Today in motorcycle history, July 23, 1972

                                       

  July 23, 1972 at Lakeland International Speedway in Memphis, Tennessee, daredevil Bob Gill, also known as the man with really big balls, jumps 130 feet without a landing ramp.  Upon landing his front wheel collapses and he does a major-league digger, sliding an estimated 125 feet on the pavement.

 

  Almost a year later, on July 17, 1973, in front of 20,000 somewhat drunk fans at Seattle International Raceway, Bob sets a new World Record.  The people from Guinness witness him jump 22 cars, 171 feet without a ramp.

 

  May 10, 1973, Bob jumped the entire fleet of Ryder Rent-a-Truck vehicles.  This jump was the first jump featured in a television commercial.  The ad aired during Super Bowl VIII and over 140 million people watched in on January 13, 1974. (The Miami Dolphins beat the Minnesota Vikings 24-7 in case you were wondering.)  This television commercial was voted the "Number One Action Commercial of the Year" and helped propel Ryder to the #1 truck rental company. 

 

  The Great Jump - On August 18, 1974, he attempts to clear a 200' gap over the Appalachia Lake in Bruceton, West Virginia.  Sadly, he came up 3' short and crashed hard, ultimately putting an end to his jumping career. 

                                                   

Today in motorcycle history, July 22, 1967

  

 

 

  On July 22, 1967, Skip Van Leeuwen wins his first AMA National – the Ascot Park TT National Steeplechase in Gardena, California.  After the race, it was discovered that a fuel line on his No. 59 Triumph had broken.  He would have been lucky to make it another 75 feet, never mind to make another lap.

 

  In the highly under-rated, but uber entertaining (yet sadly under-attended) sport,  Skip Van Leeuwen was one of the best Tourist Trophy Steeplechase riders in the history of AMA racing.  Skip dominated AMA TT competition in the 1960's, winning four nationals on the small dirt-track circuits that featured a jump, water obstructions and both left-hand and right-hand turns.

 

  He won AMA National TT races at the Astrodome in Houston,Texas, at Castle Rock, Washington, and at his home track of Ascot Park in Gardena, California.  He also won numerous West Coast regional championships, often competing against his high school friend (and west coast legend) Dick Hammer.

 

  After retiring from racing in the early 1970s, Van Leeuwen went on to launch a highly successful motorcycle accessories business.

 

  Skip Van Leeuwen was inducted into the AMA Hall of Fame in 1999.

 

  By the way, Ascot Park was also the site of 4 successful jumps by Evel Knievel in 1967.  Thought you should know this.

                           

Today in motorcycle history, July 19, 1936

                     

  Bob Feller makes his major league debut. What does this have to do with a motorcycle? What? Huh? I don't get it. Sit down, Mary, don't get your panties in a bunch.
In the summer of 1940 former-major leaguer Lew Fonseca catches "The Heater from Van Meter" on film beating a cop on a 1939 Harley-Davidson knucklehead to a target. Ball vs bike. I am hoping I can get this video somehow in sync so you can see this feat. No mound, no real wind-up, just throw it.
  When it was all over, it was estimated to be 104mph, though there are lots of arguments. One thing not argued about is this was pretty damn cool.

  If you click on the icon with my bike and look at "about me" that is where it got downloaded to.  Sorry, I know about bikes, computers not so much. 

  If you have time check it out.  Or go to YouTube and look at Cavalcade of Sports: Bob Feller Before Radar Guns.

                                         

Today in motorcycle history, July 18, 1969

  

The Honda Dream CB750 Four, which hit the market in July 1969

 

  Honda succeeds again.  The Dream CB750 Four hits the market. 

 

  Slaps it in the face is more like it.  Under development for only a year, the CB750 offered two unprecedented features, a front disc brake and a transverse straight-4 engine with an overhead cam, neither of which was previously available on a mainstream, affordable production bike.  These two features alone were brain-rattling but, with the introductory price of only $1,495 it gave the CB750 a considerable advantage over its competition, particularly British rivals, i.e. Triumph, Norton and BSA.

  On July 18, even the somewhat snotty Cycle magazine called the CB750 "the most sophisticated production bike ever" upon its introduction.  Then, not to be left out, Cycle World called it a masterpiece, highlighting Honda's painstaking durability testing, the bike's 120 mph top speed, the fade-free performance of the braking, the comfortable ride and easy to read gauges.

 The CB750 was the first modern four-cylinder machine from a mainstream manufacturer, and the term superbike was coined to describe it.  The bike offered other important features that gave you a twitching in your loins: an electric start, kill switch, dual mirrors, flashing turn signals, easily maintained valves and overall smoothness and freedom from vibration both underway and at a standing.  It seemed the biggest complaints were that the bike was difficult to get on its center stand (so don't use it) and it had a habit of spitting chain oil onto the muffler (carry a rag like the rest of us).

  The Dream CB750 model is included in the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame of Classic Bikes, the Discovery Channel's "Greatest Motorcycles Ever," and was in The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition, and is in the UK National Motor Museum.

   In fact, it gave birth to a new category known in Japan as "Nanahan" (Nanahan meaning 750 in Japanese, the term was used by the development staff to maintain the confidentiality of their new model).

   Meanwhile on the racing circuit...

   The in-house racing team at Honda R&D brought their CB750 Fours to compete in the Suzuka 10-Hour Endurance Race scheduled to be held in August 1969, soon after the model's commercial launch.  Honda dominated the race with a one-two finish by Blue Helmet MSC.  The team of Morio Sumiya and Tetsuya Hishiki took first place, while the pairing of Yoichi Oguma and Minoru Sato came in a close second.

   Veteran rider Dick Mann, meanwhile, streaked to victory on his CB750 Four at the AMA Daytona 200-Mile Race in March 1970.  It was a ride that sent customers throughout the States running to their Honda dealers. 

 

Today in motorcycle history, July 17, 1949

 


                     

 

  Freddie Frith wins the Belgian Grand Prix,  Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, aboard a Velocette.  It is his fourth consecutive win enroute to becoming the 1949 World Champion in the first-ever 350cc Class.  Freddie would win all five races in the inaugural class,  Isle of Man, Swiss Grand Prix, Dutch TT, Belgian Grand Prix and the Ulster Grand Prix.

   Known as a Norton rider for whom he won the 1935 Junior Manx Grand Prix and then in 1936 he won the Junior TT and had a dramatic second-place finish to Jimmie Guthrie in the Senior TT as well as winning the 350cc European Championship .  In 1937 he went one better in the Senior with a brilliant win over Jimmie Guthrie and setting the first 90 mph plus lap of the Snaefell Mountain Course.  Freddie would eventually leave Norton for Velocette in 1948 and would win the Junior Race, putting notice to all that Velocette was no to be taken lightly. 

                                                           ****

  Alongside other riders from BSA, Ariel and Matchless Works teams, he served in the army during World War II at the Infantry Driving & Maintenance School stationed at Keswick.  They taught officers and NCOs how to ride cross-country.  Sgt. Freddie Frith taught teams of four on Norton 500cc motorcycles riding over Skiddaw Mountain in the Lake District National Park in England in all types of weather conditions.

                                  

Today in motorcycle history, July 16, 1930

                                                  
              

  On July 16, 1930, Ing Zoller started building split-single two-stroke engines.  It would be the engine that would make DKW a dominant racing motorcycle in the Lightweight and Junior classes between the wars.

  The split-single system, or "Twingle", sends the intake fuel-air mixture up one bore to the combustion chamber, sweeping the exhaust gases down the other bore and out of the exposed exhaust port.  The rationale of the split-single two-stroke is that, compared to a standard two-stroke single, it can give better exhaust scavenging while minimizing the loss of unburnt fresh fuel/air charge through the exhaust port.  The belief is that a split-single engine can deliver better economy, and may run better at small throttle openings.

  But there is a disadvantage to the split-single, for only  marginal improvement over a standard two-stroke single, it is a heavier and costlier engine.  That said, a manufacturer could produce a standard twin-cylinder two-stroke at an equivalent cost, so it was inevitable that the Twingle should become exTWinct.

 

  Racing versions of this design were often mistaken for regular twin-cylinders, since they had two exhausts or two carburetors, but these are actually connected to a single bore in an engine with a single combustion chamber.

 

  DKW had it's taste of fame and success with models such as the RT125,  pre- and post-World War II.  As reparations after the war, the design drawings of the RT125 were given to Harley-Davidson in the US and BSA in the UK.  The Harley-Davidson version was known as the Hummer, while BSA used them for the Bantam.

                                                            

Today in motorcycle history, july 15, 1962

 

 

 

  Max Deubel and passenger Emil Horner win the West German Grand Prix  (Solitudering ciruit) 500cc Sidecar Class.  The race is their third win of the 1962 season.  In the previous June,  Deubel and Hörner became the first sidecar team to lap the Isle of Man TT course at over 90 mph.

 

  Max Deubel would go on to be a three-time Isle of Man Sidecar TT winner and four-time FIM Sidecar World Champion.

 

  After an illustrious racing career he retired after the 1966 season, but Max has remained involved in motorcycle racing as an FIM official.

 

  Sidehacks forever!