Airhead 247 Podcast: - R90S Daytona 50th Anniversary

It's the Airhead 247 Podcast. The BMW Motorcycle Honors of America present the Airhead 247 Podcast. With members in all 50 states, Canada and across the globe, the BMW MLA invites you to ride and inspire. Learn more about membership benefits including roadside assistance, tire hazard protection, and more at BMWMLA.org. The Airhead 247 Podcast is also brought to you by Boxer 2Vow, supplier of quality OEM and aftermarket parts and specialty tools. And by Barrington Motorworks, offering mail order component repair and in-house mechanical services for vintage and classic BMW motorcycles. On the web at BarringtonMotorworks.com. Now let's get this thing fired up. Hello again everyone, glad to be with you as always. The motorcycle world took notice in 1974 when BMW introduced the R90s. Two years later, the racing world was wide eyed once again when BMW won their first Superbike race at Daytona, that March in the overall championship for 1976. With us today one of the pilots of those Daytona bikes Steve McLaughlin. Steve is joined by Uber Enthusiest, friend of the show, and event organizer for the 50th anniversary celebration of that first win, Robert McIzac. Check out the about section here for a link or visit the BMW MOA website for information and registration for this event. It takes place the weekend of March 6, 2026. And I understand all three original race bikes will be on display at this event and apparently to make a few laps around the track. Before we dig into our chat this week, a reminder, if you've got an original paint survivor bike, drop us a line. Airheads 247 at Hotmail, we'd love to hear about it. Conversely, if your garage holds a modified or custom airhead, we want to hear about that too. Check in with our man Nick Melosi on Instagram at airhead missfits. Questions, comments, suggestions, same contact, airheads 247 at Hotmail, and by the way, if you're tuned in and listening on Apple podcasts and are so inclined, please leave a review of your feedback and engagement. Help keep the train rolling here so don't be shy. As noted, Steve McLaughlin, who won that race at Daytona is with us this week, we've tapped event coordinator Robert McIzac to conduct the interview. So with that, we hope you enjoy this episode remembering when the R90S was king. Breakdowns and roadside rescues there, never fun. But the MOA's towing and tire protection plans can make those a bit easier. Unlike traditional roadside assistance plans that force you to use an unknown call center, or a questionable network of towing providers, the MOA's towing and tire protection allows you to solve the problem by any means necessary. So you can call your favorite towing company, rent a truck and trailer, or use the anonymous book to phone a friend, whatever it takes to get the job done. Once all this is behind you, simply submit your receipts for a refund of your expenses, for a quick and easy reimbursement. Good grief, how easy is that? Coverage for any motorcycle is available for as little as $40 a year and maximum protection with platinum towing and tire protection. Well, that's only $80 a year for MOA members. Find out more and join online at www.org-slash-roadside. With the MOA's towing and tire protection plan, you're sure to ride inspired. Pleased to be joined by Robert MacEysick and Steve McLaughlin. We're going to be talking all about the 50th anniversary of the R90S at Daytona. And Robert, I want to get things started off with you. I'm going to let you drive the discussion and interview with Steve here in a little bit. But before I punt that over to you, let me just ask you about the event itself, where can folks find information and what exactly is going on at the Daytona 50th this year? Well, great to be with you, Darren. Steve, thanks again for joining. Steve and I spent several hours a week together. It is, as you said, the 50th anniversary of BMW's historic racing season in 1976. Steve won the very first AMA Superbike race, which was run at the Daytona Motor Speedway in March of that year. It's Pridmore won the Chanceses and Championship in '76. And Steve, Reg and Gary Fisher finished one, two, three in the Championship Series, which was really a shot her around the world. BMW up to that point had been noted for their touring bikes for the longevity of the equipment they built for their engineering, but certainly not for speed. And that suddenly changed on that very historic day in Daytona. For folks who are interested in it, there are a number of different avenues that they can get to it from. All of the airhead-related Facebook communities have the information available. Each of the clubs that's involved has information available. So the BMW MOA is actually hosting the registration site, and they're doing a great job with that. A shout out to Ted Boyer for putting that together. But the BMW MOA, the BMW RA, the Airheads Club, the vintage BMW motorcycle owned owners, as well as ARMA, the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association. All of these clubs have been involved in putting it together. They all have information available through their publications and through their websites. Wow. Let me just say, Robert, great job, roping everybody in. Very impressive. Well, thanks. And again, we wanted this to be something that really spoke to the clubs and the club's needs and the club's interests. And all of them have been terrific. I would be remiss if I didn't also say that BMW North America has been very involved in putting this together and have been both insightful and have been great in terms of bringing resources to us so that we're able to put on what I think is a really interesting and fascinating experience when we get to March of next year. And let's we forget. Daytona also has tickets on sale. That's the ticket master. That is true. And Steve makes a great point. You know, we started with the clubs to make sure that we were not misreading this, that there really was interest. And we were gratified that there was such a high level of interest. And then we had to work with both Daytona and NASCAR to put the venue together. And so, as you say, Darren, it's a collaboration of many. Well done. All is I'm going to turn the microphone and phone line as it were over to you, Robert, and let you guys chat and reminisce a little bit about this event. Thanks again for taking the time to join us. Well, thanks for putting it together. And of course, ironically, the three of us have an origin story together because I had a chance to meet both of you gentlemen at Todd Trumbor's place in 2023 when we were getting together to celebrate the 100th anniversary of BMW Motorrad. We did it on Todd's farm in the ironically town, a name town of Harley'sville, Pennsylvania. And it was a great event. And Steve was there, Darren, you were there, Udil Kietel was there, a whole series of other people that were instrumental in really helping to frame what turns out to be the second half century of BMW's origin story. But Steve, you and I met there. We had a chance to spend a good bit of time commiserating, trying to stay warm on a very wet, very cold September day in Pennsylvania. And one of the things that I discovered in our conversation was that motor sports came to you very early on. And I love hearing some of your origin stories. I did not know the story about your dad, himself being an AMA hall of fame racer. Can you share a little bit about how racing and how this whole motor had gene got into your world in the beginning? Well, my father became a hall of fame in the AMA only after a lot of people in the AMA died or retired. He took them to court at one time. He founded the first road racing club in North America called the AFM. It was called something else originally in '54. And prior to that, he had formed an AMA club in '47 called the San Gabriel Valley Motorcycle Club. He was an off road racer. And he'd won many off road racers. But his father also raced, but not motorcycles, cars. He'd raced it in the 1922. But I suspect he was actually a mechanic. It was a time when the mechanics, they were two-seaters. They got into the scene. But he was a racing guy. And he ended up coming out. He met some guys called the Dippoma brothers, who were quite big at the end. at the time. And one of them was working for Howard Hughes. And he called my grandfather and said, "Matt, get out here. This crazy guy has got the biggest air force in the world. He needs mechanics." Because my grandfather and my father were both mechanics. And so my father also raised sports cars in the '50s, which is another great bunch of stories about the rich and the crazy. But yeah, so yes, I was brought up around racing. My father first business was his Harley-Davidson dealership in 1947. And then he took a break from that after he had a fight with a man named John Harley. And when I say fight, I mean a punch-up. And so he lost his dealership. And then he went and worked for a man named Von Newman, who was a Porsche and a Porsche from West Coast, Porsche Ferrari. And worked there for a few years. And then he opened his motorcycle dealership that became a motorcycle car dealership, which he ultimately sold in the mid-70s. But so I was brought up of the, he was a BMW dealer. The first BMW I rode, I think was up the 16650. So I can't remember the actual new new generation, but the Earl IV, the only new R60/2. Yeah, I think that's what it was. The old floater down the road. And so I'd already had a little experience with some of the eccentricies of the BMW model. But that became even more apparent what I came to race them in '76. Come back to this mechanic piece because of course many airhead owners today and this podcast is the 247 airhead podcast. So it's dedicated to a specific generation of BMW motorcycles. But many people who own them today fashion themselves to be mechanics. There is a whole community of people who keep these remarkable machines on the road. And there's a stunning percentage of them that were built in West Berlin at the time that are still out there on the road, which is fantastic. But my dad also was a mechanic. He was an Air Force mechanic. He was working on T-51 Mustangs during the Korean War. Your grandfather, the mechanic, and I remember the pictures of those two cedars at Indianapolis where the mechanic had a really important job to keep things running. Your dad had sort of an interesting aviation story too. And it turns out that my dad called motorcycle in two-dimensional flying. Your dad actually was a pilot during what were two, wasn't he? He was a P-38 pilot. Obviously, deficient in some areas or the Germans were just better because on his ninth mission he was shot down over Budapest. But he survived. Basically, he was a canopy only open partially. And he said when he could tell what kind of tree he was going to hit, he just pulled the shoot and it pulled him right through the canopy, broke both his arms. And then he was a guest of the Viermacht for 12 months. And it was really interesting. The great respect he had for the Germans. He said they really didn't treat him badly. Okay, he was an officer. When he came out of the military, he was a major. He'd gone afterwards to the occupation of Japan for a couple of years, whatever it was. He'd met my mother, who was a nurse in Amarillo, Texas, I think. She's a Texan. And he was, I think, when he came back to the States, he had to spend some time in the hostel due to the injuries that he had and the fact that he gained so much weight on the liberty shift that brought him home. I guess they just ate chocolate bars. And he was quite skinny in the prison camp. And he said, understand, they didn't starve me. This was not a camp like the other people were in. We were officers and we didn't have to work. But there was just no food. And he said the German guards were not eating much better than we were. And he said, so we were never furious when they stole the stuff that came from home. We expected it that it would be that way. And he really did some business in Germany after the war. He was not like a lot of people who took a big attitude towards the Germans. And of course, I'm married to a German now. And ironically, so am I. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And further ironic, my dad also was stationed in Amarillo for a time. So there you go. There you go. Well, I know the airbase. I don't remember why he was there, but he met my mother there. I'm going to get back to motorcycles in a minute. But for our audience, one of the things that I was just fascinated to hear was when you talked about your childhood, some of your dad's friends and the fact that he partnered with Ken Miles at one point on some auto racing. And it sounds like people like Dan Gerne and Carol Shelby and James Dean were pretty close to your orbit. Can you share a little bit about that? Well, you had a combination. I mentioned my grandfather had come out to Hollywood to work for Howard Hughes. And he ended up having a career in Hollywood working at the different studios. And he knew a lot of people. But just after the war, there was a golden era of the beginning of the AFM of these road racing because he had all these European road race bikes. The bikes you don't ever hear of anymore, NSU and Horax and the different English bike. But a lot of Italian stuff. My first racing bike was a Ducati. And it was an X-Works 125 that had a five gallon gas tank because it was designed for the Amelia Amelia deep in imagined. I wish like many bikes that I had. This was in the garage somewhere waiting for me to sell my father at one time had 11 northern manxes. We had seven northern manxes and several G50s and a couple of 350 make. He had 11 of these classic bikes that I don't think he can buy for under 50 grand anywhere, the matter of the condition. But we were racers. The next thing came down, go for it. And fortunately, in my time versus his time, there was a four big selection of stuff. You had it one time, 70 or 80 manufacturers in Japan and competing. And the Japanese wave came in and it knocked down the brits and the Europeans. And then the real Europeans came back. Some British guys, you look at the guy who bought trines. There's some of the people who bought some of the other companies have come back. But I've always been in the industry all of my life. And I personally did not want to do retail. And in fact, I didn't even want to be in the motorcycle industry. I studied a business in school and I went into a Ford training program, a management program. But when they wanted me to move to Detroit, California boy that I am born in the same hospital as my father. And it turns out, Mike Baldwin and Pasadena, California. I just couldn't see myself in Detroit, Michigan. Now I'm living in Germany. So what do I know? But I was younger and more opinionated then. And so I went from the Ford training program to Nissan. At that time, it was called Dots. And I was there for the transition and the marketing department. And then later to an advertising agency that was major client was Toyota. As I said, I didn't want to be in the retail business anymore. And so, you know, that's my background story on that. I was not a mechanic, even though at one time, I spent a year working on these Yamaha's. I had to understand why I kept having these failures. I couldn't understand how a race bike couldn't go 50 miles without something breaking. And as it works in racing, generally the mechanics blame in the rider. So I figured, okay, I got to spend at least a year figuring this out. And two strokes were so much more simple than the complicated four strokes. And I had many complicated ones. I had CR 93s, the 125 Honda's. And I had a lot of different very interesting bikes. Again, all of which I wish I had in the barn somewhere. But that was Stan. And you know, this is now. And I'm living my best life so it doesn't really change anything. The fact that we get to talk about it suggests that it's your best life. But sure, but back to the Hollywood people. Yeah, I skipped over that. So dad, in one interim period, he had this thing called imported car service. And it turns out that this was before there were BMW dealers or Mercedes dealers. And a lot of the cars were German. And it turned out that as it is today, richies buy these cars. And of course, in those days, those richies had been to Europe. Well, we ended up having these two brothers show up and they both had Mercedes S.L. One was an SLR, which was just heavy as hell. And the other was the S.L. Of the era. It turned out it was William and Randolph first junior. Bill Ersson Randolph. So, anyway, they turned their sports head of their sports department on it became like dad's personal PR guy. And then they had 300 newspapers. So dad was kind of well known across the country. And they sponsored him in some car city race. But more importantly, he was first an off road racer. And he'd won this race called Catalina. And this was an American Isle of Man, except on dirt, 80% of it was dirt, except this one part through the city. And dad was just, yeah, that's how he started the AFM. He fell in love with the road racing. through the city. So anyway, one of the many Hollywood people, and I must tell you a lot, was James Dean. He actually even came to our house several times. And okay, I was very young at this time. I wouldn't have really clue who he was until later in life. And then he was killed in a Porsche. The dad, the dad was now the head of the service department for Agam Pacific, and they had built this car that James Dean was killed in, driving up to Laguna, Seneca. And I think it was up to Monterey. Yeah, I must be 'cause there's a book of the road to Monterey. And anyway, in the mechanic, the German mechanic worked for Dad and Dad, here was a really funny story. So Dad was a prisoner of war, right? So now he goes to work for John Van Numen and can you imagine what ethnic group John Van Numen comes from? (laughing) Okay, so John Van Numen, he didn't want Volkswagen for obvious reasons, but he had to take it if he wanted Porsche. Why he would want Porsche? Because he was just as big a Nazi as Adolf, a very Porsche, but anyway, that's a side line. So Dad suddenly was a prisoner of war, and now all the mechanics are from Germany, right? They've been brought in, and of course John, who was an escapee, but spoke German, Van Numen, they're all, so Dad comes in every morning and they're all staying in attention, just like in the military, with their hands out for their senior nails to be checked. And I'm sure many of the guys who will listen to this and hear this are like me, they're sons of veterans of World War II. So we were brought up by the majority of the hard asses that survived World War II and the depression, you know, not all, but a great deal of the guys who own these bikes are just like I am there, they're from this group, but it was really, it was really funny, Dad said it was just so, reverse reality, you know, here he'd been a prisoner and there they were showing to make sure they had clean fingernails to start the work day. But so anyway, he made the cover of the newspaper with James Dean and other celebrities from Hollywood and yeah, he met Big Bill France in the early '50s at Seabring and he'd flown down to Seabring with the Hurst in Bob, a famous actor of the time. He had one of these twin tail, I want to say, beachcraft, it was like a commercial airplane at the time and they flew down to Seabring, Dan Whit, it's the co-pilot and hung around with them basically the whole time and that's where I met Big Bill France, which later on turned into another business opportunity because in 1959, Big Bill built a speedway and the AMA wouldn't come to Daytona and they wanted to stay on the beach. And so Big Bill called up my father and he said, look, you found it that in Roe Gracing Club, that kind of European, weirdo club in California. Okay, look, I understand how this international stuff works. So here's some money, go to the FIM and become the FIM affiliate for North America. So quick like a bunny, my father, you know, no grouse grew on his butt. He was gone, next thing you know, we're the FIM of North America for the next 12 or 15 years till we turn it over, a guy named Russ March around the AMA and we used to stamp the licenses, there is a, what is his name? And later, Wes Cooley, you know who Wes Cooley is. Oh yeah, absolutely. His father was the next president of the AFM. It is, you know, again, but all middle industries are sports you can enter, it's all NEPO babies in the majority. Well, it's always funny to me because we have these conversations and I realized there's yet another point of intersection that my dad was in the US Air Force. My father-in-law was drafted into the VARAMOC in sense of the Russian Front and survived the war. My mother and father-in-law, when they met me in high school, when I was in high school, they were reasonably convinced I was the second coming of James Dean and this was not a good thing. I somewhat redeemed myself when I showed up one day on a BMW that at least they recognized that. And so we made progress from there, but it was always very interesting because you're right, very different cultural experiences, very different life experiences between the war and the depression and they thought about things quite differently. And yeah, Hardass kind of describes a lot of what I saw and what I experienced and what I value today in those relationships. Well, I want to pivot into the racing a bit because, you know, your dad raised, you got into racing very young somehow, you wound up in BMW racing. Can you share a little bit about what the transition was that brought you into the BMW world? No, by that time, 76, I had been racing since '63. So it's not like I was a novice, I was an AM expert. The year before I had led the dates on a 200 on a private Yamaha TC750 against the 15 factory bikes that were there from all over the world. Of course, in those days, the dates on a 200 was the biggest race in the world. And I fell off and got up and finished shift, which was really-- It was very mixed, very stop and move, right? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I matched. OK, whatever. I could think of some guys older guys that did stuff like that, but Eddie Cretz, the speak of one or my father. But anyway, it submitted my relationship with some Japanese because they like Macho. Real Macho, reality of a hard man. And so the next year, well, what happened here was-- and this is really a funny story-- that I never understood the complete reality of it until Udo came over here. I was invited-- I think it was a 100 anniversary, maybe-- with BMW at the BMW days at Garmish. And Udo called me up and said, hey, are you going? I said, yes, yes, I want to come. So he flew here, and I live at Frankfurt, which is a great airport and very centrally located. So I said, well, fly here, Udo, and we'll take my car. I have a Mercedes station wagon. We'll drive over and add together and whatever. So we spent a lot of time together on the drive because from my place to there, about four hours, maybe less if you're going super fast. But so we started the talk. And so what happened was, I didn't have a ride. The year before I had ridden the Kawasaki, I think for race crafters. And then I didn't have a ride. And then it was getting really close to the date of the 200. Two weeks before I get a call from Helmut Kern at BMW West, a Butler in Smith West is what it was. And he wanted to know if I would ride for them. And I said, well, what's the deal? And it took a while to negotiate. And we came up with what I considered acceptable. And I showed up at Daytona. Well, Udo tells me later that he had built two bikes for the race. And a third bike was the parts bike. And two weeks before they were to leave New Jersey, he gets a call from Helmut that says we have a third bike. Now, I Udo can maybe explain. I'm not sure even he knows. I don't know how the whole financing of this race deal came together. Helmut Kern, with his marketing guy, also with mechanic Maddie Capri, were very race-oriented. They had backed the reds for several years on. Several different bikes. They built GP bikes for them. They tried to race in the form of what we call form of 750 and so on. And at any rate, so Udo shows up with three bikes. And as they're unloading the bike, as Udo comes out, he's totally shocked. They've never told him who the third rider is, and it's me. And Udo comes out, and he's got a huge bandage on his right arm from about his shoulder past his elbow. And they roll out three bikes, and one bike is all straight up. And my wife of the time, on none of them have numbers. My wife of the time says, guess who's the bike that one is? [LAUGHTER] And sure enough, it turned out, yes, it was that bike, because it was the last thing Udo had. And you can't imagine how difficult it is. Udo really didn't have a lot of help. Todd Schuster could do heavy lifting and all that. And it was a great fabricator. Kenny Augustine, who'd done the cylinder heads and was really help the performance of the engine, that's all he did. He was not a mechanic. He was a low guy. And they didn't really have a lot of extra staff. And in fact, bike I rode every time I got on it for practice, never made one lap until the e-race. Something would fall off. Oil would be spurting out, because it was a last minute deal. And realize that there was Udo who had to take their official and my bike. And there was Helmut Kuhn in his group that took care of Reggie. And Reggie also was a decent mechanic himself. So between him and Helmut, they had it. Fortunately, Matt Capri came over and helped, because Udo was just running around. He was head cut off with all the stuff he had to do. And Reggie and Helmut, they didn't believe in some of the stuff Udo did. They immediately changed the camshafts. They did a lot of stuff. And they didn't accept this single shock concept that Udo had. I sometimes wonder if people can read, because Udo could obviously. And he took advantage of the rulebook. And there was nothing you could do. I spend most of my life racing doing similar. Unlike Smokey Unic, I didn't believe if you ain't cheating, you ain't racing, but pushing the rulebook to the extreme, if you understand how it's written, later on I came to writing the rulebook, and in fact, in Superbike, I wrote the rule. So I had to have the pen, right? Yeah, works. So for the purpose of making it absolutely queer, Udo in this conversation is Udo Giddle. And so prior to working at Butler in Smith and New Jersey, actually had a tie to NASA, he is a brilliant engineer. And you know, in the conversations that I've had with you and he, it's just amazing the stuff that he knows, and it must have been remarkable to be able to talk to him at the time. And I think that's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to have to do something about it. I'm going to do something about it. And I'm going to do something about it. You can follow shop happenings, repairs, bike builds, all of George Thomas' racing exploits on Instagram as well. To schedule your next repair or to find out how George Thomas can help keep your 247 in good order, drop a line or give him a call. It's all there for you at airsupportbmw.com. Boxer 2 Valve delivers a world-class learning experience with William Plam in their downloadable video series. Get tips and tricks from William's 40+ years of motorcycle experience in a format you own. Commercial free, with access, anywhere, anytime. Each video contains content that's applicable to mechanics of any level, whether you're just starting out or have some experience with the Spanners. You'll be able to take away some valuable information to assist you in your project. I know I've mentioned this before, but when I recondition my R90s a few years back, I had these videos on my laptop, on the workbench. I watched each service sequence before digging into the job. These videos gave me the confidence and assistance I needed to get the 90s back into shape and back on the road. You can find the full listing of downloadable videos for purchase at boxer2vav.com. That's the number 2. Boxer2v.com. One of the fascinating things was you had two different configurations just in case there was a problem. They were confident that there would be a problem and they were wrong. We must back up a little bit. Superbike came into existence because of the AFM in the heavyweight production class. There was a journalist named Cook Nielsen and he had this doodcati, now known as Old Blue, and Phil Schilling, quite a clever rascal. Some connections with the factory that he now disclaims, but you never the last. You had helmet with his bikes and you had poppio chamorro. You had me on and off with different bikes for different people. We were hot and heavy racing. And trip cocks, which at this time were big promoters in the AMA circuit, most dirt trucks. They had Carl's bed, Grand Prix, and road racing. They had Laguna Seca. They had seen these races because they ran the races at Riverside and the AFM race to Riverside. They decided one year we should have this at Laguna Seca. But at AMA, now the AMA didn't have these rules. Well, as it turns out at this time, as I had been for several years before, I was on the AMA rules committee. I was the writer representative to the AMA rules committee. So, who would they turn to with somebody who was actually involved with this stuff and had had a little pressure on Laguna? So, and what do you call it? Trip cocks. So, anyway, yeah, we were involved with the original rules and later on what became the final rules at Daytona in '76. I theoretically wrote them with a Hurley Wilvert. We had a thing called Formula One. They had changed the Formula 750 class to the Formula One that allowed four strokes and two strokes. And then we had Superbike. And then we had the rules that were written and they were co-authored by me and Hurley. They were written up by John Ulrich, some people who may not know John Ulrich's. And John came to my house on his first date with his wife and typed the rules up for us. I kind of like the way dates worked out back then. That sounds like a great thing. And you could see on Trudy's face, he was going, "What am I doing with this guy? Are we crazy here?" Anyway, we get sidetracked again. Well, I want to go back to you, Cook-Bielsen, though, because you were there and I wasn't. But as those bikes were sitting there going through their tech inspection, Neilson, who was the editor of Cycle Magazine, does that recall at the time? Yeah, the first opportunity to see those R90Ss and he had one of the more amazing motorsport quotes of all time. Do you remember that one? I don't know, he had many great quotes. So the quote that was attributed to him, I believe, by Kevin Cameron, was that he turned a showing and said, "Well, I can see now that we have fallen well behind on our cheating." Which, of course, it speaks to the fact that rules are written and then people look for those opportunities. And the bikes that were on that starting grid were pretty amazing between Old Blue, which I understand now down at Barber Motorsport, and the 3R90Ss and Mike Baldwin, MotoGuzzi, and a whole bunch of other stuff. And the Yoshimura bikes, I mean, they tried to kill you, but they were just bloody fast. And the truth is, again, the rules were kind of quite wide open. As the years went by, the AMH tried to tighten these rules. But the problem is, you need people to understand what it is. And there's many examples, but we should go on because I think you have a list of questions here. We're doing just fine going on. I wanted to ask you about the pops bike because you bring that up periodically, and I forgot to mention that Yoshimura built some really crazy and fast stuff. But you had some interesting experiences with the handling characteristics, as I recall. Well, that was the Z1. It turned out that pops is bike was exaggerated because he had more power than anybody else. But, you know, I was so lucky to ride in this era when there were people that were tuners. In fact, my first father-in-law, and was a grandfather of my wife actually, shelled to it. He built a dirt track bike, Kenny Roberts, one of the championship on. And I, first, dyno experience was with a man named CR-AXTEL, which is quite famous, West Coast, dirt track, and a dyno guy. And, you know, there were tuners. These were guys who had the feeling, had the knowledge, had the experience. Some of them great technical people. Others are just like pops, just the vibe. You know, he could see it like Adrian knew in Formula One who could see the airflow. He envisions it in his own way. his brain, opso, unbelievable. Truly, he's the only guy I ever rode for that wanted to make horsepower when I did NASK for it. And you rarely find a writer that says, give me more. Not give me more, you know? - Yeah. - The incredible guy, really an incredible guy. Totally kamikaze samurai on the engine. But that was the reality. Many people don't think about this, but those motorcycles with that era, we had been in a hundred years, the 40 horsepower was kind of the deal. You know, they had all these claims, the North and the Mang 75 horsepower blah blah blah. Yeah, never seen a dyno in this, it's at the Piston Ring. But at the rear wheel, 40-ish. And suddenly, the Z1, right out of the box, came with about 65 horsepower. And they complained different numbers, but I had a dyno and I checked these things. The Yamaha, he said 750, pre-tuning and dyno, had about 78, 80 horsepower. They complained about I think 90 or 100. But in that, again, rear wheel, and we used to always say with the Japanese, the horsepower would shrink, you know, they weren't samplerized. So when they had a number in Japan, by the time it got to us, it's fun. (laughing) The truth is the Kawasaki specifically, and remember Kawasaki was not a motorcycle company. You know, Suzuki, old time motorcycle company, Yamaha, historic, more historic than even Honda. Honda, just motorcycle crazy, Mr. Honda, and the people around him. And I was so lucky to meet all those people in my career that started HRC and all these kind of things at Honda. So, you know, his bikes, those bikes, the Kawasaki bikes were really evil. The swing and armpit of the bolt head was put in sloppy. So the swing and arm moved up and down because of the horsepower, the rear shocks locked up because there was only three inches of travel when you needed five and a half or six inches of travel to, you know, when you got on the gas, 'cause now you had better tires and you had a lot more power. So when it locked up, this was the problem with the reason that they got a monochock on the Yamaha TC 750 to second year was because again, three and a half, three and a quarter inches of travel with that horsepower. You got on the gas, the front end started doing a tank slapper. The problem with the Kawasaki is it would do acceleration tank slappers. It would, at high speed, you would suddenly get into a wobble. And a lot of that had to do with the swing and armpit of the bolt being loose and the wheel would move. And, you know, there were things you had to fix on it and pops didn't know that. Pops, Shoshiro Honda, look at these company names, Honda Motor Company, Suzuki Motor Company. They were just pissed off. They had to attach stuff to their motors, right? You know, they didn't know, they didn't care. And most of them thought that's a problem for the riders, you know, don't tell me about it. Just, I'm gonna make the fastest motor and they did. And Pops did. And so, Kawasaki Z1 on his own handled bad. Then you added the coefficient of pops and you add the most evil beast. When I first rode for Pops, was the year we got the Suzuki's. But the first time I rode his bike was at Sears Point. And he wanted, one of the reasons he hired me was to modify his bike because people knew I had fixed the race prep for his bike. That I could fix the Z1. So I got, but I told him, listen, leave the bike alone. We'll use it as the baseline. Let me ride it at Sears Point. And this thing was insane. I came back after practice and I told Pops, the only way we could be cooked is a perfect track for cooks bike. I said, the only way we could be cooked is if I keyboard him in the first corner. Just have to run over him. And fortunately, the Z1's so heavy, you know, I could flatten that new car, he don't worry about it. And I got in such a bad tank flapper on the back in the S's that I came up off the tank and came down on my feet at the two outside spark plugs that went to two cylinders. I broke the top of the two out. And so this day, who's your Mr. Murrow thinks I did this on purpose? Yeah, sure. Look at the video. Yeah, there you go. Well, so, you know, one of the advantages of BMWs was the Udo in team, that Todd Schuster, who's no longer with us, had made them very light. The handling was very good. There were claims about horsepower that might be a little optimistic, but the bikes nevertheless, when you got them on the starting grid, there is a Toyota U-Gary and Ridge, really ran away. You guys had a great race down there, is that recall? Well, yes, it was a very good, Reggie had the fastest bike top in. And Gary, he's trying to use my father race against his dad, known him a dealer like me. Fat Eddie Fisher was a dealer, my father was a dealer. Anyway, yeah, we were having a nice race until unfortunately something happened to the gearbox, I think, on Fisher's bike. No, I think the BMWs, some years later, I had this mechanic when I wrote for you, Mr. Murrow, Navi, what the Navi, great guy. And they were doing some test at Ontario, and I was in the town, so I went out to see their test. They were a little annoyed that I could get in, as it was a private test, but everybody had some pull somewhere. And Navi and I were talking and I said, what did you think when these rather funny looking airplane motors smoked you guys at Daytona? I mean, I can understand, maybe, loud in, but Daytona, how does that make you feel, dude? And so we started talking about it, trying to figure out what it was and what it really was is, I would not be surprised if the BMW was 120 pounds, 130 pounds lighter, and it had a ferry. And one of the advantages of having less power, 'cause I'm not gonna get in the source power discussion, 'cause it was a bit sensitive about it. It's like talking about oil, I get that, let's not. Oh, that's oil, but in this case, Udo, he has his opinion, I have mine, neither the tween shall meet. But the fact of the matter is, when you have less power, you have less stress on the chassis, and you have less upset. And so these bikes, unfortunately, these very bad brakes that they gave us at Daytona, then later caused us to lose to Baldwin, it allowed them, had these advantages. They had an actual ferry, small that it was, but if you looked at them next year, when later on, when we raised the Suzuki's and the Kawasaki's, when, the molotus name came from New Zealand, and one at Daytona, they had a little nose-faring. This makes quite a lot of difference, and I had been lucky enough to have some experience in a wind tunnel, and it just amazing the difference between the flat number plate and a naked bike, and this little nose piece. So this is what allowed us to participate in the same cookie. Cookie had even more ferry than we had. He, I wouldn't be surprised if our bikes might have been lighter than his. The Ducati's are not notoriously, not the lightest thing on the track, and Ducati had been very successful with their suspension, because they didn't have enough power to cause any problems, so they could run the bike rigid. This was long before people understood compression and rebound dampening in motorcycle, obviously they did in cars and motocross, but road racing, this took a while. We're always 20, 30 years behind car racing, and it's just the nature. We were lucky if you were a Californian because we had aerospace, and this is one of the things that made a lot of the car builders build on the West Coast. You had Earl Supply, you could go by titanium by the pound, and you had fabricators from the aerospace business, and, and, and, Carol Shelby, you know, a lot of that stuff, my cousin worked for Shelby, and Shelby was a friend of dad, and, as was these other people, and, and, and Gourney, I actually met, when I thought I did, obviously, too, when he was racing at Riverside, and I think it was about 18 or 19, I might have been 10, maybe, maybe a little younger, met Fanzhou, at Riverside as well, back in the day. We had the US Grand Prix at Riverside, and I think it was early 50s. (laughs) It was a real Grand Prix, but yeah. - Yeah, I love these pictures you shared from your family album of a, of a very, very young Steve, who's maybe graduated to a bicycle at that point, just some of these other people that are surrounding you and your dad, I think those are just great shots. Well, we talk about age, let me do this one thing. - Yeah, so, later on, I got drafted in the Founded American Honda's first road race team, and part of that, part and parcel, that was hiring Freddie Spencer. Now Freddie, when I hired him, was actually 17. He turned 18 at Daytona, and he had raced 12 years. I was 32, and I had raised 17 years. - Yeah, now I started young because my father was controlling the AFM, and he dropped the age limit for riders. Now, many riders, like my lifelong friend Ron Pierce, and many of the friends of mine of my youth, all lied about their age on their AMA licenses, okay? But in my case, I didn't have to because my father just changed the rule. And later on, of course, all those rules fellified and you could be much younger. Randy Mahmola, I think, when he first came to AFM racing, maybe he was 14 at the max. And but I was 15, I think, 1963, whatever that would have been. But I was able to do that. But then later on, as the sport changed and as motorcycle expanded and racing. And that's what you saw when you went to Daytona. So many people, John Long, father, a dealer and a racer. That could just name hundreds like Fisher that were. And in so many of these, we knew each other through dealer functions or social deals. And, yeah. Anyway, sorry, we digress and I'm-- Well, no, but I do think it's kind of amazing because the world clearly has changed. You got a few more laughs around the sun than I do. But I remember the first time I went go kart racing with methanol alcohol, fueled go kart, and somebody lent me one to go out. And I was probably in my early 20s. And on the first turn, a six-year-old ducked underneath me and took off, right? Yeah. Because, of course, he'd been doing it since basically he started walking. And I had a certain weight disadvantage. But, yeah. You realize now, and I look at my own grandchildren, I took them go kart racing the last time I was up at their place in New England. And to see the mechaisik Smith boys out there mixing it up at six and ten years old, not something I was doing. And I think that's a reflection of the changing times. But something you said about the bikes at Udo. And I am going to come back and maybe ask you to just share a little bit about Udo and your experience as post-BMW. But those bikes that you guys built or raised at Daytona, one of the fascinating things to me is it's not like you showed up at the start of the season and you ran the same equipment all the way through. Those bikes changed every week. You mentioned the brakes and the underbrake, underwhelming brakes that you had that were the factory calipers and equipment at Daytona and what happened at Loudon. So can you share a little bit more about the evolution of the bikes and maybe speak to the brakes specifically? Well, starting with the brakes, okay. They were single-sided, much like the Honda CV750 of the time. But the MW, in a very traditional German sense, decided that their customers wouldn't be ready for a totally hydraulic front brake, so they put a cable from the brake to the mass of cylinder. Now, I can understand this two tonic logic, especially being married to a German and having a German son-in-law. I understand this kind of traditional logic, but the problem was the cable stretched. And because of the way it was designed, it was not as adjustable as it would be if we'd had Chiriani brakes or the Yamaha brake or the other ones where we had a big adjuster in it, you could take out the cable stretch. So what happened was, and we told them, "Hey, Tony, you're really only going to have to break a couple of times." This isn't going to work anywhere else. We barely had any brake pads, sure. And they could turn them to go, "What are you talking about? Look at the brake pads." Yeah, because there's no cable you plow. So we all bitched about it. It was not a question. You can't say Reggie didn't bitch about it. He didn't bitch us loud as Fisher and I did. And understand where Fisher had been talking to Yamaha. I had been this. We had done stuff. We were national numbers. Reggie was not one of those things. So we were used to dealing with factories and Helmell was just, "This is the way it is. This is the way it would be." Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then we got allowed, okay, in my case, I had a malfunction and didn't finish the race as it happened at several other races. And they woke up and went, you know, when Baldwin cleaned our trial and with, you know, don't take anything away from Reno Leoni, the motor goods see, and my ballroom, okay. All three of them. It's a local racetrack. They had everything normally going for them. But it wasn't like they couldn't, we couldn't beat them. We just couldn't stop with them. And halfway through the race and a great track. One of my favorites loud, and this was the old loud and pre-naused car. Yeah, yeah. A lot of breaking, a lot of turning and just a fantastic place. And some years later, Baldwin ran out of front of me and I ran over him. Those were Kawasaki, which is probably pretty heavy on them. Anyway, the truth is they recognized that and that led to Laguna Seika. Because in that year, I think we only had four races, maybe. That's right. That's exactly right. Four or five, yeah. Because the end race was at Riverside. And yeah, so we got Lockheed's and so we had dual piston brakes, which is a big step up. We got better discs. And I was lucky. I had started using disc brakes. I think about 67. I had this friend Dan Hannahbrink, who had this company who made weird stuff and one of the things he did. And my father, almost his name Gunter, something Gunter. I'm a very famous dirt track racer. He'd come out with a disc brake, I think in the mid 60s. You know, before the other guys had disc brakes. And this friend of mine, Peter Williams in England, we were all experimenting with disc brakes. And we already had a lot of experience. And of course, the Honda CV750 was the first one with a standard disc brake. That's right. So. Well, you know, I get messages from people swearing that the picture we've got of your bike is wrong because they saw it with the stock calipers at home, or they saw it with a totally exhaust. And as you walk through the bike history, just that year and then later, you see the exhaust turn black at some point and the lock-eat brake sprung up. And all of these other changes so that by the time the bikes actually finished their riverside, they were pretty different than what started at Daytona. And why not? I mean, the truth is, first, the rules were flexible. Okay, actually, in reality, number one, number two. The reason it was was we were developing. Yeah, again, I was very lucky. I was lucky with the Yoshimura's, with the BMW. We were at a time when the mechanics that actually made motorcycle development. And now it's an AI. It's an AI, but even, you know, it was a computer program. How much longer ago? Not long. Everything has become a computer program thing. And yes, the bikes are totally stable. And, you know, all these things are great. For me, part of it's not so much fun. So long ago, it was bikes that my childhood, they were like riding a live animal. And the Harley's with the last one had that. You could get to a certain speed and they wobble. You have to sit in a different location. And, you know, this was part of the rider skill, you know, a skill set. How to defend against the stakes that were built into the bike. And, but, no, the bikes developed as they went. And those who followed it very closely. But you understand, in my case, I was just a fast gun hired in here. There was no great loyal to, I was not an East Coast guy, which is what Fisher's team was. Okay. And I was definitely not the guy from the wife's white west coast that they liked. They just paid me. And it turned out later on we found out that they had heard I was going to go ride for your Shamura. And so this is why Helen would hired me. Not to ride for your Shamura, which of course became deadly a year and a half later. Yeah. When I got on the first of colors, I can then the Z1s, the GS line from specific. So they, they, he was a clever guy, very clever guy. And I have a great deal of sadly, he's not with us any longer. I have a great deal of respect and sadly taught me a nice, a human you would never meet. And the guy who could just about make anything and list about everything, you know, if you had a problem, he'd just pick it up and move it, you know. So I was not involved because Udo is a very exacting person at what he does. Yes he is. And there are certain inputs that he's willing to take from a rider, but not so many. Because he has a vision of where he's going and I can only in retrospect, it was different at the time, have a great deal of respect for what he did. Well, you know, you know, you manage to, I'm presuming accidentally create one of the greatest visions in motorcycle racing history of all time at Laguna Seca. And you and your R90s came apart, shall we say. And we separated for sure, don't be on the ground. To be honest with you, first of all, I had never had a tire that was that strong that would allow me to hinge on the front wheel. Right. Secondly, I just miscalculated how early reds would stop. Now see, remember the disc brakes were new to us and reds really wasn't that experience with the better brakes. He had used the BMW disc brakes, sure, but they were defective vision. And reds by nature was conservative. and I take nothing away from him for being that way. And at this point, he's leading the championship so he's not taking a lot of risk. So he really stopped, my wife said, he couldn't see. So he just stopped really early, but she was kind of difficult person. And so anyway, he stopped right in front of me and I had a choice. Itum, which would definitely not win me any caduce with BMW because they were leading the championship. And Reg and I were not always on the best of terms so it would also look maybe a little tacky. So I said just throughout the break, so it's all what happened and it turns out I did the first stoppy unsuccessfully. It just went and I unfortunately were missing there was I think seven or eight shots that my shimmons had in a sequential order. It literally shows this thing, engine and me dropping to the ground. What you see is the bike upside down and me either sliding or running away. You have to run away from the, get the, to get off the track, not running away from, I ran away from the bike, 'cause for me any bike that's crashed is damaged. I don't need to see it again until it's fixed. But the, the, yeah, the truth is, I do this early stoppy and was not very good at it. I can't do wheelies either. When I saw this picture of Trey Corson doing a wheelie at Goodwood, it just, I was so jealous. I couldn't do, I couldn't do wheelies on a Kawasaki with a 150 horsepower, let alone the BMW. I was glad you cleared that up for me, 'cause I saw your bike doing that wheelie as like, wow, yeah, it was not you, it was Troy. It's Troy and he's just a great guy and very talented. And yeah. So the picture that I was referencing, there is one that many may have seen of your R90S upside down, covering across the ground. And mushrooms got that picture just before it contacted Terra Firmament again. And it is one of those pictures that I just think stands out as sort of iconic from that era. Well, to be honest with you, he had this whole sequence and the funniest thing. I was working for this guy named Mike Goodwin. And Mike Goodwin created a thing called the Super Bowl of Motorcross. And I was his marketing director. And he was a great guy, he would get up a, like a great guy, he was interesting. Anyway, he would get up at four o'clock in the morning. He went to bed like at seven o'clock at night. And he was a big newspaper reader, he had to read all the papers first thing in the morning. And I'm working in getting ready for some Super Cross we were going to do, I think Anna Heimer's up there. And he comes downstairs, 'cause I never went to work for 10 o'clock. He's up at four o'clock in the morning. I shop at 10, it's okay. And this has been Laguna Beach, it's where it's off the floor. And he says, "Have you seen the papers?" And I said, "Well, I don't think it's cyclones." And he said, "Oh no, the LA Times. Look at this." And there was this four shots of me flipping the thing upside down, like it says. But she had seven shots, starting with the thing start to re-wield to lift to me being dumped on the ground. You're only seeing very limited of it. And he's scoured his files and can't find the rest of it. Maybe he sold it to somebody. But nice guy, much in must, can you imagine? - Yeah, absolutely. And we've been in touch with him. So he's one of those people from that era. And I know we're coming up on time, but it has been remarkable because, you're involved in this. Sadly, Gary Fisher is no longer with us, but his daughter Heidi, we anticipate, will be able to join us in Daytona Reg, and his wife, Gigi, will be there. There are a couple of other people who were maybe at that race, but not on BMWs, but race BMWs later. Like Johnny Long is going to be with us. - Terry Clemson. - Terry Clemson. You mentioned Ron Pierce. So there is this magic of getting the bands back together again, which I think is pretty remarkable. And again, for me, my dad bought an R90/6 in 1975. I have a poster in my office that he bought with it, which was of a Daytona Orange R90S, which was just an ungodly amount of money at the time. And when you and Reg and Gary were at that race, when you run it, won a Daytona, that was the talk of the dinner table for a very long time in our house in New Jersey. And so to all of these years later, I have this remarkable opportunity to spend time with you, and the people who were there is gratifying. I will say that after you and Darren and I were in Pennsylvania a couple of years ago for that 100th anniversary event, I decided that if I was ever gonna buy an R90S waiting on it, probably wasn't a great idea. So I shortly after that did manage to acquire one, and it is everybody's brilliant as I'd hoped it would be. But maybe you could just share a little bit as we're getting ready to close out. You and Udo went on a remarkable experience later after BMW. He came to work with you at Honda, right? - Yes, I got tasked by a guy named Dennis McKay. Later on, it turned out a Japanese friend of mine who was the president of Ben RSC had actually gotten the budget together for American Honda race. American Honda didn't have a road race team, and he had directed them to hire me. But for many reasons, we don't have to go into it. I was not love a dead American Honda. It's a long story. And but this was kind of a deal where they were in a difficult situation, and so we all tried to make it work together. And I had to put a team together in a very short period of time. So I really fought for several people, many different mechanics I got, and man, Prompid from Canada, and Joe Beto, and Michael Lesco, and these different guys, and then I knew that I had worked with. And a couple of guys I had worked with, Dennis Zickrick from Colorado. And he was trying to get the guy named Ray Plumley who came later, but couldn't, if it's not Plumley. Yeah, it ain't right. So I called Udo, and I needed to do some chassis work because one of the reasons they hired me was to fix the Honda chassis. If you look at the bike of that era, this production bike, the sharks were not laid down. Right, yeah. It was quite standard. So the IKASON, the president of the NRFC later HRC, he knew that I could fix the chassis. And that's basically what they hired me for. Later on, the next reason was that I was able to hire a Freddy Spencer away from Kawasaki, the Honda people had been trying to do that for six months. And they gave me make or break, do this. And so anyway, I asked Udo, and especially to bring Tottie, because we need a fabricator. I knew fabricator's an LA Plumley of them, but Tottie was a motorcycle guy. I'd worked with him. People don't know I rode their bike, Udo's bikes. The next year in '77, they tone up. We had some problems, but it didn't even right. I had this relationship with him. So I hired him, I wanted him to screw chief to do stuff. But I also was in a kind of funny situation because I was tired to do this. And I had been doing inline overhead cam four strokes for 10 years now with Kawasaki's and the different bikeer eight years, whatever it was. And so where Udo had been this twin guy, not that he was an engineer, I just had different experience. And we were in a big hurry. So it was very difficult for Udo to start with. But after I left, a couple years later, he became the team manager. And he won a lot of championships. It had a really good relationship with the Japanese, much less miracle than I am. But let me give you two quick BMW stories as we finish. I told you my father was a BMW dealer. And we happened to be next to a two or three aviation, aerospace industry companies. And there was a little Italian guy came, spoke good English, but with an Italian accent. And he bought a new BMW every two years. And he would buy this BMW and he would order, and I think I want to say nine gallon, but they had this massive gas tank for this bike. What are the high minifigs? There you go. So he would order the tank when he ordered the bike. And because he was so short, he, and again, he was an aerospace engineer, he made aluminum fabrication with no padding, and did lower the seat height. And so we got to talk and it turned out that he was an Italian talent. And I asked him why did he come to the United States? And he said, "Well, the time I came in the States, the fashion was black, and the color black doesn't work on me." So he was an anti-fashista. And he was just such an interesting guy, you know? Then when we won Daytona on the BMW, what is the name of the famous German radio maker, car radio maker? - Blaupunked? - Anyway. Yeah, I don't think it was Blaupunk. I think it was somebody else. God, I wish I could, my mind, it's not the wine. It's just I'm old. The anyway, the son of the owner was at Daytona that gives me a radio, I had a BMW car to go right in my car. And the guy was really excited to give it to me and everything, but the problem is he came Sunday. But after the race, the BMW related. But this BMW guy, he was so funny, the count. He would come in every two years and buy a bike from us and do it. And I said, "Why do you put the tank on?" And he says, "Because I'd like to ride to Texas, to the border of Texas before I get off." - Yeah. - The bike. I am saying person. But, you know, what can I say, iron butt? My bladder wouldn't last that long. Oh, even when I had a good bladder, it wouldn't last that long. Well, Steve, I really appreciate you spending the time with us today. I know it's late over there, but I want to pass it back to Darren for some final thoughts, but we're really excited about the Daytona event. It's been a labor of love to put this together. I'd be remiss if I didn't call out both Udo and Don Cromholz up in New Hampshire for the work that they've done. They were instrumental in the restoration of Gary Fisher's number 24, which is-- Well, I don't forget Richard Diel, who put it all together. Well, yes, exactly right. So Richard paid for that, and it is in his collection sitting next to Reges F750 out in San Jose, California. You and I managed to talk BMW North America into releasing Reges bike on the provision that Don and Udo would also repair that and get it ready for some track time. And the BMW AG folks in Munich are getting years off the wall, which is an amazing thing in the Zentrum Museum in Munich and getting that over here. And so we're looking forward in March to having those three bikes back together again for the first time, probably in 50 years, and having them on the track down there to help lead some parade laps that the participants will be able to join in. And guys, Eric Lenzman, John Long, Ron Tears, Myself, and a few others. Udo will have no problem talking to you. We got some stories, guys. And we're looking forward to it, Steve. So Darren, thanks again for setting this up. I'll pass this back to you for any final words. Robert, great job getting this together. Steve, thanks for your time and being able to reminisce about this magic time. Cheers, chance. Cheers, good night. Well done, Robert. And Steve sounds like a big time in Daytona coming up this March. It should be a nice contingent of R90Ss at the event as well. That's going to do it for this week until next time, so long, everyone. The Airheads 247 podcast is distributed and produced by From Off Productions. Our producer, engineer, is Jeff Glover. I'm Darren Dorton. Look forward to catching up with you next time.