Good ride, if not on a GS

[850 Combat]

I was thinking of the fun trips I have taken on my MkIII Norton over the years. Unfortunately, due mostly to work, there have been none lately. I have ridden it all over the country, from Texas to LA, From LA to Oregon, From Virginia to Maine, etc.
One of the most fun long rides I ever had on it was riding it down to San Filipe Mexico for the La Carrera road race to Ensenada. This was in September of 1986. I had read the story in Cycle World by Steve Anderson about his adventures in the race, and I wanted to try it for myself. My brother drove my old VW Westfalia down as my pit crew, I rode the Commando down there from Lake Elsinore, California.

This is the only organized motorcycle race I have ever entered. We set out Friday night, after Paige, my brother, got off work. No spare parts were brought, because it didn’t seem that a little weekend trip of only about 650 miles should be a problem on the Commando, even if 125 miles of it was a race. I rode the Norton down from Lake Elsinore, California following Paige in my 1968 VW camper bus. Its kind of hard to ride that slow, but what are you going to do? We slept in the Van somewhere outside on El Centro, CA.
We hit the road in the morning, had breakfast in El Centro, and entered Mexico in Mexicali. Riding through Mexicali was no fun for me, but not as scary as riding through Tijuana. We got into San Filepe in the mid morning of the day before the race. After finding the headquarters, I asked about tech inspection. The official asked me if the Mexican border police had let me ride the bike into the country. When I replied that they had, he said “well you passed”. So much for tech inspection.
Before we rode into town, we saw a lot of race trailers and transporters out by the course, Mexican Route 3, pre running the course, and practicing. I felt pretty intimidated seeing how many of the participants were approaching the event. Many had been prerunning for days. These people were serious about it. I thought it was just a lark.

At the race headquarters, which happened to be at the waterfront hotel we were staying in, a lot of people were doing last minute tune-ups and oil changes and such. I cleaned and waxed a little on the Commando, but performed no maintenance at all. It had been tuned only a few hundred miles ago after all, and it just isn’t that fussy of a machine. A BMW rider who was parked next to me borrowed some cleaning stuff from me to tidy up after performing a hot valve adjustment on his boxer twin. He would end up crashing and to his death in the race.

One of the coolest things ever was to walk out front of the hotel, and see Gary Nixon crouched down sitting on his heels rubbing his chin while checking out my Norton. He thought it was a nice bike (and probably hoped I would keep it out of his way).
That night, I could not sleep at all, because off anxiety and fear. I was ready to drop out of the race.
In the morning, I talked myself out of dropping out of the race, and went ahead with the group to the start, about 25 miles to the north of the San Filepe race headquarters.

[850 Combat]

Installment 2

On the way to the start, a race broke out. I was feeling good, running along with a hot Ducati Pantah 600.
At the start, the plan was for my brother to fuel me using the cans in the old Westy. He had problems due to an inability to communicate with the Federales at the start, who were closing the road. While he was trying to stop, the Federales were waving a pistol for him to go. This was not really in a threatening way, but disconcerting just the same. He went, leaving me behind unrefuelled.
I left the start thinking that It still was only 60 miles to the mandatory fuel stop, so I should still make it. What I did not know was that the night before, they called an additional riders meeting to announce that the mandatory pit stop had been relocated another 25 miles farther away from the start.
Now my Norton is not exactly a race bike. At that time, it had slightly raised compression, 32 Mikuni’s, and an HPI #3 Cam. A 12 in. front brake and fork brace was installed, Progressive Suspension springs, S & W shocks, and rearset foot pegs are about the only mods save for the 1972 type exhaust system. That was it, save for slightly wider alloy wheels (18 in. in back).
It was (and is) a peppy street ride, but certainly not a race machine of any sort. The bike still had all original internals including pistons, with the exception of the cam and gaskets, and about 35,000 miles on it. Just another day in paradise on my daily street bike. I didn’t even consider pre-running the course. It never occurred to me that it was that serious.
I had decided to leave the mirrors on it, as I expected to be overtaken quite a lot. Two motorcycles started every 30 seconds. I started next to a real clean tracker style Triumph with a Bonneville tank.
When we were waved off, I kind of let him go ahead a little, because I was still not comfortable. Soon it was apparent that my 850 could easily run with the Triumph. Across the flats, it would pull 7100 or so rpm, for about 122 mph with the 21 tooth countershaft sprocket and tire size I had. That was expected. What was not expected, was that It would not maintain that speed. At high speeds, fuel was apparently leaving the float bowls faster than it was running in from the fuel tank. I opened the reserve valve, but that did not completely solve the problem. It worked fine in the twisty bits, where the throttle was not constantly kept open wide, but on the long flat straights it would run out of fuel. It would only pull about 6200 rpm continuously without feeling like it was leaning out. Each time I had to let off the throttle for a turn, it would Pull all the way past red line again until it starved again.
I ended up running out of fuel before the pit stop. I stopped and spectated for a little while, until all the other bikes went by. Then, concerned about missing the party, I took off pushing. After a little while, probably less than a half of a mile, I encountered some spectators with ATC Hondas. After a little convincing, one of them graciously removed his gas tank, and poured its contents into my Norton roadster. Back in business!
I finally made it to the pits, where Paige had put the fuel can away. He thought at that time that he was facing the prospect of scraping me off the pavement somewhere, and had closed up. It was not exactly a Formula I style pit stop. He was more interested at first in finding out why I was so late in arriving than he was in fueling. He is yelling “What Happened” While I’m yelling “Get the Gas!”. Finally, I get refueled an on my way again.

Although the road was “closed”, the authorities were not able to keep all non race traffic off the highway. I passed 3 or 4 Mexican farm vehicles during the ride, some going my way, some not. I was mindful of this in the blind curvy and hilly sections. The left lane was not for me in a blind turn.
Back on the road, I finished the race without further incident, except I was now so late that the cars were catching me. I was leaning over in a right turn when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It was a bright red Plymouth Superbird going sideways around me in the turn, driver and passenger grinning like fools. I rolled way off the gas and let them go. The race is the one and only time I have ever ridden on that road. It was a blind turn, and I was only willing to push so hard. I was just afraid that Hal Needham, in the Scoal Bandit Winston Cup car was close behind me and closing at close to 200 miles per hour. It wasn’t, but I was not all that excited about the prospect of being overtaken by a 3500 pound car going 200 miles per hour.
The finish was anticlimactic. I still averaged over 65 mph for the distance, even after running out of fuel and waiting for everybody to pass. Fred Eiker won (among the bikes), averaging some 117 and change on his 1974 850 Norton. Three of the four or five bikes to average over 100 were Nortons. One was Nick lenatsch on a Motorcyclist Magazine project Sportster, one was a Ducati 750 F1 Laguna Seca. Every Norton except mine beat every bevel drive Ducati that participated in the race, including a sweet Hailwood Replica which was entered. There were a lot of Ducati F1’s entered too, including Laguna Seca’s and Montuich’s. Most of the Norton’s beat up on all of those too.

There was free Tecate for the participants. I grabbed a can and walked up a hill to watch the rest of the entrants come in. When the Scoal Bandit came into view, probably going close to 150 mph (he averaged 137) it began to brake hard. The car moved around under braking, and actually made me wish I was watching from farther away for a moment.

At the finish, I was real stoked to find that my mother and my other brothers and sisters had driven down to meet us at the finish, and we all had a great time. I got to buy a round of drinks for a group including Mark Brelsford and Gary Nixon at dinner that night.

While negotiating the Tijuana traffic home on the Norton, the following morning, I got to split lanes toward the border crossing, running between most of the competitors who had trucked or trailered while they waited in line.
I believe that my bike was the only entry in the vintage class ridden there, raced, and ridden home. A lot of hot race bikes did not finish. I saw a beautiful Honda CB 750 looking like the one Dick Mann rode in 1970 at Daytona, and a great looking Guzzi broken down at the side of the road, among others. Probably a full race track machine has trouble on straights lasting 10 or 15 miles. The straight flat stretches across the top of Baja are miles and miles longer than the straights at most tracks.
It was a great race, and a pretty fun time. It was great to see Nortons do so well. The day before the race, the Ducati riders were pretty much just wondering which one of them was going to win it. My brother came down with a case of Montezuma’s Revenge on the drive back.

I didn’t wait for him.