Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 30 JULY 29, 2014 P113 racing) would really be something nice to do.'" Rancourt's first road race on the Parilla was a re- sounding success; he won first time out on a road course in Vacaville, California. Within a couple of years Rancourt and the Parilla were the combo to beat in the 250 class in AFM racing. He won the championship twice, dominating most of the races he entered. Rancourt is quick to point out the mastery of Hall's engineering of the Parilla was the thing that made him so successful. Hall's little Parilla became known as the Gadget because he modified about every single piece of the bike. The only obvious thing to the casual ob- server was the massive front drum brakes taken from a Norton Manx, but there was much more to the Parilla than big brakes. Hall found enough room in the head to drill a 10mm hole for a second smaller sparkplug. He ground his own cams and lightened everything on the bike. He was obsessive about shaving weight. [Rancourt gets up from his chair and does his best imitation of Hall.] "He had a crook in his back so he'd walk like this (slumped over at the shoulders). He loved to spend hours at the lathe," Rancourt smiles. "He'd come in and say, 'Norris come here I want to show you something.' He had a gleam in his eyes. 'See this? That's the top nut for the front forks. See I machined out the inside, it's soldered at the bottom, so it's nothing but the threads here. And I machined the top down just enough so that you could get a socket on it and each corner here see, I drilled a little hole. Guess how much of the weight I got off? 60 percent!' That's the way he was." At one race a Honda rep approached Rancourt about switching over to race the new Honda 305, but Rancourt told him he was doing just fine on the Parilla. "Instead the guy signed me up to be a Honda dealer," Rancourt said. "They made it so easy to have a dealer- ship, to sell a few of their 50s and 90s." Rancourt was married with a child, working nights at the State of California's print shop and trying to run his dealership by day. Something had to go and it was rac- ing. "I told Orrin I was sorry, but I couldn't keep racing," Rancourt said. The relationship had garnered count- less race wins and had become the dominant 250 road racer on the West Coast, but before calling it a day the two decided to test themselves against the best and go race the AMA Lightweight event at Daytona in 1964. Lightweight, good braking and handling were the strong suit of the Parilla, but it was all about sheer horsepower in qualifying at Daytona. "They just had us do a flying lap around the speedway, not the road course for our qualifying time," Rancourt said. So that put Rancourt on the outside of row two. The Parilla was geared tall and wasn't fast off the line, so Rancourt was well back in the pack as they dove into the infield road course at the time. "All of a sudden bikes are swerving back and forth and slow- ing way down," Rancourt said. "All those two-stroke were seizing" Rancourt picked his way through the field and eventually emerged in second. Harley factory rider Dick Hammer had a big lead. Rancourt was starting to cut into that lead when suddenly part of the exhaust pipe at the rear mount fell off. "Orrin saw the crack just before the start of the race, but we decided we really didn't have enough time to change it and we just hoped it would last." With the broken exhaust the Parilla lost power out of the turns. Rancourt did all he could, but there was no catching Hammer. He finished second. He said one funny backstory was that the AMA was supposed to do a fuel check after the race, "And wouldn't you know it? Hammer's Harley ran out of fuel on the cool- down lap so they decided not to do the fuel test," Rancourt said. "For the rest of his days Orrin thought Harley was running hot fuel in Hammer's bike." Regardless, Rancourt and Hall had proven their point. They not only had the fastest club racing 250 on the West Coast, the little Parilla was among the best 250s in the nation, even up against the factory bikes. Rancourt is 80 now and trying to scale back his activities at his Honda dealership. The Gadget still survives today and is owned by one of Hall's grand- sons. Parilla ceased production around the time of Rancourt's run at Daytona. Today the legend of Ran- court, Hall and their famous Parilla lives on as per- haps the most popular racing machine that company ever produced. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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