Gamma Cum Laude
GAMMA CUM LAUDE
Kevin Schwantz would be proud
EVER HEARD OF THE 80/80 Factor? That's the standard amateur roadracers adhere to when painting their racebikes.
What it means is a bike only has to look good from 80 feet at 80 miles per hour.
John Leisner’s 1986 Suzuki RG500 Gamma certainly looks better than that, but you wouldn’t want to get a whole lot closer. Do so and you’ll see a few stone chips and scrape marks, telltales of the near 50,000 hard miles the bike has racked up on Southern California’s famed Angeles Crest Highway.
A retired theme-park executive, Leisner, 63, is a lifelong motorcyclist whose son, Andy, became a topranked AMA 250cc GP competitor before hiring on as CfV’s West Coast Advertising Manager. John bought his Gamma from the original owner circa 1988, and rode it for a couple of years in stock trim before growing bored. “I was going to get rid of it and buy something modem,” he recalls, “but Rick Lance (of Lance Gamma fame, 770/983-9239; www. lancegamma.com) talked me into riding his ‘ideal’ Gamma, and that changed my mind.”
The end result was the Kevin Schwantz Replica shown here.
Gammas came stock with skinny 16-inch front and 18-inch rear wheels, but Leisner’s bike was upgraded with wide 17inch Dymags, a braced tubular swingarm and reshaped expansion chambers (handcrafted by Tommy Crawford) that together facilitated the use of a 170mm rear Michelin radial.
Lance massaged the Gamma’s GP-derived, twostroke square-Four engine, boring out the carbs 2mm and plumbing the frame to serve as the oil-injection system’s holding tank.
“The engine mods made a gigantic difference,” enthuses Leisner. “We went from around 100 horsepower to 118, and the on/off switch in the midrange went away.
It’s fast, too! I never really get deep into the powerband unless I’m passing a car.” Crowning touch was the bodywork, which Leisner had Paint ’n’ Place spray in the Pepsi colors that adorned Schwantz’s 1988 Suzuki RGV500 during his debut GP season. And which he’s been happily scuffing up ever since.
Brian Catterson
