Cycle News

VOL. 55 ISSUE 35 SEPTEMBER 5, 2018 P109 Long still has memories of hitting the track at Mosport 40 years ago. "As far as that Mosport race goes, the main thing I remember is how much I hated the BMW that weekend," laughed John Long when asked about his victory in the first-ever Canadian Superbike race at Mosport 40 years ago, aboard the now-legendary G.S. Tuning BMW R90S flat twin. "No matter what we did, we couldn't get down a straight without a big weave," explained the Florida native, still active in racing with his son. "I decided I couldn't win that race, because I couldn't go down the back straight wide open. I thought I had the corners covered pretty well, I had raced there a num- ber of times, but that weave was a real problem." No one knew about a superbike race at Mosport until the pre-entry forms arrived in the mail. The class was growing fast in the U.S., but there were hardly any actual modi- fied superbikes north of the border. Contrasting with the mostly stock "superbikes" entered in Canada's first Superbike race, on Long's BMW, there was almost nothing stock on the white-with-motorsport- striped R90S that he brought straight from Laguna to Mosport. The frame was modified and braced, the shaft-drive-containing swingarm was heavily reworked, and shocks were specifically built at Koni. The engine was a wonder, with reworked inlet ports for the Dell'Orto Carbs and huge efforts to keep the powerplant narrow for ground clearance. Heads held two plugs per cylinder, with a Bosch total-loss CDI (rare) and four coils. Pistons were by Venolia, cams by Crane, and the intake valves sourced from a Chrysler Hemi. The main talking point of the big, bad BeeMm was the front forks, complete with standard era racer- mod alloy Lockheed brakes. The calipers mounted to an anti-dive linkage—a big plus for a bike that struggles not to drag chassis parts and cylinder heads when raced by a Pro like Long. Remember, hardly anyone "hung off" back in the day! A pair of custom rocker arms pivot from outside the axle of the stock, long-travel BMW forks, linked to the lower crown by a ball joint and pushrod originally used in a Cum- mins Diesel truck. The result is level braking at all angles of lean, a goal BMW would eventually chase with their production flat twins. So Long headed to Mosport, a busy drive in just four days, with his AMA Superbike loss fresh in his mind. Once he got to Mosport, however, he was much too busy tuning four separate bikes to worry about what might have been. Now Long was facing a very fast Canadian in Lang Hindle. "I had ridden against Hindle and his Lester Wheels Kawasaki Endur- ance team at a race in Florida; I think we were second behind them," remembers Long. "He was one of those 'Iron man of superbike'-type guys. I think he sometimes had three steering dampers on his Kawasaki!" Hindle was running away with the race on his Kawasaki Z-1, a parts bike built for the race at Action Kawasaki, where Hindle worked as Service Manager. Unfortunately, a coil failure stopped the Kawasaki rider with a lap to go. "Most of that bike was from 1973, and the parts were old!" Long, meanwhile, rode a cau- tious race, mostly by himself just behind Hindle. "It turned out the frame had a big crack in one of the gussets under the tank, it must have happened at Laguna," said Long. "During the race, I experimented—I tried sitting up on the gas cap, sitting as far back as I could get on the seat, locking my elbows, all these things to try and get up that straight-away wide open without a tank slap. "I didn't really know any of the other people in the race, we just got the thing running and went out. It's funny, it was so traumatic; it was the worst ride. I couldn't wait to get off that BMW at Mosport. Before that, most of our year, it had really sur- prised people. After that, I rode it for some new owners; we won the first Battle of the Twins Championship, but it never ran as well as in 1978." Little did Long know at the time, but he made history with that race. That race was the beginning of what would eventually become the Canadian Superbike Cham- pionship. Appropriately enough, the bike that won CSBK race 1 at Mosport this year, during the an- niversary, was another BMW, this one ridden by Ben Young. This story was co-authored by Colin Fraser. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

• Cover