The Kings banned Harley Killer

He spent the early part of that race in the back, figuring the bike out, then passed the entire field. He requested that they ban the thing.
 
Actually, Kenny Roberts did not request it be banned. He raced it 2 more times, with far less success. His crew chief, Kel Carruthers also did not "request" it be banned, he suggested it in the interest of rider safety, citing that it would soon kill lessor riders. In fact, there were 3-4 other riders that had tried it without any success, but they did not have Kel in the shop tuning and building, and they were nowhere near the talent of Roberts.:thumbsup:

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I know this is all old news, especially the video. The pic was new to me, and the Cycle World article coming up is kind of what I was really posting.
 
I know this is all old news, especially the video. The pic was new to me, and the Cycle World article coming up is kind of what I was really posting.

Superbikeplanet re-visits that video at least once a year. I still look at that thing and am amazed anyone could throw that thing around a mile. Unreal.

Carruthers was not afraid of the machine, he was afraid the learning curve was far too steep and the power so radical for the time (both the peak, and the nature of delivery from a quad chainsaw motor) he was concerned that the cost to riders while riding it hard enough to try to compete might be their lives. An unbridled beast, in the strictest sense of the word. 35 years down the road, any number of builders could build a more manageable bike around that engine, but many hundreds of thousands of man hours of testing and building have happened since then, and current GP bikes produce 100 more horsepower that this famous 2 stroke fire breather. The story will never be better though.

Here is the ORIGINAL event clip, with some narration from King Kenny himself.

 
It seems to be missing the "testicle receptacle" required to house the balls you need to have to stretch it's throttle cable!
 
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