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VOL. 51 ISSUE 47 NOVEMBER 25, 2014 P93 minutes into motos, the team eventually went back to conventional rear shocks. In 1976 the factory Harley-Davidson team debuted with Rex Staten as the primary rider. Staten was a tal- ented rider, but had the reputation for being tough on machinery. He was the perfect rider to put the new Harley-Davidson MX-250 through the grinder. After some success in the Winter-Ams, the Day- tona Supercross was the first big test for the team. Unfortunately Staten came up short on a big jump and smashed his chin on the crossbar and ended up finishing 24th. But a few weeks later Rocket Rex and Harley bounced back in a big way, finishing fifth in the AMA Supercross round in the Pontiac Silverdome. Marty Tripes and Mickey Boone both managed top- 10 Supercross results in the following seasons, but Staten's Silverdome finish in Harley's second race, was never bettered. At the '76 AMA 250cc Motocross season opener at Hangtown, the Harley suffered ignition problems all day and Staten limped home to a 12th overall. And so it would go for Staten and the Harley-Davidson team the rest of the season. While there were flashes of bril- liance, teething problems for the new MX-250 meant that Staten was able to score just one top-10 overall finish all season, an eighth at Rio Bravo near Houston. With a full season under their belts, Harley-David- son was ready to tackle the '77 season full bore and they brought on Marty Tripes to team with Staten. Ingham recalls, with a laugh, Tripes' introduction to Wisconsin winters. "We'd been dealing back and forth with Marty and I finally told him to just come to Milwaukee to talk with us," Ingham said. "I went to pick him up at the airport and he flew in from San Diego wearing a t-shirt and shorts. He almost froze his butt off. I had to go buy him a jacket and all that crap, just to keep him warm inside the building for crying out loud. Harley wasn't spending a lot on heating their buildings at that time." Tripes gave the Harley team something to cheer about in the outdoor national opener at Hangtown in April of 1977. There he raced the MX-250 to a 4-5 moto finish for fourth overall. It would prove to be the best 250 National result Harley-Davidson would enjoy. Tripes recalled his days with the Harley factory team. "The bikes weren't all that bad," he said. "They had decent power, but they'd never last. I would get out and run up front a lot of times and I just knew the bike wasn't going to make it through a full moto." To help further develop the motocross bike, Har- ley-Davidson entered select AMA 500cc Motocross Nationals in both 1976 and '77 with the same bike but with the motor basically punched out to 350cc. It was a 500MX National where the team, with Stat- en, scored its one and only national podium finish. It came at Unadilla in 1977. Staten had a solid outing at Unadilla that week- end and went 3-5 to finish third overall behind the factory Hondas of Marty Smith and Tommy Croft. The result brought a big smile to Staten's face. "It's great for the team to finally give them a result like this," he said at the time. "They've been working so hard and we've finally got a bike that's competitive." Staten ended the season ranked eighth in the final AMA 500cc Motocross standings and to this day it's the only place you'll find the Harley-David- son name in the top 10 in the AMA Motocross re- cord books. After two years the factory program came to an end. Ingham said the biggest problem was the Har- ley dealers never warmed up to selling dirt bikes. "The way they saw it they couldn't make any money selling the small bikes," Ingham said. "So we had a tough time even getting dealers to carry the bikes." Seeing the program as a failed experiment AMF sold off the Aermacchi factory to Cagiva in 1978. While the Harley-Davidson MX effort never at- tained great success, if you look at some of the ac- complishments of the team in such a short times- pan, you realize the company's efforts were actually not bad at all. The MX-250 today is one of the most collectable motocross machines on the vintage market and it's looked at today with curiosity to a newer generation of motorcyclists who could never picture Milwaukee in the motocross game. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives