Motorcycle Man
Motorcycle Man
RACE WATCH
Remembering Max Bubeck and the world's second, third and fourth fastest Indians
ALLAN GIRDLER
EVEN AT THE AGE OF 91, MAX BUBECK WAS TOO YOUNG to have inspired Rudyard Kipling, but when the poet wrote of the man who can "Meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters both the same," he should have had Bubeck in mind. Begin with the present. It's mid-winter, at Windy Point, California, on the edge of the desert. Buheck is riding his 1939 Indian Four, which lie bought new and has ridden 190,000 miles. He's riding with Jim Robinson. who s on a hybrid labeled Chout II meaning it's an Indian Chief fitted to an earlier, lightweight Indian Scout frame
Now, rewind to 1948, to the dry lakes, where Bubeck has ridden the original Chout, tuned by Frank Chase, to a clocked speed of 135.58 mph, making that machine the World’s Fastest Indian. Then came (no prize for guessing) Burt Munro, whose streamliner did 184 flat, relegating Bubeck’s record to the World’s Second Fastest Indian. Years later, in 2002, Bubeck helped an Australian Indian fan push his 1924 8-valve Indian to 158.73 mph, meaning the Chout was in third place.
Next, when Robinson decided to build his own version of the Chout, using all the tricks tuners had developed over the previous 50-plus years, Bubeck was there with at least as much help and advice as Robinson could stand, with the result that Chout II went through the traps at 135.69 mph. Yes, that’s .11 mph faster than Bubeck’s 1948 record.
We can scan the history books for a long time before we find anyone else who’s helped his ostensible rivals lower his own personal best from first to fourth. But, as Bubeck said, when you’ve been competing for 55 years, you’ve had a lot of time to win and lose and make friends and enjoy the sport.
Bubeck’s unique history begins in the most normal of fashions. He had older brothers and the brothers had motorcycles, so, naturally, he pestered the big guys and they taught him the basics and sold him, by happy chance, a used Indian 101 Scout.
Comparing different eras is challenging, perhaps impossible. We know that Jake DeRosier, Joe Petrali, Mike Hailwood, Kenny Roberts and Valentino Rossi dominated their times, but we can’t know how Rossi would do on a brakeless boardtracker or DeRosier on a Ducati MotoGP bike. But, from all the comments and results, and from those who still fly that flag, it’s fair to say the 101 Sport Scout was, so to speak, the Rossi of its day, which got Bubeck off to a sporting start.
For another cultural shift, remember that when most roads were dirt, there were no dirtbikes. There were big and small motorcycles, and they were expected to cope with rocks and sand and ruts because that’s what so many highways were made of.
Racing on tracks was specialized when Bubeck began riding. His loyalties had been set, so he moved from the Scout to the top of the line, an Indian Four. By 1939, the inline-Four was several generations old, being based on a design that appeared before World War I. The various versions were powerful and sporting, and they set lots of records while labeled Henderson, ACE, Excelsior and then Indian.
But there were some shortcomings.
By the time Bubeck bought his new machine, he knew what needed to be done. He fitted an oil cooler, used Chevrolet valve springs and revised the oil system by re-drilling the crankshaft. The result, wrote historian Jerry Hatfield in American Racing Motorcycles, was “an unusually reliable and speedy fourcylinder motorcycle.”
Sixty years ago, an enduro wasn’t a race to put a 31 -inch-wide motorcycle through a forest of trees 28 inches apart, using lightweight machines with wheel travel measured in feet. Enduros then were point-to-point races, across deserts and mountain ranges, daylight and dark. In 1948, the Greenhorn Enduro was 509 miles in two days, with the highest point being a climb to the top of 6800-foot Greenhorn Peak. Bubeck won it on his Four, with a pair of Harley 61 s in second and third, which pretty much proves the point about a different era.
“We know that Jake DeRosier, Joe Petrali, Mike Hailwood, Kenny Roberts and Valentino Rossi dominated their times, but we can’t know how Rossi would do on a brakeless boardtracker or DeRosier on a Ducati MotoGP bike.”
Then came Chout I. By 1948, Indian Motocycle Co. was in trouble and not for the first time. The 101 Scout was dropped in 1931 because it was cheaper to put the large or small twin-cylinder engines in the large frame. Bubeck, Chase and sponsor/tuner “Pop” Shunk fitted skinny tires, two carburetors jetted for alcohol, a Vard telescopic fork and camshafts reworked so there were four lobes, one per valve, instead of two.
Again, a different era. In California, it was routine for troops of cars to travel to the dry lakes, camp and tune, run through the clocks and head home. The results sheets showed average times for the Indians, Harleys, Ariels, Triumphs and even the occasional Mustang scooter. Chout I was the best example, and in 1948 was the fastest bare motorcycle in competition, holding the Indian speed record for nearly 20 years.
Bubeck’s next improbable triumph involves business. Indian survived World War II, but not by much. There were new owners and new executives, and they bet the farm on a new business plan: to drop the proven models and introduce a different notion, motorcycles
in the European vein aimed at people who hadn’t ridden motorcycles. Timing is everything, as folk wisdom says, and it’s fair to note that what Indian tried in the 1940s is what Honda did in the 1950s, so it’s possible that the marketing was right but came too early. Except that there was one major difference: Honda arrived with excellent machines.
Indian’s new models, vertical Singles and Twins designed by an engineer doing his first motorcycles, were woeful failures. Not only did they fail in daily service, they were introduced to the public at the Laconia, New Hampshire, national roadraces in 1949. There were 12 factory-prepped bikes ridden by top riders. They all broke down, in public, a debacle not even the never-met-amotorcycle-we-didn’t-like press of the time could soften.
“[Bubeck] switched to Hodakas. ‘It was easy,’ he said years later, ‘once I got used to riding with the throttle wide-open.’”
Why does this matter here? Because Bubeck knew enduros were changing and that the Four’s racing days were over. So, he got an Indian Warrior, the 500cc Twin, and in 1950, he rode it to victory in the Cactus Derby. The Warrior did so well for so long it became known as Old Blue, virtually the only competitive example of its kind.
Things kept changing. In the mid1950s, with highways now challenge-free, the off-road era began, giving lightweights an edge. At the same time, Bubeck, being a man who married early and often, began looking for a motorcycle his son could enjoy. By happy chance (again), some dirtbike fans in the northwest had drawn up some plans for lightweight enduro models and had found a company in Japan that would follow their guidelines.
The brand was called Hodaka, and it was an instant hit. Bubeck got an Ace 90 His son liked motorcycles but was more interested in boats, so while he went off
to become a world-class ocean racer, Dad switched to Hodakas. It was easy, he said years later, “Once I got used to riding with the throttle wide-open.”
“As an Indian fan from childhood, Bubeck enjoyed mocking and abusing ‘Hardly-Stumblehome’ riders and the machines they hoped to ride in on.”
In sum, Max Bubeck raced in the desert for 44 years. He ran out of fingers tallying the years he wore the numberone plate in AMA District 37. By the time he retired from competition in 1979, he’d competed in 32 Greenhorns. He liked to say he won two-and-a-half times, the qualifier being that one year “The guys from the previous enduro hadn’t cleaned up their lime [used to mark the course]. I got on the wrong line and got lost. But I won the Sunday half.” As Bubeck adapted to new technologies, he became more involved in the old stuff—as in really old. He knew a classic codger, the eccentric with the bam full of old machines, and as legend insists, he kept after the guy until in 1993, Bubeck got a 1915 Indian Twin with an intakeover-exhaust engine, three-speed transmission and rear suspension—yes, in 1915, 4^ years before Harley-Davidson did it, bift that’s another story.
In 1914, the legendary Erwin “Cannonball” Baker rode a similar Indian Twin from coast-to-coast in 11 days and 12 hours, cutting nine days off the previous record. Bubeck celebrated his new/old Indian by following Baker’s route, coast-to-coast, except that because there was no way to duplicate the actual riding conditions of 1914, Bubeck was careful to take more time for the trip, in case anyone thought he was trying to re-stage the actual record.
Meanwhile, the old motorcycles became so much fun that Bubeck created a festival, a ride to and through Death Valley, in the winter, of course. When Bubeck began the ride, in 1986, the Death Valley Run was open to what the classic clubs consider old: 35 years or more. The limit has moved up every year since, surprising some of us who hadn’t realized our 1970s’ models were officially over the hill.
Does all this make Max Bubeck seem almost too nice of a guy? Be assured, he did have some quirks. One could be predicted: As an Indian fan from childhood, Bubeck enjoyed mocking and abusing “Hardly-Stumblehome” riders and the machines they hoped to ride in on. There was a sign to that effect in Bubeck’s shop, albeit he didn’t mind a visitor’s Aermacchi—that’s an Italian Harley, kids—as long as it stayed in the truck and didn’t touch the driveway.
Generally, he always objected to the use of the term “bike” when applied to motorcycles. “That’s a nice bike,” someone would say when he saw Bubeck’s evergreen Four.
“It’s not a bike,” Bubeck would retort. “It’s a motorcycle.”
He was right, of course. So, it doesn’t seem to matter that this is one competition he lost. And, finally, there’s one he got to keep. Conventional history says the last national championship win scored by an Indian was Ernie Beckman on a Sport Scout at Williams Grove, Pennsylvania, on October 11, 1953.
Bubeck disagreed. He and Old Blue won the Greenhorn Enduro in 1962.
It was a tough one, only 23 of the 170 entrants finished, but because it was an AMA national event, Max Bubeck reckoned he was the last man to take an AMA title for Indian.
He was still riding into his 90s, so the game wasn’t over until this past April, when it was really over. Here’s to a life well-lived.
