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/126413
/' IAbove left! M ert confers with rider Skip Aksland in the San Jose pits. IAbove right) Garth Brow observes as Mert installs cams in the engine.IBelow right) . The mighty V-twin hooked up to C.R. Axtell's dyno.IBelow left) A collection of number plates adorn the Lawwill garage. but Garth's bike sits nea rby, ready to race. Next to it is T ed Bood y's machine . also ready to go . Brow and Boody have bee n staying with the Lawwills since the Apr. 14 Sacramento mile. There's no room or time for a blowby-blow report on what happened at Lawwill 's house on the day before San Jose . It was a busy day. A jillion things, from ignition timing to manu factu ring exhaust pipe brackets ou t of strap metal, had to be done . "W e're not always this disorganized ," Men joked, but they really wer en't. Things were reported ly m uch the same last year, when Men's bike won the San Jose m ile . It ma y seem that ' confusion reigns, but Men and Para , who works pan tim e for Mert , know what they're doing. Their record speaks for itself. on the race track. . The sidecase got weld ed back up and put into place. A cam was re timed . An obscenity resulted when ca ms were put back into pla ce and a sidecover bolted on , only to discover that the distributor drive had been forgotten . The small parts gremlin hit on occasion. result ing in anxious sea rc hes for missing bits and pieces . Pieces of tubing got weld ed int o sh ape to serve as slip -fit mountings to connect head pipes and mufflers . Proper-weight springs were fitted to shock bodies and then the shocks were attached to the motorcycle. Batteries were charged. On one machine, the plastic bushing wouldn't stay attached ' to the primary chain tensioner, so three short screws, awa y from th e contact area , were enlisted to keep the bushing in place. Countless more things had to be finished before there were three race ready mac hines. But the effort d id progress. By early afternoon on e machine was ready, The Lawwill's d riveway drops sharply downhill from th e garage, perfect for bump starting Harley-Da vidsons , It was and th e machine sounded cris p , ' ready to go , One down , two to go . Mert , Para and Shane contin ued working on the two machines. Bu t they weren't the on ly wheeled vehicles that had to be made ready. Garth Brow and Ted Boody were drafted by June Lawwill to assemble a doll stroller for two-year-old Marcella. This was not an all -together uncomplicated p roject , for as with mos t child ren' s toys the instructions were garbled to the po int where they might as well have been printed in Japanese. An old cliche goes : "It never ra ins but it pours." Such was the case this weekend. O n top of all the other things go ing on , it was Joe's ninth birthday. His present was a threequarter scale 10'speed bicycle: and a chicken dinner was followed by chocolate birthday cake. After the birthday celebration. it was back to work. Shortly before midnight, work came to a hal t. All that remained was the more-or -less normal trackside prepara tion. At the track the following day. all t hree machines .we re utilized in practice , . with Aksland and Gene Romero, without a machine of his own at San Jose , as the riders . Down on power or not, both of Mert's bikes m ade th e National, transferring out of th e fourth heat after an incredible dice between Aksland , Romero , Joe Wilson and Brow , Aksland, however, had dislocated his shoulder in an Ascot half mile two weeks previously, and it was not full y hea led . So Romero wa s the top finisher at eighth after dicing with Brow (who also runs a Lawwill set -up engine). Aksland was 12th, and later skipped Ascot to give his shoulder a cha nce to heal more fully . Men, who has his own business (Lawwill Racing Products , 148 Rockhill Dr. , Tiburon, CA 94920) , sell ing engine kits and frames for XR7 50s and other items. will not travel the circuit as he did for so many yea rs, He will fly to east ern events, and be a t home during th e week . O h yes, one other thing. Wha t ha ppened to the missing horsepower? We ll, it seems th e fall Aksland took at Ascot ca used th e flywheels to sh ift po sition sligh tly . When ·t his was d iscover ed . corrected and th e bike tak en ' to Axtell's dyno shortly before th e ' ra ined-ou t Topkea half mile, .the horsepow er readings were right ba ck where they had been earlier in the year, How much? Well , tuners don't like to get into rating wars , so let us just say that the MeT! Lawwill HarleyDa vidson engine is producing over one horsepower for every 10 cubic centimeter of displacement , at 8.000 rpm. W ell over. . • 25