Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

00 ~ The Bruca Lind/Jack Hart rig leads Pete Es..ff and Kenny Harrold at Long Beach earlier this year. The Lind/Hart duo has won three straight AMA races. A pair of aces, three vvheels and a Four The 'Lind/Hart .sidecar effort By Lane Campbell The Elkhart-wjnning sidecar team of Bruce Lind/)ack Hart almost ended their joint career minutes into their first race on their TZ750-powered outfit. Sitting trackside· at Seattle International Raceway after a fruitful test session (about a month prior to the Elkhart National), they could almost joke about it. 32 "It may have been over-exhuberance on my pan...· mused pilot Bruce Lind. " ... Or it may have been the wrong tire pressures." added owner/passenger Han. At any rate. early in a 1979 Ponland club race meet, the two got sideways, went off the pavement. then caught a wheel on the road edge coming back on. That shock lurched them into a pole vault flip. Corner workers later related that the rig went over their heads at an altitude of about eight feet, inverted, with the crew still in a .racing tuckl On impact, Bruce Lind's Bell Star took the brunt of it. splitting in two places over the temples, sacrificing it· self to save Bruce's head. The crash broke Han's baclt, and doctors later told him one-eighth.inch over and he'd have been paralyzed from the waist down", "I didn't need to.hear that ... ," said Han. As for Lind, he escaped major head trauma but sustained a lingering concussion. "For two weeks I couldn't feel the ends of my fingers." Then he grinned. "But I never missed a day at Boeing." We.all giggled on that one. (You gatta' work at the Big B to understand the joke.) The sidecar itself was worse off. No longer were all three wheels i", the same plane. Everything was warped; with two wheels on the ground, the third wheel hung at a crazy angle some three inches in the air. Nothing to do now but tum the whole horrible mess over to frame spe' cialist Dick (Wasco) Wascher. It took him a week and a half just staring at it before deciding how to fIX it. (" ... because I'm slow ... ," said Wascher.) He final" admitted he didn't like the way it was before it got bent. So, as he straightened it. he redesigned the chassis as though he were building it himself. He made the entire frame 'more rigid. stiffened the third wheel links. cranked in a degree of extra toe· in and added about four pounds of extra metal. Said Han, "It must have worked, because one month later we won Laguna and three weeks after that we won Pocono. We still run a restrictor; others don't. Apparently we're getting horsepower to the ground." Tracing how their success evolved from near-ultimate disaster, one can begin to appreciate the COlt, complexity and effort it takes to field a c:hampionship-class road racing sidecar. Canadian-born Han has owned a number of rigs. gaining track experience in Canada, Europe and the U.S. He sold a Kawasaki-powered outfit shonIy before hooking up with Lind. Bruce, a solo rider with substantial roadracing background. had been itching to try sidehacks but on one condition - that the machine be powered by a TZ750 Four. As to chassis, the pair decided on one major specification: the best available at the time. After considerable .shopping. their choice was a British·built Windle chas· sis evolved for World Championship competition. The bare-bones price tag on such a rig runs $4,000. For that. you get the multi-tube frame. three rims (no tires), braltts (five of them). engine cowl, front fairing and third wheel cover. Engine, fuel tank, tires, plumbing, passenger platform and allimponant handholds are all up to the individual buyer. The pair stripped the needed engine/ cooling system/powenrain parts off a 1'2750 solo, then sold the rolling chassis to a customizer who wanted to fut a four-stroke itt it. (Honest.) Tota cost ran over $8400. "It took us four months to put it together. and one and a half minutes to destroy it," mused Han. Since its rebuild. the outfit has won every race it has finished. Of those it DNF, overheating has been the major ,:ulprit. leading to cracked- blocks and other damage. ThiS is one of the common hitches to sidecar road racing with a water-cooled rig. All too often. a cooling system designed for a solo bike is not adequate for the heat loads imposed by pulling a 6OO-plus pound sidecar/crew combination. By increasing tank capacity and adjusting flow rates. Lind and Han are approaching a reliable solution. . Although weight may penalize a sidecar's acceleration and top speed performance. its tire area and overall low stance enhance its cornering and braking. The Lind/Han machine follows European practice in the brake department. There are five disc braltes total - three on the front wheel. one each on the drive wheel and third wheel. One of the three front brakes is worked by the handlebar brake lever. per European rules. The other four are slaved together to the rear brake pedal. The results are savage in execution. "One thing I like about piloting a sidecar is that J can do things I always wanted to do on a solo but couldn't things like getting sideways and back- ing into comers on pavement." ACCOiding to PaJlenger Hart (who abhors the term "monkey"), Bruce pilots the rig as he would his solo - going deep into comers, braking fiercely, rolling hard on the throttle with little or no transition. Han wears an assonment of soccer guards on anns and legs aliIr.e to ward off the brutal pounding that such a slam-bang style can dish out. "You're getting beat up even if you don't fall." Han explains. "If a pilat makes a mistalte while you're in the middle of a transfer - boom! I can do one-handed pushups, either hand. Yet riding with Bruce, when he is on the bubble. it's aliI can do to hang on... Obviously, at speed on a traclt like SIR, it's more than just hanging on. To truly'get around a course quickly. it taltes a fully trained athlete in the "chair." .one with an intimate knowledge of his machine's responses to weight transfer, an acute sense -of timing and absolute trust in his pilot. (Oh. yeah ... and hands like a bear trap.) . Watching the Lind/Han team at work, their smoothly-coordinated. delil>erate moves almost mask the difficulty, or the physical effon involved. To really appreciate the stress level, one has to sample a couple laps as passenger oneself (see sidebar). Their teamwork falls into sharper perspective when you realize that this track test session was a unique occurrence, needed to son out the cooling. Normally. the two only run the machine on race weekends. (Said Han: "Bruce is getting better. We only hit the wall once at Long Beach ...") Seeing the cost. the complexity of the machines, the limited opponunities for practice and the inherent difficulty in getting it all together at competitive racing speeds, it's not surprising that the field of first-class sidecar racing teams remains small. Yet the rewards are there, for racers and spectators alike. Seeing a team like Lind/ Hart at work is believing. •

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