Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126288
Once a new design is proven to be
competitive and reliable on the test
track, it's then put into limited
production in the form of works bikes
to be used by the factory's motocross ,
team. As is the case with most of the
Japan~ and European factory teams ,
their prototype works bikes are pretty
well sorted out before they ever lay a
knobby track in national or international competition. Once the bikes
are in competition for a while and
the new design has proven to be
reliable and competitive , then the
factory 'will start thinking about
building production versions for sale .
Where Harley-Davidson differs
from this proven method is that their
engineering department doesn't do the
initial design on the motocross bike
because they have no experience with
motocross. Added to this is the fact
that all Harley's two-stroke bikes and
engine designs come from Aeromacchi
in Italy. What Harley did four years
ago was form a motocross team and
told them to design their own bikes
based on the Aeromacchi 250cc
streetltrail bike they sold . It was
hardly an easy assignment, because
Harley used their own people rather
, than go out and hire the best available
designers who knew something about
motocross. Race team mechanics Don
Habbermill and John Ingham are the
two people most responsible for the
tremendous amount of progress made
with the works bikes and production
bikes since the motocross project
began.
/; What remains to be a difficulty for
the motocross team though, is that
they receive no direct input from the
engineering departments at HarleyDavidson or Aeromacchi. In effect,
the bikes are designed in the field by
the motocross team and whatever they
come up with that works is eventually
transferred along to the engineering
department so it can be incorporated
into production. This is hardly a bad
way to do things if you have
experienced motocross riders and
designers on the team who know how
to build competitive motocross bikes.
The handicaps for such a
development policy though, are
obvious. The first being it's hard to
win races when you're busy playing
'with new designs and don't know if
they 'll work or not. The second is that
Harley's present race budget isn't large
enough to hire the best available riders
'an d designers to engineer the
motocross bikes.
"We've tried to hire the best possible
riders we could," explained Clyde ,
;'with in what our budget would allow.
Rex Staten was our first choice for the
team last year because we knew he had
a reputation for being tough on bikes
and figured he would bring out any
weak points the bikes might have.
Marty Tripes was added to the team
for 1977 because he's obviously fast
when he wants to be. Rich Eierstedt
was signed on for the Trans-AMA
Series Support