Here's one of my favorite racing stories. It occurred in 1980 when I was racing my 1979 YZ125, which was sleeved down to 100cc, had Simon's forks and a Fox Airshox for suspension.
I love, love, loved racing the small bore bikes. They were so much fun. You really had to be on top of your game to get them to go fast, which I thought really showed who was the best racer.
While the bike was sleeved down, it was stone stock! I didn't believe that you needed to hop the bikes up to go fast, plus if I got heat, that was that, I wasn't good enough. If I did win, well that meant that I was the best racer that day at that track.
I had raced 250's for two and a half years prior to going to the 100cc class and this was my second year racing the small bikes. I had purchased the bike second hand and always made sure that it was clean and in the best state of tune that I could manage.
One thing to keep in mind is that I was taller and heavier than most of the racers that I was competing with, so during the starts you could expect me to be at the back of the pack.At the time my hero was Bob Hannah, who was known to blast through the pack from behind and win races. This was actually my favorite type of race to watch in person, watching a really good racer work his way to the front after a bad start or fall.
Another point to bring up is that leading up to this fateful day of racing, I had been having some electrical issues with my bike. It was an intermittent problem that was driving my friends and I crazy! We had changed spark plugs, replaced coils, swap out black boxes and cleaned all the electrical connections carefully. But it seemed that no matter what we did, the bike would run great for a while and then start to deteriorate after a period of time.
On this particular Sunday, it seemed that the bike was finally fixed and working fine. In practice it worked great. So I prepared for the first moto.
I rolled my very tall Yamaha to the start line and picked a low number clothespin (which allowed for better gate picks), picked a gate towards the inside of the first turn. There were approximately 25 or 30 bikes lined up for this very important 100cc Amateur motocross race (important in my mind at least!)
The two minute sign was held high, the highly excited 100cc racers were revving their bikes to the moon. I was bouncing on my bike, rolling the throttle smartly on then letting go, the bike was running perfectly. The sign turned to 1 minute to go, the bikes seemed to rev even higher than before... some were holding the throttle wide open for long seconds... still I was cool, calm and collected, content to rev my bike to make sure it sang cleanly.
Then the sign went sideways... and all hell broke loose. Some racers had already had their bikes in gear and the clutches were starting to drag them towards the backwards falling gate. I calmly clicked my bike into first gear and held the throttle steady at about three quarters and looked down at the gate, saw a little movement of the gate and was gone....
..well not to the first turn, just off the start gate, head down concentrating with all my might, thinking about shifting the bike into the next gears to bring me to the first turn. As expected I was very close to the back of the pack going through the first turn, I'm sure there was at least one or two racers behind me... weren't there?? Man do I need to work on my starts!!
But here is where I know I can go good, heading into the second turn, I held the throttle on longer than anyone around me, diving deep into the corner, hard on the brakes, pivot, back on the gas using the clutch... passed 4 or 5 guys in one turn.. the same happened on the next few corners passing a few here and there...
Getting into a rhythm now, flying up the face of a jump, soaring through the air, landing hard on the gas into the corner, hard on the brakes at the last moment, back on the gas.. passing, passing, passing.... man this is awesome!!!
On the second lap or so my sturdy Yamaha started it's mis-firing... this time worse than ever before. Oh crap!! I never ever give up no matter what so I soldiered on and continued, finding that if I didn't rev the bike so high I could keep it going pretty good on the level parts of the track. Unfortunately I was coming to a short, but step up-hill section that was preceded by a hairpin turn (the hill was about a 45 degree angle and about 30 or so feet total).. I set up perfectly to keep my momentum as high as possible going through the hairpin and try to gain as much speed as possible to get up the hill.
Attacked the hill with some speed, and started my way up, but the bike was slowing, tried to hang on, but it wasn't going to have enough power to drag me up..... crap!! I did the only thing a person could do... I jumped off the bike and pushed along side the bike till the top and jumped back on!! The thing is that I was wearing the old style Scott boots, not exactly the best running footwear!
Sure am glad that I trained for motocross!! I made a few decisions right away... I was going to have to pass as many people as possible every lap... when I got to the hill I was going to have to jump off as soon as the bike slowed to the point where i could run faster than it was going... The following lap I passed a few guys leading up to the hill section, the bike sputtering, choking, misfiring.... sounded like a wounded whale!! I barely shut off for the section leading up to the hill.... no one passed me.
Hey this could work! So I continued my march forward... if my friends were signaling me what place I was in, I didn't see them. I only cared about passing as many people as I could. Every lap jumping off and running alongside my bike... a crowd gathered on the hill to watch me push my bike!! I smiled beneath my face mask!
Finally the checkered flag!! Man I need something to drink!!
Pull into the pits and one of my buddies comes running up and tells me that I finished in third place!! Holy cow... really?? Yup you would have caught the other guys if you had a couple more laps.
What was even more unbelievable is one of my competitors came over a bit later to say "what the hell was wrong with your bike? It sounded so bad, it made me sick to my stomach when you passed me.."
The second moto was almost a carbon copy of the first....
... what about the bike?? Did I ever figure out what was wrong? The answer is yes.... that week I vowed to find the problem. I poped off the ignition cover and was inspecting the coils for what seemed like the hundredth time, when I noticed a piece of black electrical tape around one of the coil lead wires. It was done so neatly that I had missed it previously. Once removed my problem was found. The previous owned had tested the coil using a punch style tester which pierces the wire, he pushed it clear through the copper wires leaving one loose strand to make contact, sometimes!! I spliced the wire and never had another problem!
