O'Brien Harley-Davidson's War Eagle

Let the race begin, part VI

1972 Harley-Davidson XR-750 glory days

Before going into 1972 with the all Aluminium XR-750, let us end 1970 and 1971 with the cast iron XR-750. The H-D Factory rider Mert Lawwill, who won the 1969 National Championship on the KR-750 flathead last outing, lost in 1970 to Gene Romero on a factory Triumph. Dick and the H-D crew took more lickings in 1971by losing the National Championship again, this time to factory BSA rider Dick Mann. If things weren't bad enough, the union workers were doing slipshod work and Dick could not fire them… so he shut down the factory racing dept and moved it to Nickol's Engineering in Griffin, Indiana. This way he could hire the people he could trust and dump the Union. Before 1972 came around he moved the Racing Dept back unto the factory Capitol Drive plant. Dick had to get H-D in some kind of a winner’s circle to offset the British and Japs destroying him in both road racing and dirt track. The decision was made to go to Bonneville Salt Flats and try to set a new World Land Speed Record.

For the first time in five years, Rayborn was without a win so Dick picked him to ride -or rather drive- the 700 lbs 10 ft long streamliner. He could not see out the front so he had to follow the black line on salt bed out the side windows... Cal crashed it a couple times under 100mph and they had to go and strip sheet metal off junk airplanes… The air flow over the streamliner was causing it to handle differently at various speeds as well. From 0 to 150 Cal had to steer left to go left, from 150 to 200 it was turn right to go left and from 200 to 250 it went back to turn left to go left. They set the new record at 250mph with a single 90cu. in. nitro Sportster engine and started to pack up but they found out that Triumph was on the way to the flats with a double three-cylinder streamliner. They decided to stay another day and see if they could up the record. They spent the night at a woman's farmhouse and stored the liner in her barn. Clyde Denzer, my brother’s assistant, cracked the frame on the road bike he had with him and decided to weld it in the barn with the gas tank full and still on the bike. The bike caught fire so he had to drag the 700 bl streamliner out just in time to see his bike and the barn go up in smoke. I'm not too sure as to how Dick explained the bike and barn on his expense account... The next day Cal set a new record of 265.492mph. Triumph did come but crashed their streamliner and it almost killed the rider…

Dick says no and Calvin goes abroad alone

It was spring 1972 and there would be a series of Transatlantic Match Race in England which put the best Americans up against the best of the Brits. Harley-Davidson just didn’t went to Daytona, as the iron Xr was still over-heating and the new alloy version wasn’t ready yet, the race was won by Yamaha rider Don Emde on a 350cc two-stroke.

The New XR-750 was at first down on horse power, like in the high 60. The factory messed up the XR alloy heads requiring him make a recall on most of them. Dick was wishing he had gone with the Aermacchi vertical twin… Cal wanted the factory to back him with a New XRTT-750 for the match races but Dick said NO because he knew it would not beat the Triumph and BSA triple's. Cal then, out his own money, hired Walt Falk, the service manager from Daytona Harley-Davidson, crated his old 1970 cast iron road racer plus a back up engine and off they both went to England. The entire operation was so slipshod that Cal had to hand carry that 200 lb back up engine aboard the plane with help. Cal was down 25 hp on the  Brits… He had to switch engines between races and rebuild the day’s previous engine in the back of a van and do it for six races at 3 different race tracks. Cal won 3 of the 6 races (and finished second in the other 3 races…) while British rider Ray Pickrell on a Triumph triple won the other three races (and finished second in the other 3 races!!!) a dead heat of sorts as Cal had never seen, never mind raced on, any of those twisty short circuits….The Brits were impressed!!!

Cal came back to the States and won two AMA nationals on the new five speed XRTT-750, one at Indianapolis, Indiana and the last one at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California on July 23,1972. This would be the last ever road race won by the XR-750.
1972 would be the last time Harley-Davidson could lay claim to a “complete” Grand National Championship (mile, half mile, short track, TT AND road racing…) and it was thanks to Mark Brelsford, Cal's team rider and Mert Lawwill protégé.

Cal is dead and Yamaha comes after Harley-Davidson

At the end of 1972 I left Harley-Davidson and soon started my own business O'Brien Flowmetrics, doing flow work on racing heads. Cal had had enough with Harley-Davidson. Neither he nor any of his teammates could win a Grand National Championship because you had to be competitive in road racing. H-D had no answer to Yamaha 4 cylinder 750 2 strokes…. Aermacchi did, but again, the factory would not hire the engineers to put them in the winners circle. One of Aermacchi's race bikes was the RR 250cc two stroke and the other was the RR 500cc, a twin two stroke with two carburettors per cylinder. The 250 RR, and 350 RR that followed, in their water-cooled versions, did won World Championships in Europe, in the capable hands of Walter Villa, but here in the States, they were more like grid fillers.

Cal joined with Suzuki and on December 1973 he was racing at a club event in New Zealand on a 500cc two stroke racing in the 750cc class. The bike could not keep up with the 750's and the rules allow him to use methanol but the mechanics got the mixture too lean ant the engine seized up at 100 mph. Cal slid under a guard rail and crushed his head and chest. The news hit the road-racing fraternity hard, 33 year old Calvin was dead… In this world we all have heroes and sometimes we make the mistake of worshiping them. I learned that the only one you should worship is Jesus Christ and I wish Cal's wife had also done the same. Cal's wife decided she could not live without Cal, not even for their young son, so she broke a glass into small pieces and drank it down…

Yamaha came hard after Harley-Davidson with a young rider by the name of Kenny Roberts. Triumph and BSA were now out of the racing picture and almost out of business. Roberts took his OHC 750cc twin after H-D on the dirt track and his 750cc four cylinder in the road races and started cleaning the house. By the end of 1974 Yamaha's Kenny Roberts has taken the 1973 and 1974 Grand National Championships.

Harley-Davidson did talk to the AMA with the view to split the Grand National Championship into two divisions: Dirt Track, which included the mile, 1/2 mile, short track (1/4 mile) and T.T., and Road Racing which, at that time, consisted of 250cc and 750cc bikes. This was in the end done, but in 1975 Yamaha sent Kenny Roberts to Europe to race in the FIM World Championship Road Racing and at the same time pulled the rug out from under all the other Yamaha riders. That left Harley-Davidson all alone to race itself. It is at this point that dirt track racing started ebbing away in the USA, the new generation of riders heading the moto-cross way.

The thing most people don't understand is that the dealers and the riders don't get involved until the factories do, and then they also drop out when the factories do. About 1975, AMA Superbike came in, as a fill, at Daytona and had a 100-mile race on the Friday. Harley-Davidson built a black very good-looking Café Racer production bike, called the XLCR, that year. It was designed totally by Willie G. Davidson and Jim Haubert, but it had two weak spots. The first one was it had a stock engine with no more than 40hp at the counter-shaft sprocket, which was half of what was needed to be in the winner’s circle. The second problem was that Willie never tested the handling and it darn near killed everyone who tried to race it. The Harley-Davidson Dealers of Florida had me design a set of heads for XLCR and this full house engine gave us 70hp at the counter-shaft, just about adequate. The bike still couldn't cut it so the dealers entered it in Stock Class at Daytona Amateur speed week and… still lost the race.

From 1974 to 1982 I worked a lot with Ducati road racers and Superbikes in general, then I realized that Dick would retire from Harley-Davidson in 1983 and that there had to be one last Road Race for War Eagle…

Copyright Jesse O'Brien 2005