Cycle News

VOLUME 57 ISSUE 24 JUNE 16, 2020 P103 suffered from a terminal horse- power problem, as in way too much. "The trouble was that it accel- erated so hard that when you got to the corner, it didn't want to turn left," Stolzenburg says. Not exactly the ideal handling characteristics for a dirt track machine. "You had to kind of road race it and make big circles, kind of like what Roberts had to do at Indy that time [1975]," Stolzen- burg recalls. "You had to use the whole racetrack to get around on it because it had too short a wheelbase, and it would break the rear wheel lose really quickly. If you weren't careful, it would put you on your ass in a hurry. You had to be a real throttle jockey to ride it." Fortunately, Stolzenburg had access to a real throttle jockey: 1960s cushion master Ronnie Rall, a Grand National-winning rider with whom Stolzenburg had a special relationship. "I built Ronnie's first KR out of everything that Fuhr [business partner Edgar Fuhr] threw away, back in 1960," Stolzenburg says. "That was the first time that Ron- nie ever rode a Harley, at Zanes- ville [Ohio] on Labor Day. He had fastest time of the day as a pro- bationary Novice, and he would run that thing into the corners so hard on the primary cover that the wheels weren't even touching the racetrack. I had to keep pull- ing it off and pounding it out so that it didn't hit the clutch." Stolzenburg figured that if anyone could tame the Buffalo, Rall could. "I put that Buffalo together, and we just thought that we'd try something different," Stolzenburg says. "He'd take the thing clear out to the straw bales before he would make his turn. We ran the thing up in Troy [Ohio] one night, and I remember the rear brake froze. The disc was red hot, and he still almost beat Gary Scott with it, but when he pulled off the track and through the pit gate, the rear wheel just started slid- ing because the brake was just tight." But on the racetrack, the Buf- falo had so much horsepower that it could turn the rear wheel through the dragging calipers without even breaking a sweat. Rall ultimately stepped away from the project, but Stolzen- burg's faith in the Water Buffalo as a potentially stellar dirt tracker remained high. In 1975, he had plans to revive the beast when reigning AMA Grand National Champion Kenny Roberts made history by winning the Indy Mile aboard a Kel Carruthers-built factory Yamaha TZ700 on August 22, 1975. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the AMA banned the two-stroke multis from competi- tion shortly thereafter. "I'd already had the frame on order when Roberts won that race, and then AMA banned the multi-cylinders," Stolzenburg says. "I went ahead and bought the frame anyway, but I never did finish it. I still have the thing. It's sitting in a pile in my shop." Stolzenburg relates one more story about the big Water Buffalo. "If you're gonna talk about that bike, then you have to mention the time that [Steve] Morehead rode it," Stolzenburg says. "He was a Junior in 1973, and we were at Greenville, Ohio, when his Yamaha blew up. So, his old man came over and asked me if I would let him ride the thing, and I said, 'Sure.' Morehead got on it and ran it wide open and lapped the entire field in a 10-lap final, except that on the white- flag lap, he hit a chuck hole in the turn and went over the fence. The bike went under the fence and Morehead went over it. That was the only time that bike was ever crashed, and we could have straightened the handlebars and ran it, but Morehead broke his kneecap in the crash. "And, he claims that it hurt, too." CN This Archives edition is re- printed from issue #6, February 15, 2005. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to pre- vent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still plan- ning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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