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Team Ironwood GS1000S @ LeMans

srsupertrap

srsupertrap

Forum Sage
Past Site Supporter
Just received Motorcycle Classics Jan/Feb 2012 edition which contains the article "Mission in the Ardenes" Americans invade Europe's Spa Classic. Some exercepts . . .

Two American teams took on the this year's 4 Hours of Spa Classic, an endurance race for 1980's and older Superbikes at Belgium's iconic Spa Franccorchamps circuit. It was the first time US riders ever took part This is their story.

Team Ironwood: Ralph Hudson & Gary Di Pietro campaign a GS1000 among the most successful Superbikes of the era. "I kind of found this one by accident . I bought it and then found out everything (GS1000) on it was bad. At every turn it was more work than we expected. It was just a road bike , but with bad brakes, bad wheels, and bad steering stem bearings. The starter clutch was gone , it didn't charge , the wiring harness was burned. The list went on and on"

The GS1000S Endurance Racer was equipped with a Yoshimura full race system (Where did they found that?), 1983 1100E Wheels, Keihen CR's, Endurance Deep Oil Pan, Fork Brace, RaceTek modified shock mounting brackets and flew the Wes Coley colors.

The GS1000S DNF: The Clutch basket shattered and blew out engine case



My 2 cents: Sounds like a typical GS1000 :)
 
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Wow all the way to France with an under prepared Bike sounds just stupid to me, very little research and they would have found out about the clutch problems may be just more money than sense.
 
rapidray said:
Proper Planning Prevents Pi$$ Poor Performance, the 6 "Ps". Ray.
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Amen...

Lets go racing! Heh... Perhaps had they found the GSR they'd have known that the basket needs to be dealt with if ya plan on banging on the gearbox...Among other things they ran into.
 
fast pom said:
Wow all the way to France with an under prepared Bike sounds just stupid to me, very little research and they would have found out about the clutch problems may be just more money than sense.
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Spa Francorchamps is located in Belgium not France...
Le Mans of course is in France.
It's not as easy of course as for us Europeans to locate Indianapolis;)
 
fast pom said:
Wow all the way to France with an under prepared Bike sounds just stupid to me, very little research and they would have found out about the clutch problems may be just more money than sense.
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abit harsh, in racing **** happens..... even to the best prepared :)
 
More Pics

More Pics

This is for those of us who like all the other stuff . . .

Big Booming Guzzi navigating the Chicane, is that a giant oil pan or just a engine cowling?


Eye Candy: Lovely Laverda 3C triple campaigned by Laverda Corse came in 17th.


A.V. Racing’s 1980 Honda CB900F finished 16th.
 
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Nice article and pics. I would bet that the clutch hub was strengthened. Di Pietro was a big name, IIRC (racing Hondas?). It's interesting to see what is stock size on the bikes. The GS looks to have a simple 1100E swingarm with highly modified top shock mounts, while the 900F has a super swingarm with normal appearing shock mounts. The 900F forks seem to be the stock, skinny size, while the front rotors are huge.

Yeah, lets go racing... :D
 
fast pom said:
Wow all the way to France with an under prepared Bike sounds just stupid to me, very little research and they would have found out about the clutch problems may be just more money than sense.
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Hudson won his class at Daytona the last two years on his T-500 built by Scott Clough (who built my RD400). I believe he ran over 200 at an SCTA meet at El mirage dry lake in '10 as well.

http://home.earthlink.net/~scloughn/


I'll agree that clutch baskets are a known weak spot, I'm not as certain as you are that they were unprepared.
 
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I will concede i may have been a little hasty to condemn, but of all the well known problems with the GS1000 the clutch basket is one of the easiest fixes I have not heard of any catastrophic failures like this one , here in NZ Craig Smith ran a 150+hp GS and of all the problems he had the clutch was not one.
 
http://www.ozebook.com/compendium/suzi/hudson.htm

Hudson was racing Suzukis in the AMA when I was in High school, aparently. He had some New Zealand antipodean help build his bike back then, so your assumption that it was not well prepared may have been well founded.

Just Kidding, Geoff Perry did better than anybody on his Suzuki 500 in AMA pro racing.

Hudson has been kicking butt in AHRMA pretty consistantly though.


fast pom said:
I will concede i may have been a little hasty to condemn, but of all the well known problems with the GS1000 the clutch basket is one of the easiest fixes I have not heard of any catastrophic failures like this one , here in NZ Craig Smith ran a 150+hp GS and of all the problems he had the clutch was not one.
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It is always possible we've not got the full story...i see the bike has brembo 08 front calipers, nothing bad there, but if you've got the wrong m/c size on those they can be a real pain...if they'd had brake trouble, as a hypothetical example...and had to start abusing the gearbox to get slowed down I can easily see the clutch basket disintegrating.

What will last a season of short sprint races may very well break in a 4 hour endurance race.

I met Geoff Perry a few times - nice guy. The Kiwi connection with TR500's was quite strong. Keith Turner (a Kiwi) riding a TR500 with a NZ built frame and a NZ tuned motor was runner up to Ago in the 1971 500 World Championship.
 
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Kel Carruthers was a mentor to Kenny Roberts. I always thought Kel was from New Zealand, but I guess he was Australian.

As to the clutch failure, who knows? Factory teams in important events experience failures. I just took exception to what I considered to be a rash assumption that the team was stupid (more money than sense), and unprepared. It appears that the comment sports those atributes, however the record of the rider clearly does not.

GregT said:
It is always possible we've not got the full story...i see the bike has brembo 08 front calipers, nothing bad there, but if you've got the wrong m/c size on those they can be a real pain...if they'd had brake trouble, as a hypothetical example...and had to start abusing the gearbox to get slowed down I can easily see the clutch basket disintegrating.

What will last a season of short sprint races may very well break in a 4 hour endurance race.

I met Geoff Perry a few times - nice guy. The Kiwi connection with TR500's was quite strong. Keith Turner (a Kiwi) riding a TR500 with a NZ built frame and a NZ tuned motor was runner up to Ago in the 1971 500 World Championship.
Click to expand...
 
fast pom said:
I will concede i may have been a little hasty to condemn, but of all the well known problems with the GS1000 the clutch basket is one of the easiest fixes I have not heard of any catastrophic failures like this one , here in NZ Craig Smith ran a 150+hp GS and of all the problems he had the clutch was not one.
Click to expand...

Happened to me in '81, as I remember it was broken where one of the rivets fixing the ally to the gear, instant shrapnel. No warning, no clutch noise, no slack in the lever, just bang and all the oil dumped instantly on the road and back wheel.

The replacement clutch basket was not the same beast that was in bike originaly.
 
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