echappist

funny, i went looking for the Simpsons clip when he mentioned Clown college. Too bad i couldn't find those clips
or rather, still attending. ugh...
oh you so sly
dude, i ain't fancy. I'm just a petit bourgeois.
Parking cost $20 for two hours in Georgetown; that's almost NYC prices. I don't usually dare to set foot in the shops there.
I'd like to go on the record and say that MDCatV is a no-fun teetotaler; at least that's the image he'd like to project. I offered him a beer (Dogfish Head) after his hardest race and he turned me down. Can you believe this guy?

All jest aside, it's more that i can't get up early enough to get out to the boonies. I told Jsut that i'll drive him to skyline when he gets here. Of course, you are invited, and oh, there's beer at the end of the ride to reward you for climbing hills

big john

Our road club made a rule banning e-bikes from club rides. Not sure why, one guy was hanging around but he wasn't dangerous, just annoying.
A friend demo rode a e-recumbent trike, said he was able to go 23-25 mph up some of the local climbs that have me in single digits.

Racer Ex 

The guy who bought my old TZ250 put the motor in a shifter cart. Given that the thing didn't make any power until it hit 8500 RPM and shot the front wheel to the sky and shut off at 12,500, that had to be exciting.

Nice onboard cam of a guy doing a pretty good job on one:


GSXR 1000 trying to chase down a TZ 250:

rkwaki

I can't believe Jens held such great composure...
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/q-an...8-tour-samples


Should probably be 217...

hammy56

I sold a few 250 motors and a handful of modified cylinders to a few kart guys, helped them with tuning info,etc.

Fat Boy

I've never driven a 250 kart, but I had a friend with an old YZ250 kart. It was stupid. You had to be really careful driving it and if you hosed the rear tires off of a slow corner, you were finished. The tires would just never recover until you parked the thing for a while and let them cool off.

My fastest kart was a 125 that made about 42HP. It would come on around 10k and run to about 14.2k. It was a dedicated kart engine and prohibitively expensive. Some of the piston port direct drive engines can spin to ~19k. Crazy.

Fat Boy

It was just a guy trying to get his goat and he pretty much succeeded. I have no reason to suspect that J.V. wasn't dirty as hell through his early career. It's just a bit silly to bring all this stuff up now if you ask me.

It's like someone doing a huge expose' on Indurain. Ummmm, ya, he doped...get over it.

hammy56

stinkwheels ftw.

furiousferret

My opinion of him wouldn't change if he did. Back then, my guess is anyone not willing to play ball was shown the door real quick.

shovelhd

The last time I raced the Salem Witches Cup there was a TZ250 in full yellow and black leading the field.

echappist

Composure? I'm not so sure. He's accusing the journalist of being in cahoots with Murdoch's tabloid papers. His reasoning: you say i'm a cyclist who has dealt with Bjarnes and Johan, and therefore i'm suspect; fine, you are morally suspect because you are a journalist whose industry happen to include Murdoch's media empire. What sort of logic is that?

Also, this is the guy who was in the winning two-man break with a doped up Vino in the doper's classic and someone who is somehow is staying forever young... People give him way too easy a pass

jsutkeepspining

It cuz we love us some jens

hammy56

like.
this is the last one I had (Honda RS250). Sold it in 08

Creakyknees

looks like txbra.org got taken down again

Creakyknees

man you are really good at multi-quoting... I never figured that one out

misterwaterfall

Damn you guys love your 2 smokes. Way too much maintenance for me but I bet racing a GP bike is awesome. I'll stick to racing my 600

echappist

aww thanks. the "Multi-quote this message" tool allows you to multi-quote up to 5 quotes at a time, from up to five different threads. After that the BF software goes berserk and can't handle it. You basically have to type up all your replies, hit select all and copy, and the next part is where it gets tricky. You have to go to another thread go to reply with quote/go advanced to clear the "cache" of the previous 5 quotes. Then you go back to the first thread, keep on multi-quoting and then paste in your original responses. Real pain at times

Fat Boy

Nice bike. Growing up sucks. The road-race guys with 250 superkarts still run RS's, I believe.
==================

A long time ago I was with a team shaking down a car at Willow Springs. We were there on a day where there was a kart club and they would work us in here and there so that we could do whatever it was we were doing. Anyway, when we were waiting to get on track at some point I was watching one of the open sessions. There was 1 guy that was clearly head and shoulders above the pack. Turn 9 at 'Big Willow' is a _serious_ corner and this guy was taking it flat and using every bit of track every lap. His line was perfect and his repeatability was uncanny. It was just driving you don't see often at all and seeing it at some random odd-ball track mid-week with someone in a kart just doesn't happen.

When the guy came in I had to see who it was. The hand-controls gave it away...Wayne Rainey. All questions answered.

Creakyknees

Steve Tilford does not tolerate intolerance.

https://stevetilford.com/2013/12/16/intolerance/

hammy56

if you'd ever done some laps on a properly tuned 250…

and among other benefits, they were made to be worked on, and they crashed well. Unlike a lot of the 4 strokes that when crashed they were junk. And a relative nightmare to work on, especially at the track when in a rush.

shovelhd

Hammy...sick. Must have sounded awesome.

hammy56

thanks shovel…and yes, watching/hearing the onboard video posted above brings back good memories. Sounds, smells, empty wallets, sleepless drives across multiple states, broken bones, etc.

the first pic I posted above was the last time I rode a motorcycle. I had a weird feeling that day that came out of nowhere. I went home and sold it. No regrets.

carpediemracing 

Just got my -32 degree 14.5 cm stem on the bike. Position is great until I get off the bike and look at it. Then it looks ridiculous.

Racer Ex 

Drool.

I need to scan some of my old TZ pics. I have a great shot of me leading Dave Sadowski at Infinion (Sears Point) while he's going way sideways.

They hadn't gone to the perimeter frames yet, mine was still steel tubing. Old school forks Etc. Tires were probably half the width. The big modern feature was a centrifugal governer actuated variable exhaust port, which added around 1500 RPM of power band.

I look at what guys can do on the modern stuff and think about how quickly we would have been on our ass. That said it was a great "point and shoot" bike against it's peers and would turn laps close to as faster or faster than open bikes depending on the track.

EDR used to race karts when Rainey was doing the same. He asked him how he could drive them because he (EDR) drove based on the sensations of the cart underneath him (Rainey was an former 500 GP World Champ who was paralyzed from the waist down). Rainey told him he basically drove it like a video game.

aaronmcd

Holy long dangly stem, Batman!