Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

.... 00 0') ..... r-. ~ < Richard Washet; single cylinder advocate By William Blears 16 Ex-AMA dirt-tracker Ric1uJrd Washer makes his living these days building racinB frames and straightening street biJce frames in S~attle, Was~ton. His company is called Wasco Frame Service, and the street bIke frame stTtUghternng I.S the most profitable thing it does. But Washer's first love, as always, .is racing: Especially when it comes to building special frames for 'OOcc single-cylinder engznes, frames meant to be road raced. .. .. could afford to maintam It. Which IS You have thil500 Honda ~ nar why I'm now selling frame kits for project, What is the point? What are most of the big singles, including the you trying to accomplish with this Honda, the Yamaha, the SwulU. I'll project? have a Can-Am frame soon. It started out because I wanted to Have you had a chance to test your build something different. And I theory in practice? wanted to build something that was Sure_ We came damn near to winning fun. Several years ago I entered a sixthe 1980 Portland Six Hour. The only hour race and we had a failure due to thing was that we invited John Ulrich complicated mechanical problems of Cycle World to ride with Bruce that came about as a result of having Lind and Steve Shafer. John rode first, to have a four-cylinder motorcycle hadn't been on the bike before, and he perform all of its functions properly couldn't get it started. When he finally and have all four carburetors got going everybody was long gone, synchronized, etc. And of being able but he caught up and was actually to afford it. futh and gaining by the 10th lap. I had reached a period in my life Then he crashed and lost a bunch of when I knew that there wasn't a lot of laps pushing it in. By the time we got money in road racing. The most I going again we were 20 laps behind. knew I would ever get out of it was the But by the finish we had unlapped enjoyment of doing it. So I felt that a ourselves 11 times and finished fourth 500 single would be the kind of thing overall, first 600cc. that a regular guy could afford to Bruce has also ridden the bike in maintain and be able to take to the several club races and has done real races every week and have fun and not well. Bruce is acttially the one who got cause himself to go broke. Most people me involved in road racing. We've can't afford to maintain a fourlived close to each other for many cylinder motorcycle. If they think they years and known each other, even can, they should just try it sometime. though he was a road racer only and I Not very many people make as much was a din tracker only. Our paths money as it costs to maintain a crossed because we did business with superbike. the same motorcycle shops and knew So that's where we started. Also, I the same riders. I found that as I grew had in my head that we could win a older, more and more of my friends six-hour race with a single-cylinder were getting involved in road racing as engine, by not having to make alit well. People that I knew, like Steve stop every hour, or every hour an a Baker, became a road racer after half, by being able to go a longer being a dirt track racer. And my distance with less complications. Tire friend Gene Romero was a dirt tracker wear factors and gas are big problems and a road racer. But mainly Bruce got with the big bikes. Also, being an me interested, by asking me to do independent, I have a limited budget. some work on his roadracer. I became I can afford to build a single cylinder intrigued. After going to the road engine and maintain it properly, keep races a few times, I started having the good tires on it, keep it in good ideas of my own, just like in dirt track. running order, take it apart after every It was mostly curiosity. I set out to try race and inspect it. Those were the things to see if they would work, and things I found 1 couldn't do with a one thing led to ~n.other just like in four cylinder motor, because I didn't dirt track_ have the time to maintain it. I started making frames when I was From the business viewpoint, I felt in din track. When I started racing that a single cylinder bike would be a dirt track in the 19605, there wasn't salable item becaue most people much available and.everybody sort of ran whatever they had. I noticed that some pro racers had equipment that worked better because they had different frame geometry. Mostly their bikes were shorter and had steeper steering head angles than the bikes that we were using. When I was a novice, I had a CL72 Honda and I started cutting on it and making it work better for myself. When I became a Junior, I got a stock Triumph and I thought it worked pretty good, but as soon as I got the money I figured I'd buy a real racing frame. As soon as I got an extra $400 I got a racing frame and the first thing I found out was that it didn't work as good as my stock Triumph frame. I set out to find out why and that led to building my own frames. I started doing modifications on my own stuff to find out what worked. I tried to change one thing at a time so I could make an accurate analysis of what I did. After I did some things to my bikes and made them work better for me, other people asked me to do those same things to the.ir bikes and one thing led to another. It started out doing modifications and then building swingarrns and then building complete' frames and that's how it got going. Were you lIelf-educated as a frame builder? Yes, to the point that I learn by doing, but I also studied as much as I could on the subject. I was very fortunate because where I came from, a small cown, it was very important to them that every kid learn math. They always gave you tests in the local schools and sort of forced you ahead of yourself. I was one of those kids that have geometry in the eighth grade and trigonometry in the ninth grade and from there college algebra and physics. Anyway, I didn't realize the importance of it at the time, but then as time went by, I saw that everything I was doing was math. I guess that the best education I had was just simple mathematics. When you get around racing circles you find that very few people know the numbers that make a feelable difference in the wheelbase, fork angle, swingarm pivot relationship to countershaft sprocket and axle, gearing differences, how to split gearing differences. Those things that I found to be normal everyday items, a lot of people didn't grasp. That gave me an advantage I needed because I wasn't one of these guys who have a lot of natural racing ability. I started racing when I was a teenager and didn't start racing professionally until I was 21. Most other guys had three years of racing experience on me. The thing that made a difference for me was that my bike worked better. I still have an advantage, even though it's now in the frame building business instead of racing on the track. I've learned more from straightening frames than I have from building them. Straightening frames gave me an opportunity that other frame builders don't have. It gave me the opportunity to test the torsional rigidity of the entire frame structure. I found out a lot of things about frames that are good and things that were bad. Things like why they bent where they bent. I made my own device to test the torsional rigidity of a frame. It's simply a matter of tying the steering head solidly and being able to flex the motorcycle at the rear axle and test the flex in pounds with a simple dial indicator at different positions on the frame. I found that there were a lot of answers to torsional rigidity. I also found the reason that a lot of frames seem to be hard to ride. A lot of frames that are hard to ride are also very springy. They were made of good steel, but they weren't tied t~ther very well. So they would bend a long ways before they would stay bent. The problem was that when you were riding that kind of frame, it would have a tendency to want to flex like that, and they would wobble. I think back on how I spent money that I really couldn't afford on racing frames that I thought were going to put me in the winner's circle and they actually made it more difficult for me to get around! That's whyl That's why I went back to my thick-wall, waterpipe-frame that came stock on Triumphs, and started doing modifications on my Triumph, one thing at a time. Steering head only, not changing the trail. It's very difficult to change the angle of the steering head without changing the trail. It's practically impossible unless you're willing to change the clamps at the same time. Most people don't realize that when you change the angle of the steering head, you're testing several things. You don't know if you like the bike better because it has a steeper head angle, or because the front wheel's heavier, or because it has a shorter wheelbase. You've really tested three things all at once. You might find that if you change the steering head angle and don't change the wheelbase that you've actually made an accurate test, a test of the effect of changing the steering head angle only. It's very liard for an individual to do that himself unless he has a frame jig and some equipment and a lot of curiosity and a lot of time. When I started working on my own frame, I was working at the time as a welder and a fabricator. I used to build Looniis armored- cars and also fire engines. They were very interesting projects because they were the kind of thing you worked on for a year at a time. Just by being around and meeting people who had experience in engmeering, in actually engineering products, structual engineering, I found out things, and I would try things based on what I found out. Moving from the past to the present, your frames have round tubing swingarms,' Why aren't they rectangular in CI'Oll aection? I . had made rectangular swingarrns, and rectangular swingarms are much

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