Buell set up a large drawing board in the “barn ... - Whitehorse Gear

Buell set up a large drawing boardin the “barn” so he could draw theRW 750 engine components.The building was not reallya barn—the barn was across thedrive—but rather a large farmoutbuilding with three garagedoors and a concrete floor. Heatwas by an antique oil burner thathad its own small oil tank. Everyday someone filled the tank bycarrying a pail to the 300 gallonoutside tank, filling it and haulingit into the shop. When it was reallycold out it would be an hourbefore the coats came off.An original drawing of theRW 750 crankcase producedby Erik Buell. This is part of thedrawing that is on the drawingboard in the picture above.14

SILVER DREAM RACERErik Buell was born in 1950 in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania. His dad was atop notch patent attorney and his mom taught English. (Don’t turn inany document to Erik with grammatical errors; it will come back withall the errors marked up!) He was exposed to a lot of mechanical stuffon the farm; his dad collected interesting cars and by the 1960s hismotorcycle passion was in full bloom. His first motorcycle ride at age12 had ignited the flame that continues to burn today. By the late ’60she’d begun working at bike shops and was racing motocross. Heworked for shops throughout the Pittsburgh area but perhaps the mostimportant was the one belonging to Walter “Zero” Finnegan. Zero wasa bit of a local legend, choosing to run his own small shop rather thanuse his considerable mechanical skills to work for someone else. Hewas not a good fit for many of these shops as he was a meticulouscraftsman and committed to giving customers the best service hecould. Erik took to heart Zero’s commitment to customer service and itremains a guiding principle for Erik and Buell Motorcycles.Erik had tried his hand at being a rock star—didn’t we all at thatage—but it was tough to make any money. The baby boomer explosionin the motorcycle marketplace was well underway and competent mechanicswere in demand. Seriously good mechanics could make somereal money. Erik was one of the good ones. He essentially turned himselfinto an independent contractor, working for whichever shopneeded a top-notch wrench. He could work on any brand and usuallycould beat the book rate while doing first class work. If the shop askedhim to do something he considered unethical, he would simply moveto another shop. The fellow who wanted him to clean-up and quietdown the little Hodaka comes to mind. This dealer planned to sell it tosome sucker as a 4-speed. It had come from the factory as a 5-speed butthe tranny was failing. Erik refused to fake it and walked. Some shopswere a little rough. At one, a customer showed up with a shotgun andthe owners faced him down with the pistols they carried; Erik knew itwas time to move on.By the early ’70s the racing bug had bitten really hard and he wasriding on the fire roads in the area for hours each day to train. In 1972he was running his F81M Kawasaki hard on a fire road when disasterstruck. He was flat out and sideways when coming the other way was ayoung kid on a little dirt bike. The kid froze. Erik was running so hard1979–1985 RW 75015

16he could not avoid a collision and took out the entire front end of thebike with his leg. The front wheel of Erik’s bike was destroyed and hisleg was crushed. The forks bent backwards so far that they broke someof the fins off the cylinders. With a shattered leg and bleeding badlyErik was lucky that a Jeep came along and got him to the ER before hebled to death. It was a close thing. When he was stabilized, one of thedoctors wanted to amputate. Fortunately a different doc thought theleg could be saved. What pieces remained were screwed into a metalshaft and they casted Erik from the hip to the toes. That was the end ofhis motocross/flat track career.Instead, when he could finally get up and move around, he took themotor from his crushed bike and combined it with a 350cc cylinderand a H1R Kawasaki frame to make a road-racing bike for a friend.They made it to Daytona in 1973 but shortly afterwards the fellow decidedhe wanted out. Erik bought the half his friend had provided andwent road racing. He had realized that even though he could not racemotocross with a cast he could get on a road racer.He turned out to be pretty good, running at the front of a Noviceclass that included the likes of Dave Roper, Richard Schlacter, and DaleSingleton. He saw Gary Scott beat Kenny Roberts at Laconia on theHarley-Davidson RR250 GP bike and when they became available forpurchase he just had to have one. He borrowed a lot of money to buyone and when it showed up for the 1974 season, it was horrible. Theproduction version was not even close to the bike Scott rode; they wereunreliable and to top it off you couldn’t get spares. Erik watched infrustration as the fellows he had diced with as a Novice continued towin races and qualify for Expert while his bike would break and hewould slide further down the list.Perhaps the low point of the season was the Talladega round. He hadcrashed the RR again by pushing too hard in a valiant but fruitless effortto make a slow bike go fast, and had a white gel-coated Yamaha fairingmounted on the bike (you couldn’t buy a Harley-Davidson fairing). Nopaint, just a number. While driving all night to get to the race he stoppedat a truck stop and saw a very large decal of a leaping bass. You know theones; they decorate the rear windows of campers all across America. Erikdecided it was just the thing to brighten up the boring white gel coat.This decision may have had something to do with lack of sleep, but forwhatever reason a pair of these beauties ended up on the bike. When herolled the bike into tech, the inspectors took one look and flunked him.They would not let him race until he took the decals off.

PittsburghPerformanceProductsErik Buell was your typical racer: alwaysstruggling to get enough money for racing.The really good parts were expensive, soBuell, not content with just being aconsumer, decided to become the U.S.distributor, under the name of PittsburghPerformance Products, for some of theproducts he wanted to use on his bike. Hegot on board with manufacturers of thebest equipment out there. He sold the verylightweight Dymag magnesium wheels, APRacing brakes, and Interstate Leathers(despite the name these were high qualityrace leathers made in England). Theexchange rate really favored the dollar sothis was a very nice little business.Buell also developed and patented a“sandwich” brake rotor. At the time brakerotors were either cast iron, stainless steel,or aluminum. Cast iron has excellent brakefeel, good heat transfer, and good life but isprone to rust and is very heavy. Aluminumis very light and has excellent heat transferproperties but wears out quickly.Buell addressed these issues in hispatent application:“It has long been recognized that theremoval of even a few ounces of unsprungweight was of tremendous advantage.”“I have discovered a brake disc whichsolves all these problems. It is light inweight, has high thermal transfercharacteristics, and is highly resistant to thewear and abrasion of the brake pucks.”Buell’s solution was to sandwich analuminum core between two sheets of stainlesssteel. They had one-third less weight than a steelrotor plus much better heat transfer and a verylong life. The Wilke Brothers’ race team won twoUSAC National Midget Championships in theSales literature was produced for theproducts Buell sold through hisPittsburgh Performance Productscompany to support his racing.1980s using just one set of brake rotors for anentire year.One of the points that Buell stressed for theDymag wheels and the Buell Brakes was thereduction in rotational mass and unsprungweight. You can see from the ads that Buell’scurrent ZTL brake system is not just “marketingspeak” but a further development of a long-heldbelief.■17

Barton MotorsBarton was a tiny company founded in the mid-1970sto produce an English Formula One motorcycle. Mostof the Japanese Formula One bikes were run by teamslocated in England so there was a lot of expertiseavailable to make parts. The engine was derived from aSuzuki. The first, and apparently only, complete bikethey built was for the movie “Silver Dream Racer”which starred David Essex. The chassis followedcommon wisdom at the time that too much stiffnesswas not good, and that the right amount of flex in thechassis would result in a nice-handling motorcycle.This sometimes actually worked for the underpowered,skinny-tired bikes of the early two-stroke era but withthe power the 750 Barton was making by 1981, aflexible frame was almost unridable.This brochure for the Barton company shows theSilver Dream Racer bike that was featured in the movieof the same name.■The primary function of racing tech inspection is to ensure thesafety of the participants; secondary functions involve meeting the basicrules of the class you are running. They are not trying to catchcheating—if you have used the valve springs from a 1936 Super Duperwhile only 1935 valves are allowed, the post-race teardown is supposedto catch that. They also enforce standards involving appropriate decalsand the like but safety is the first and foremost task of the inspectors.Imagine his surprise when Erik rolled his bike back to the pits to readyit for the first race only to find that the frame was cracked in threeplaces. Seems it was okay if his bike folded in half at 150 mph but it wasnot gonna have a big old bass on the side when it crashed!In the mid ’70s, to help raise money to support his racing and also tocut costs for parts, Erik set himself up under the name of PittsburghPerformance Products as a distributor for some of the parts he needed.This enterprise would prove to be a lifeline at key points in the future.While Erik was chasing his road racing dreams and wrenching atbike shops he was also pursuing a mechanical engineering degree at theUniversity of Pittsburgh. As he worked his way through school he alsoworked his way up the ranks of AMA road racing. He made LightweightExpert in 1977 and Formula One Expert in 1978. He graduatedfrom Pitt with a Mechanical Engineering degree in 1979.18

Harley-DavidsonErik had done well in school and his look of steely determination surelydid nothing to discourage potential employers, so he had his choice ofa few jobs including a very nice one in aerospace. Instead, he pursuedHarley-Davidson. They were the only American motorcycle companyand Erik had it very bad for motorcycles. Harley-Davidson would onlyrecruit locals and were not all that big on college grads. Erik had to gethimself to Milwaukee and talk his way in.That he did, and once there his talent and drive quickly made an impact.He started out doing testing and analysis; his first job was trackingthe oil usage on Shovelhead test bikes. This consumed a lot of timeas you might imagine. Shovels were never known for being oil-tight.He quickly rose through the ranks to lead the chassis developmentteam for the FXR project.His personal racing was also in progress. He owned and raced aDucati and a TZ750 Yamaha, the latter running in the old FormulaOne (F1) class. His racing program was moving along fairly well for acouple of years but things were about to change.The career at Harley-Davidson was going well. He was leading thechassis team on the FXRT project and as a result learning an enormousamount about real world motorcycle chassis dynamics. The teamhooked up test bikes with recording gear and then flogged them aroundthe Talladega test track, recording what was happening. The result wasone of the sweetest handling Harleys of all time (these bikes became oneof the favorite rides of the Hell’s Angels because of this), and a head fullof knowledge that Erik would find useful for years to come.Erik’s career was going well but his racing was not. He was fast butthe Yamaha was old and wearing out. He was also concerned aboutracing a Yamaha while Harley-Davidson was locked in a life-anddeathstruggle with Japanese manufacturers; it was becoming increasinglyobvious that racing a Yamaha while working for Harley was notappreciated by people in the corner offices.Erik considered two solutions to these problems. The first involvedan obscure British company called Barton Motors, which had built a750cc square four two-stroke race bike. The second involved convincingHarley-Davidson that they should take the Sportster motor andbuild themselves a real sportbike.19

20This dyno chart is from an RW 750 run that was made to tune the exhaustpipes. By this time there was more Buell than Barton in the engine. It gainsover 23 hp in less than 600 rpm when you hit 7500 rpm; ultimately gaining 90hp in 3000 rpm to reach 163.5 hp at 10500 rpm. This is manageable in a racecar with nice fat slicks but trying to feed in throttle while leaned over on a bikewas treacherous. Even with modern slicks this would be a handful; with 1980stires it was a recipe for high sides. Buell was able to smooth it out a bit bytuning the pipes and carbs but it would never be an easy bike to ride. BeforeBuell designed a nice stiff chassis, it bordered on the suicidal.

Erik was watching the ambitious Barton motorcycle, which costarredwith David Essex in the B movie “Silver Dream Racer,” whenthe TZ’s chassis broke. The Barton looked to be the answer to his problems,so he bought the Barton bike in late 1980. Actually the bike wasjust the beginning of his problems.The second solution got about as far as you might imagine. It wouldreappear after the first solution collapsed but we will get to that later.The Barton bikes had shown potential with 500cc engines but thelarger 750cc displacement did nothing to help their already questionablereliability. In addition, the chassis was decidedly marginal. Not todisparage Barton—after all it was a couple guys in an ancient abandonedchurch attempting the impossible—but their lack of resourcesresulted in a motorcycle that was not going to take Erik into the upperreaches of the AMA pro ranks. However, it was fast. Erik felt he couldfix the problems. He was, after all, very knowledgeable about motorcyclechassis design.Did we say the Barton was fast? It was very fast. Erik would eventuallyget it to 178 mph with a peak horsepower of 163 at 10,500 rpm.This was more than enough to compete with the ubiquitous TZ750 inAMA F1 racing. There was of course one small issue. Its very flexibleframe would wind and unwind itself under hard cornering. The resultwas unpredictable handling. If the motor had given you a nice broadpower curve, you could ride around the handling. Trouble was thepower band was about as wide as a matchbook and when the power hit,all the matches lit at once. Plus, it liked to seize—often and withoutwarning. The thing was a wicked, mean, and nasty SOB but when itwas right it had the power to kick the TZ750’s butt; a very seductivepackage for a determined young engineer/racer.With Carmine Vara, his friend and partner in the enterprise theycalled Ermine Racing, Erik struggled with the Barton through 1981 butthe beast was constantly breaking. Erik was constantly calling Englandfor parts. They persevered, intrigued by its potential.Then fate intervened. In early 1982, Erik learned that Barry Hart(the mad Welshman behind Barton) had gotten a job offer from Britishbike maker Armstrong that he just could not refuse. The idea of an actualsteady income was too much to pass up so he took it. Barton partswould become unavailable. Erik, as he likes to do, jumped in with bothfeet, buying the whole Barton deal, lock, stock, and porous crankcasecastings. He really had little choice. If parts became unavailable, Erikwould not have a bike to race in F1. Going back to race a productionCarmine Vara and Erik producedthese packets in an effort to attractsponsorship for what wouldeventually become the RW 750.They got no takers.21

Bill Meyer in his Buell powered Ocelot at Road Atlanta for the 1985SCCA National Championship races. Meyer was the last of the sports carguys to give the engine a try. Meyer found the motor “reliable and fast.”He won the SCCA round at Summit Point in August, but at the NationalChampionship races the ignition system failed. That was the last gasp forthe Buell-Barton engine.Not on Two WheelsThis advertisement for the sportscar motor ran in Sports Carmagazine.Dave Ammen and Greg Rutherford purchased Barton engines touse in a SCCA D-sports racer. This class allowed 850cc engines ofany configuration. The Barton had a real power advantage overother available engines but proved to be very fragile. “We wereconsistently faster than everyone else, but we could not get theengine to last,” Ammen said. “It needed more work and financialbacking than we were able to give it.” Ammen had to make hisown set of gears. “The gears were just not able to handle theweight of the car,” said Ammen. Fortunately he was in thebusiness of making gears. He managed a couple of wins andqualified for the National Championships a few times but gaveup after not being able to overcome the reliability issues.The 750cc engine also saw use in Nigel Rollason’s sidecar rigat the Isle of Man TT and it is there that Barton had its bestresults. Rollason managed a second in 1979 and a first and thirdin 1986. He was consistently fast from 1979 until 1987. By thetime of his victory Buell owned Barton and some of the pieces inthe winning chair were more Buell than Barton.■22

ike after running in the premier class was not an acceptable option soErik really had to buy Barton. He was convinced he could make thebusiness work and sell some motorcycles. There was a market for a decently-pricedreplacement for the TZ750 in AMA racing. It took untilvery late in 1982 to arrange all the details and then in early 1983 Erikwrote the check. He was in the motorcycle business. Unfortunately, bythe time the pieces all arrived, the 1983 race season was half over andvaluable development time was lost.Development of the RW 750Erik labored on continuing to develop what was now being called theRW 750 motorcycle. Then in the spring of ’84 he convinced Harley-Davidson to witness a test at Talladega (a track where Harley-Davidson rents countless hours of testing time) hoping to get them totake the project under their wing and get him the resources to competeIt usually looked like this in the shopat the farm, where you can see onepartially assembled RW 750 andone bare frame.23

24When the first “production” RW 750was finished, Erik Buell and DaveGess set up a photo shoot. Dave hadaccess to a portrait studio at thattime; it was decidedly marginal forwhat he had in mind but when youhave no money, you have to make itwork. (Making it work was arecurring Buell theme!) Daveborrowed yards of black velvetmaterial from a photographer friendand draped the studio in it. Twoexposures were taken, one with thebodywork off and one with it on.The result is this ghost image. Erikwould later credit this picture as theinspiration for the translucentbodywork on the City-Crossmodel of 2005.

in the Daytona 200. Doug Brauneck would ride the bike, Erik wouldwrench, and Harley-Davidson would watch. They offered no money tohelp the test along so Erik arrived on his usual shoestring.Brauneck ran a dozen laps and was very fast indeed. A speed of 178mph was recorded on the radar gun and the handling was great. Hisspeed was such that Harley-Davidson began to believe that runningcompetitively at Daytona was not a fantasy. They wanted to see justhow the bike would do over 200 miles.This seemingly delightful result of the test was the RW’s downfall.Because of the time constraints Harley needed to run the test thatweekend. The only tires available that would survive the banking forany length of time lowered the bikes gearing. Erik, being broke, did nothave any gears that would allow the bike to run fast and stay below redlineon the Talladega banking. Brauneck ran some very, very fast laps.The engine seized. Erik fixed it. It seized again. Turned out one of therotary valves was incorrectly machined and that cylinder was leaningout at maximum rpm. Harley was not happy; Erik was still on his own.Now a regular guy like you or I might say at this point “Damn, thatdidn’t work. Glad I have a day job to pay the bills.” Erik is not a regularguy. He decided that if he had more time he could get this thing workingright and have bikes to sell by the fall. To get the extra time he quit avery nice job at Harley-Davidson. (Actually, he tried to quit, but JeffBleustein made him take an extended leave of absence so he wouldThe RW 750 engine was a 66.4 x54.0 mm bore and stroke, rotaryvalve square four. It featured twotwin-cylinder crankshafts gearedtogether. There are four separatecylinders. Many of the partswere designed or redesignedby Buell, including the pistonsand the flywheel. The enginestarted life as a 500; there wasalso an 850 version in additionto the 750 that Buell raced.25

Doug Brauneck on the RW 750 prototype during practice at Road America in 1984.Road AmericaBy the summer of 1984, Buell had fixed mostof the RW’s problems and was running thebike in as many AMA Nationals as he couldafford. The goal was to sell bikes. At RoadAmerica that year Doug Brauneck, one of thetop privateers, was entered to ride the bike. Hedid a lot of practice laps and was impressed,but he was concerned about reliability and, atthe very last minute, decided to stick with theslower but reliable Yamaha TZ750. Erikliterally jumped into his leathers and ran tothe start line. He only completed one lap beforethe water pump drive sheared. Dave Gessmanaged to get one shot of him aboard thebike. (See page 6)The next race was at Pocono. On theMonday before the race, Buell joined a fewfriends who had rented Blackhawk Farms racetrack outside of Beloit, Wisconsin, and ran afew laps to make sure he had fixed the waterpump problem. The bike ran great until itseized in turn one and highsided Buell to theground. He broke three ribs. The bike did notrun at Pocono.■Erik Buell and John Hasty discuss the RW.26

have the option of coming back after six months. He was not comingback.) His parting was on exceptionally good terms—something thatwould prove important in the future.To develop a race bike Erik needed cash, so he sold his duplex andfound a run-down farm to rent in Mukwonago, Wisconsin. The farmwas a long way from any neighbors and had a nice garage building aswell as a barn. It was an ideal place to build and test a race bike. Hewould generate some income by stepping up his Pittsburgh PerformanceProducts business.The RW 750 really was, as the hot rodders say, “sanitary.” Lots of attentionto detail is evident in the construction of the chassis. It hadmostly straight tubes for maximum stiffness. The engine was mountedwell forward to keep weight on the front end. The front suspension wasMarzocchi with the patented Harley-Davidson electro-pneumaticanti-dive system (which Erik invented). The rear suspension was a singleWorks Performance unit. The axles were thicker than usual 1980spractice; the front was 20 mm versus the usual 17 and the rear was 25mm versus 20. The bearings were out against the fork tubes. None ofthis was common 1980s practice but resulted in a much stiffer axle. Increasingstiffness is a theme continued across the entire history of Buellmotorcycles.The bodywork not only looked good but shows the beginnings ofBuell’s interest in aerodynamics. It started with the basic shape of the1969 Harley-Davidson Cal Rayburn streamliner developed in CalThe one-car garage in Milwaukee,where Erik started to develop theRW 750, became increasinglydifficult to work in as the RW 750project grew. This farm nearMukwonago, Wisconsin, was aperfect location for the project. Thebarn itself, on the left, was used forstorage of leathers, wheels, andgeneral parts. The small building infront of the barn was the office. Itmay have started life as a milkingshed and is attached to the barn.The out-building on the right wasthe actual “factory” where theRW 750 was made and earlyRR 1000s were built.27

In the winter of 1984-85 KevinCameron authored a feature story forCycle magazine. This portrait wastaken for that story. You can reallysee the pride radiating from ErikBuell as he poses with the RW 750.Tech’s wind tunnel. Careful attention given not only to airflow over thebodywork but also through the radiators resulted in a very efficient,aerodynamic package. At the time, most fairings were simply covers,with little attention paid to how they actually worked moving throughthe air. Some period race bikes were faster without the fairings.By 1984, the new bike was ready and media kits went out. Cyclemagazine sent Kevin Cameron out to write a major feature article thatappeared in the July 1985 issue. One bike was sold and a second salewas pending. It looked like the gamble was going to work. America hada new motorbike company. Then, in spring of 1985, the AMA pulledthe plug on the class. Formula One would go away and the growingSuperbikes would become the premier class. Overnight Erik’s marketwas gone and along with it his business.28

Alan Ladd aboard the Machinist Union RW 750 prepares to go outfor practice at Daytona. Ken Winpisinger is standing at the left.Machinist Union BikeOne RW 750 was sold. On January 14, 1985,this was delivered to Kenneth Winpisinger of theMachinist’s Union. “Alan Ladd and I had beenracing locally and winning a lot,” saidWinpisinger. “My dad was president of theUnion and they sponsored an Indy Car team.I’m thinking to myself ‘they should sponsor us’and then I saw a magazine story on the Buelland showed it to my dad over dinner. The Unionwas always looking to promote American-madeproducts. I jokingly told Dad, ‘I should get oneof these and you guys sponsor us.’ He said ‘Goget it.’ I just about fell over. I called Erik andbought one.”The plan was to run the 1985 AMA seasonwhich kicks off at Daytona. “It would be better tostart a new race program somewhere other thanDaytona,” said Winpisinger, “if you are not 100percent ready to go, that place will hurt you.”It certainly did hurt them. The bike seized inpractice out on the banking between NASCARturn three and four. Top gear was about 160-170 mph. Ladd managed not to crash and theygot the motor back up and running by race day.“What I didn’t realize at the time was theamount of damage done to the rest of the enginewhen it seized. We kept having issues at thenext several races and it finally dawned on methat they all could be traced back to thatseizure. There was a lotta stuff we should havedone right away that we didn’t think about. Itwas a learning curve for all of us, that’s forsure,” Winpisinger said.The bike did not qualify at Daytona but theywere told to be on the grid to replace any nonstarters.A few guys didn’t make the race but theAMA official at the line straddled the front tireand grabbed the faring not letting them go out.He actually wrenched the fairing so hard hecracked it. They never ran a lap. To add insult toinjury they were listed as 80th, last place in theofficial results posted the next day. “I wasfurious, they wouldn’t let us start and then theysaid we finished last,” said Winpisinger.The best finish all year was second in a clubrace at Summit Point at the end of year. “I feltwe had a pretty good package by the end of theseason and was confident that we would havedone well if the class had survived,” Winpisingersaid. “It was very frustrating.”■29