Winding Staircase Drag Race
While this is a rather unique story for most people to comprehend, it is part and parcel of the Veltenshine proffered by Clemson Café Racers.It could well have been a dark and stormy night for all I remember. We had been drinking for a number of hours at Burrells Place. Why do so many of these remembrances dwell on time spent at pool hall type dives? Surely we knew the foolishness of our actions? It was always a gamble to venture up to Burrells of an evening. Morgan had the only roadhouse in the South Carolina mountains, and the surrounding North Carolina mountain counties were dry. You could have a hopping good time at Burrells most any night. In my years before motorcycle we'd hitchhike up to Burrells Place on a Friday evening, drink all night in preparation to a weekend of climbing up in Pisgah National Forest on Looking Glass or The Courthouse or any of the then uncrowded rock. Mrs Burrell would always find us a ride going up 107 towards Cashiers. Most times these accommodating folks would dump us out at Whitesides, or up in the Forest and we'd scurry away to bivouac under some rhododendrons prior to trekking up NC 215 to the Parkway.
But, I digress. As we were all riding European twins, mostly Axis models save for the odd Norton or Triumph boy, gas could be a problem, see, Morgan knew his bikes, and he had spent four years in Europe killin' them sons-a-bitches, havin' them shoot at him, and he was bound and damned determined not to sell gas into any damn kraut tank, and that went for them frickin' Italian jobs too, though I got gas for the Guzzi for awhile until Buddy Konect told Morgan it wasn't one a them Italian Harleys at all, but a genuwine Mussolini police bike, and it wasn't, it was a early production run V-7 Sport, which, if you check into it, you will realize was the first factory Café Racer, predating the vaunted R90S by months.
While I continue to digress this does bring us back to the R90S and the basis of this story. We, Larry & I, had spent a long day at the gas station and were in need of a relaxing ride & a bit of libation. We had been fawning over the R90S all day, setting valves, trying different ignition advance settings, tuning Dellortos and doing butt-dyno plug cut runs down the highway in front of our gas station to check it all out. Doesn't everybody? In between bouts of denying such activity to Officer Bouknight we thought the old girl was pretty happy. The main cause of all this merriment was the successful installation of the newly arrived and swiss-cheesed flywheel. All the way from California. There was something to be said for standing in the parking lot of the gas station, coins in hand at the pay phone, talking with Reg Pridmore in Goleta about the weather in the South Carolina mountains. No, we did not think we were cool & hooked up. We knew it.
So, when they closed the bar at Burrells that night & Mrs Burrell said we had to go home because we had to go to work in the morning, it just didn't set well. That and Joey Cooper had been running his mouth all night about how light and quick that damn Kawa Mach III with all that fancy English fiberglass was. So naturally we had to get a 12 pack-to-go and wandered down to the Winding Staircase Falls straightaway, the only straight bit of highway up in those mountains for 20 miles in any direction, and it was on the way home. We tended to obey Mrs Burrell and attempt to stay on her good side, not that she had a bad side, she was just so nice you wanted to do good by her.
So, after the beer was gone, and there was nothing left to smoke, and Joey was still running his mouth, we had to have at it. Larry and Joey lined up and I flagged them off. It was difficult for me to see all the way down there and know who won. And neither of them were about to tell the truth. So next race, I went down there and tried to flag them off from the finish line. But it was dark, no moon, maybe misting, I can't remember, but I do know those two were still in disagreement about who had left the line early. Providence arrived in the form of, I think David, or maybe LeAnn, now we had a starter and a finisher. Lined up, Larry was determined to get a great launch on the still damp surface. Not to have worried, when he dumped that single element dry plate clutch onto that light flywheel, it hooked up like two weasels with a most satisfying thunk, and the bike never moved. That was how Larry and I first learned about single application bolts and how they are stretched during their initial application and not meant to be used again, except by South Carolina rednecks who want to save five bucks after spending several hundred getting a flywheel lightened and balanced in California. Being good South Carolina rednecks, we pushed the R90S over in the bushes, went home and got the sleep Mrs. Burrell had told us to and came back the next day and retrieved the R90S from the side of the road, after having put in a call to the only BMW shop in South Carolina for some new flywheel bolts, from the pay phone in the parking lot of the gas station.
Submitted 4/26/05 by Mark Wishart
The guy I raced was Joel Garrett. Allgood and I had bumped into him earlier in the afternoon and he challenged both of us. I said we'd be at Burrells, but wanted no part of it. Allgood, however was all over it. Joel's bike was a good deal faster than Cooper's it was a 750 MKIII Kaw that was punched out to 810 cc with a special long swinging arm just for drag racing and also had the end all be all expansion chambers.
At the end of the evening, before Burrells had closed, Allgood came over to me "We" were on the way down to drag that mouthy fucker Joel and I said I wanted NO part of it. I stayed for a while longer and then left on the R90 headed back to Karen's trailer. As I pulled up to the Winding Stairs road there were people everywhere and cars parked all over; quite an impressive crowd over a hundred people I'd bet. Tom ran up and was BEGGING me to race Joel as he said Joel was barely able to beat him and I should be able to leave him for dead if I did it right. I said OK, let me do a practice run and I did. The front end stayed in the air through the first three gears and ran as well or better than it ever had. I turned around and went back to the starting line and lined up with Joel. Somebody flagged us off, and same thing, rear wheel spinning and front end carried through three gears of slam shifting. I beat the fuck out of him, but the flywheel twisted off the crank as I coasted through the finish, but WELL ahead of Garrett's bike. I mean well ahead of him. His contention was that he won because I broke, which of course is bullshit, 'cause as anybody who ever attended a drag race knows, it's who crosses the finish line first who wins, no matter which direction or in what shape you are in. The bike was left in the ditch for the night and retrieved the next morning in someone's pickup. But originally it was Nogood who was stirring all the shit and I swore I'd have none of it.
What caused the break down was when I was installing the flywheel up at the BMW shop in Brevard NC, the shop owner told me to put something like 70 ft.lb. of torque on the flywheel bolts. I said the factory manual says 54 to 56 ft.lb. or something to that effect. He said who's the factory trained mechanic here, you or me? He was correct if the bike had been produced a year later, cause the factory went from 10mm fine thread 1.25 thread to a coarse thread 11mm bolt that did indeed take 70 ft.lbs. of torque. I distinctly remember the bolts stretching as I applied the torque. If you recall I had to get Lyle help me get the bolts out and call good ole Reg and order another flywheel. The old one is still handing on the wall of David's shop. I don't know If I ever told you, but a couple of years later when I was living up on Main Street Reg got tired of me asking so many questions, and one day on the phone he asked me if I had some time and a pencil and paper. Course I answered yes and he said I'm going to tell you everything I know about building a Boxer engine and he did. He was a truly swell guy and I hope to meet him someday to let him know how much I respected him and appreciated all his help.
Addendum and corrections submitted 6/1/06 by Larry Addis