VOL. 52 ISSUE 42 OCTOBER 20, 2015 P107
the faces of the nearly 70,000 attendees.
We went to the Festival this year not exclu-
sively to cover the races, but to try to take in
the entirety of the event and tell some of the
stories. There were plenty.
The 70,000-Mile Superbike
Pete Hokenstad may have the distinction of
owning the racing Superbike with the most
mileage in the country. The former MRA
racer-turned vintage campaigner found a
1981 Kawasaki KZ1000 on eBay and decided
to convert it into a Superbike for AHRMA
road racing. As I take a closer look at the KZ
Hokenstad eagerly points out the odometer
to me. "I decided to keep the original odom-
eter on the bike," he says with a grin. "Check
it out—over 70,000 miles. Only about 300
miles of it was on the racetrack."
Hokenstad machined most of the race
engine parts for the bike himself. He had to
custom grind some pistons to make them
work. A supreme improviser (or as others
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