AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days Festival 2018! July 6th 7th 8th!

[Chuck78]

Norm!!!!!
I had to pack up early Sunday (due to dirtbiking mud slinging antics getting nasty stinky mud into my eye & causing an eye infection) & find the Suzuki Samurai guy who was towing everyone out of the mud, as my high performance street tires did not fare well in our flooded mudpit campsite! The Samurai guy was pulling EVERYONE out, including 3/4 ton 4x4 trucks with trailers full of bikes... THE MOST MUDDY I have EVER seen Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

I didnt take my GS out beyond the more dry areas of our campsite, but sure did clock in A LOT of time on the 2 dirtbikes I brought! WOW WAS IT EVER MUDDY! The muddiest I've EVER seen it there!!!!!
Did not get the '77 Suzuki PE250 restored in time, but my Pittsburgh buddies brought a truckload of early 1970's to 1979 Suzuki Enduros and dirtbikes, & raced 1 in the vintage 125cc motocross class, & I got to many really intense rips around the fields and a bit in the woods on this '74 Rickman Montesa 250cc Vehkonen Replica (race engine built to specs of the famous Finnish racer), & WOW...What a BEASTLY LITTLE MONSTER that bike is, holy crap! Everyone kept asking me if it was a 400cc or 500cc, it sounds soooooooo snarling & mean & aggressive... It nearly broke my ankle 3x trying to kickstart the high compression monster of an engine (kicking backwards with my good leg, had to have my heaviest friend kick it for me several times due to knee injury). Montesa 73M Vehkonen Replica 250cc engine in a special Rickman chassis...every person that I had try to kick-start it for me due to my injured/recovering knee said they had never kickstarted an engine that had so much compression... My 2 friends that I let ride it were floored...one came back with a ghostly white flushed face after grabbimg a big handful of throttle!!!

Next year I hope to have the GS425 roadracer built up, as well as the '77 Suzuki PE250B.
Also looking for an 80-81 Suzuki PE175, as this Rickman is a rowdy mean snarling beastly little vintage monster, & perhaps too much for a casual trail rider for my wife... perhaps too much engine for me as well!

I unfortunately did not get to watch any road racing due to friends racing motocross & vintage hare scrambles, & my own testing the waters (post-knee surgery) of riding dirtbikes again...
Hope to focus on twisty road riding thru September, & 2 stroke enduro bike trail riding Sept-Dec. That's my knee surgery recovery program...

2020 AMA VMD...I CAN'T WAIT!!!!

Oh yeah my Pittsburgh buddies ALL said unanimously that this event is INCREDIBLE, & They'll be there EVERY YEAR from now on! 1st timers!
Me in rare party animal form with my PGH punk rocker buddies:

 

[Chuck78]

Is anyone on GSR going to AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days 2021?!?

I'll be there, although I need to sell a dirtbike or 2, so I might not be bringing a GS for the first time in the history of me going to AMA VMD...

 

[storm 64]

Haha. Yeah, I'll be there. We'll probably be camped back in the corner, to be close to Saturday's festivities. I'll probably take my truck so I have a place to sleep, also might bring home something...

Chuck, I might be interested in buying a dirt bike. Can I test ride it doing a "Barrel Race"! Haha

 

[Eli69]

Possibly.....

 

[storm 64]

Possibly.....

Come to my house Friday afternoon. We'll ride down to Mid-Ohio Saturday morning.

 

[grcamna2]

I've been there just once in the mid 90's and attended the vintage swap meet,lot's of tables.I'm glad they're having the event ! after all this Covid stuff has caused folks to hide from each other:social distancing.

 

[Eli69]

Come to my house Friday afternoon. We'll ride down to Mid-Ohio Saturday morning.

Thanks for the invite. I know a couple guys that are going but we haven't worked out the details yet. I think they have a camping spot reserved.

I haven't been there in a few years. The racing is awesome. Lotsa bike parts too.

 

[hank2]

I made it there one time, in 2008. Rode my '72 airhead from eastern Pa. Real big crowds then. Watched a lot of the (then) AHMRA track racing and walked all the dealer grids. I had a camping pass with my weekend ticket. They weren't supposed to allow anyone into reserved camping until 9:00 am on Friday. Got there at 9:30 am and it was already max capacity. They had left everyone in the night before. So, off to the overflow camping fields on the other side which was nearly empty. That filled up with many thousands more in a short time. I've been a flat track race fan for many years, so I rode to the Ashland vintage days flat track races on Sat. night. Great fairgrounds track! That was all AHMRA also back then. Somehow, a few years later, the AMA and AHMRA had a tiff and AMA started up their own vintage racing leagues. One of the best things I ever did. That and the Atlantic City rock festival in '69, a couple weeks before Woodstock. Maybe, just maybe maybe go the Barber thing in the Fall. Too old to do the 900+ mi. slab run on a 40 year old bike though.

 

[Chuck78]

In the 9 or 10 years I've been going to AMA VMD, it has progressively gotten bigger every year especially the past 4 or 5 years...
Apparently attendance had dropped quite a bit prior to that from the old days. 2019 was the biggest year ever for attendance. Thousands and thousands of campers and many more coming just for the day events...
It's become my biggest holiday of the year, every year!
Barber Vintage Festival near Birmingham Alabama is a very close second when adding on the week-long trip that I usually take, riding solo through the Eastern mountains and camping 5 or 6 days worth to get there.

AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days fortunately for me is only one hour north at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, and AMA is headquartered out of my home city of Columbus Ohio! And it's probably the biggest vintage bike event in the US, with Barber very close to it in attendance.

 

[Guest]

May have to check this out. Been back in Ohio for 14 yrs and never been there. Is that lap of legends still going on? I didn't see it on their website, or is that a deal where you have to be there to donate and ride a lap? I got to do a ride along in a race car at that course about a month ago. Whoa, that course is awesome!!!!

 

[Chuck78]

Yes I'd imagine they're still doing the Lap of Legends, you'd have to look at the program guide scheduled to see, but they seem to do that every year, and I do think you have to donate $10 to the AMA museum fund or something... I managed to do it for free a few years ago due to some connections I had. I got to do Barber also due to the same connections.

& I'm FINALLY getting my GS400 frame titled so I can finally start building my road race bike without stripping down a perfectly good stock GS425!
I think I'll probably be getting my Rickman CR900 frame titled also, possibly road racer number two, with an 1100cc GS1000 engine!

If you think that road course is awesome, you should definitely go to Barber vintage Motorsports complex, that course is designed around motorcycles and probably the best in the usa. And the museum is filled with amazing bikes, with about 5x as much bike inventory in the warehouse is not on display, awaiting restoration or in rotation... Mr Barber has probably the best motorcycle collection in the world...

 

[Guest]

I gotta love my wife. Been married for coming up on 31 yrs. Told her about the vintage days. Conversation went something like this: Thinking about going to this up at Mid-Ohio. "What is it, going to be a lot of people there?" Vintage motorcycles, racing, swap meet, etc. Yeah, thousands of people. "You hate crowds?" Yeah, but I would be able to ride a lap around the track! "Oh nice, by yourself?" No, a parade lap. "So wait, your going to go up there, with all those people, pay extra to ride a parade lap? But you like to ride fast in the corners right?" Yeah, I do. "I don't get it. You hate crowds and riding slow in corners. Why don't you just go to your usual roads and ride fast?"
Ha ha. She gets me.......

 

[storm 64]

I'll be there Saturday morning. I'm thinking about taking the truck so I can possibly drag something home... Chuck, I know how to find you. Ratatouille, I'll send you a private message with my phone number. Maybe we can meet up.

 

[Chuck78]

We'll be in the same row by the trees, buncha friends & friends of friends taking over half of rippers row there by the trees @ edge of barrel races. 20 of us Friday night 30+ for Saturday night, huge party!!!
My old '62 GMC needs a lot of love right now so I'm pulling the trailer with a silver VW Jetta TDI wagon.
Kawasaki KDX220R probably with purple tank and graphics, although I might put the black tank and green or white shrouds back on so I don't destroy the sought after purple stuff.
Red '74 Rickman 250cc for sale, I've got to put some finishing touches on that, output shaft seal on gearbox is leaking significantly! Shift drum detent spring needs shimmed. Hopefully my 1" fork spring preload spacers were good and not too much for off-road, too soft without.
Black bodywork '07 KTM 200 XC-W also (wifes, she's riding her Triumph Bonneville up Fri night/Sat AM)
No GS sadly, no Lap of Legends... Probably a good thing as a little bit of liquor and a bald tire Saturday night a few years ago (2018 or '19 AMA VMD?) caused me to overheat a stock GS750 8v engine severely (Delkevic header was cherry red smokin' hot!!! Oops!) and fry the GS's valve stem seals & piston rings at the corner party burnout contest! I still rode it cross country after that but it was using a bit of oil...
Put the best picks of my 850 pistons, used rings, and freshly honed and resurfaced cylinder on it, lapped valves + new stem seals, and it was the best compression I've had on any stock piston engine to date, 850/1000 cams for the first time on my machines, definitely lost some 7,000-11,000 RPM acceleration but the mid-range torque is very much pleasing!
Still have a ported head Yoshimura cams and 920cc cylinders/pistons for an ultimate GS750 build...but this 850 top end is quite pleasing!
I'll build another spare engine with that stuff later & swap this one to a bare titled frame I have & build a budget "Chuck's parts bin" hot rod build & flip to a friend most likely.

 

[storm 64]

I came up early. I figured what's the difference of coming up tonight or tomorrow morning. Plus I'd have a better chance of getting a good spot. I'm camped/parked in the party section of the grounds. However the fellows next to me said that they might get a little loud.. Ha, I've been to popcorn parties louder than them... I did check out the "unsanctioned " Barrel Races. Also the Burnout Contest. Some folks where just melting down their engines... And what a cool moon tonight! One more beer and I'm done. I'm going to sleep under the stars in the bed of my truck... good night

 

[Eli69]

Sounds awesome. Didn't work out for me getting there this year I guess. The last time I was there we met some folks that had acoustic guitars and they asked us to play something. We did a short set of megadeth. Actually drew a bit of a crowd. That place is one big party. The racing is great too. I'd never seen side car racing before. Blew my mind. Have fun guys.

 

[limeex2]

This sounds like what Brainerd International Raceway was before the fun police got big headed. Sounds like an absolute riot. I'll be retiring in June of 2022. This and Barber sound extremely fun.

 

[Chuck78]

Storm!!!
Sorry I missed you, some of my friends said you came by the campsite looking for me...
Good story, you slept in the bed of your truck? Thursday night to do was very heavy, everything we had out was soaking wet! Not so bad Friday night and Saturday night though...
I spent a good bit of time at the corner party AKA burnout pit you're out... Lost my voice partially both Friday night and Saturday night due to that perpetual party, and we had some hardcore punk rock bands playing at our campsite spaces, which also got very rowdy!
Unfortunately I broke my new to me "rebuilt" KDX220R (internal kickstart/clutch area problem). Never trust someone else's rebuild work, I guess! I should have known better based on the guy's terrible wire crimping job installing a tusk dual sport kit to make this crazy 2 stroke street legal...
Then he told me a KTM shop rebuilt the engine?
They sure didn't torque the head gasket tight enough! I think they might have lied about putting a Wiseco piston in it also...

Thanks to some liquid courage saturday, I finally was really getting the hang of ripping around on that '74 Rickman motocrosser, trying to lean it like an ice racer and grabbing a whole handful of throttle doing probably 100 laps on the dirt flat track for the unsanctioned unscored barrel races! Miraculously I only laid it down once, I was worried about the IRC mud knobby up front that I just installed, on hard pack dry clay and ruts, but it did awesome...
Wow that bike was super fun, a tall modern Enduro bike is relatively scary to slide through corners like that due to the height and wheelbase and fear of high siding! That Rickman frame is really awesome and compact and are great to slide. I was trying to sell it but I might keep it as my vintage days barrel race bike! The most interested buyers I had were Saturday night, and I might have blown that by letting them witness me clamping a bicycle headlight on to go out and blaze around the barrels with dozens of other lunatics! Burning rubber spitting rocks and dirt out of the corners and power sliding into/through the corners on a pristine and rare vintage bike with a "For Sale" sign on it is a bit of a paradox... LoL ��

 

[Chuck78]

FYI Norm, with the attendance the event has drawn the past several times, breaking attendance records every single year, "early" means you are there waiting in line at 2:00 p.m. Thursday in order to get in when they open the gate at 5:00PM...
Or getting in 9:00AM Thursday with a season pass or racing registration or a vendor pass (swap meet spots reserved).
I was there 9:00AM Thursday to stake out a couple more sites (my brother buys all of our family season passes to the track). My buddies got there Wednesday to volunteer and had a couple sites reserved already.

 

[Chuck78]

So who is going this year?!?
Norm?
Jedz?

You better bet this guy will be!

I might have either a Suzuki GS400 hot rod big bore track bike built by then, or maybe a vintage Suzuki PE250 Enduro that I've had for years, one of two models of PE that I have for resto-mods!


I doubt I'll have time to get it ready for sale and have another GS built by then, but I've been thinking about liquidating all of my beloved GS750 stuff since I have 77-79 GS chain drive models of all sizes, GS400 and 425 for the lightweight twins, GS550 with 650 big bore top end for a lightweight inline-4, and a '78 GS1000, plus Rickman CR slated for a GS1000 engine, and several GS1100G top ends.
The 750s with an 850 top end are INCREDIBLE bikes, but they are right in the middle of the lineup and I can't store or maintain as many bikes as I currently have... So I might haul all that stuff there for sale if I get another daily rider GS build completed by then.