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59
Joined
7/22/2008
Location
Cognac
FR
This bike appeared on a French forum last week end, his new owner asking details about this "CR"500 he'd just bought as he didn't know anything about mx bikes. So it was war on the topic and the guy stopped posting...
What do you think about that ? Joe, any idea ?
What do you think about that ? Joe, any idea ?
Here is link to pic of him : 1983 Works HRC
Front number plate seems exactly the same and the overside rads etc.
and Malherbe, same year Malherbe 83
What's the story with the bike? Anymore info etc? Was the guy sold it as a works bike or just a 'normal' 500 for a bargain price!? Maybe he went 'missing' off the forum because he realised what he had and the attention it may bring!
The Shop
If its not, its great there is another one still in existance
I wonder if that bike is easier to kick over than the 84 CR500?
I dont believe the owner doesnt know anything about that bike. No one buys a 83 Works Honda off French Craigslist not knowing exactly what that machine is
Its funny when watercooling first came about the thinking of how much air flow was needed to the radiators. The first watercooled bikes all had some kind of crazy vented numberplates.
I was always puzzled why they made tanks on factory bikes so slim, but by the time they made it to production tanks were big and fat
Swing arm poss looks abit different but in the pics of the French bike, shows another swing arm on the floor by the bike.
Yea- me too, not so sure the guy who bought it knows 'nothing' about mx bikes- by the pics he looks to have a pretty good setup, plenty other bikes and some decent equipment etc. Also that bike looks very well looked after- someone selling it to him on French Craiglist or wherever (who didn't know what it was), would imagine may have owned a roach, not a polished works bike!
If someone stold a bike like that it would be a little hard to sell it for big money, but it would be easy to sell it for fast money to a newbie who dont not know how special it is and thinking he buy a stock CR500.. and then he need some parts and wonder why his bike dont look like any cr500 on partzilla...
Or they understand it is some value in the parts and make some research on a forum and disappear when the discussion gets hot..
Just a thought
Hope i am totally wrong
Is the guy still silent on the original forum???
Only Noyce wore ARAI helmet - Thorpe & Malherbe wore MDS.
-see ARAI sticker on front fender.
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Well, it´s hard to answer that question. As from the appereance, yes, it is a ´83 works bike. Some part looks to a particular rider but, i think it is may build out of parts we changed on the bikes.
You may have to know that we calculated the live time of ALL parts. Some of the had to be changed every GP, some of them after some running hours. For instant, a crankshaft and a crankcase had the longest "running time" as well as a rear swingarm. Main chassis frame may had changed after 2-3 GP´s, if no damage was found.
So, what to say now? All parts (we could recollect) after the GP-Season where destroyed at the end of the year (without the exception of 1983, we solve a lot of parts for André Vromans).
Another yes is to the bike of the winning champion. HRC granted a "show bike" to him, with no internal parts in the engine. But if the mechanic of the champion may spared (??) a new or used crankshaft, who knows, a new rebuild engine appereared.
The bike above on the picture, i can´t identify. If you can tell me the chassis number and the engine number, i may know to who we supplyed the parts (or bike) but i can´t tell who rebuild the bike afterwards and may sold it. That´s (for me) is the ugly side of racing.
Whoever, good for the lucky new owner of the ´83 works bike. Enjoy it and.... he is a smart guy, he took off the cover of the waterpump. If he hadn´t, all of the magnesium inside would have disapeared.
Still abit of a mystery though this bike but nice to read Walters comments.
Wasn't it David Thorpe's works bike that Walter refers to that got given to him and his Dad (the mechanic) without the internals? (also being a later year than this 1983 one); was that the '89 Championship winning bike? If so, not so relevant to this bike in question. Also did Malherbe not get given his works bike before WITH the internals? Was that the one that got torn down and 'inspected'!? Didn't the story go after Malherbe got given his whole, Honda did not want to repeat that scenario(mistake they made maybe, giving a complete works bike to Malherbe), hence that is why Thorpe got his with the internals removed?
Whatever the 'mystery' ..... damn cool bike and era for sure!
Thorpe got given his '85, '86 and '89, all without internals. All three now sold to private collectors and all three now running again courtesy of more 'stolen' parts. There was a complete RC500 engine for sale on Mastercross a few years ago. Incredible how much stuff went missing... Many, if not most of the factory bikes floating around are made up of parts rather than being a legitimate race bike. Honesty was evidently not a very common commodity amongst 80's mechanics. I had one mechanic who blew my (healthy) parts budget in 3 months once. It wasn't going on my bike, I know that. He didn't work for me for much longer.
I don't know about the Malherbe story sorry.
Walter did say that Jobe tried Andre's bike (without HRC's knowledge) and he was faster than Malherbe...
Kawasaki ended up giving him 1983 SR500's for practice bikes when he finally convinced them that he could not practice all week on the overweight, underpowered and ill handling pig of a production bike and be expected to show up and compete on the works bikes. At the end of the season they did not ask for any practice bikes back.
Pit Row
This wasn't the only time the Italians did this either. Their road-racing efforts in the mid-80s also benefited from some 'technological espionage' which bordered on the unethical (and might have been criminal).
I recall something about David Thorpe having lent / leased a couple of Honda Engines (from his later years as a privateer, but, reputedly to have some 'special' aspects / parts to them) to one of the British Privateers, that were stolen from the Privateers van in France / some place in Europe.
Am I completely off board with this recollection?
I think their first effort, in the late seventies / early eighties with 500cc RR, was simply a 500 inline Yamaha engine, with their own frame, and their own parts, plus things like Harold Bartol [ though, they might have been another suppliers, that the name of escapes me right now - Hans Hummel, perhaps?] barrels. In honour of MV, they initially ran the bike(s) in the Red and Silver MV colours. I think they also ran a Square 4, for some time.
They had No need for any 'industrial espionage'. In later years , with their V4s, they got quite a deal of help from Yamaha in particular. and Honda, slightly. Yamaha (or was that Honda's contribution?) presented them with special carb sets that they would never have got, to replace the Dellortos, and gave them quite a bit of info / help with other aspects of engine design. It's been much written about, and quite openly known. The help, kept Cagiva in racing, when they were very close to just giving up.
The Japanese recognized the need / benefit from having another - non Japanese - Team out on the tracks , in the Championships. And, they didn't really fear Cagiva in terms of Rider, or Manufacturers titles - though Lawson won 1 GP for them in '92, and Kocinski won Laguna Seca in '93, and Phillip Island in '94, getting 3rd in the Championships that year in the last year of Cagivas efforts.
http://www.cagivaracing.com/About_CRD.html
I interviewed Jan Witteveen as part of the research, and it was a fascinating conversation with one of the motorcycle racing industry's technical wizards. A real privilege to speak at length with him.
As to what happened with the RC500, I'll not speculate further ;-).
It's a pity more Motorcyclists don't know of him.
The last pictures of him I have are when at EICMA, a few years ago, Athena had their 2t EFI / semi DFI set up on display, and Jan was in some way involved with it. He is involved with a Moto 2 team, last I saw.
There was a Fantastic Italian Motocross 'E Magazine , a fair few years ago, that he wrote a monthly / semi monthly column. Always interesting, and always fairly dispassionate on the 4t vs 2t thing, when people thought he'd be nothing but a 2t flag waver. He, early on was saying that 250 4ts were well on their way to mid 50sHP level, and a 2t, had no real advantage over a 4t when it came to max output - not with the revs 4ts could, and had to pull. . It was pretty clear that he knew there was no need for a 2x or 1,75x capacity advantage. In the same article, he then approached the issue of pollution, saying it was the issue so played upon with 2ts. He put forward the, even then, availability (for many years) of what he called 'ashless' 2t oils. He went into the various 'flash points' for complete burn of oils and fuel, and noted the various ways of controlling the other, main pollution aspect of 2ts - bucket loads of un-burnt fuel just exiting the engine. To him, easily controlled, if manufacturers were to be serious about a return to 2ts. But, he noted how things were so artificially stacked against such a resurrection.
I wish I could remember the name of the Italian E mag. For a few years, it was Free. They then finally charged for it, and I happily paid for it, but it was too little, too late, and it folded in another 2 or 3 issues. I'd stored a few years of the mag, but, in one of my computer melt downs, lost all issues. It seriously, blew every other bloody mag, out of the water. Though, the Italian to English translations could be quite entertaining. It would come out about a day or two after a GP, with full coverage, and had so many great articles. Perhaps it was called Motocross International?
One would assume, that his Dad , Keith(?), would have know a fair few tricks, and may have had a bit of a stockpile of parts from his HRC days. Though, I know not if they were still working together, at the time. You would have seen Eric Geboers story on Terry Goods site, MXWorksbike.com, with him talking about going out and testing various cranks, snaffling the 'best' of them, and running at least one, well past the amount of races / time the Factory Technicians deemed them to be serviceable. He and his mechanic, were ready to break the rules of HRC, to win. Got to love that.
It's funny how I never saw much, or any mention of various factory kits available for sale in the US. For those not knowing of the sort of kits I'm referring to, they were a bit like the GYTR (is that the correct acronym?) parts you can get now - well, I think they used an acronym similar (the same?) for bits way back in the 70s for 'special' OEM Yamaha parts.
It seems every picture I've got of Kurt from the '94 MXDN is from the RH side, or something obscures the barrel in the LH side pics I have, so I've not been able to see if he had the barrel with that neat, HRC decompressor on it.
http://vintagebikeads.com/
I think it will be pricey..
Joe, I have his phone number ;-)
sorry for my English , i fall on this conversation and i see you have a contact with a person of HRC ask him if he don't remember in 83 or 84 i am not sure of the year but two of these bikes ( malherbe) have been stolen on the track of " salindre " in the South France during the awards in the hrc truck, and never found after it was on a national race before the season of GP
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