Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

r vs. The Cyclone e ge nd has it that the Suzuki TM4 00 Cycl o ne remai ns the wors t dirtbike ever pawned off on the public. L First prod uced in 1971, the Hamamatsu-based company 's initial consumer foray into the Open Class motocross category is remembered as being comprised of the most frighteningly powerful engine ever devised wrapped in a chassis too weak to hold up a hammock. Believe the hype, and you'd swear that t he deserts and motocross tracks of Ame rica are still littered with the bones of those unfortunate enough to cross paths with a TM400 and attempt to tam e it. But at least one man remembe rs them a bit differently. As a factory Suzuki racer in the early 19705, Rich Tho rwaldso n recalls that the TM400 was a pretty decent bike , once a few of its various handling an d power issues were addressed properly. "I actually had pretty good luck with them," Thorwaldson re calls. "Give n another half a year [of development], they actually we re a pretty good motorcycle." Thorwaldson vividly remembers the first time that he ever rode a production T M400. "It was at Saddleback Park, and it was myself and Russ Darnell," Thorwaldson says. "We both tested them at the same time . It had virtually no flywheels, and it had that T-shaped crankcase , so it revved like a 125cc road racer - from idle to wide open immediately. Every time that the front end got airborne o r the rear wheel got light, it would just light up . The thing had no tractability whatsoever, and wit h the handling it would pitch you sideways so quickly." Most people, including the enthusiast motorcycle press corps, sw ung legs over stock TM400s, only to come back shivering and co nfused from the experience - if they came back at all - but Thorwaldson has never been most peo ple, and he saw an opport unity to develop the bikes into winne rs. In fact, he won the first race he ever rod e aboard a stock TM400 . "Suzuki was ecstatic when I w on, but even then I knew that I had a lot of wor k cut out for me to make the th ing work right," Thorwaldso n remembers. "A lot of people just shied away from it, but I was just so Impressed with the absolute powe r of this th ing that I th oug ht, 'Shit, I've got to ride this th ing. I'll deal with the handling later.' They [Suzu ki] gave me th ree of the m to run with for th at first yea r. Th ose were just the produ ction versio ns. Then, when I we nt motocro ssing, I got a lot mo re facto ry support and special parts." But T ho rw aldson also did muc h of his own backyard R&D as we ll, and the case cou ld easily be made that it was he - and not the factory - wh o made the biggest strides in the T M400's deve lop me nt cycle. A rider undo ubt ed ly cast in the mold of the legendary Dick Mann , T horwaldson's gre atest talent may have been not in his riding prowess but more in his ability to apply practical solutions to th e see mingly com plex e ngineering problems of the TM. To him, the Japanese -ma de bike was no different from the British- and European-engineered dirt machines that he had grown up tinkering with . Unfortunately, this was largely lost on the buying public. Suzuki's ad hacks claimed that the T M400 was a race-ready production machine, de rived directly fro m the GPwinning mounts of Joe l Rob e rt , Roger DeCoster and Sylvain Geboers. Buyers swa llowed the ad hype hook, line and sinke r, the n moaned loudly in emergency rooms and group therapy sessions across the co untry. T hrough all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, Thorwaldson wo rked to build the T M400 into the bike that it should have been in the first place. "Suzuki was very nice to me in that they would let me make all kinds of changes and test and keep them apprised of what I was doing," Thorwaldson says. "If I did something good, they would have someone else test it and see if they liked it. I liked doing that stuff, and it didn't seem to bother them . I'd cut frames , cha nge cra nksha fts and flyw he els and cylinders. I'd scab re ed cages from gokarts onto the cylinders. T he TS400 had a heavier crankshaft, so I wo uld use that. The TS250 had an external flywhee l ignition , so we woul d use that . I used the trail model [TS] cylinder and did some porting so that the thing wo uld rev a litt le more. I played with those things for an awful long time ." In fact , Thorwaldson says, by the time Suzuki's first true production-based motocross machines, the RM series of 1976, were sitt ing on the do cks, the T M400 had turned into a pre tty decent bike . Though it never earn ed the reputation as a win ner, Th orwal dson got the TM400 closer than anyone else , finishing second in the District 37 cross country series as ea rly as 1972. "I would have wo n, but I was at a race in Red Rock Canyon that year, and I was 98 MARCH 10,2004 • CYCLE NEWS abo ut 10 miles fro m the finish when I came over a rise in the road and ran head on into a truck," Thorwaldson says. "I wadded the thing up, and it e nded costing me the championship. But I won an awful lot of individual races on it . I used to win those Sat urd ay Saddleback 45 -minute [GP] deals eve ry week that I was home ." Thorwa ldson finished his care er w ith Suzuki in 1976, wh en the RMs were just a year into a lifespan that co ntinues to this day. Natu rally he acknowl edges that the new machines were much better th an the TM400, but he still has a soft spot for the Cyclone. "The RMs were a quantum leap fro m the produ ction TMs because they were actually based around the RH250 and the RN370. The first RH250 I had was just incred ible . It was like a CR80 with 50 ho rsepowe r - so light. "But the T M's re putati on was pro bably not that fair," he co ntinues . "I think th at it act ually opened th e door of the new e ra of mot ocross bikes and closed the door on the old CZ and Maico era with the tracto r-like powe r and re latively slow acce leration of those bikes . It was the forerunne r to the CR Elsinores and 'fZs and bikes like th at . There were some horror stories, but they cou ld be dealt with just like anything e lse." Thorwaldson moved on to found Tho r Racing in 1976, making chrome moly handlebars, alum inum swingarms and other motorcycle components that were vast improvements over those offered by the O EMs of the day. His ideas eventually manifested themselves on production machinery. After moving from Cerritos, Calif ornia, to Gardnerville, Nevada, in 1985, he o pe ned BigValley Honda, which subsequently moved to Reno and became know n as Big Valley Mot orsports. After a prosperous te nure in the motorcycle dealership business, Thorwaldson sold the com pany to investors in 1999 and retired. In the past four years, Thorwaldson has taken up road racing. He is a fixture on the AFM circu it on the West Coast, and he e njoys making annual forays to Daytona for the motorcycle weeks held there. At 58 years old, he hasn't slowed down one bit . "I've had a lot of fun with road racing," Thorwaldson says. "I actually started doing it because my hip got so worn out from kick-starting mo tocross bikes that I couldn't swing my leg up over them anymore. I've gotten that hip fixed since then . Now it's goo d for 500 years ." And in the back roo m at Big Valley Moto rsports, Rich Thorwaldson can often be found pe rfor ming the same types of tricks on new mac hines as he did o n th ose o ld "Th row Me" 400s back in the early '70s. How eve r unlikely, if another motorcycle should eve r com e down the pike deserving the same vile re putation as the T M400, he 'd be the go-to guy. "I'd be all over it ," he said. eN Scott Rousseau 40th An niver sary Our tester wheelied the new HarleyDavidson Sportster XLI000 off the line for the cover of Issue # 9. We determined you didn't have to have an iron butt, onlya golden wallet and a feel for history if you wanted one. It retailed for $2485... We also tested the Norton 850 Inte rstate, which featured a 6.2-gallon tank and a front disc brake... Bob Stef· fan won the Chaparral 143.5-mile Enduro in Twentynine Palms, Calif rnia, o w ith a score of five ... Gene Romero set a new World One-Hour Speed Recordof 150.6725 mph at Daytona International Speedwayon hisYamaha TZ700 twostroke road racer. The previous record of 144 mph was set by Mike Hailwood in 1964 on a 500cc MVAgusta. 20 YEARS AGO_._ March 13. 1984 Freddi e Spencer and Kenny Roberts shared the cover of Issue #9, our Dayton a Preview Issue . Roberts had come out on top of Spencer in the 1983 Daytona 200, and the odds had them battling it out again in 1984... Jeff Ward (Kaw), Bob Hann ah (Hon) and David Bailey (Hon) won the 125, 250 and 500cc Nationals, respect ively, at round one of the AMA National MX Championshipsin Gainesville, Florida. Ward and Baileywent I-I , but Hannah lost moto one to Ricky Johnson (yam), who was leading when his rear shock malfunctioned in the second moto... Greg Zit· terkopf (Kaw) dominated the Open Pro class at Corona Raceway MX... Damon Huffman won the 60cc (0-8) classat the CMC Golden States. Tommy Clowers won the 60cc (9- 1I) event. 10 YEARS AGO••• March 9 . 1994 TeamHonda! I-BOD-COLLECTs Jeremy McGrath hogged the cover of Issue #9 after winninghis fifth race of the six-race-old Camel Supercross Series. He won the AtlantaSupercross over teammate Jeff Stanton and Jeff Emig (Yam). Ezra Lusk (Suz) won the 12Scc main over Tim Ferry (Han) and Chad Pederson (Yam)... Kevin Hines (Hon) shared the cover with McGrath after winning the Quicksilver National Enduro in Coalinga, California. KrM's Jeff Russell and Kelby Pepper rounded out the top three... We interviewed Noleen! SizzlerYamaha's Larry Ward , who achieved a podium finish at Anaheim. He said, "I'm going to have another chance at a factory ride."... Kevin Windham and John Dowd clinched the 125and 250cc Pro championships, respectively at the , final round of the Florida Winter AMA Series. It was Windham's Pro-Amdebut.

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