Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

no~ononononononono~ c: ., --, "' ;: w Z W .J U >- U ~ • T~O 'f £. () ! r ~~ YAMA"fA r limit of 3!~c:!?a~ "', t 'ft ~ with this coupon 24020 NARBONNE AVE., LOMITA, CA. 90717 ~ 0 "SPECIAL OF THE WEEK" COUNTERSHAFT SPROCKETS ALL YAMAHA ENDURO'S & MX'S ~ 0 Phone (213) 534·2311 ~O 'f"t;" 't~" 't~~) 't", fl.O t"&o 1'<; <:) 'tt" 't£c.> "(' l; LESS SOUND MORE GROUNj~ Off Road Vehicle Institute-SD ••••••••••••••••••• : STATEN & PENNZOIL : RIDE TO VICTORY • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • : : • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Now, all over the country riders are discovering Pennzoil and riding to victory. This time, it's Rex Staten in the 250cc su pport category in the TRANS-AMA International Motocross at Saddleback Park, Irvine, Calif. Ask for Pennzoil yourself. It's the one the winners win with. • • • Askabout Pennzoil's complete line of motorcycle oils. • • • • • • • • • • : • ~ Pennzoil 2:Stroke and 4·Stroke Motorcycle Oils for cycles using gas on track. trail or street. Pennzoil Racing Oil for 4-stroke cycles using gas or exotic fuels. • • • • • • • • • • PENNZOIL COMPANY • Oil City, Pennsylvania Western Headquarters:' Los Anqeles. Calif. • • ••••••••••••••••• READ TEST from page II. Motor Cycle Mechanics (Mercury House Publications Limited, 180 Fleet Street, London, EC4, England. Mailing agents for "air speeded" US subscriptions: Air & Sea Freight Inc., P.O. Box 1303, Long Island City, NY, 11101) MCM is a delightful 70 pages of motorcycle magazine whose coverage is very clearly described by its Table of Contents divisions: Technical, Practical, Sport, General and Bike Test. A )It:ar's subscription cost six US dollars. MCM creates a striking i.mpression when you simply scan through the pages without reading them. Its graphical design is totally unlike any American bike book and, at least in some respects, is markedly superior. I t makes effective use of clean, "Popular Science"-style line drawings and diagrams. It is imaginative and very practical and readable in typography, making excellent use of bold·face, italics, titles, subtitles, and reversed (white on black) formats. How·to photos are much smaller than found in American magazines, yet are completely comprehensible ...making you realize how much the domestic books tend simply to "fill space" with their pictures. There is but one sheet (the four center pages of the magazine) of full color yet, by clever layout, this is completely integrated with the preceding and following articles. About a dozen and a half pages are printed with red (besides the'usual black) and this . color is worked in so practically and logically that American magazines look amateurish by comparison. There is a wide and effective use of boxes and borders to organize and present the material. When one realizes how limited MCM is in printing technology - its paper is just a high grade pulp stock, not a glossy, clay-coated magazine stock - the unimaginative, dull, copy-cat design of stateside magazines seems inexcusable. If MCM can accomplish this much with its limited resources, the high·bucks American books should be able to do far better. They don't. The contents are outstanding and have a scope that American magazines never even dream of. For example, there is a "Beginner's Knowhow" feature which simply and clearly explains such basic facts as how a typical dry·sump lubrication system works yet, at the other 'extreme (Aug. and Sept.), there is an extensive mechanical, functional and maintenance description of all major cycle carbs which is by far the best collection of carb information I've ever seen, and which makes the occasional efforts of American magazines along these lines seem pathetic in cQmparison. MCM pays Ll for letters and L5 for the monthly "star" letter, meaning that it encourages sensible reader correspondence. It tries to ans""er technical queries by mail for readers who send a self·addressed, stamped envelope; even so, the technical Q&A's appearing in the magazine are extensiye and very well done ...so extensive, in fact, that they can be arranged by brands. Besides its own "Tricks of the Trade" column on shop hin ts, MCM pays L 2 to readers for the "Hot Tips" which they contribute; this elicits a flood of practical, hard-won information. MCM seems to have several times as many advertisements as typical American monthlies, yet few of these are full-page ads. US readers will boggle at the hundreds of goodies they never even knew existed. Have you ever heard of DAG Heat Dispersant, claimed to improve heat transfer from cooling fins or brake drums by 25%? The British magazine "Bike" was recommended for occasional novelty. MCM is recommended because it is a solid value. Too bad it's not available on American newsstands. Street Choppers (TRM Publications Inc., 731 Melrose Avenue, Placentia, CA 92670) This is the lead paragraph from the November SC article titled "A Mikuni Carl:> for the Sportster": "The Mikuni carl:>uretor is without question one of the best flowing carburetors for motorcycles. Its wide mouth with no butterflies or shaft to disturb air flow enables it to pass more cubic feet of air per minute (CFM) than any other carburetor available for the Sportster. Adapting the larger bore Mikunis to the American twin is becoming common practice. We have already looked at the super large 44mm to the Sportster (sic). Although this is primarily a racing carl:>uretor, its acceptance to the street (sic) was not surprising, due to its versatility. We ran across another Mikuni adaption, more for the street. The 38mm, which is also intended primarily for track use, suits the big V thumper just right." This is the opening to the November "Big Bike" article entitled, "A Mikuni on Your Sportster?": . "Every year, the l:iikers of the world discover a new trick carl:>, that will automatically convert the tamest old FLM pan or xLH into a fire·breathing monster. "You know how it goes, 'Have you tried the Siurper MK 9.5 Penta·Throat? It'll give you a torque curve that goes straight up, nine million horsepower and an e.t. of 9 seconds. Does it on pump gas, too, and you'll get 400 miles out of your peanut tank, too.' SC goes on to praise the 38mm in glowing but perfectly gaue terms, and ends up with the name and address of the place to send your money. "Big Bike" goes on to test the 38mm Mikuni on a dyno. Guess what? The highly tou ted Mikuni ran smoother than the stock Tillotson at low revs, but any place above 3500 RPM it was grossly inferior to the standard carl:>. Incidentally, the merry men of Hi·Torque managed to locate their article on page 38, an ironical twist that mayor may not have been deliberate. This single example captures precisely the editorial style of SC, and of BB, and displays dramatically the enormous difference between the two. SC is written in the same tone as a women's fashion column in a newspaper: This is the latest thing from Paris. Buy! Buy! Buy! The TRM offices, as the TRM magazines never tire of failing to mention, are located in the southeast comer of the AEE building, and AEE ads, naturally, occupy the back cover and inside front cover of SC each month. These are the two most important ad locations in a magazine. The next most important location is the inside back cover, and SC normally devotes this to something called C.C. Industries. By an amazing coincidence, C.C. Industries is located in the unmarked office at the northeast comer of the AEE building. TRM, C.C., and AEE combine to occupy the entire building. Golly gee, isn't it a small world? Supercycle (Magnum/Royal Publications, Inc., 1560 Broadway, New York, NY, 10036) Pulp stock, blurred photos that hurt the eyes, negligible advertising, an i.mpressive list of contnbutors moonlighting from other parts of the motorcycle magazine industry, inferior road tests, and precious little else prove again that somebody's got to be at the bottom of the heap. Transportation Science (Operations Research Society of America, 428 East Preston Street, Baltimore, Maryland, 21202) If you take your street riding seriously this quarterly publication of the Transportation Section of ORSA may interest you. It answers all those questions you've been spending so many sleepless nights worrying about, like "Scheduling and Fleet Routing Models for Transportation Systems", "On-Line Estimation of Traffic Densities from Time·Series of Flow and Speed Data", and "Environmental and Special Costs Impacts of Northeast Corridor Transportation System TechnOlogies". Study up the jargon and blow the mind of the next CHP who stops you for a traffic violation. Listen carefully to what Yasuji Makigarni of the Highway Public CorporatioD of Japan has to say and you can be the first kid on your block able to represent traffic parameters in three dimensions. That's one more di.mension than two! Hea·vy. Motor Cycle World (Countrywide Publications Inc., 222 Park Avenue, New York, NY, 10003) About five years ago, Myron and Irving Fass decided to go into the motorcycle magazine business. Their plan was ingenious. Since a new magazine's first problem is attracting enough advertising to show a profit, they would transform this liability into an asset by refusing to accept advertising and by trumpeting their fearless independence. Costs would be cu t to the bone by using cheap pulp stock, by featuring personal ramblings, rewrites of manufacturers' brochures, and by occasional outright plagiarism. If things went well, they could eventually dump the bold no·ads policy and sell space to whomever would pay for it. Who knows? They might wind up as well as Henry Luce or even Walter H. Annenberg (the notorious publisher of the "Philadelphia Inquirer" and "TV Guide" whose journalistic practices were so vicious, predatory, vindictive, unethical. and self·servinj( that he became a millionaire and was appointed by '" , I '''J ;, ... 1">1 J JI1(.'\ ,., '::t', • (Continued On haf!e("It I I I 18) ,~ 9 f'

• Cover