Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

MASTER OF MECHANICS· DICK u o ~ w Z W ..J U >U riI =--- by Jack Mangus AMA 1968 GRAND NATIONAL CHAMPION CHIEF MECHANIC DICK BENDER "This is the highest award a mechanic in the motorsport field can receive, the Master of Mechanics T~ophy stands as a tribute to all m~chanics, who seldom have the opportunity to share in the prestige and glory of the winner. rt has become an accepted custom for the winning driver to receive the trophy, kiss the queen, be interviewed by the press and admired by everyone. This trophy is an inspiration to every mechanic and gives special recognition to the Master ,of Mechanics for his all important contribution to the winning machine. It is the hope of the P.A. Sturtevant Co. that mechanics will someday share an equal position with drivers, and we hope to make mechanics immortal by symbolizing them with an instrument of their trade, TIlE TORQUE WRENCII." -- . The above is the inscription on the sole trophy in Dick Bender's home in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Bender, now working as a sales ~epresentatjve for Rose Cycle Distributing, won the award by wrenching for the 1968 Number One Cary Nixon. Four years later Cycle News spent several hours with Dick reminiscing about those years and the years before and after. ' "My first experience with the mechanical world was at the age of 13 when 1 started buying old junkers and rebuilding them just for something to do. I was about 15 when I bought my first motorcycle it was a basket case and my father told me r could keep it if I could get it running. Well, he reneged on that promise after I got it together. "About the age of 18 I had convinced everybody that I knew what I was doing so I started scrambling and learning to be a mechanic the hard way. i had to do all my own engine work - you know, things like tearing them down and then rebuilding them. In about 1962 or '63 Triumph came out with their unit cqnstruction job. I was living in a small town in Connecticut and the riders around there couldn't keep the new Triumphs in time so I Was getting a lot of work in the area. The Triumph road man for that area, Dan Sollenberger, finally came to my house and told me I was hurting the dealers' business and rhat I'd have to quit moonlighting on their bikes. Well, I just told him to go to hell." Three or four mon ths later Bender was on the receiving end of a phone call from Rod Coates, Triumph's Service Manager, offering him a job with the Triumph Corporation in Baltimore. "f went down there to talk to Rod and he told me how exciting it would be, but when we got to the money part he offered me about $-100 a week to start. Well, I fell out of my chair and my wife, Barbara, almost crashed too. I went back to Connecticut after turning down the job offer. I was making at least twice that much what with my regular job for an auto house and my moonlighting. That winter my project Was rebuilding a Bay City crane from the tractor all the way up to replacinlt the pulleys on the crane and I'd about finished it. I remember taking my coveralls off and throwing them into a corner and they just stood there, so you could say I was really anxious at that time to change my position. Anyway, about a month later Rod called me back and offered me· a better figure and I Was on my way to Baltimore." Bender's arrival in Baltimore coincided with Cary Nixon's arrival and the two started a rider·mechanic relationship that saw them become close friends and eventually led to both of t1iem reaching the pinnacle of their chosen professions. "Shortly after I arrived there I met Nixon and onc weekend I went to a race with him, I think it was Williams Grove in Pennyslvania, and immediately I thought, ') don't like this little red headed s.o.b.,' but anyway it turned out that we got along real good. He didn't try to mind my business and I didn't mind his. I let him do his thing and he let me do mine and things just worked 'out pretty good. HI was working as a mechanic," Bender continues, "in Triumph's Service Departmen t. \"'e were there -to solve dealers' problems. Things that the local dealers couldn't fix or put a finger on. Usually it was some minor problem caused by somebody just overlooking some little thing but occasionally it was a major that caused us a lot of grief. "Basically that year I just hit the races with Nixon in the Pennsylvania and Maryland area because my immediate supervisor was a real - well, let's just say if I wasn't at work at 8 a.m. Monday morning he'd let me know about it. Like say I'd driven all night long from a Santa Fe in Chicago to get to work at 8 and I'd be sO damned tired I couldn't see straight. All the race work was on my own time and I was told that the big boss didn't like employees going to the races but I never questioned anybody but my immediate supervisor. " The man who hired Bender, Rod Coates, was the man who turned Dick's talents towards the racing division. "[ think it was the Springfield weekend in '65 when Rod came up to me and asked why I didn't want to go to the race. Anyway, [ told him that I had the feeling that) was unwelcome. Well, from that point on Rod Coates went with me all the way. He sent me to races and i got paid for doing it and for the next four years I guess 60 percent of my time was pent going to races with Gary and then later both Nixon and Chuck Palmgren." We asked Dick what Was his biggest moment during those years and he quickly answered, "That was in '68 when the factory put together an effort and sen t over some exotic road racers which in the first day of practice at Daytona four of them expired, as the Englishmen say. They suffered from all kinds of diseases like rods hanging out the bottom and stuff like that. I was working on Buddy Elmore's bike at Daytona and Buddy was really disgusted, particularly after he time trialed at under 125 which meant he'd have to start in the back of the grid. ) started to work on his bike after time trials on Thursday and despite a lot of harassment from the Triumph people I just sat outside 'the little shop Triumph had and did my thing. Like, 1 just sat there in the sand, washing parts in gas in a little bucket I'd bought and finally finished it up at 2 a.m. Sunday morning. The only guy who gave..me any moral support was Doug Hele. "Sunday, B.uddy was so dejected he didn't even want to ride, but halfway through the race he had worked his way up from the back of the pack to the point where he passed Nixon and took the lead, and 'at that point I was really jazzed. I've never seen anyone as happy as Elmore Was after winning that ,; . ;:~ :~.r· ,:' .: :';'¥- ..;'..; ' ~ race. Like Doug Hele had cOme over with that bike from England and was badmouthed by the California and East Coast Triumph team, the BSA team, just everybody. And like the BSA's had flown apart like a $2 suitcase - yeah, [ guess that was my biggest moment, seeing Buddy win Daytona. And to top it off when we got back to Baltimore my immediate supervisor wouldn't talk to me for two weeks because he thought we had cheated. He had built Nixon's bike and done a good job, but Nixon had a flat tire so the win was Buddy's and mine." The following year saw Nixon win Daytona with Buddy taking second on which Bender commented, "The English sent over motorcycles that were really ready. They ran within two miles an hour of each other Nixon, Elmore, Dick Hammer, Larry Palmgren and Eddie Mulder. Eddie Was too big, he couldn't tuck in behind the fairing, and LaITy was a dirt tracker who really never has cared for road racing. Buddy chased Nixon but never could catch him: That was the year Hammer and Nixon diced most of the race until Hammer did one of his spectaculars in the first turn." Through the seven or eight years Bender worked with Triumph racing is what kep t him going, ") t gets in your blood. You can't pay a man enough money to go and do what you do at a race track. He has to want to do it - say, now, if Nixon came up to me and said, 'I'll pay you whatever you want to do my work and help me' -I couldn't put a figure on it. J'd have to do it because I wanted to - you just ean't pay a man enough to have himjustdoing it as ajob." Those close to the sport know of the many hours a mechanic and many riders, spend rebuilding their equipment. "Many nights you'd be in some strange town at a dealer's shop working all nigh t on a bike and when you finished up what you had to do you'd just crawl up on a work bench and go to sleep. J've seen Neil Keen fall asleep righ t on a concrete floor while people -were still working on bikes. You'd have to step over him and the reason he'd be sleeping on that floor was that he didn't have enough energy left to go home or back to his motel. On top of the long nigh ts was the fact that probably the next day you had a National and with only a couple hours of sleep you'd go at it all day." Bender continued on about the love of the sport affecting those deeply involved in it by adding, "You can look at the guys who are still out there doing it after a lot of years have passed and see that involvement. A guy like Dick Mann - he's dedicated to racing because he knows he wouldn't want to do anything on the outside or rather let me say racing is the thing he knows he's the best at. Bugs tried to he a manufacturer's puppet, and I don't know why it didn't work out but he just had to be racing full time. I t's in his blood. "Here in Dixie you have guys like Powe.lI Hassell, who worked for Harley and now owns H-D of Atlanta, who has been at racing all his life. They opened up a can of castor oil and there Powell was. You have to love it and people like Powell, Bugs, the Markels and Nixons, well, there are hundreds of guys that just love it and don't want another way of life. "Some guys get burned out," Bender continued, "like Nick, who traveled with Romero and got Burrito the number one plate, he was getting a lot of pressure from the 'home front and just had to drop out. But guys like Nick, well, Burrito trusted him, had absolute faith in anything Nick did on a bike. 1 think Nixon, Chuck, Fisher and the 'others had that faith in me - like they could go out on a mile track and not worry about anything falling off. Dick Mann will never really trust anyone. He'll always watch or check every th ing that somebody else did to the machine he's got to ride. Mann is a real good mechanic, probably the best engine builder there is, really. Nixon is another racer that knows what's going on in the engine department. Freddie Nix always suffered because he really didn't know anything about his bike. If it didn't run right he'd have to push it back into the tru.ck unless someone Was there to help him." When Dick was questioned about the growing "art" of cutting tires, he answered with, "It takes a hell of a lot of skill. You can ruin a tire quicker than a heartbeat. Coodyear's Bill Robinson has forgotten more about tires than I'll ever know and he says you're wasting your time cutting them. He says the answer is working with tire pressure. I watched him work at the Atlanta mile with Castro and just by changing pressure he had the tire working several different ways. So although I don't go along with Bill a hundred percent, I'd say he probably is righ t." The years spent traveling with the Nixons, Elmores, PaImgrens, Fishers, etc., were years of pressure as all of those riders were covering the National circuit, and while racing is racing, the pressure brough t in those involved in the chase of the title, "Crand National Champion," is perhaps known only by those directly participating. "Yea, there were high points, and low points like Nixon taking the ", .,1 . .; . ,. ~

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