WORDS: PATRICK BODDEN AND MITCH BOEHM PHOTOGRAPHY: TOM RILES AND CATHERINE BRENNAN >CLASSIC FILE From roach to racer in three easy, fun-filled days. (Ha!) We go butt-to-saddle at Daytona with the most notorious and successful roadracing motorcycle of the 1970s— Yamaha’s TZ750 MEETING THE MONSTER Patrick Bodden: I peer into the back of Russ Bigley’s dingy gray Chevy van and get a face full of carbon-fiber two-stroke silencers. “Impressive,” I think, “this thing’s the business!” After all, here was a seemingly competent example of one of the most leg- endary racing motorcycles of all time, the bike that struck fear deep in the heart of every manufacturer with large-bore roadracing intentions during the middle and late 1970s. If you had the balls and a decent rac- ing résumé, and wanted a real chance at winning, even big-time, world-class winning, well then, mister, it was a Yamaha TZ750 or nothing. May 2006 MOTORCYCLIST 105 >CLASSIC FILE You wouldn’t be alone in and-white two-stroke racebike Boehm: Yeah, the TZ was a tion. The Lentz machine is a Formula 40 event, which wondering if maybe the TZ750 that shrieked past the pits at IF YOU HAD beast, but I still wanted to ride long way from something allowed any racebike but was isn’t more than can be man- what seemed to me an unbe- THE BALLS AND or, better yet, race one, ideally Boehm or anyone else would limited to riders aged 40 and aged by mortal man. Plenty of lievable rate of speed; had to be A DECENT at a circuit with an equal mea- consider an acceptable risk on older. people are having such 130 or 140 mph. And the sure of history. Daytona the racetrack. There’s a lot of Bodden: When you’re in thoughts. Reports in the for- sound! Ear-splitting was way RACING seemed perfect, and when work to do, some evident and trouble you turn to your friends. eign press have told of the too tame a descriptor. After the RÉSUMÉ, AND Bigley offered up the chance to some yet to be discovered. And if there aren’t enough of TZ500’s impact in GP racing, session I walked the pits to see ride Kurt Lentz’s bike (which This hadn’t been part of the them, you draft innocent told of the stunned panic with- what sort of animalistic WANTED A Bigley took care of for Lentz), I bargain when Boehm presented bystanders. Heritage Racing in the opposing MV team. Jarno machine was capable of such REAL CHANCE jumped at the chance. me with his latest Daytona partner R.L. Brooks is a long- Saarinen’s death gave MV mind-bending velocity and rack- Bodden: I thought I’d seen scheme a few months earlier. It time friend who’s helped me another 500cc championship, et, and found it cooling menac- AT WINNING, the last of this sort of bike prep was supposed to have been through more than one but the Yamaha’s early perfor- ingly in the pit of Midwest racer EVEN BIG-TIME, back in the ’70s during my days Heritage Relaxed Racing this Motorcyclist vintage-racing time; just show up, look the adventure. He and I make new mances would seem to give it a Robert Wakefield. I approached WORLD-CLASS as an East Coast club racer. Lentz’s TZ again, many years—and many parts—later. We’d put place of pride as the fastest the bike from behind and saw Boehm said, “we’d” just have to bike over, check the tires and 30-plus hours of preparation into this thing by the time we shot friends on the spot—Phil motorcycle in GP roadracing smoke curling slowly from the WINNING, WELL make the best of things. Of spark plugs, and let’s have a go it out on the Daytona infield, and it showed. Ariel and Jenny are DiGiandomenico (whom we’d history. What, then, might it be skinny stinger exhausts. But it THEN, MISTER, course, the Heritage Racing at it. But here it was, take it or Lentz’s daughters, by the way. met briefly a few years before, with more displacement, with was the shredded, half-melted guys have managed the impos- leave it. Might as well get on and father of Jimmy and virtually a pair of the engines rear slick that lazered itself into IT WAS A sible in impossibly short time so with it, I thought. Tommy) and congenial but that made Yamaha’s TZ350 so my gray matter. Having never YAMAHA many times over the years that Boehm: My plan going in, “basically ready to go” when it Because AHRMA didn’t have a unsuspecting TZ750 racer (and formidable during 1973? The seen a warm and recently used Boehm has come to expect this which I communicated ad nau- arrived in Daytona. He’d class for what’s arguably one of Brit) Mark Middleton, to name whole concept is intimidating roadrace tire up close, the sight TZ750 OR as an entirely reasonable seum in the lead-up to Bike spooned a fresh set of sticky the most historic racing just two. enough to have given everyone filled me with genuine awe. I NOTHING. approach to racebike construc- Week, was simpler—and there- Avon vintage tires onto the motorcycles in the world (high- We size up the situation from pause. — Gordon Jennings, remember thinking, “This thing’s tion—never mind we’re dealing fore potentially less angst-gen- bike’s old sand-cast mags, and ly ironic, considering it’s the clues provided by Bigley and Cycle, January 1974 a monster.” with a device, old as it is, capa- erating—than many of our pre- although heavy snowfall in New American Historic Racing our own sleuthing and chart a Bodden: The TZ750 forged Yamaha quite naturally has ble of 170 mph even in less vious vintage-racing adven- Jersey kept him from bumping Motorcycle Association), I course of action. Someone a well-deserved reputation as reservations about selling than top-notch condition. tures. Bigley had told me over the bike off and making sure it planned to run the TZ in the detects excess fork oil on the an unbeatable and unstoppable TZ750s to just anybody with Fact is, racing résumé or not, the winter the TZ would be ran, he told me not to worry. Championship Cup Series’ tubes right away, so Boehm is racer. But I’d been blinded by many a TZ750 fell into less- this bike’s array of shiny new than-expert hands, meaning silencers. Unloaded in the dis- they didn’t have much exquisite mal, soggy environment of our workmanship lavished on them. Daytona pit, the TZ looks tired No matter. The TZ750, like its and shopworn, and inspires lit- smaller brethren before it, was tle confidence. Boehm and I so inherently good and so natu- stand there gazing at it, not rally cooperative that, as long as saying much for fear we’ll come the bike was reasonably well to our senses and go off in bolted together and no one search of margaritas (for him) went crazy with ignition timing and root beer (for me). I break and carburetor jetting, would go the silence first: “Well, Mitchie, like fury and do so for a long we’ve not only got a vintage time. Parts were readily available racer, but vintage workmanship from local dealers and, as long to go with it!” as they were replaced as Mitch Boehm: I see none of Yamaha prescribed, didn’t often the downsides at first. What I Kurt Lentz’s TZ750 as it appeared in 1984, his final year at fail. Many a ratty TZ750—Miles see is a real-deal TZ750, and Daytona and the year following his outstanding sixth-place fin- Baldwin’s and Richard Chambers’ a late-model monoshocker at ish—and first privateer—in the 200-miler. “The only bikes in bikes come to mind—would that. I’d been in awe of front of me were factory Hondas and Yamahas,” Lentz told us. allow a motivated and capable Yamaha’s big TZ since the second-echelon privateer to summer of ’76 at Michigan’s upstage the more elegant (read: Grattan Raceway. I’d gone there money and a bag of brave pills. spooked, because they know factory) front-runners. to check out a real roadrace But AMA rules require 200 they don’t have 200 Juniors Bigley had had his hands full with Dale Dahlke, an copies and you can’t expect and Experts who can cope with trying to prep two TZs—Lentz’s RD350/TZ250 mechanic who them to simply warehouse the what it is feared the Yamaha bike and Bigley’s own Spondon- was tuning my XR75 and production left over after Kel will deliver. But there’s nothing framed racer—and the prepa- YZ100 motocrossers while run- Carruthers takes what he to be done now; Yamaha created ration he’d done wasn’t meticu- ning a small bike shop near my needs. All the big fours will be the TZ750 in good faith and lous. It was the rough-and- This is how we spent the three days northern Ohio home. In an early sold, some of them to riders strict conformity with rules ready type that had sufficed all leading up to my race—sitting, bending over practice session my 14-year- whose talents were barely equal long-standing if not necessarily those years ago during the TZ’s and lying down, working all the time.