I love the sound of a race bike in the morning
Words: Roger Moroney Photo: Andy McGechan
N
ostalgia and racing fuel... a most
agreeable mixture. More so when the
racing fuel is placed within the fuel
tanks of machines long past their race-
winning glory days, but which are still
rolled out and fired up at reunions and
celebratory meetings. Nothing beats the sound
of a race-ready Suzuki RG500 idling perfectly.
Well no, that’s not quite correct, because
what does beat that is the sound of the thing
tearing down a very fast and long straight then
buttoning off for a challenging turn. Ditto for
the two-stroke Yammies and Hondas and Kawas
and their European chums that once plied their
racing trades on tracks all round the world.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the ear-ringing
shrill of a racing two-stroke. I remember at
the MotoGP over in Oz about four years ago
where there were, on the Friday and Saturday
morning before the Moto irons were sent
out, fields of bikes familiar to those who
embraced the racing game back in the 70s.
And one caught my eyes, and ears. It was a
three-cylinder Yamaha which must have been,
in capacity terms, around 425cc, because it was
based upon a TZ350 unit with a third cylinder
attached. When the bloke bump-started it and
then stood beside it blipping the throttle, it drew
admirers. Many admirers. There were lots of smiles.
The smiles of both audio satisfaction and
nostalgia... although there weren’t too many
three-cylinder TZs circling about back then. Plenty
of TZ twins though, and hearing flocks of them
barking at high revs was always remarkable.
I never rode the race versions but rode plenty of
road versions... from RD250s to RG500s to NS400s
(the three-cylinder job) and RD500 V4s. And in
earlier days I had a Kawasaki Mach IV, the 750, in
my hands for a week (I did a swap with a mate...
he had my CB750). It had expansion chambers
and went like... well, I think you know what it
went like. It was frightening in a most wonderful
way. It reminded me of the sound of the racing
Kawasakis that the late, great Greg Hansford rode.
The two-strokes have pretty well dissolved from
the public landscape today, but not from the tracks
when the post-classics and the like are invited out
for a bit of fun. Nor have they disappeared from
Racing four-strokes and two-strokes sound bloody great
70 KIWI RIDER