Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

bike if you push the front , the steering turns, and the tire digs ~\ You would thi nk in, and you have a 50-50 chance thot Kevi n Schwantz w o uld of saving it. But if the swingarm claim old GSX·Rs decked, obviously when you like this one as his were already right over, it'd least favorite race bike( but just lift the front off the he says it was a Su%ukl he ground, and you'd crash . It and Doug Chandler raced , the Su%uka a ·Hour that only took a little touch . The Elf :ade his life m iserable fo r 3 did it, but they made it beta weekend . ter, but it was always a problem with the Elf4 and 5. You'd just breathe on it, and it'd have you off. "The other was the front brake - it had that single disc central to the wheel. It'd work fine for 10 laps or so, then on the next one there'd be noth ing. You couldn't even pump it up. It was as though the brake lever had fallen off. My riding was a bit off that year, because I'd be going down the straight and always checking to see if pension, and other drawing board the front brake was there, which isn't a "improvements." The motorcycles resisted good way to race. It handled okay in the manfully, proving hard to handle, with any end , and the feel of the front forks was theoretical benefits much outweighed by a good. If you only ever raced the Elf 5, it' d be okay, but growing up racing with forks, serious lack of feel for the rider. Ron Haslam you get used to them." rode the last of the Elfs to the best results they achieved. It was always hard work . KENNY R08ERTS "I rode three Elfs," Haslam said. "The 1982 YAMAHA SOO OW61 first one had pull-push steering w ith vertical Yamaha's first V-four, the OW61 , replaced bars • tank type steering. The big problem was that ifit got into a wobble and you'd try the down-on-power square four with sev- bike's problems. He gave these comments, three months before his death. "It was the ideal anchor for anybody's boat," Sheene said. ':t\ complete piece of shit. The frame was too weak; it didn't have enough power. It was just something they produced and sold on the back of Kenny Roberts' winning races. "The engine was never powerful enough , and the frame was too weak. They tried to patch up over two or three years , then dropped it. In 1980 I'd signed for Yamaha in the expectation of supposedly getting works bikes in 1981. I had a Wayne Rainey said he frame made by Harris , but it wasn't politdidn't have bad motorcycles, just motorcycles ically correct as far as Yamaha was conthat needed some cerned, and with my position that was y; adjustments. The 1992 the end of that . amaha YZRSOO was one such "I had better results than anybody else :h0tor~Ycle, according to the riding one , until I lost my finger at Paul 't h~-"me ~orld Champion. Put t 'hs wa~, It wasn't a keeper . Ricard. It was my own fault, really I was or t e Ramey museum. going way too hard, and the thing was pattering so badly. I was trying to make up the ground I was losing to [Graeme) Crosby [on a Suzuki) on the straight. I was catching him from the end of the straight to the last right-hander before the pits, then he'd piss off and leave me again. I crashed because I was just trying too hard. "The worst thing is that it could have been so much better. The TZ7S0 was also a production bike, and it was fabulous. It was easy to ride, and the standard bike was bloody quick. You could win pretty much to hold it, it would just get worse. The next any 750 race on one . The 250 and 350 proElfhad a swingarm at both ends and sort of duction racers were also really good. I was sagged in the middle. When you hit a bump, also used to Suzuki, where the production it'd sag, and it created a feeling as if the bikes were as good as the factory bikes, and front end had slipped, but it hadn't. sometimes better. I thought Yamaha would "The last Elf, the Elf 5, also had a front make a good production bike. I was wrong." swingarm but also a scissor linkage to the handlebars, so in that way it had the feel of RON HASLAMa front fork. In fact better than forks, 1987-9 ELF 3 , 4 , S because the steering geometry was the Another engineering dream, the Elf sought same no matter where the suspension to impose the science of car-type suspenwas. The steering didn't change when it sion and chassis construction on SOD-class dived. But there were two problems. One racing. A series of designers tried hub-cenwas that the front swingarm would ground ter steering , front-and-rear wishbone suswhen you had it right over. On an ordinary JANUARY 21,2004 • CYCLE NEWS CARL FOGARTY 1988 HONDA RC30 Carl Fogarty's choice was unexpected. There'd been "quite a few " bad ones in his long career and a notably difficult Ducati in 1998 when he'd returned to the team from a year with Honda. "That was my own fault, for leavingthe team for a year," Foggysaid. "Never break up a winning team." But the one that sticks out was the bike on which he f 36 piston-port engines had been very nervous, but at least when it hit, it hit. ':t\t the same time they fitted a push-pull carb system, copying the Lectron needle system, with no other jets . The result was , it was either off or on, and with the front wheel in the air, there was no connection I could find. And, of course, the suspension was a nightmare. There was nothing drastically wrong with the system except that it wasn't strong enough. The linkages were on splines, and a lot of times the splines would start shearing. I remember one race I finished with the seat an inch lower than when I'd started. "I won my second race on it, at Jarama in Spain, and it was probably the best race I ever rode. It wasn't much to watch because I won by almost 10 seconds, but [Barry) Sheene was behind me and pushing me , and he was on Michelins to my Dunlops , and to be honest, they were a better product. "He was inching closer, and I was having to pick it up midcorner and just aim for the curb. I never knew if it was going to spin the wheel or not . I just used the curbs as a berm and bounced off of them. It was the most exhausting race I've ever ridden. " made his name as an international racer - the hugely successful Honda RC30. "The RC30 was my worst, even though I won three TIs and a World Championship on it," Fogarty said. "It wasn't bad in itself, but it just really didn't suit my way of riding. I always use high corner speed, but the Honda was made more for the American style, of going in hard and stopping then squirting it out. "It was more on short circuits where it was bad, where you had to push really eral novelties, including two disc valves driven by gears at 90 degrees to the crank , each serv ing two cylinders, and a novel rear suspension system : The rear unit was horizontal, squeezed from both ends by a complicated linkage system . Both of these contributed to making the machine, in the words of crew chief Kel Carruthers, the worst Yamaha ever built. Kenny Roberts remembers it the same way. "It was all the wrong deal," Roberts said. "O ne thing was , it had very expensive light baby flywheels to make it accelerate quickly, That was what I'd asked for. The 40th Anniversary hard. You'd go into the corner, and the front would just be going away. I was almost crashing all the time . It was always the same problem. I was always battling with the front . It'd just touch a bump and tuck under. The engine was really good, but it was basically a road bike chassis, and it was a handful. Funny to think I raced them for four years. I was pleased to get off that and onto a Ducati in 1992. KEVIN SCHWANTZ 1992 SUZUKI GSX-R7S0 ENDURANCE Racing legend Kevin Schwantz often seemed to have to fight his bike to get the

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