25 Jahre RG und RD/RZ Treffen USA

Wer im Herbst in den Staaten sein sollte:
http://www.gammagathering.rg50…00_gathering_welcome.html

Grüße
Carsten

OK, here's the plan! PLEASE READ and if you are interested at all, take the survey -see blue link below!

I also cc'd this to everyone in my address book with "rg 500" in the notes, so if you live in Botswana and got this in error, just bear with me.

Over the last few months I've spoken with with numerous Gamma guys from on the list, from off the list, and most recently I have been chatting with Rick Lance about a possible mega-Gamma-Rendezvous for 2010. I think we have a decent plan that is very affordable, offers lots of diversion, and will make for a memorable weekend. Rick says it sounds like a good excuse to get the southeast guys together, some of our Canadian buddies are planning to come down, and we may even entice a few of our the guys from over the pond to attend. Could be a pretty fun party. Ready?

The Barber Vintage festival will take place over the October 8-9-10 weekend near BIrmingham, Alabama. This is a stellar 3-day weekend filled with tons of classic bikes (dirt and pavement) , vintage racing (trials, roadracing, MX, etc), a spectacular location to hang about, good local roads for riding, a world-class museum, and dirt-cheap admission to all of the above. There were also stunt shows by vintage aircraft and tons of spectators on unusual machinery all taking place at a world-class facility that caters to bikes first and foremost.

The plan is, we just attend the vintage festival, and use that as an excuse to get together with our Gammas, RZ500s, and whatever 2-strokes we can muster. There will be no shortage of things to see at the world-class track or museum (one of the best motorcycle museums in the world), there are all sorts of good riding destinations in Alabama, and if you are bent on riding around Barber you could even do the promoter's practice on Friday. Or take a parade lap during the weekend. I went to the vintage fest this past October and it was GREAT. It would be a perfect venue to get together with our cool bikes. in an atmosphere that actually appreciates vintage machinery!

There is even an exhibition "open 2-stroke GP" class that will be run on Saturday and Sunday, and Gamma owners so inclined could even take to the racetrack to lay down some blue smoke over the weekend. Licensed racers only, alas.

If nothing else, drag yourself and your Gamma or RZ down to Barber for 3 days of benchracing, oogling bikes, and hanging about with the rest of the 2-stroke gang. You will suffer an overdose of cool hardware exposure and probably go home with a strained jaw from chattering for 3 days, but other than that I think we'd have a blast own there.

PLEASE take the survey below and let us know if this idea rubs you the right way.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CCNNC35

more info on barber vintage festival: http://www.barbervintagefestival.org/

barber museum: http://barbermuseum.org/

AHRMA (vintage racing): http://www.ahrma.org/

Randy Noria.

Don't miss this one!

Latest tally from survey:

Will attend “for sure” 25
“probably” 16
50-50 chance 7

bikes listed:
Rg500 32
RZ500 15
other 21

ping
8-10 Oktober!

http://www.gammagathering.rg50…00_gathering_welcome.html
und was da nich' alles am Start stehen wird ...
http://www.gammagathering.rg50…_Stroke_Shop_RS500GP.html
http://www.gammagathering.rg50…agathering/attendees.html

Carsten (Aachen-Germany)

ping ping :D

Katastrophe :

Beim Aussenherumvorbeifahren in einer Kurve wurde die mittlerweile super laufende RG500delta von einem das Vorderrad verlierenden Supermotofahrer abgeräumt und fing mächtig Feuer ...

Gruß
Carsten

"So, after a few days of wrenching and tuning, the Delta was pretty much spot-on, handling great, running like a monster on the track, and race-ready. earlier in the day I just got 3rd in the 250GP class in BOT and was starting to get the feel of the track reasonably well.

Just before my race, I said- "what about the camera?" and Matt Manspeaker (my crew chief) says "forget about it". And I say:

"But Lonny said he wants video!"

so we mount it on the side fairing

Did warmup lap on the RG for the open GP race and it felt bloody fantastic. like a proper racebike, instead of an out-of-sorts streetbike with fat jetting. ready to rock and roll. I was thinking, "we're going to run quite fast in this race"

We grid up and I get a decent start, behind pomeroy on his big cheetah-motored RS and maybe 2 other guys into T1. red flag immediately, someone was off after T2.

hot lap and grid up again for another start but some guy had a disaster of some sort on the starting line, red flag. we sit around for a while.

hot lap again and as I come around, a guy points frantically at my bike, waving me off. I pull into the hot pit and pit marshall comes up- the camera had fallen off and was swinging by the cable. they work to saw off the cable ties and get the camera off, but too late to grid up. He says, "You have to start from the hot pit, after everyone else has cleared the tower" and I say "no problem".

So, 3-2-1 off they go, then second wave goes, and after they clear the hill he lets me go. I do my best job to sear out of the pits and fly out onto the track. RG working perfectly, almost as much confidence as I had on the 250. While not the fastest guy at the place I'm running decent laps and so I'm catching guys immediately and with very high closing speeds. pass, pass, pass, around we go, I'm sucking up everything in my path on lap 1. As we come to the last 3 corners of lap 1 I've got andy jones in my sights, must have got a lousy start- he's 2 bikes ahead of me and the Delta is hauling ass. down the straight and I catch a motard going into T1. He goes up the hill to T2 and I'm going around him on the outside pretty rapidly, we're probably talking 10-15 seconds per lap differential so it's a big speed difference.

As we crest T2, I'm moments away from passing him around the outside, when he loses the front and crashes. he and his bike skid directly into my path and at this closing velocity, I smash into it in an instant. The timing was satanically perfect. cresting a hill I had no way to slow or change direction with any authority- he had just lost traction and I didn't have much more than he did.
I was afraid I hit his body but people watching said I missed him and hit his bike. So, over I go, and crash onto the right side. My bike skids off into gravel pit AND CATCHES FIRE. The motard guy is laying by his bike. I can't help him so I try to beat out the flames with my hands, to no avail. it's apparent I can't put it out, so I give up and scoot away to a safe distance.

The corner guy takes quite a few moments to arrive as I was in an odd spot. He has a water fire extinguisher which has no effect on the fire. The fire gets bigger as my fuel lines have melted and gas is likely just running out of the tank. With my genius of not having an easily-accessible petcock I can't stop the fuel flow.

2 more guys show up with water fire extinguishers that also have little effect on the fire. The flames go down some, but keep coming back. They stop spraying, but from my vantage point I can see it is still burning inside the bodywork. I run down and say hey, let me pick it up, so you can get the flames. Well, when I do that, it really gets going. (dang it) Now the bike is burning quite merrily and I'm watching my beautiful bike engulfed by flames. it's getting ruined in a hurry.

finally a fire truck arrives with a BIG hose and he blasts out the fire. The bike is like a charred body. oddly enough, the tailsection has mostly escaped damage (strange twist there) but it's really been badly burned up. bodywork is garbage, wires all shot, AiM dash scarred and bubbled , everything black and charred. The had to pry my gas tank off with a bar, so it's not great, either.

So that's about it. I can rebuild it, but don't have the resources to address everything for a while so it's going to be out of commission.

what started out as this (1.Bild)

ended up as this (2.Bild)

I helped get the other guy into the ambulance, not sure how he came out. He was moaning and groaning so likely busted something. I hope he's OK. dang, dang, dang.

But really, I think we can pin this one on Lonny. Certainly, the modern way is to put all blame on someone else. If Lonny hadn't demanded video, we would have left off the camera. No camera, no camera to fall off. No camera falling off, no hot pit start. No hot pit start, no passing of the motard in T2. Aha!! Lonster, YOU SUCK!!! " (Letzte Zeile ist ein Insider )

weitere Bilder vom Treffen:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=lf#!/album.php?aid=31382&id=112292322124886

"As I have heard - and said- many times, "if you can't afford to crash it, then don't race it"

Well, I can not afford to rebuild my 500 at a moment's notice, as this is something I have put years and thousands of hours into, but NOT putting it on the racetrack would be completely out of the question.

On a fantastic racetrack like barber, with the bike working beautifully, and having finally figured out out to ride the track, the sensation of letting the Delta have its head in every way to the fullest extent is what the bike was made for. No amount of driving up and down to cruise night or twisty backroads can compare to wringing out the 500, 100% on a great racetrack against other bikes and riders doing the same.

I built this bike so I might have a small taste of what my heroes felt on the real 500GP bikes. It may be a bit heavier and slower, but for a few laps yesterday I raced a 500 grand prix bike on a fabulous racetrack and that memory may just have to last me for a while. It was bloody fantastic.

Also discovered that a Grand Prix 250 seems to be as fast as the big-block RZ/ RS/ whatevers so a 250GP bike is still a very, very good idea if you want to go fast. The RS was a freaking missile and was not even thinking of breathing hard, on the chassis side. So I raced my 250 and 500 GP on the same weekend, which was awesome. I think the RG may have had its first chance of outrunning the 250GP and I was really set on giving it a shot. It was working that well.

The motard guy fell off almost exactly where I fell off Friday, on my 250, - and another Gamma went down there on saturday- and the first red flag in our race another bike went down there- it's a tricky right hander cresting a hill, you can overwhelm front traction with too much speed, or the wrong line, or just old tires, or the wrong input at the wrong time. It's an easy place to fall, it's a race, that's what can happen, I won't worry about it. I just hope that guy is OK. It was not like someone coming into a corner way over their head and T-boning you (which I have had happen to me on a simple trackday, which is supposed to be safer than racing)

I have to get into the motor quickly because while it was not directly damaged (I think) it surely has plenty of water inside and I have to clean it out.

Don't worry, I already have plans for the next "upgrade" . Jim and I thought Delta2 (squared) might be a good change. I will strip and clean it very shortly but it won't be rebuilt for a while.
The tempermental 38s will probably go into a box and I am looking to try the semi-fuel-injected TMX34s with pulsed powerjet. Russ Hoffman doesn't know this, but I am going to pick his brain seriously on that project.

This winter I planned to build a race-only RG500 XR40 replica, since I have almost all the parts needed to do that, I will just go ahead and build that bike. It will be quick and simple and won't have 20 years of blood and sweat in it!

And just think- I always wanted to get rid of the stock tank. now I will band-aid it up and use it on the XR40, and the delta will finally get a real alloy tank. And the tailsection survived mostly intact! front forks and rear suspension seem OK. I thought maybe new bodywork in front but this doesn't look too bad and hey, the front fairing stay is still good!

here we are headed out on warmup lap with camera still in place on the left side of fairing. (too bad I couldn't figure out how to turn it on in the 250 race, as there was a ton of passing. Hey I only got passed once, by the overall winner from wave 1 --we were in wave 2-- who lapped me just before the finish line.) another unfortunate turn of events.

all electrics, carbs toasted, Aim dash, bodywork, anything rubber or flammable in the centre of the bike, aack. it burned for so long I don't know what may have baked or warped. not to mention crash damage on right side. But there is plenty of the bike left to use over.

Have to admit, luck was purely horrible this last week. Absolutely fucking horrible. But, no matter what went wrong we kept fighting through it.

Looks like fate finally quit fooling around and decided to deliver a big-league smackdown that I can't get around with a few late nights of extra work. This has definitely got me wondering.

On the other hand- I'm in one piece. No one in our group was hurt too badly. Bikes can be repaired. I had a wonderful weekend with loads of friends (both old and new), and family. My very hard-working Pit Girl gave me a big hug and said to me last night, "can't we just drop off the face of the earth where nobody can find us and keep going racing?" 8-)

Things are not so bad after all!

Randy N

weitere Bilder:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO57LZ4qEZw>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCsARqGHdM8>

http://www.whiterose.net/~russ/Barber3/

http://www.whiterose.net/~russ/Barber2/

http://www.whiterose.net/~russ/Barber1/

C.