A Pure Racebike

A pure racebike

LEANINGS

Peter Egan

IT WAS JUST LIKE BEING 13 AGAIN. THAT was the age at which I illegally rode my homemade Briggs & Stratton-powered minibike all over the back roads of Wisconsin one summer. No driver’s license, plates, headlight or brake lights. Just me and the minibike, chugging along at 15 mph and keeping a sharp eye out for the Juneau County Sheriff. And hoping, if caught, to throw myself on the “earnest, resourceful youth who could be doing worse things, like sniffing glue, after all,” defense.

And here I was again last weekend, at the somewhat over-ripe age of 54, riding a totally illegal motorcycle down the backroads of Wisconsin, keeping my eyes peeled for cops and hoping to avoid arrest. No headlight, plates or brake lights.

Only this time I wasn’t exactly chugging. “Crackling” would be a better word, though still at modest speed, thanks to a draconian break-in procedure.

The bike in question was a brand-new Aprilia RS250.1 had, just the day before, purchased it from my salesman friend Scott Siem at a Ducati/Aprilia/MV Agusta shop called Corse Superbikes in the little town of Saukville, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee. The RS250, for those who are not familiar with it, is a racetrack-only GP-replica with an Apriliamodified Suzuki RGV liquid-cooled, 249cc, two-stroke, 90-degree V-Twin engine, said to put out 68 bhp and to propel the 295-pound bike (dry) to 137 mph.

This bike was at the heart of the nowdefunct Aprilia Cup Challenge, a onemake race series introduced in 1999. In the U.S., the RS is now used mostly in club racing and for track days. Europeans have a street version of this bike with lights and turnsignals, of course, but in this country only the stripped-down race version can be imported and sold.

For the past three years, Eve been doing track weekends on my Ducati 996, leaving the headlights taped and numbers on the bike. No road use at all-for that I prefer my good old 900SS. The 996 is a wonderful track bike, but heavier than it has to be for its current purpose. So I had planned, over this coming winter, to throw some money and time at the 996, to lighten it up with a monoposto race seat, headlight-free upper fairing, carbon-fiber instrument pod, genuine magnesium race wheels, etc.

We’re talking $3000 to $4000 here, added to a motorcycle that was already the most expensive new bike I ever bought. Not to mention the $2K worth of canisters, chip, sprockets, etc. already added. I was getting into serious money here, for a bike that could easily be thrown down the track at any moment by a clumsy oaf such as myself.

Anyway, last month I took the 996 to a Ducati Owners Club of Canada track weekend at Grattan, Michigan, with my old buddy Pat Donnelly and his 900SS. The day before we left, Pat called and said, “My next door neighbor, Jeff Schiffman, would like to come with us. He just bought a slightly used Aprilia RS250 yesterday.”

“Great!” I said. “Maybe I can bum a test ride and find out if I really want one of those things.”

I told Pat I’d been looking at the Aprilias ever since they were introduced at Daytona three years ago and was wondering if I could live with a two-stroke and its legendary peaky powerband, oil-injection, ring-ding exhaust note, lack of engine braking and all the rest. I do, after all, think of myself as “a four-stroke guy.”

But bum a ride I did. Jeff kindly let me take the RS out for a full 20-minute session on a hot Saturday afternoon at Grattan. A jab of the kickstarter had it running, and I was off.

Impressions?

Instantly light, agile, quick-turning and fun. The engine pulls surprisingly well from 6000 rpm up, with broad, useable torque up to about 9000, when a nice

“Holy smoke!” rush to its 12,000-rpm redline kicks in. Easy to ride, and the least amount of work I’ve ever done in fast transitions. When I came in from the session I was elated. Also about half as overheated and sweaty as I’d been on the 996. A few people had warned me I wouldn’t like the lack of compression braking, but I hardly noticed. I tend to brake hard and reassuringly early (not to say panic) rather than coast into fast comers anyway, without much transition time.

The RS250 had nowhere near the wonderful, soul-satisfying torque of the 996 exiting comers, nor the big-bore muscle while blasting down the straight. It also had cheaper hardware and cobbier paint. But it was very quick, and lots of fim. And I think I was getting through the snaky back section of Grattan faster and more easily. Compared with everything else I’ve ridden on a track, it felt almost weightless.

So. When I got home, I debated whether I should put more money into lightening and de-streetifying the 996, or buy a pure racebike that started out 140 pounds lighter from the factory. After a few weeks, I reluctantly decided to sell the fast and lovely 996 and try something completely different, variety being the spice of life and all.

Back when I raced Box Stock Kawasaki 550s and 750s in the early Eighties, I always imagined my next track bike would be a Yamaha TZ250, a pure racing motorcycle without one ounce of fat.

But then my friend and colleague Jeff Karr actually bought a TZ250 and raced it for a season. He said it was a blast, but very maintenance-intensive. Lots of pistons, barrels, bearings, gaskets, etc. Working on the bike, he said, was a fulltime hobby. The polar opposite of cheap, worry-free Box Stock racing.

So I gradually let the 250 GP dream drift away, like so much Castrol pre-mix smoke. Never did ride a racebike that hadn’t been on the street first.

And now, 21 years later, here I am, running up and down the little country road near our rural home on the nearly weightless RS250, laying down a light haze of two-stroke smoke and putting on the required break-in miles. And watching for cops.

Just as I was at the age of 13.

If I get arrested, I don’t know if they’ll go for the “earnest, resourceful youth” defense again.

Maybe I can tell them I’m senile.