivot, and high, very, very high. The seat is low, the grips almost in line with the seat bottom. Result: You sit with your feet jammed under your butt, your arms stretched out nearly straight to grasp the fat gray grips. It flashes through my mind as I wriggle into position that a little rider like Mann must have dreaded racing this thing without the extra cushion he fabricated. I'm six feet tall, and it still stretches me out.

Now the clutch. I squeeze, and surprise! Roper is right. The effort is still high, but not impossible. Gently up on the gear lever. It's been eight years since I've had a righthand-shift racer on a track, and Iannucci has warned me that despite the modified shiftplate and pawls, this bike tends to overshift. Uncomfortable I nod and they step back. I feed in the clutch and ease on the throttle.

Something happens, right there in pit lane. Something special, something I'd all but forgotten about. It has to do with symbiosis, really, and in racing it makes the difference between just going fast and winning. Right there in pit lane, while I'm try-in g to get the controls worked out, trying to burn the Krober tach's picture into my mind so I don't have to concentrate on looking at its redline, right there, in the first twenty seconds I'm on the bike, it reaches up, enfolds me and I feel the presence of a machine that's really special.

I ride at street speed for a little while, getting familiar again with the twisty, bumpy Lime Rock track, which I haven't seen in over two years. Through the Hook's undulating patchy surface. Out to the edge, where the looping rubber marks re-cord four-wheel blunders then to the slick, lefthander, the delightfully banked right-hander and up to the jump, the fast right-hander followed by a hill gentle enough to walk up easily, but with a tendency to pitch fast cars into the air, uncontrollable and upside down. Then another fast right-hander and the even faster last turn before the straight. Me and the old Beeza, getting acquainted. How much throttle? How much brake? In back, a Goodyear slick with not too many hours on it gives me confidence, and a Michelin PZ-2 keeps the front end steady. Impressions to lap 10: a smooth, even powerband, stiff suspension, delicate shifter, awkward riding position. I come in on Iannucci's signal.

"Any problems?" I shake my head. "Thought we should gas it up." He flips up the caps and begins sloshing in the right stuff. I nod to Dave Roper, sitting on the Armco.

"Am I doing it right, Dave? Any procedures I'm not following?"

Before he can answer, Iannucci laughs. "Yeah. You're not going fast enough." General chuckles around the pits. He's right, of course; this machine doesn't even work until you punch it to eight-tenths. But my inflexible rules of racetrack testing have kept my braking points early, my throttle hand gentle. There's some urgency about it all now, though. The time is slipping away; we have plenty of sun, but the peculiar lo-cal ordinances demand that operations at Lime Rock cease precisely at six p.m. So we have less than half an hour. And I need to find out why it feels so special, so good.

This time I blast out of pit lane. I keep my braking point early in the Hook, but I commit the Beeza to serious lean angles and high power settings. And then I know why Dick Mann's first question to Rob Iannucci was "Do you want to sell it?"

The fantastic howl can be dialed like a rheostat, and the road goes by obligingly quickly or slowly. More than any other racin g bike I know, the BSA Rocket-3 gives me a direct, uncanny link to roadspeed. Go fast: dial it up, regardless of rpm. Go slow: chop it, and three 12:1 cylinders give you a free fourth brake to add to the wonderful 10-inch Lockheed discs. I go a little harder each lap, carefully exploring the outside of the envelope.

In the wild bumps of the Hook, my toe on thee g as high as it will go, the bike pitches and jerks. But it doesn't wiggle. No Kawasaki H2R death-wobble. I drift it out to the edge, snap it into another gear. No hesitation, no stumble. Just more world-shattering booming. And speed.

Left flick. It glides over without the heave I'd expected. The exit-drift is more pronounced here, requiring a little opposite lock. Right again, full chat, and I'm behind the bubble all the time now. Up to the hill. Let it drift out to the left, and we're airborne. No twitches, no uncertain fork topping-out. Boom. And boom again, lap after lap.

Iannucci says it's geared for Daytona, but it's reaching max rpm well before the start-finish line here at Lime Rock. The power floods in at anything over 4000 and seems to keep going well past the 8500-rpm redline. In '71, only Paul Smart's triple used Amal Concentrics--the others, including Mann's, used GP carbs —but Iannucci runs this one with three gaping Concentrics. Smart claimed they helped him slice through traffic. I can see why.

And then, too soon, the boom stops. Six o'clock. Surprised, I jump on the brakes and coast in. The chain rattles loudly in the unfamiliar silence. My ears ring. I know I should be able to jot five pages of mental notes on the bike; quirks, failures, above all, the motor. The aged, antique, scoffable, oh-so-slow motor.

But I can't. All I can do is grin like a fool. It isn't just the chemistry of a fine day, a racetrack and a racing bike, either. I enjoyed Harry Klinzmann's TZ750 at Willow Springs. Had fun with the Murray Sayle factory Kawasaki KR750 at Riverside. But the Rocket-3 is special.

I figured it out a long time later, somewhere over Kansas in the bowels of a United flight through the great dark Midwestern night. It's not a particularly profound understanding, maybe, but it helped me explain the grin and the aura of that old BSA, not to mention the fanaticism of four-stroke freaks.►