Round·up

ROUND·UP

THE AMA has added another nice feature to its deal for members. Quality Inns International has taken on the AMA as a participant in its Corporate Guarantee Rate plan. Just show your AMA card and get the same discount all those traveling salesmen get. Any Quality Inn that is using the CGR plan will give you a discount if you are not part of a group function and are traveling individually. Call the AMA, (800) 323-5252 for reservations.

JOE PARKHURST

OBS, the big eye in the sky, has really gone all out for motorcycles. Well, at least “CBS Sports Spectacular” has. In August it televised the Superbowl of Motocross that was held the month before in the Los Angeles Coliseum. It was fantastic, and not just because I was a part of the program.

Ken Squires, producer of many of CBS Sports’ best programs—like the World Speedway finals in Sweden and the feature on Kenny Roberts—asked me to participate in the commentary. You didn’t get to see much of me, which is probably the best thing. Later on, CBS Sports broadcasted the AMA National road race at Laguna Seca. I got a little more exposure on that one. While at Laguna Seca, Squires also shot the feature on sidecar racing. Both ran in the fall.

I’m trying not to be personally biased, since CBS Publications is a part of the same company, or because they used me in the broad cast, but they are doing a marvelous job and giving motorcycle racing great exposure.

ANOTHER American rider is making a mark in Europe, or England really. He’s Scott Autrey, the speedway ace. He rode his first grass-track event recently for the Exeter speedway team. Scott found four laps of the 1000-meter (approximately 3300-foot) course at Ludlow in Shropshire very tiring. He says he discovered muscles that he had forgotten about while racing speedway.

Mechanical problems kept Scott out of the running, but he proved himself a top grass-track competitor. Riding for the Exeter team with an average of about 10 points out of a possible 12 per race, makes him a valuable back-up man for Exeter number one, Ivan Mauger.

Scott also has a fan club. His greatly-improved riding indicates that he could become the best American cindertrack star since Wilbur Lamoureux. It would be great to see the Stars and Stripes at the Wembley final this year. Dave Despain, the Ameri can Motorcycle Association's public relations manager, was the main announcer. It is nice to hear knowledgeable com ment from someone who knows so much about what is going on at an event. Dave comes across very profession ally, making the coverage all the more informative and ac curate. Watch CBS Sports next year, it will feature a lot more bike coverage. Whether I will be part of it is not important. It hopes to cover as many as six events in 1976, including the Superbowl and Laguna Seca again. Excuse me, my agent's calling. . .

NOSTALGIA, I’m told, is a form of romanticism. If that’s true, I am a romantic. Having been weaned on four-stroke Singles has made my life miserable at times. Especially in the past decade of my motorcycling life, in which I’ve found myself surrounded by hot bikes of the two-stroke generation. For years the four-strokes were all too heavy and underpowered. Modern design techniques and lighter alloys have changed that.

We now have 350 to 500cc four-stroke Singles that weigh about the same as the average two-stroke 400 bullets. Power is still a problem if they must run against two-strokes, and we may never see a successful four-stroke motocrosser. Yet Alan Clews in England has built versions of his CCM on which guys who know—like Joel Robert and Roger DeCoster—have told me they could be World Champion.

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The factory BSA MXers were light and powerful and could run against anything in their day. Lack of top rider talent kept BSA from getting very far. BSA factory riders back then were some of the best in the world; but the Continentals were better.

Looking over CYCLE WORLD issues from the last decade produces some inter esting food for thought. We tested nearly every available production 500 four-stroke Single made in that 10 years, with two exceptions: the BSA Gold Star and the Moto Guzzi Falcone. We did, how ever, test the Catalina, a Gold Star without lights. In addi tion, we tested three Velo cettes, three BSAs, three Matchlesses, one Norton and a really wild creation, the ESO 500. It was a scrambler that used the speedway en gine mounted in a Jawa frame.

With the exception of the Matchless G5OCSR and the Manx Norton, performance of the bikes was nearly identi cal. The G5OCSR consisted of an sohc road racing engine mounted in a G8OCS frame. It was a terror to ride in traffic. The Manx Norton was, of course, an out-of-the box, limited production dohc road racer. It reigned almost undefeated in Europe and at Daytona's old beach course (until the AMA ran them out).

But neither of these two bikes was exactly what you would call production, though the G5OCSR was in tended for road use. I think it was simply a thinly disguised road racer, designed to beat someone's rules. It turned the quarter-mile in 14.1 sec. at 98 mph. Who ever said a Single couldn't be a superbike?

The Norton was geared for the Isle of Man, so, with such tall gearing, getting it off the line was a chore. Neverthe less, it turned the quarter in 15.5 and 98 mph. The

G5OCSR would top out around 121 mph; the Manx would hit 142. The Manx weighed 325 lb. in racing trim, the Matchbox 385. Both pretty light for their types.

The ESO was the lightest at 296 lb.; it was a pure off-road bike of the kind then called a scrambler. The heavi est was a Velocette Clubman, a road bike with fairing and a huge gas tank. It weighed in at 435 lb. Average weight of the 11 bikes tested was around 348. Consideration must be given to the fact that six were pure off-road, three were road bikes, and two were dual-purpose. The point is, man were they heavy.

Horsepower claims were heavy too. Up to 50 bhp was claimed. About that time BSA Singles dominated Ascot Park’s Friday night AMA half-miles, and the sharpest tuners of the day were getting 48 to 50 measured on dynos from fully prepared racing engines. So much for truth in advertising in the ’60s. Probably a pretty good thing that Good Housekeeping wasn’t approving motorcycles.

Performance comparisons are interesting too. The previously mentioned Matchless and Norton were the fastest and quickest. BSA’s Gold Star was the quickest in the quarter at 14.8 sec., but the BSA Victor 441 was faster by one mph at 83. The Victor took 15.5 sec. to get there though. The Velocette Clubman, Matchless G80 and G85CS, and the ESO all ran the quarter in the low sixteens, turning in the mid-70 mph bracket.

Except for the single overhead cam Matchless and the double overhead cam Norton, all were overhead valve engines with long pushrods. All used four-speed gearboxes, but there was a five-speed conversion available for the Manx for quite a while. Gearboxes were separate from the engine in all but the BSA MX and Victor 441, the first unitconstruction Singles, I believe. They all had one lovely thing in common. They went thump, thump, thump. And they would idle. How many of you out there remember racing bikes that idled? Don’t give me that heavy flywheel crap . . . I’m being romantic, remember?

Before the Ariel Owners Club lets fly at me for not mentioning the Red Hunter, let me say that it was out of production when I started CYCLE WORLD, so we never got the chance to test one. Ditto for the Vincent Single, Matchless Typhoon and a real giant of the day, the Panther. There are probably a lot more I didn’t mention, but I’m addressing only CYCLE WORLD’S first decade, 1962 to 1972.

We used to laugh at yet another thing they all had in common—starting. Worst was the Velocette with its short kickstart lever. All fitted compression releases, so the drill consisted of decompressing the engine, kicking it through to top dead center, backing up on the lever, picking up an anvil and putting it in your pocket, jumping in the air and landing on it.

Now we have the Yamaha TT500C, tested last month in CW. We also have the remarkable Bill Bell at Long Beach Honda and Powroll up in Oregon. Both of the latter are building goodies that turn the XL350 Honda into a Baja winning bomb. Powroll sells the parts to make your Honda a 450, and Long Beach Honda will put one together for you. By the time you read this, we may hear that Honda is at last building an XL500. I certainly hope so.

Younger readers who have never ridden a four-stroke Single are in for a whole new experience. They are generally more reliable than twostrokes, have better torque characteristics, and will pull right off idle. Furthermore, they can be made to buzz, are pleasant to listen to, will run on lower grade fuels—without having to worry about gas/oil mixing in any form, of course-and, best of all, they go thump, thump, etc.

There is a load of irony here. BSA was the last maker of thumpers until it quit just a few short years ago. Ducati has made some of the best Singles in history, the biggest a desmodromic 450, half of which is the 700 Twin it makes now. Ducati dropped them for 1975, switching to four-stroke Twins. BSA is no longer. Velocette folded back in the late ’60s. Jawa/ESO still makes the Single that dominates world speedway racing, but until Yamaha blew our minds around here, Jawa/ESO was the only one in the world building thumpers other than Honda, who, as mentioned, limits them to 350cc.

Part of the reason for this series of events is the impending pollution control regulations. The two-stroke is a much more difficult engine to control. It is being speculated that we will soon see the last of two-stroke road bikes. Hopefully off-road bikes will be given special exemptions in the future. It makes sense, but that human trait is not too common among legislative bodies. Yamaha will show two more 1976 fourstrokes soon ... a 750 Three and a 360 Twin, both obviously for the road.

We may be having the four-stroke engine forced back on us, at least for road and dual-purpose applications. Honda has been aware of the trend for several years; Yamaha has now followed suit. Kawasaki has had a 500 thumper—called the “Lobster” in the company’s secret jargon—for several years, but has yet to produce it. Yamaha may force Kawasaki’s hand. Only Suzuki remains as a predominantly two-strokeoriented maker, and I have to believe that it is watching all of this very closely. The next decade of motorcycling is going to be very different from the last. Some things will have come full circle, like the return of the thumper. No matter what kind of a decade it turns out to be, it will certainly sound good. Going thump, thump, thump.