Shannonville 50 years

TK4

TK4

Well-known member
The weekend of September 25-27 RACE Moto will be celebrating 50 years of motorcycle racing at Shannonville.
Please spread the word to all the old racers to keep that date open.
I just found out today from the organizers, details to follow as we get closer I'm sure.
Yeah, I'm that old...
 
I know I’ve posted this before but if you haven’t seen it it’s really worth the time to watch. I was there that weekend at Shannonville on a pit crew for a friend, Doug Morris, that was racing amateur Superbike. I saw this whole thing being filmed. Lange Hindle and Art Robbins both lived in Scarborough when I was a kid, they were like rock stars.This really was the golden age of Canadian bike racing. The stands and corners were overflowing with spectators, I don’t think they get crowds like that anymore.
 
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The changes in both age and body position are unreal. The guys looked old even back then compared to the kids racing now that look like they still get milk mustaches. Body position looks more like green group track day riders than national racers. Pretty amazing.
 
Renboy said:
The changes in both age and body position are unreal. The guys looked old even back then compared to the kids racing now that look like they still get milk mustaches. Body position looks more like green group track day riders than national racers. Pretty amazing.
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The bikes being raced in that video started off as a stock Kawasaki KZ1000 or Suzuki GS1000 putting out maybe 85 horsepower on good day, a very good day for that matter. Lang Hindle’s bike and Art Robbin’s bikes were closer to 130-140 horsepower, I believe Leitner and Busch did all the work on Art’s bike, they were the go to guys back then. Steve Crover who later owned Competition Kawasaki did the work on Reuben’s bike and many others. The name of the fellow that built Lang’s bike escapes me though.
 
So the opening scene is Lange Hindle, Rueben Mcmurter and Yvonne Duhamel, just doing laps on the very late Saturday afternoon/early evening. I forget who had cameras on their bikes but they were about the size of a shoebox, they didn’t have them on for the actual race. Yvonne Duhamel is riding Lang’s backup bike and at some point crashed it before the race you see here. Lang not having a backup bike certainly added to the drama and excitement of that weekend.
 
Bobo said:
The bikes being raced in that video started off as a stock Kawasaki KZ1000 or Suzuki GS1000 putting out maybe 85 horsepower on good day, a very good day for that matter. Lang Hindle’s bike and Art Robbin’s bikes were closer to 130-140 horsepower, I believe Leitner and Busch did all the work on Art’s bike, they were the go to guys back then. Steve Crover who later owned Competition Kawasaki did the work on Reuben’s bike and many others. The name of the fellow that built Lang’s bike escapes me though.
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L&B started doing Art's bike after he showed up on his street ride and waxed the field in AM Superbike. After only a couple of races he was bumped up to pro. Rick Tomasic at Sports Afield 2 did Reuben's bikes after he got black numbers. Lang did pretty much all his own wrenching with a guy named Dave (last name escapes me) helping out at the track. Rick Andrews at Ontario Honda did a lot of the cranks for the Kawasaki and Suzuki guys with Dave Garland doing balancing. It was quite local hot rod community.
 
Somewhere there's a photo of Robby Mieklejohn positively ventilating the crankcases of his SOHC Honda 750/1000.
Mike Crompton tuned, Weber carbs, chock-a-block full of RC Engineering parts. It was a total monster until suddenly it wasn't...
 
TK4 said:
L&B started doing Art's bike after he showed up on his street ride and waxed the field in AM Superbike. After only a couple of races he was bumped up to pro. Rick Tomasic at Sports Afield 2 did Reuben's bikes after he got black numbers. Lang did pretty much all his own wrenching with a guy named Dave (last name escapes me) helping out at the track. Rick Andrews at Ontario Honda did a lot of the cranks for the Kawasaki and Suzuki guys with Dave Garland doing balancing. It was quite local hot rod community.
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I was also there the weekend in 1981 that Art handily won Amateur Superbike on pretty much a bone stock,red, first year 1980 Suzuki GS1100 , I had the exact same bike. As was the tradition back then, they let the top ten amateurs run in the Pro Superbike race to give them some seat time and fill the grid.Nobody expected them to be competitive. Well that was not the case here. From the very beginning of that race Art got right on Lang Hindle’s tail way ahead of the other factory riders. He really gave Hindle a run for his money and finished second. You have to remember this was Art’s very first weekend ever racing. It’s also a testament to the Suzuki GS1100. It was bone stock ( other than tires and a pipe) very competitive against a totally done Kawasaki 1000. Back then amateurs could race 1100cc bikes but for whatever reason the pros were limited to 1025cc’s.
 
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Bobo said:
Back then amateurs could race 1100cc bikes but for whatever reason the pros were limited to 1025cc’s.
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As I recall (memory can be a little dim) here in Canada we ran Open Production and Open Superbike classes, Amateur and Pro- no displacement limit. Most of the front running Pros held to the 1025cc limit so they could race the same bikes in the U.S.
But it was 50 years ago, and I can barely remember what I had for breakfast. :)
 
TK4 said:
As I recall (memory can be a little dim) here in Canada we ran Open Production and Open Superbike classes, Amateur and Pro- no displacement limit. Most of the front running Pros held to the 1025cc limit so they could race the same bikes in the U.S.
But it was 50 years ago, and I can barely remember what I had for breakfast. :)
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At one point (1988 ?) a few of the Formula USA bikes showed up. Big money weekend, run what ya brung. That was quite a show.
 
TK4 said:
As I recall (memory can be a little dim) here in Canada we ran Open Production and Open Superbike classes, Amateur and Pro- no displacement limit. Most of the front running Pros held to the 1025cc limit so they could race the same bikes in the U.S.
But it was 50 years ago, and I can barely remember what I had for breakfast. :)
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That’s not how I remember it. I don’t ever remember an Open Production class. As I said Pro Superbike was limited to 1025cc in Canada, basically a 1000 bored out to clean up the cylinders.I think the idea was to promote sales of the 1000cc class motorcycles which were very popular at the time. For whatever reason amateurs did not have this limit in Canada as anything bigger was a bit of an anomaly at the time.Also, tariffs came into play during the Regan administration in an attempt to protect Harley Davidson’s larger displacement bikes. For example, for a few years we got 750cc sport bikes that were only offered as 700cc’s in the States, exact same bikes other than displacement. In 1982 we got the Katana 1100 where as the US got a Katana 1000.
 
Bobo said:
That’s not how I remember it. I don’t ever remember an Open Production class.
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There most definitely was, a lot of racers would bump up to Superbike after running in Production.
At one point Michel Mercier ran a Suzuki GS1150 they called The Bus.
Frank Mrazek and Steve Dick rode Honda CBXs in Open Superbike.
 
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I also remember that originally, Superbikes were required to be based on a factory production bike. That was the starting point, a 1000cc bike off the production line. Well a year or two later race bikes started showing up that had no sign of the tubing that held the passenger foot pegs and that the exhaust system hung off being cut off, the welds were much better and the frame was made of a higher grade steel on these race bikes than production bikes. I think that the Japanese had a gentleman’s agreement to not say anything if you don’t, let’s race.
 
TK4 said:
There most definitely was, a lot of racers would bump up to Superbike after running in Production.
At one point Michel Mercier ran a Suzuki GS1150 they called The Bus.
Frank Mrazek and Steve Dick rode Honda CBXs in Open Superbike.
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Your right about Michel Mercier, they actually called his bike “The Magic Bus”, they must have changed the rules about displacement when 1100cc plus became more common. I was at Shannonville on the Friday of a race weekend when Steve Dick, pretty sure it was him,showed up with a factory Eddie Lawson 1000 race bike fresh out of the crate, not the street version but the full on factory race bike with 8 spark plugs, I think there were only 10 in Canada.Before the day was done he had crashed the bike and seriously damaged it. I’m in tears just thinking about it. I can’t even imagine what one of those would be worth today. Wow, this thread is really bringing back some memories.
 
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TK4 said:
Somewhere there's a photo of Robby Mieklejohn positively ventilating the crankcases of his SOHC Honda 750/1000.
Mike Crompton tuned, Weber carbs, chock-a-block full of RC Engineering parts. It was a total monster until suddenly it wasn't...
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When the stator on my GS1000 crapped out, as many did, Robby found one at L&B. It came out of Robbins GS they built. Crompton built a hella` strong engine on my 1000 when he was with Rocket. Has anyone mentioned Tony Russell, he was at Comp. Wheels and built the engine in my `85 GPz900. Was he the force behind Mike Taylor`s race success, I recall so. He was super cool, a good guy.
 
Bobo said:
Your right about Michel Mercier, they actually called his bike “The Magic Bus”, they must have changed the rules about displacement when 1100cc plus became more common. I was at Shannonville on the Friday of a race weekend when Steve Dick showed up with a factory Eddie Lawson 1000 race bike fresh out of the crate, not the street version but the full on factory race bike with 8 spark plugs, I think there were only 10 in Canada. Before the day was done he had crashed the bike and seriously damaged it. I’m in tears just thinking about it. I can’t even imagine what one of those would be worth today. Wow, this thread is really bringing back some memories.
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To my knowledge there were only 3 complete KZ1000 S1s in Canada. Steve Dick, Rhys Howard and Reuben McMurter had them.
Only 30 bikes in total were built for worldwide consumption. Lang Hindle had a bunch of factory kit parts on his KZ1000 MK2.
Read Kevin Cameron's book on the early days of superbike racing. It's an expensive buy but worth it.
 
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