Team Ironwood GS1000S @ LeMans

[850 Combat]

Kel Carruthers was a mentor to Kenny Roberts. I always thought Kel was from New Zealand, but I guess he was Australian.

As to the clutch failure, who knows? Factory teams in important events experience failures. I just took exception to what I considered to be a rash assumption that the team was stupid (more money than sense), and unprepared. It appears that the comment sports those atributes, however the record of the rider clearly does not.

It is always possible we've not got the full story...i see the bike has brembo 08 front calipers, nothing bad there, but if you've got the wrong m/c size on those they can be a real pain...if they'd had brake trouble, as a hypothetical example...and had to start abusing the gearbox to get slowed down I can easily see the clutch basket disintegrating.

What will last a season of short sprint races may very well break in a 4 hour endurance race.

I met Geoff Perry a few times - nice guy. The Kiwi connection with TR500's was quite strong. Keith Turner (a Kiwi) riding a TR500 with a NZ built frame and a NZ tuned motor was runner up to Ago in the 1971 500 World Championship.

[tatu]

I will concede i may have been a little hasty to condemn, but of all the well known problems with the GS1000 the clutch basket is one of the easiest fixes I have not heard of any catastrophic failures like this one , here in NZ Craig Smith ran a 150+hp GS and of all the problems he had the clutch was not one.

Happened to me in '81, as I remember it was broken where one of the rivets fixing the ally to the gear, instant shrapnel. No warning, no clutch noise, no slack in the lever, just bang and all the oil dumped instantly on the road and back wheel.

The replacement clutch basket was not the same beast that was in bike originaly.