Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

JIM BELLAND Non-resident Harley Genius. by Dave Schoonmaker When most people think of a tuner or mechanic, the mind conjures up images of a slightly scruffy-looking fellow, grease under his fingernails, constantly getting his hands into an engine. In truth, most of the tuners for the top AMA Experts are employed by a shop doing some kind of specialjzed mechanical work. Jim Belland, tuner for Mark Brelsford, the Grand National Champion, is an excep tion to all preconceptions. Preparing bikes for Mark and Scott Brelsford is Jim's hobby. He does it in his spare time, i.e.,. weekends and evenings. That is, on evenings when he isn't attending a PTA meeting with his wife, Wanda, or taking his four chi)dren horseback riding in the hills behind their home. Jim is employed full-time (for the last 15 • years) as a salesman at Dudley Perkins' - Harley-Davidson in the Bay area. He works there Tuesday through Saturday, with occassional Saturday's off to travel to Nationals with Mark and Scott. This year he has taken his two weeks of vacation out in Saturdays to travel to Nationals. On Sunday night he flies home and rebuilds both the brothers' engines on Monday. Jim has been involved with motorcycles ever since he got his first Harley when he was 18. Two years later he went to work for the elder Perkins. At that time he was involved in drag racing cars and traveled the drag racing circuit with some success as a driver. He became in teres ted in the drag Harleys and began to help out with preparaUon of the bikes. Then, in 1962, he started going out to Champion Speedway with the Perkins gang. One night, Mert Lawwill crashed and tore up his bike fairly badly. Jim jumped in and managed to piece it together for Mert, with the eventual result that Mert took the Main. From that night on, they started to work more and more together and Jim got his start in "Class C" racing. Jim has a natural genius with mechanical things. His shop, which is in his garage, has as a central fixture a drafting board from which much of the technology now found in Harley factory racers has come. Probably the biggest goal of Lawwill and Belland in the early sixties was to win against the locals at Ascot in Gardena, California. Jim says that this was probably more cen tral in their minds than the Grand National Ch ampionship. To do this, Jim developed the swing arm frame for Mert's dirt tracker. He got in to suspension tuning and weight transfer, to an incredible level of sophistication. He used suspension and frame geometry to transfer weight to the front wheel for cornering and get it back to the rear wheel for acceleration. Needless to say, it worked. They won at , Ascot and Mert wen t on to become the Grand National Champion. About 1965, Jim got to know Bart Markel and began to assist him with bike preparation. Bart spen t four months living with Jim and Wanda get~g set up, then headed out on the CIrCUIt. At that time Jim didn't travel with Bart or Mert but did their engines on a rotation arrangemen t whereby they shipped them back to San Francisco in a crate. Jim has a collection of broken parts from Bart's bikes that he is very proud of. "The engines would come back with the rods four-thousandths elongated just because of how hard Bart used them." In the later sixties, Mark Brelsford started riding for Mert Lawwill through Perkins H-D. Mert always did a lot of his own turning and put Mark on his spare machine. Mark moved up through the Novice and Junior ranks and soon was competing with Mert. There were some obvious deficiencies in this arrangemen t and Mark as ked Jim Belland to be his tuner as a full-time thing, rather than the partial arrangement with Mert. Jim and Mark got along well, anyway, and Jim decided to accept. During the first year, Jim did it completely as a gesture of friendship and Mark didn't pay him a thing. Those were really hard times for H-D with the "i'nterim" engine and Jim nearly· dreaded every race. He didn't travel with Mark, but every Sunday night Mark would call and tell of another breakdown. "I still feel bad today that I couldn't get those things Ito stay together." No one else .could keep them together either, though. "I always felt that maybe if I'd been there, we might have kept it running." The.next year Jim got them running a little better and Mark offered twenty percent of his winnings. Mark: "He really didn't want to accept any of the money and I practically had to force him to take it." Many people feel that both Scott and Mark Brelsford have an incredible advantage, being Harley factory riders. When it comes down to it, it's not the factory at all that keeps them running, but Jim Belland. Jim could make a list pages long of things that he's done to the XR. He has sold frames to the factory and he and his wife are personal friends of the O'Briens (Dick O'Brien is H-D's team honcho.) which has done a lot for Jim's parts service. Actually, the factory has been trying to get him tv go to work in Milwaukee for years, but Jim wants to keep his family in the San Francisco area. He has a beautiful house, which he has built a large extent himself, and is generally too involved in the welfare of his family to go professional. "I'm not really sure 1 would want to do this as an occupation," Jim commented. "Having it as a sideline and hobby is really preferable." Preparing bikes for the top Expert and top Junior on the AMA National circuit is not exactly what most people would consider a relaxing hobby plus holding a five day a week job and being a family man, too. Jim doesn't exactly classify it as relaxing, but tilt's part of my life; I enjoy it. Some weeks J work in the shop every night until one or two A.M., get up at seven A.M. and go to Perkins', come back at six P.M . .and back into the shop. Wanda is fantastic. This is just part of my life which she has accepted. It also helps that she really likes Mark and Scott." From Mark: "Wanda is amazing. Sometimes we have stayed up all night two nights in a row, and she will stay up with us, bringing us coffee and doughnuts." This year, the man who prepared bikes for the two HNumber Ones" didn't have mechanical failure which caused either Brelsford to lose a race. There was one defective can rod early in the year but, fortunately, that race was rained out. That is an incredible record. Jim doesn't just maintain the bikes, he improves them. He makes changes in frame geometry according to the weights of Brelsfords and according to their riding styles. "Mark likes his bike short, almost to the point of causing a constant wobble. It probably would wobble with any other rider." From Mark: "Jim comes up to me and says, 'Maybe half a degree less rake.', and I say 'OK', and it works. My bike is known to be the best handler in "Class C" racing." ,; o Z (J) ;t w Z (Please turn to pag,. 22) _K a·G_ lIIIII.engineering _ .. FRAME MODIFICATIONS Production pric' now available for Yamaha DT·1. RT-1. CT·1. AT-1 & Suzuki 400 & Hodaka 100 Other makes & models altered per your specs at slightly higher cost 2353 San Fernando Rd. P.O. Box 65735 Los Angeles. Calif. 90065 (213) 222·8778 *********************** • • • • • • .. • • • • • • . • .. • . · . · · · · .. · .. : .. .. • • .. 7241 Orang.thorp. Buena Park, CA 90621 • • •• .'.... ~ .. . .. Let's have an American World Champion. Join the American Motocross Team a"nd receive this beautiful multi-color team patch for a 55 (or more contribution to .American MotOC?ros~ Team, Box 3276, Hollywood, California. . .. : • .. • .- .~********~.***~********* ~~'0~ SMuRLER A complete travel trailer designed to carry 5 bikes. 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