I'm NOT a Drag Racer

But I know a pretty cool one!

Once upon a time, I worked for a guy who's business was run on the force of his own personality, Russ Collins.  You may have heard of RC Engineering?  It's where Terry Vance and Byron Hines (Vance & Hines Racing) got their start.

When I worked there, I was just starting to get into the speed world and the new engine builder was an englishman named Nigel Patrick (Patrick Racing) who sorted me out porting cylinder heads, a smart guy just coming into his own rite and would win the pro-stock national championship the next year.

But Russ was this bearded, cigar smoking gravelly-voiced character who was always larger than life.

Here's the bike that tried to kill him...

The engine section was in his office as a coffee table.  I'm told that when the beast was running, it was so smooth you could put a glass of water on it and not spill any.  Something or other about how the power pulses/harmonics cancelled out, I believe it.  I think they named it something weird and hyped that the media liked, but we called it the "Achison, Topeka & Santa Fe" bike.  He rode/raced the performance parts he designed.
Today, Russ matches fuel injectors for race teams of all flavors whether 2 or 4 wheeled and was very fuel savvy then and I can imagine even more now.

The performance parts / accessories business is difficult in the best of times and in 1979, the stress lines were etched into his face daily.  He came back into the shop one day after being to a depressing motorcycle show where the prognosticators were predicting more gloom and I could see the joy come back when he saw another generation, or at least one person - me, had the soul of a motorcycle.  One of those rare and special moments that turn the throttle that motivates each of us.

My tastes have always been in the turns but whether you go fast straight or in the turns, may you too, find those moments that turn your throttle.

...And Then There Was Don Vesco

Many of you may know, or know of, Don Vesco, me too.  I wish I had known him better, longer.

I built this silly fast Yamaha street bike into a roadracer by taking half of a TZ750 and grafting it onto my RD350 bottom end, the result being a TZ375, or something like that.  There was a lot of cutting and welding but in the end, it was done and the bike ran and was really, really fast.  Fast by about 145mph at Willow Springs raceway.  Not bad for a 1973 350, built-up in 1980.

My friend, Mark, wanted to race it, Ok, and ended up burning a hole in the piston and scoring the cylinder beyond repair.  He found a replacement from a guy south of us named Don Vesco.  I went down to his shop in Laguna Niguel, CA and entered into Nirvana, or the mechanical doppelganger thereof.

You see, Don was the tuner for Kel Carruthers, former world champ from Australia, winner of Daytona, and once upon a time, the worlds fastest motorcyclist at Bonneville.  His streamliner was in the shop, this one a  Kawasaki and we talked speed for quite some time - he went 318 in it.  Me, a bumpkin from SD and he a sophisticated, unassuming guy just trying to make ends meet. 

The picture is with his dual TZ750 'liner, he went 250+ in it.  Art Friedman photo.

Talking together was amicable, over much too soon and I didn't ever get back to talk to him more before he moved his shop again even further south and his death too soon after.

In his quiet way, he showed me how classy a smart mechanic cum engineer could be with just a small amount of ingenuity, some hard work and a brain that worked.

I'm running up to 20 patents now and the unwitting encouragement he gave me is something I'm sure today he'd laugh and say "...only 20?"

Godspeed Don.