styling in the angles on the rage cage

 Between being a dad, dreaming of flattrack racing again, running a shop with enough work to make me feel like a three legged dog in a fire hydrant factory- I have still been plugging away on the crosskart/rage cage/ oversize go-kart. Whatever the fuck it is. I call it the Fuzzy Eagle. If Dan Gurney built his own F1car to take on the world's best and he named his car the Eagle than my creation for Colorado hill climb domination is named Fuzzy Eagle. Or maybe Daffy Ducks illegitimate Dodo bird off-spring. Did you know Ben Franklin thought the Bald Eagle was a disgusting coward of a bird and he wanted our national bird to be the Turkey. I like Turkey. Not only with swiss on rye but they are a feirce, native, and resilient, majestic dinosaur of a creature. So if a Japanese Hayabusa flying at 200+ miles per hour crashed into a Turkey doing boogie woogie dance moves and somehow impregnatied it while Slayer was blasting through a blown out woofer, the offspring might be the two too many wheeled project that I am building and hope to someday race up that ol mountain that ol Zebulion declared un-climbable...

Betty's revival

 Story time:

Back before I started this blog, back when I was just starting to bud as more than a recreational racer, I was working at my first dealership job a couple of years out of MMI. A badly beat up dirtbike came into the shop. It looked like it was used for cleaning mine fields on the wrong end of a bull dozer. The owner apparently got some wild hair to go desert racing and took it out to vegas for the Mint or something like that and got the desert bug bad. I must have impressed him with my ability to straighten and fix up the old bike because he asked me if I wanted to go race Baja with him. I had just won a national amateur WORCS championship and my desire matched his enthusiasm. He bought a brand new XR650R and left his credit card with the parts counter. I built my dream bike. We named her Betty and the three of us went south of the border for the Baja 500. Without any support crew or real Baja experience we finished and had a total blast. Next was the 1000. It was a point to point peninsula run, much more logistical than the 500 mile loop we did before. With the help of a few good friends on the crew including my own Mom who nearly suffered a nervous break down due the extreme insanity that are Mexican highways, we managed to finish the race in 32 hours. Betty had the ever loving shit flogged out of her for 32 hours! The war stories were too many. We were bloodied, bruised, and beat to shit but poor Betty looked so much worse. This was the last year that Honda offered it's pit support to racers on the XR650R. A move to transition everyone to the new CRF450X platform. So A new 450X was purchased and I did what I do to a bike with an open budget. Here is where the story gets hard for me to tell. It all started when I was working on the bike after hours at the dealership on the bike and I was not allowed keys to the place so when the other senior employee there was ready to leave I had to put down my wrenches and go home. Somehow I forgot to fill the engine up with oil... Never will I forgive myself for this awful blunder. The bike went 40 hours before the transmission stated to whine. I was gutted. Nobody made me feel worse than myself. I tore the engine down and everything looked fine. A testament to Honda's rollerbearing cam and overall durability. We gathered a 3rd rider and with two crew trucks we headed to Mexico. Before crossing the border we stopped for a meal at an interstate side steakhouse in San Diego. After dinner we came out to the parking lot to only find one of our trucks. In the parking space where our other truck was parked was only the ignition key switch tumbler. Lots of gear and pre run bikes were gone but our race bike and old trusty Betty were in the truck we still had so we decided to continue. We shouldn't have. The next day south of Ensenada a speeding conversion van on lowly inflated tires swerved around us and then a few miles later we saw it crashed off of the highway while at least half a dozen Mexicans crawled out and then stood grimly while a girl whaled from inside the upside down van. I helped my EMT buddy crawl in the van and we extracted an infant. I held the tiny small lifeless body in my hands. It's head was horribly smashed. Everybody just looked at me. Finally my EMT buddy said there is nothing we can do. I set the poor thing down on the ground and walked away. The next day while pre-running the 3rd rider broke his foot. The next day while pre-running the 450's transmission again began to make concerning noises so we decided to make ol trusty Betty our race bike. The night before the race Betty's lighting coil stator burned out. We finally threw in the towel. It was a long quit drive home. My Baja racing days were over as was my relationship with my teammate. But 15 years later the ol enthusiastic guy came through the door of my shop and said I want to sell the bikes. But he couldn't see selling ol Betty to anybody except me and he couldn't see selling anything to me but rather to bestow ownership. The bike had been sitting out side leaned up against a dumptruck under 4 feet of snow. stripped of it's carburetor, birds living it ol Betty's air box. What a sorry sight but he knew I would bring her back to life. Welcome home Betty.

Hitting the big time

 So operation when you wish upon a star is well underway. It started with the delivery of the Champion XS bike a few posts ago. Or Maybe when John put me on his vintage BSA vintage motocross bike I posted about last june. Or maybe when I became good friends with John's brother Frank after he played jazz music over the loudspeaker while doing the race commentating at the flattrack races I started to attend in Denver when I got the flattrack bug from the Sideburn magazine way back when. Who fucking knows when or how or who the fuck'n fuckidy doo dah it started. But I remember when I was a bursting into the scene pro off road racer and working for the Maxxis off road industry I once over heard the Factory Kawasaki team boss talking to my Maxxis boss about not knowing if their new team leader racer had just hit the big time or if the big time had just hit him. I have often thought of that conversation like when I found myself in Spain shaking down a 150 hp race only homologation Buell XBRR 1340cc monster bike on a MotoGP track and the thing was spitting off its chain, spitting out rags the mechanic left in the air box, and spitting off its 62mm throttle bodies when I chopped the throttle. I had hit the big time. And the i felt the big time hitting me back even harder. Hard enough that weeks later on that same spanish MotoGP engineered beast I felt like I was playing Russian roulette, dancing with death. As close to suicide as I ever plan to take myself. What a rush. If that is the big time- I don't want it. Expectations are for angry in-laws, parole officers, and some old twit at the fabled golden gaits. Luckily I dont have any of them characters in my story. What I have is the real grass roots grown bond of the Lambrick brothers; Frank and John. Like two school yard mates who have each other's backs. Us against all the rest of the world. Not only did John offer me up the beautiful XS Champion bike but he started talking about a 1989 Yamaha YZ250WR (wide ratio) bike he won in a Cycle Magazine raffle. Back in 89 the AMA in an effort to keep flattrack alive hyped up DTX (Dirt Track Conversion). They gave each major magazine a dirtbike to convert into a flattracker. The Yamaha was developed with the help of none other than Chris Carr and even crash tested by David Aldana. It took a year for John to take delivery on the bike and by the time he got it it was ready to race, despite Aldana's signiture crash marks. John raced it to a 4th in championships points that year. It eventualy got changed back to a dirt bike spec and now I have the suspension on my bench and I am turning it back into DTX. I also rebuilt the crankshaft. Kind of cool to rebuild a crank that has been flogged by so many others. More cool is that this June I am to go out to Illinois and flog this puppy myself. On a TT, Short track, Half mile, and A Mile. Yes sir, this June I am really feeling like I am going to be riding high, hitting the big time. GO TEAM NEWBOLD'S MOTORBIKE LAMBRICK BROTHERS RACING!

I love a bike with a story. And this bike has it's story. I am hopping I can add a fun adventure filled chapter to it. June will be here before I know it. Time to start rubbing crisco into my leathers to make my beer belly fit into them... I think it has been two or three plus years since I went roundy round racing. ....Where the fuck did I stash my hot shoe...?

Hashiriya Riders | Japanese Riding Culture

Pure. They have always done everything with way more style over there.

Project Rage Cage takes shape

 

After months of delay I finally van tripped over to Mona Gary to get the start of the chassis. He bent all the tube for me, built the jig, and started tacking it together. What an awesome buddy! I am sure if I would have kept delaying my trip out to get it, he would have completely finished the chassis.

Since this build is intended for Colorado Hill Climb racing I decided to lengthen it by 7". This made the KJ Raycing VF-1 plans a lot more difficult to follow but the plans are just that: plans; not exact instructions. 

Gary's bender could not do the acute bend needed for the nose so I was left with figuring out the best way to attach all the tubes at the nose.

Novella digs it!

Now, on to suspension, fitting up the Hayabusa power, and styling in the angles...