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Cables, Coffee, Cycles, and Cocktails


Tarheel

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3 hours ago, BigStewMan said:

Heard from one of my kids today. they were evacuated from their home yesterday due to one of the SoCal fires.  They were already packed up and ready to go the in-laws place when the evacuation order took effect. 

I hope they are able to return home soon as trying to carry on with the normal responsibilities of life while crashing at someone else's house is a challenge. 

The national news said some wet weather was rolling in on the west coast, so hopefully they get some relief.

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18 hours ago, Ceptorman said:

It was a Harley....so! They just don't crash well. They have occasional recalls from their frame welds, usually around the kickstand area.

 

Cool racing story. 24 hour endurance, that sounds like fun! How many riders, 3? I've always wanted to ride a 2 stroke on the track, but never did. I was passed by a TZ250 once while I was on a CBR600, on my first lap of my first ever track day, it was awesome!

 

So you’ve done track days?  Lots of fun, right?  Go as fast as you like, with no cars, trucks, buses or cops.  And if you go with friends, you sometimes learn who the real fast guy is, and it’s often not the one who’s Speed Boy on the streets.  After I quit racing at age 34 due to not bouncing as well as when I was younger, and losing too much time off work due to injuries, I often went out to track days, at Shannonville and at Mosport, two tracks in Eastern Ontario, not far from Toronto.  On a fun day, you go as fast as you like, while on a race day, you sometimes go faster than you like.  And yes, those TZ250s are fast, with a top speed over 150 mph.  They also have high cornering speeds, which means they come out of corners going faster, thereby reaching top speed sooner.  Just like at the drag strip, a bit of a lead at the start of the quarter mile results in a steadily growing lead all the way to the end of the straight.

 

For the 24 Hour, we had 4 riders and a spare, but some teams do it with 3 riders.  We split into A and B pairs.  A started, and swapped riders twice, then B took over and swapped riders twice.  That way, each pair had 4 hours between shifts, and might get 3 hours of sleep.  You want to be sharp at 4:00 am, not drowsy, especially if it’s raining, and all the way to the end at 3 pm on Sunday.  One hour was long enough to ride at competitive speeds without losing concentration, plus it was a good time to refuel. We went through two pairs of tires, if memory serves.  Big bikes use more tires, so that was an advantage for us.  In the ‘84 race, we had no crashes, but a mistake during a tire change cost us 15 minutes to swap a front wheel, replace a damaged brake disc and caliper, plus bleed the front brake system.  Many hands make fast work.

 

The race was The 24 Hours of Nelson, at Nelson Ledges, a track in northeastern Ohio.  It’s a popular event, with over 50 starters most years.  I’d like to have done more endurance racing, since it was lots of fun, and cost less than sprint racing, with only 1 bike being used, plus you get hours of track time every weekend, instead of minutes.  It’s also fun to race and celebrate together with friends.  All of us riders knew each other, since we usually rode 10-20 lap sprint races across Eastern Canada and the Northeastern US, and rode at comparable speeds, so we had met many times on track.  The pace is a bit slower in endurance races, meaning you ride at maybe 90% instead of at 95-99% like you would in a short sprint race.  You have to maintain concentration for a full hour, not just 10-15 minutes, and do it again in an hour, so you ride with a greater margin of safety.  As well, if you crash, you don’t just embarrass yourself, you let down the team, costing them results and money.

 

We prepped well, with 13 people on the team.  Apart from the riders, we had 4 friends for pit crew, plus a pit boss, 2 girlfriends were in the timing tower doing the scoring, and we had a cook, so we could have food at any time during the race.  One rider supplied his bike, which was kind of beat up (both years:  we rode a 1983 RZ350 in 1984 and an ‘84 RZ500 in 1985), but ran well.  He organized the effort, with 2 of his older brothers in the pits and his high school math teacher was our cook.  Teach arrived in his motor home, with built-in kitchen.  As well as my tool chest and a little Honda generator borrowed from one of my sponsors, I brought my RZ350 for backup.  That turned out to be important, because we wound up needing brake parts urgently in the middle of the night.

 

We were so confident that we brought two bottles of champagne with us.  It was a good call, since we won our class and got to spray it around.  There were 53 starters in 1984, and we finished 8th Overall, and 1st (!) in class.  The Canadian RZs were faster than the US models that year, because ours didn’t have catalytic converters, so we had to ride in Lightweight Superbike.  The following year we were in Middleweight Superbike with our RZ500, because they weren’t available yet in the US.  In ‘85, we finished 6th Overall and 2nd in class.  Since Randy rode his bikes in Production class in Canada, they were totally stock, and the three riders other than Randy would have immediately noticed if his bikes were tuned or tweaked.

 

The 350 had a top speed around 125 mph, while the 500 could go about 140 mph, and the back straight at Nelson Ledges is long enough for both bikes to reach top speed.  The bikes are also light, which meant they could brake later than heavier bikes.  They also don’t crash as hard, so a crash doesn’t cost as much time.  And money!

 

Hmm, if you read this far, could you be bike-curious?  In any case, thanks for your patience.

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3 hours ago, BigStewMan said:

Heard from one of my kids today. they were evacuated from their home yesterday due to one of the SoCal fires.  They were already packed up and ready to go the in-laws place when the evacuation order took effect. 

I hope they are able to return home soon as trying to carry on with the normal responsibilities of life while crashing at someone else's house is a challenge. 

these fires are still raging -  unreal how different it is from Coast to  Coast  ------we are  in the Freeze for a week now at nights  , plus  non-stop rain for 1/2 the summer -

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20 minutes ago, Islander said:

 

So you’ve done track days?  Lots of fun, right?  Go as fast as you like, with no cars, trucks, buses or cops.  And if you go with friends, you sometimes learn who the real fast guy is, and it’s often not the one who’s Speed Boy on the streets.  After I quit racing at age 34 due to not bouncing as well as when I was younger, and losing too much time off work due to injuries, I often went out to track days, at Shannonville and at Mosport, two tracks in Eastern Ontario, not far from Toronto.  On a fun day, you go as fast as you like, while on a race day, you sometimes go faster than you like.  And yes, those TZ250s are fast, with a top speed over 150 mph.  They also have high cornering speeds, which means they come out of corners going faster, thereby reaching top speed sooner.  Just like at the drag strip, a bit of a lead at the start of the quarter mile results in a steadily growing lead all the way to the end of the straight.

 

For the 24 Hour, we had 4 riders and a spare, but some teams do it with 3 riders.  We split into A and B pairs.  A started, and swapped riders twice, then B took over and swapped riders twice.  That way, each pair had 4 hours between shifts, and might get 3 hours of sleep.  You want to be sharp at 4:00 am, not drowsy, especially if it’s raining, and all the way to the end at 3 pm on Sunday.  One hour was long enough to ride at competitive speeds without losing concentration, plus it was a good time to refuel. We went through two pairs of tires, if memory serves.  Big bikes use more tires, so that was an advantage for us.  In the ‘84 race, we had no crashes, but a mistake during a tire change cost us 15 minutes to swap a front wheel, replace a damaged brake disc and caliper, plus bleed the front brake system.  Many hands make fast work.

 

The race was The 24 Hours of Nelson, at Nelson Ledges, a track in northeastern Ohio.  It’s a popular event, with over 50 starters most years.  I’d like to have done more endurance racing, since it was lots of fun, and cost less than sprint racing, with only 1 bike being used, plus you get hours of track time every weekend, instead of minutes.  It’s also fun to race and celebrate together with friends.  All of us riders knew each other, since we usually rode 10-20 lap sprint races across Eastern Canada and the Northeastern US, and rode at comparable speeds, so we had met many times on track.  The pace is a bit slower in endurance races, meaning you ride at maybe 90% instead of at 95-99% like you would in a short sprint race.  You have to maintain concentration for a full hour, not just 10-15 minutes, and do it again in an hour, so you ride with a greater margin of safety.  As well, if you crash, you don’t just embarrass yourself, you let down the team, costing them results and money.

 

We prepped well, with 13 people on the team.  Apart from the riders, we had 4 friends for pit crew, plus a pit boss, 2 girlfriends were in the timing tower doing the scoring, and we had a cook, so we could have food at any time during the race.  One rider supplied his bike, which was kind of beat up (both years:  we rode a 1983 RZ350 in 1984 and an ‘84 RZ500 in 1985), but ran well.  He organized the effort, with 2 of his older brothers in the pits and his high school math teacher was our cook.  Teach arrived in his motor home, with built-in kitchen.

 

We were so confident that we brought two bottles of champagne with us.  It was a good call, since we won our class and got to spray it around.  There were 53 starters in 1984, and we finished 8th Overall, and 1st (!) in class.  The Canadian RZs were faster than the US models that year, because ours didn’t have catalytic converters, so we had to ride in Lightweight Superbike.  The following year we were in Middleweight Superbike with our RZ500, because they weren’t available yet in the US.  In ‘85, we finished 6th Overall and 2nd in class.

 

The 350 had a top speed around 125 mph, while the 500 could go about 140 mph, and the back straight at Nelson Ledges is long enough for both bikes to reach top speed.  The bikes are also light, which meant they could brake later than heavier bikes.  They also don’t crash as hard, so a crash doesn’t cost as much time.

 

Hmm, if you read this far, could you be bike-curious?  In any case, thanks for your patience.

Hey Pat, I didn't know you raced bikes. That endurance race sounds like a blast. You were all in with a team like that. I started going to track days at the age of 45, 12 years ago, then started racing 2 years later. I did about 30 track days, and 8-10 races. The trackways were with Nesba (N2 now) and STT. I raced with WERA. I started track days on a CBR600, then to an RC51, but I raced an SV650 Lightweight Superbike. I never won a race, but I always finished higher than I started. I had a blast. I did one race at Nelson. I liked the layout, but the surface was very bad. I raced at Grattan( Michigan) Barber (Alabama) Rd Atlanta, and VIR. I did a lot of trackways at Putnam Park, about an hour west of Indy. I went to the Moto-America (old AMA) races at Indy a couple of weeks ago. They had a new series called Vintage Superbike. That's pre 1984 Superbikes and vintage race bikes. It's not a race, exhibition only, but you know those guys want to perform well. I hope to do the Indy round next year if they're still doing it....imagine racing at the Brickyard! 

 

I've heard a lot of good things about Mosport. James (Woofers and Tweeters) on here raced WERA also. I believe he raced in A Superbike....the fast guys. I think he even won or got very close to a championship. 

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5 hours ago, grasshopper said:

 

Being a grandparent is sposed to be all about spoiling the kid rotten and sending them home wired on Mt.Dew and chocolate, but, given her situation we are parenting her already. All of her stuff is here... not at her dad's. She only sleeps at his place.

 

I am amazed how much influence I have on her already. She listens to me.

 

my neighbor raised the 2 kids of his Son at age 5 and 6  , the Grandparents got there in time before the kids were given to adoption by the State , the kids came out great  , they consider me as a Big Bother given we are very close and we all had supper together , today , these kids now have their own kids , and Life goes on -

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16 minutes ago, RandyH000 said:

Yes Lord I am a Sinner , but one of these will do also  ----------TZ 750 -

 

Yamaha TZ 750 F | Classic Motorbikes

 

That’s one of my favourite looks for the TZ750, the ducktail tailpiece.  I don’t know how aerodynamic it might be, but I saw it behind some very fast guys in the late Seventies. Back then, I was contemplating getting one and making a street bike out of it.  That was the big fantasy back then, and there were a few of them.  I did see one on the highway on the way home from Daytona in 1979, but that engine was not made to idle while sitting in traffic.  That mad crackling of the four pipes just screams “Rev me!  Rev me!”

 

At the time, the price of one was a bit out of reach for me, so it never happened.  It’s funny to look at those bikes now, with their skinny tires and spindly frame tubes.  I did wrench for Ernie White Cycles at Daytona in 1975, with Bran Henderson as our rider.  Ernie had two bikes for Brian, a TZ250 and the TZ750.  He wasn’t an AMA Pro at the time, so he raced the 750 in the 100 Mile Junior Race.  There were lots of classes back then, instead of just 600cc Super Sport.  Those were the days!

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riding either of those would prolly kill me....

I think I would prefer the lady

 

pot roast tonight. Basic as... meat, potatoes, onions. Salt and pepper

 

Our dew point was somewhere near 0` last night.

Was petting the cat. Getting 3 stokes before static discharge. Cat would spark all over,  like one of our little thunderheads Thought that was pretty funny

 

in the doghouse

   after tapping the sub out on the sony avr, I think I am going back to running the sub off the speaker outs. The sub out is connected to all of the A/V effects. I like 2 channel for the muted effects. Not even tone controls.....

now that I think about it, I think I might be able to control the level of effect at the receiver

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30 minutes ago, Islander said:

 

That’s one of my favourite looks for the  TZ750. 

I always wanted a TZ 750  , but it could be too late now given the fact than an H2 is relatively affordable and extremely reliable -

 

-the TZ is track only , it cannot be very easy to ride on the street -the powerband must be very pointy ----if not brutal -

 

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11 hours ago, Ceptorman said:

Hey Pat, I didn't know you raced bikes. That endurance race sounds like a blast. You were all in with a team like that. I started going to track days at the age of 45, 12 years ago, then started racing 2 years later. I did about 30 track days, and 8-10 races. The trackways were with Nesba (N2 now) and STT. I raced with WERA. I started track days on a CBR600, then to an RC51, but I raced an SV650 Lightweight Superbike. I never won a race, but I always finished higher than I started. I had a blast. I did one race at Nelson. I liked the layout, but the surface was very bad. I raced at Grattan( Michigan) Barber (Alabama) Rd Atlanta, and VIR. I did a lot of trackways at Putnam Park, about an hour west of Indy. I went to the Moto-America (old AMA) races at Indy a couple of weeks ago. They had a new series called Vintage Superbike. That's pre 1984 Superbikes and vintage race bikes. It's not a race, exhibition only, but you know those guys want to perform well. I hope to do the Indy round next year if they're still doing it....imagine racing at the Brickyard! 

 

I've heard a lot of good things about Mosport. James (Woofers and Tweeters) on here raced WERA also. I believe he raced in A Superbike....the fast guys. I think he even won or got very close to a championship. 

 

Seriously?  I missed a chance to brag, err, reminisce about the good old days?  No, check your old Messages.  We did share some of our fun times on the track.  There’s no shame in not recording a win, since only a very few out of all the hundreds who register to race get to take a victory lap.  In spite of all the effort and money I blew/invested in racing, I had very few wins.  Support makes a big difference, and very, very, few people get support like Casey Stoner did, when his parents sold their house in Australia and moved to England when Casey was 14, because he could race in England at 14 in the Pro class, while in Australia the minimum age was 16.

 

So what happened?  As I’m sure you know, he did very well in England, with lots of wins, then eventually moved up to MotoGP, becoming World Champion at age 21 in 2007.  Not bad.  At 21 I rode my first race, the 5 Hour at Mosport, on an old Yamaha R-1 with R5 forks.  My teammate and I couldn’t afford proper racing suits, so we had leather pants made so they could zip onto the jackets we wore on the street.  I had actual racing boots, while my teammate wore work boots with ductape to connect them to his leathers.  Believe it or not, this was not unusual among beginners.

 

After racing as a Junior and then an Expert on my TD-3 (the ancestor of the TZ250), I quit for six years after my daughter was born in the Seventies, then came back at age 31, in the Eighties.  A year later, I rode in the Nelson Ledges 24 Hour.  In the same race was a skinny kid from Texas on a Yamaha FJ600.  His team didn’t finish, because they ran out of brake and clutch levers, as well as footrests, because he crashed 7 times.  However, his talent got noticed, and a few years later, he was competing with Wayne Rainey at the top level of the sport.  His name was Kevin Schwantz.  Nine years later, in 1993, he was the FIM 500cc World Champion.

 

So that’s how it goes sometimes.  I coulda been a contender!  Well, maybe if I’d been able to start racing at age 6, with my parents buying whatever I needed for fifteen years or so, and if I never sustained any serious career-ending injuries, and if there was a vacancy when I was ready to move up to the next level, and so on and so on.  So many ifs...

 

Wow!  I sure reached the logically absurd conclusion there.  And now I have a monster stereo with 2,000 watts of clean Yamaha power, and I don’t have to buy tires for it every season, so I’m not complaining.  I’ll stop now.

 

EDIT:  Well, in all that raving, I got carried away and didn’t actually reply to your message.  It sounds like you had a good time, and rode on tracks I’ve heard of, but never got to see, like Grattan, Road Atlanta, Barber, and Indy (!).  Riding the RC51 must have been great, along with the SV650 Superbike.  

 

Nelson Ledges definitely does have terrible pavement.  It’s been like that since before I first rode there in 1973.  During the 1984 24Hr, Turn One was so rough that speeds around it were nowhere near what a track map or diagram would have suggested, and we could barely lean over at all.  That was disappointing, because it reduced the speed from One to Two quite a bit.  Turn Three was good, but the showpiece turn is The Carousel.  It’s something like 250 degrees of turning, and is banked a bit as well.  The turn is long enough that there are lots of passing opportunities in the turn, and a high exit speed pays dividends all the way along the back straight.  

 

Supposedly, Nelson Ledges was repaved at some point, or maybe there was just some discussion about it.

 

Okay, stopping again, lol.

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32 minutes ago, RandyH000 said:

I always wanted a TZ 750  , but it could be too late now given the fact than an H2 is relatively affordable and extremely reliable -

 

-the TZ is track only , it cannot be very easy to ride on the street -the powerband must be very pointy ----if not brutal -

 

 

Yes, the TZ750 would be a pretty bad street bike, requiring constant attention, and often leaving blue clouds of oily smoke behind it.  Besides, the technology is 45 years old now, and current street bikes are faster than even the mighty TZ.  The Kawasaki H2 is miles better as a street bike, and not bad on the track, either.  Time marches on...

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4 hours ago, RandyH000 said:

Yes Lord I am a Sinner , but one of these will do also  ----------TZ 750 -

 

Yamaha TZ 750 F | Classic Motorbikes

That's a beauty. I was at the Indy Mile flat track race a few years ago, the first year back there after a few decades. The MotoGP guys were in town also, and almost all the GP racers were at the flat track race that Saturday night. Kenny Roberts made a ceremonial lap on the TZ 750 he raced and won there in 1975. He started last, and won it. 

3 hours ago, Islander said:

 

Seriously?  I missed a chance to brag, err, reminisce about the good old days?  No, check your old Messages.  We did share some of our fun times on the track.  There’s no shame in not recording a win, since only a very few out of all the hundreds who register to race get to take a victory lap.  In spite of all the effort and money I blew/invested in racing, I had very few wins.  Support makes a big difference, and very, very, few people get support like Casey Stoner did, when his parents sold their house in Australia and moved to England when Casey was 14, because he could race in England at 14 in the Pro class, while in Australia the minimum age was 16.

 

So what happened?  As I’m sure you know, he did very well in England, with lots of wins, then eventually moved up to MotoGP, becoming World Champion at age 21 in 2007.  Not bad.  At 21 I rode my first race, the 5 Hour at Mosport, on an old Yamaha R-1 with R5 forks.  My teammate and I couldn’t afford proper racing suits, so we had leather pants made so they could zip onto the jackets we wore on the street.  I had actual racing boots, while my teammate wore work boots with ductape to connect them to his leathers.  Believe it or not, this was not unusual among beginners.

 

After racing as a Junior and then an Expert on my TD-3 (the ancestor of the TZ250), I quit for six years after my daughter was born in the Seventies, then came back at age 31, in the Eighties.  A year later, I rode in the Nelson Ledges 24 Hour.  In the same race was a skinny kid from Texas on a Yamaha FJ600.  His team didn’t finish, because they ran out of brake and clutch levers, as well as footrests, because he crashed 7 times.  However, his talent got noticed, and a few years later, he was competing with Wayne Rainey at the top level of the sport.  His name was Kevin Schwantz.  Nine years later, in 1993, he was the FIM 500cc World Champion.

 

So that’s how it goes sometimes.  I coulda been a contender!  Well, maybe if I’d been able to start racing at age 6, with my parents buying whatever I needed for fifteen years or so, and if I never sustained any serious career-ending injuries, and if there was a vacancy when I was ready to move up to the next level, and so on and so on.

 

Wow!  I sure reached the logically absurd conclusion there.  And now I have a monster stereo with 2,000 watts of clean Yamaha power, and I don’t have to buy tires for it every season, so I’m not complaining.  I’ll stop now.

 

EDIT:  Well, in all that raving, I got carried away and didn’t actually reply to your message.  It sounds like you had a good time, and rode on tracks I’ve heard of, but never got to see, like Grattan, Road Atlanta, Barber, and Indy (!).  Riding the RC51 must have been great, along with the SV650 Superbike.  

 

Nelson Ledges definitely does have terrible pavement.  It’s been like that since before I first rode there in 1973.  During the 1984 24Hr, Turn One was so rough that speeds around it were nowhere near what a track map or diagram would have suggested.  That was disappointing, because it reduced the speed from One to Two quite a bit.  Turn Three was good, but the showpiece turn is The Carousel.  It’s something like 250 degrees of turning, and is banked a bit as well.  The turn is long enough that there are lots of passing opportunities in the turn, and a high exit speed pays dividends all the way along the back straight.  

 

Supposedly, Nelson Ledges was repaved at some point, or maybe there was just some discussion about it.

 

Okay, stopping again, lol.

I do remember chatting about bike racing with you, it's been a couple years. I've ridden bikes my whole life, but didn't hit the track till I was almost 50. Then got re-married, adopted her 2 girls, and life got in the way. When I met her, I had a garage full of toys, CBR600 track bike, RC51 street, VFR800 street, CR250r dirty bike, and a Polaris 700 Ultra snowmobile, and an new enclosed trailer to haul them in. Sadly, I started having a couple health issues, and decided 2 wheels were off my list of hobbies. I am feeling better, and have been looking at bikes again.....don't tell her that! I'd rather ask forgiveness than permission!

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