Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

'------- - - - - - -- - - - - - Machine: 1963 Greeves Starmaker 250 Owner: Bill Samstag, Lake Isabella, California If Greeves aren't rare enough, this one-ofB7 Starmaker belonging to Bill Samstag stands o ut as rare among t he rare. Samstag, 6S, is a fo rmer motocross racer w ho continues his passion for the sport by collecting Greeves. No surprise tha t this Villiers-pow ered Starmaker is the jewel in his collection. "What's unique about it is that the engine has two carburetors," Samstag says. "The throttle goes through a junction box which opens them progressively. The one opens a ce rtain amount of distance , and then the second one will kick in a certain amount of distance." As novel a concept as the progressive carburetor setup was, the Starmaker didn't stick around for very long. "They only kept this up for a litt le while," Samstag says. "What was progressed beyond this was called the Challenger. The biggest market for Greeves was California, and they found that the California people didn't want to fiddle with two carburetors. They wanted a motorcycle with one carburetor that could be fixed with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. The Machine: 1967 Greeves Chall enger 250 Owner: Ralph Beer, Grand Junction, Colorado If there is a quintessential Greeves, then perhaps this is it. Ralph Bee r, S6, be longs to this particula r '67 C hallenger. It is one of five Greeves that he curren tly owns. "There were two or three motocross models befo re this one," Beer says. "The Motocross Special is actually the one that I think about, but this is about second or third on the list for me. But if you had one when you were a kid, then Iguess you have to have one now. I had exactly this same model when I was a kid." Beer 's fascination for Greeves began when he was growing up in Montana . "When I was a young guy, just starti ng out, the guys who we re a littl e bit older than me were riding Greeves, and they were beating the worl d, w inning everything," Beer says. "Everybody else was still riding BSAs, Triumphs and Matc hless. 38 MARCH 3, 200 4 • Greeves were the first two-strokes that anyone too k serious ly." Wh en asked what part of his C hallenger really capt ured the magic for him, Beer protested such a tough question, and then he came up with a unique answer. "The square barrel was a Greeves trademark, and I really like the way that looks," Beer said. 'J\nd the leading link, of course. We all rode in the woods up in Montana, and the leading link really worked great for jumping over logs. You could run into a big log and just hop over it." His log-ho pping days may be over, but Beer says that he still e njoys cow- pasturing his Challenge r, especially at Greeves Days. "I rea lly en joy com ing here and seeing t he ot her people that share the same vision, the same dream." CYCLE NEWS 40th Anniversary Challenger was a simpler engine, and it was also a complete Greeves design." Funky car b arrangement aside, Sarnstag's Starmaker show cases several bits of Greeves' quirky goodness, including the tra demark leading link fro nt en d, aluminum beam mainframe (which Greeves stayed with until 1972), and a unique twist in the form of a pancake exhaust system, which was an early attempt at quieting the two-strokes down by getting away from the cutoff "blooey pipes" which used no muffler whatsoever. Samstag estimates that he has about five years invested into the restoration of his Starmaker. "How it works is that you buy one of these and then spend the rest of your life gathering parts to try and put it back togethe r the way that it shou ld be ," Samstag says. "Take the air cleaner on this bike: The original was discarded many years ago, so I had to get in touch with a guy in Denver and have him send me an example so that I could make one by hand ." For BillSamstag, whatever it takes , it's a fair sacrifice when the reward is ownership of a unique piece of motocross history.

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