Motor Races

Saturday, November 5, 2016

Fall Giro

This year's USCRA Fall Giro was based in Brattleboro, Vt. There were about 80 entrants and among them, three Moto Guzzi Airone Sports, including mine.

The Vermont Airone Sports

Laurence Deguilme and I had planned to go together and share a room but, at the last moment, something came up and he couldn't make it. I called Tim Courts and offered him Laurence's entry. Tim thought that sounded like a good idea and thought he could get his old 250 Ducati race bike shaken down for the Giro. I thought Tim was a grizzled veteran of these events, but it turned out that he had never entered a Giro before.

Tim's ex-racebike 250 Ducati. He was conserned about the seat, which is little more than a plank, but he got a gel pad from my brother and had a sheepskin and he was fine.

Saturday started pretty cool and somewhat foggy as we headed north from Brattleboro to Dummerston, then west to Newfane and South Wardsboro. I took a little detour and went to some land that my siblings and I own in West Wardsboro. After a quick snoop around a tiny corner of the land, I returned to the Giro route on Rt. 100 south thru W. Dover and Wilmington. and into Ma. We had lunch at Sayre Anthony's Nova Motorcycles in Turners Falls, after a 100 mile morning. Sayre was working on a number of interesting bikes including a Gold Star an a Pre War DKW100.

A late '30s DKW 100 at Nova Cycles. Rob Sigond photo

Robert Fuller was having a hard time starting his Airone Sport as he wasn't quite reading what the motor wanted. I got it started for him on the 2nd kick. They're stone axe simple motors, but they can be particular. The afternoon took us south through Deerfield, then northwest through Conway and Ashfield, east on Rt 2 through Shelburne Falls, than north through Colrain and Leyden back into Vt. I caught up to Tim as we approached Brattleboro and his bike started running poorly as we got into town. But, we made it back to the motel and Tim discovered that the problem was that he was running out of fuel. He filled up the tank and it was better than new. A total of 193 miles Saturday.
Jesse Morris' NSU Max had blown a head gasket (which he couldn't understand as he had replaced it, heat cycled it and retorqued the head) and Peg Preble had blown up her 175 Honda side car and I offered them each the use of my TC200 Suzuki for Sunday, but they both declined and decided to run a second sweep vehicle in addition to sister-in-law and Amy with Gayle Ellis.

The NSU Max of Jesse Morris and, yes, I'm a terrible photographer

The dealer sticker on Jesse's NSU, King Motorcycle, Brooklyn, N.Y.

A 65cc Yamaha

Sunday was like Sat., cool and sunny. We headed across the Connecticut River into N.H., then north following the river more or less to Walpole, then east through Alstead Center. Somewhere around here, I came upon a gaggle of Giroist and I passed a bunch of them down a steep hill just as I see the cop parked by the side of the road, but I guess he didn't see me, luckily. Shortly after this, Bill Condon pulled up along side me pointing at my bike. I pulled over and he pointed out that my kickstarter was hanging straight down. I pulled it up and took off again, but the kickstarted fell down again and I realized that the return spring had broken. Not a big deal as I had a bungee with me to hold it up and the bike is very easy to bump start. After a bit, I stopped to see why Rich Hosley and Rick Bell, my nominal teammates in Team Paleo, were stopped. Rich was securing his speedometer on his Ossa Wildfire after a small crash had knocked it ajar. They followed me but almost immediately I went on reserve and I wondered if I'd make it to the next fuel stop. But, I did and while there, Henry Syphers gave me what was left of some oil that he couldn't used, which eased my mind a big as the Airone was spewing it profusely. We skirted south skirting around the east side of Keene and south some more through Swanzey and Richmond into Royalston, Ma. Lunch was at the Boiler Bar and Grill in Orange, a converted mill, 81 miles from our start.

The Boiler Bar & Grill, Sunday's lunch stop. Rob Sigond photo

The afternoon took us back up north into N.H. about 20 miles from the finish, Tommy Cotter's 175 Bridgestone died and his brother Danny towed it back to Brattleboro and they still made their time check.
the scoring of the Giros is almost entirely based on the agility test when one is given a specific time to get through a slalom of cones where points are accumulated for time over or under or for knocking down a cone, dabbing or going out of bounds; low points wins. I am consistently a high scorer, but this Giro I actually did fair. I had a total of 7.7 points and beat my Team Paleo teammate Rick Bell's (250 H-D Sprint) 10.284, but we both dragged down Team Leader Rich Hosley's 4.842, good enough for 2nd 250 and 10th overall.

I love these Zundapp Super Sabres

Add caption

They do require pre-mixing

The owner found an NOS exhaust pipe for cheap

Jake Herzog's Grossa, an Ossa motor in a Greeves chassis

A YDS2 Yamaha

Kawasaki GPZ 900R #2 by Bagus!

Foto: Bagus

Monday, October 31, 2016

Ducati Scrambler SRC by Moto Corse

Foto: Moto Corse

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Calabogie

On Sept. 9th, a week after I flew to Salt Lake City for the AHRMA Bonneville Vintage GP, I drove north to Calabogie. This was the VRRA's first event at Calabogie, near Ottawa, and it was excellent. The track is really challenging with 20 corners, many of them decreasing radius, double apex and/or blind, 3.14miles long and in excellent condition with good traction and not a single bump. It was a lot to learn and I only got 2 laps on a bicycle Fri. afternoon.
Fri evening, I rode my '68 TC 200 Suzuki into town to get something to eat. While I was waiting for my order to arrive, three racers who were pitted near me showed up and joined me. Andy D'Ornellas, who is from Guyana and rides a very clean CB350 Honda, Paddy Fitzgerald, who is from Ireland and rides a Norton Atlas, and Colin Paul, who sounded American but assured me he was Canadian and who rides a RZ350 Yamaha. They are a great bunch and represent part of what I love about Canada: it's diversity. We had a good chance to get to know each other as the service was very slow and it was a long time until we got served.

Andy D'Ornellas' CB 350 Honda, one of my competitors in P1-350

Paddy Fitzgerald with his 750 Norton Atlas

Colin Paul heads out on his P-4 F3 Yamaha

Then, Sat. morning, the ERTT didn't want to start. after futzing with the points for about 40 minutes, I finally got it running but had missed my one and only practice by then. So they let me go out in 'fast' practice on my P-1 350 with all the vintage superbikes, not knowing where I was going.

I'm #71 in the VRRA

One guy showed me around for a lap, then my face shield came adrift. We had been warned that there was a strict noise ordinance at this track and I had fitted a different megaphone and pop riveted a silencer on the back with a hanger from the frame.

I lashed on a silencer for Calabogie

But, the pop rivets were aluminum and they broke on the 3rd lap and the muffler dragged on the track while hanging from the frame. I got in 1 more lap and had a vague idea where I was going.
As it turned out, no one was tested or hassled about sound. I got some steel pop rivets from Rodger McHardy and, after dollying the end of the silencer that had dragged, replaced it and I had no further problems with it.

The silencer replaced with steel pop rivets after dollying the leading edge

When I started the bike for the P-1 350 heat, I knew right away that I had a clutch problem, but had no time to do anything about it. By the end of the first lap it was slipping badly, but I stayed out because I needed the practice. Back in June at Rd. Am., my shift linkage came apart while in 4th gear and I severely abused the clutch finishing the race. After I fixed the linkage, the clutch seemed fine. But, at Mosport, one of the friction plates delaminated and I replace it with a NOS plate and, again, it seemed fine. I should have replaced all of the friction plates after the event, but didn't and one failed at Calabogie. Luckily, Dick Miles had given me a whole set of used friction plates at NJMP, so I put them all in at Calabogie with the help of Gary McCaw, who wasn't racing.

So the bike worked well in the heat for the bump up class, P-2 Lightweight and I got a 3rd in the (wet)heat, definitely still learning.

This is probably from the P-2 LW heat on Sat., probably turn #16 Tim Voyer 840 leading Dave Mascioli 103 and Stan Nicholson 70 with just my helmet showing. I got by Stan and finished 3rd. Norm Voyer photo

exiting the last turn. When I see photos on me on the bike, I always think that I look so big and the bike so small, but it doesn't feel that way when I'm riding it. Nev Miller photo

After Sun. practice, I geared it up and won the p-1 350 final and was 2nd to Tim Voyer's well ridden, fast CB350 in the P-2 LW. The motor does stumble on the exits of hard cornering, which I figure has to be related to the remote float and I've tried to stabilize it and various float heights, but without success and I just ride around it.
As near as I can figure, Calabogie represents the 116th race track I've ridden on and it probably rates in the top five along with VIR north circuit, The Ridge, and Mid-Ohio (in the dry).