Riders Preferred Membership
Shop by Vehicle
Track Order
Contact Us
Daytona Beach, Florida, 1994: Rob Muzzy looked up from the bowels of the factory Kawasaki ZX-7R and laughed. "No, what really makes me nervous is if practice goes smoothly."
The Kawasaki garage at Daytona was a frantic place and this cub reporter had asked the championship-winning tuner if the ongoing practice woes made him nervous for the 200. This was during Scott Russell's green dominance. Muzzy explained that a smooth and trouble-free Bike Week practice put him on edge… he wanted to struggle before the race, not during the race.
Muzzy's words come back to me at every American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association (AHRMA) race I run, and July's event at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca was no different. Here's a look at a typical weekend of getting old bikes ready to race.
Fuel belongs in the fuel tank!
Carry Andrew of Hypercycle and I have been vintage racing with AHRMA here and there for a few years, he on his updated 1977 Kawasaki Z1 and me on Chris Carr's 1981 GPz550 (AHRMA's Chris Carr, not dirt track's Chris Carr). Chris passed away two years ago and his widow, Sowatha, has allowed Carry and me to campaign his white Vintage Middleweight bike. I love riding it, AHRMA peeps love seeing it; Chris was a mainstay of our club, a champion, and a dear friend.
But Carry took on a huge project before Laguna: build a second Z1 for Mark Miller to race. With the focus on the Z1, the GPz550 didn't need much and got just a cursory check-over — one that failed to notice that the fuel petcock had been taken off the tank for repair and never replaced! My mechanic Willi Sheffer and I noticed this vital missing piece just seconds after pouring VP C12 into the tank and then onto our shoes about 30 minutes before Friday practice started.
Despite public announcements of our need and a search of the ongoing swap meet, we were dead in the water. Trudging through the paddock like Linus without his blanket, I happened to spy a seemingly similar petcock on a beautiful Honda CB750 race bike. Sure enough, owner Grant Spence had an extra and thanks to God and Jarno Saarinen, it fit the GPz. We were back in business.
Until the next issue.
Grant's new petcock didn't have a sock filter but, in our haste, we looked the other way and hoped for the best. Wrong and stupid move. The original 1981 fuel tank poured fuel and assorted bits of contaminants into the CR smoothbore carburetors, sticking the needles again and again. Friend George Beavers arrived with an in-line filter, and after the eighth cleaning we were up and running.
Riding joy at Laguna Seca
Friday afternoon practice was a gas, no pun intended. The weather was perfect, the track more fun than should be legal, the GPz an eager partner. I always ride this bike with Chris Carr's spirit, and his spirit gloried in motorcycling. Carry's rebuild of this bike for last year's Laguna event, and Steve Biganski's suspension re-do, created a 360-pound machine that just loves to circulate a race track.
No, it's not tire-spinning, wheelie-popping horsepower, but when you're celebrating your 61st birthday, it's OK to not threaten your health on every corner exit. This is an excellent point for "mature" racers who enjoy competition but perhaps not the expense and physical commitment of an MotoAmerica Superbike race: Don't quit racing, just step down to a more balanced dance partner. I've raced Rusty Bigley's insane Spondon TZ750 for years but am now enjoying this Hypercycle GPz and have a Speedwerks Yamaha FZR600 being prepped by Steve Long. Super fun but not super nasty. Gosh, isn't "fun" the reason we do this?
Hey, wasn't this a six-speed?
In the day's last practice, Muzzy's words revisited bike #64N with another challenge: no fifth gear. I mean, nuthin'. It was like a neutral between fourth and sixth. Carry and Willi pulled the countershaft cover and played with the shift drum.
“I think every tooth is sheared off of fifth gear,” Carry reported.
“Hmm…,” I said. “Any chance those teeth could get caught up in the trans and lock the rear wheel?”
“Yeah,” Carry answered. “Don’t jump any curbs so the teeth stay in the bottom of the oil pan.” Everybody laughed. Through the laughter I fantasized about actually living to see 62.
Overnight, I thought about where to shift from fourth to sixth with two movements of the shifter, identifying five places per lap. On Saturday morning, I practiced the double shifts. To say that the little 550 fell flat on its face in those five spots would be accurate and I walked through the pits to warn my main competitors about my significant lack of acceleration in certain spots. "Heads up if you're drafting." In practice, I hung my left leg off the footpeg in warning every time I went from fourth to sixth.
This type of conversation between competitors is per usual at AHRMA, where the vast majority prioritize the glory of racing over the need to win at any cost. There are fast and talented racers in every class, but few desperate non-thinkers. If this interests you, AHRMA is waiting and even offers a school for new racers that's run by racer Mark Morrow and allows graduates to race that very weekend. I'm a big fan of AHRMA and vintage racing in general and I and hope to run with other organizations in the next few years.
As we ate lunch before our races, I remembered that Muzzy always did well after practice hassles: Willi and I had hope.
