Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

while satisfying an increasingly steady demand of fra me o rde rs fo r Rot axes, Har ley-David son XR750s and the like. KTM's interest in the machine increased as well, bu t the factory still insis ted on keeping the project at arm's length. "Mike (Rosso) was the key to KTM's involvement," Ow en says. "KTM 5portm otorcycle ge ts most of its recognition from enduros and some motocross, bu t as for the di rt track, I don't thi nk Rod Bu sh (KTM 5portmotorcycle's president) wanted anything to do with it. I think they had their fill of people calling them up and burning them. At that point, if Mike Rosso wanted to give me pistons or gaskets or clu tch springs or whatever, that was fine. But they really didn't want to recognize it as a factory effort. The support got better every year, thou gh." Things appeared to be moving forwa rd, however, but Owen and the KTM (Above) Nothing special: " In setting these th ings up , I've alwa ys thought that I should keep everything as simple as possible for the customer," Owen says . KosmanlGrlmeca binde r Is standard dirt track equ ipment. (A bove) Eng ine layout Is spartan. The 600cc powerplant has proven to make a reliable 70 horsepower, according to Owen. The battle has come In getting it to th e ground. (Ri ght) Hacker struggled with the mo torcy cle at the 1995 Peoria IT, nec essi tati ng a change from White Power to Cerl anllWorks Perfo rmance suspensio n components. wou ld even notice it. 50 I decided to build the KTM. I had bu ilt a fram e that Rusty Rogers was ridin g on, so I asked him if he would be interested in riding the KTM at Dayton a, and he said sure as long as we brought the Rotax, too." With Rogers on boa rd , Owen then con tacted KTM to see if he cou ld get any more help . "I told them that I was going to build th e bik e and asked th em if the y could supply me with a rad iator" Owen says . "The m ot or tha t I h ad bou ght w as a 553cc. I to ld them th at I had no idea w ha t it was goin g to do and not to get the ir hopes up . But Mike Rosso (KTM's Na tional Technical Director) sent m e a spa re cylinde r and piston that brought it up to 600cc and also some o d ds and e n d s . It w as w ay m o re h e lp th an I expected." Owen burned the midn ight o il to read y the machine for the 1994 Daytona cam paign, so mu ch so that he was still study ing the KTM manual to figu re out how to hook up the rad iator hoses as he rolled toward Florida . "We fir ed it up, a nd it ra n, which su rp rised me," Owen says . "Rusty ran it at the Regional, and if I remember cor- als," Owen says. "He wanted to do Daytona an d Peoria, an d he d idn't want to do any testing. It got to the poin t where his 750 p rogram was going in one direction and this one was going in anoth er. I need ed one rider that I could stick with. It came down to Mike Hacker and Kevin Varnes. Both had rid den th e bike and both liked it. It just tu rned out that Kevin went with Johnny Goad, an d they have th eir own 600 program . I had watched Mike since he was a Pro-Am ride r, and I knew tha t he had a lot of talen t. He'd ridden the bike and loved it. He has been such an easy guy to get along with, and he gives me as much feedback as he can. He's a good young rider." Owen and Hacker set about conti nuing to refine the project thr oughou t the early part of 1995, racing in as m an y local and region al events as possible. After struggling d uring Camel Motorcycle Week, th e pair continue d to refine rectiy, he got about eighth. Then in the Grand Nation al, he finished seco nd in his heat race and was running in the top l O in the main event before he got a flat tire. He wound u p finishing 13th." Bu o yed by such a n e nco u raging debut, Owen decided to stay with the project. He continued to de vote m or e time into improving the machine, all the face d ano th er se tback with Rogers' withdrawal from the project at the end of the yea r. Owen was forced to hunt for not only another nam e rider, but a nam e rider that wou ld be beneficial to the p roject in terms of con tinuing its research and developmen t. "The pr oblem I had with Rusty was that he just want ed to do Grand ation- th e motor cycle, incorpo ra ti ng m ot or changes to soften the hit and wide n the powerband witho ut sacrificing horsepower. "I w orked with Rusty for so lo ng , an d Mike is so mu ch differ ent: ' Owe n says. "Rusty liked it when he grabbed a handful of gas and it pu lled the fro n t wh eel four inches off the ground . He likes a bike that he physically has to race around the track. He just loved it right off the bat. Mik e is more of a fin esse rider, and that wasn 't his type of po wer. But that 's fine with me, because I know that he is like 90 per cent of th e riders out there. It's all abou t tryin g to find out what a guy likes - whether he likes a high revver or not." To achie ve the smoo ther power pul ses that Hack er was after, Owen homologa ted a seco nd bore-and-stroke combination , downsizing fr om a 78 to a 76 millimeter s tro ke a nd further pulling KTM into the p roject. "KTM had no probl em (paying the $2500 homologation fee ) at all: ' Owen says. "It took me a whil e to convi nce them that we needed to do that. We actually got on the phone wi th the engineer in Au stri a to exp lain what we wanted.. He told us that we didn't want to d o that, because it would make the thing a tracto r and not a Ferrari. We convinced him that was exactly what we want ed . That was a big step for KTM." The chan ge di d yield results. On the night before the '95 Peori a IT, Hacker 2

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