Peak Hooligan: A Moto-Autobiography Story

“The older I get, the faster I wuz.”

I’m an old man now, 72, and although I still ride a motorcycle almost every day for transportation, and still do an occasional small wheelie, and sometimes will turn the twistgrip a bit more than is necessary, 98% of my riding these days is fairly sedate A-to-B local transportation and some occasional road trips.

Beyond that there’s truth in the geezer observation: “The older I get, the faster I wuz…” Like everyone now old, I was young once and thought about my place in the world like many self-centered free-range youths of my generation. I was feeling moderately indestructible, and since I’d always enjoyed skateboards, bicycles, mini-bikes and eventually motorcycles, I liked practicing, and developing better riding skills, and testing myself, and figuring out how to do a modest selection of riding ‘tricks’. And thanks to a well-paying job a few years later as a union laborer (Minnesota’s minimum wage then = $1.60/hr, union laborer wage then = $6.88/hr), I was the prideful and grateful owner of an international orange Can Am 400cc dirt bike and was consistently collecting cute little 1st and 2nd place B-Class trophies many weekends during the summer series of enduros in our state's AMA district (23).

Aerostich was still a few years in my future, but I knew my noisy hooligan enduro dirt bike needed to become less a part of daily A to B transportation and more a narrowly focused competition tool. This meant I had to find a bike with street-legal turn signals and a brake light, and a horn, and mufflers and a working speedometer, none of which the plated Can Am had. Soon a low-mileage 1978 BMW R100RS from a private party seller became available at an affordable price and I naively figured it would be simple to remove its fairing and replace its low handlebars with dirt bike bars, add semi-off-road tires, and have myself a home-made GS (this was few years before GS’s were invented, so there wasn’t a short name for what I was wanting to build and ride).

As it turned out, converting that model BMW to a naked standard, much less a big ADV bike, was far more work and cost than I’d imagined, but I was nothing if not a determined young man so pretty soon this bike was remade as I’d wanted and I was bombing down gravel roads carefully learning to slide this big heavy pig of a street bike through corners and teaching myself how to do donuts on the damn thing. The RS’s larger 40mm ‘higher performance’ exhaust system diameter didn’t hurt, but a dirt bike it wasn’t. Not even close. Just barely manageable, but it got me around town more legally, despite an occasional pesky speeding ticket.

With the help of some good people, some good luck, and a work-focus which came from feelings of desperation, at around this time Aerostich came into existence, chartered to make and sell armored textile coveralls to help make more of my days ‘rideable’ through this area’s often chilly and unpredictable weather. Work demands of the new enterprise soon ended my dirt bike and enduro riding career, but winter after winter with lots of work from a wonderful technically skilled friend named Rod, the BMW became increasingly hot-rodded. It went from a mid-60hp stock-engined machine to a mid-70hp highly modified machine which, by the time we were done, was able to do easy throttle-only wheelies in second gear as it came onto its aftermarket “performance” cam. I put maybe a hundred thousand miles on it that way, before eventually switching to a second-hand R80GS whose engine I wisely left stock. It was much slower, but far more practical, and I ended up riding it much farther and longer than the RS, measured in both years and miles. I was growing up.

My peak hooligan days were behind me, but before they tapered fully down to (ahem…) ‘a mature, restrained hooligan…’ I made a lot of great memories riding the much-modified old RS. Here’s a list of what Rod and I did to the poor thing:

1978 BMW R 100 RS (Gold) - owner changes

1. RS faring removed, converted to /7 configuration
2. MT 50, MT60 dual sport tires
3. Progressive fork springs, bottoming springs, fork brace, fork gaiters, alloy upper triple clamp
4. Stainless front brake lines, late model handlebar mounted master cylinder
5. Turn signal helmet holder, 80-100 w high beam, elec grips w/custom switch, narrowed ‘/2’ high bars, custom quick detach instrument faring, digital ambient air thermometer
6. Avocet cyclometer computer w/clock, current & max speed, altitude, dual odometers, etc.
7. Heinrich 9-gal steel tank with matching paint & striping, late-type petcocks and fuel lines
8. Re-foamed seat with firm Vibrasorb foam, first aid kit compartment in seat pan reduced 80%, optional rear book rack
9. Narrowed rear turn signals
10. Braced main frame. Late type main and passenger footrests. Left main footrest relocated 2” back to be even with right side. Custom gearshift linkage to match relocated footrest.
11. Drilled airbox, K&N filter, 39mm Kehin CR Pumper carburetors with custom venturi’s, 3 angle valve job, ported head, SS exhaust valve seats, titanium valve spring retainers, late type valve guides with oil seals, 1050cc big-bore pistons, late model(1986) clutch/flywheel, dual plug high output ignition, big battery, custom aluminum battery tray, custom exhaust crossover clamps, drilled relieved 40mm mufflers. 40mm headers. Custom external crankcase breather and filter system. Late-type larger capacity oil pan. Heli-coiled cylinder head studs (all). Early type round valve covers.
12. Electric vest and Electric tank bag (radar detector, etc) fused outlet plugs
13. Drilled and painted oil dipstick handle, aluminum horn brackets
14. Monolever Swingarm and late model (1988) rear frame section, attached at backbone and footrest positions. Late type RT differential and rear wheel. Custom rear brake linkage and adjuster.
15. Sport cam and 3 degree advance key
16. Rebuilt motor in 1994 including main bearings, rod bearings, cam chain and sprockets, and all seals
17. Rebuilt alternator, ignition advancer, and starter to late model specs. Late type electronic voltage regulator
18. Remote-reservoir Works Performance gas rear shock and firmer spring
19. Re-sleeved cylinders and piston rings, 1994
20. 14mm front brake master cylinder and performance brake pads, 1994
21. Headlight off-on switch cluster, internal headlight running light
22. Custom quick release throttle friction control
23. Late model (1986) transmission, modified with roller bushings
24. Molex accessory lead on handlebars
25. Solid state digital voltmeter gauge

And here’s a photo, taken around 1990, possibly in California at one of the USGP road-races at Laguna Seca:

For an old heap, she’s a beauty, right? You can still look through what little is left inside those stock mufflers, like a child looking through a toy telescope, and you’ll see nothing but clear air from end to end, thanks to a hole saw made for cutting wood, a bunch of drill bit extensions and a juvenile electric drill operator. Speed-wise this thing ended up only about as hard-accelerating as a 600-class sportbike of the period, but with a quite-a-bit less top-end. It went only about 120, all-in. Still, it was surprisingly quick for one of these.*

There are several good stories** about my riding heroics on this bike. Once, at a Reg Pridmore track school, as it was being ‘teched’, Reg looked down at the slant-slide pumper carbs and exclaimed in surprise: “Hey! You’ve got Honda carbs on it!”  “Yup!” I replied with a grin. Twenty minutes later this bike and I were out on the track with a bunch of far more modern sportbikes and riders and I started making those little gummy rubber snot balls on the edges of its skinny Pirelli MT 50 semi-dirt rear tire. One sportbike-piloting classmate (FJR Yamaha, maybe?) said during a break: “Boy, you sure make that thing go.” Another “Yup!”, followed by another stupid-happy grin.

Maybe the best story about this bike and the riding heroics it enabled happened when I was riding through the infield area of the Brainerd International Raceway, on a narrow sandy two-track between some stands of tall grasses and trees, heading toward turn one, a right-hander at the end of a nearly mile-long straight. I was hoping to meet and camp with riding friends who usually camped in a grove of older shade trees just to the left of this not-quite-a-road, and I was going very slowly as there were race fans walking both directions along this same two-track. I’d never been to the exact spot where my friends liked to camp, so I wasn’t quite sure where it was.

While sort of putt-putt-putting along at not more than two miles per hour, carefully weaving between a few scattered people, I spotted the campsite after almost riding past it. Without hesitation I quickly stood up, pulled in the clutch and tapped the rear brake. Half a second later I put my left foot firmly down, leaned the bike way over (to the left), gave the engine a good rev, and released the clutch so its back tire broke loose and came nicely around, just like it does when one is doing a donut. All without thinking. Half a second later the bike was spun about 120º around and was now pointing in the direction of my friend’s tents. As I slowly motored toward this well-shaded grove of trees, I clearly overheard one of the nearby pedestrian-spectators directly behind me say to someone they were walking with: “I’ve never seen a BMW do that.” And his buddy answered with: “They are not supposed to do that.”

This was probably the second-best hooligan-riding compliment I’d ever received, even though it wasn’t spoken directly to me. At that moment I didn’t think anything of it but smiled inside the rest of that afternoon. Younger readers, please note this was many years before BMW was known for making sporting bikes. They were generally appreciated as well-made, old-school (meaning heavy), slow and not-especially-nimble old-guy touring or sport-touring bikes. Mine wasn’t that.

Every word of this story is the truth, and the older I get, the faster I wuz…

Mr. Subjective, June 2025

PS – See photo below, showing where this bike is today, dry-stored in the basement of my home, next to its R80GS successor. Both are about eight feet from a clothes washer and dryer, thanks to a very lovely and understanding wife.

PPS – On a couple of occasions late at night in my bedroom slippers and bathrobe, I’ve gone down there and climbed onto its hard saddle and just sat there for a few minutes twisting its throttle, pulling in its clutch lever and squeezing its front brake lever.   Don’t.        Tell.        Anyone.

From left to right: DIY fabricated radar detector mount, Avocet bicycle speedometer/altimeter, heated grips switch, DIY GPS mount, lighted bar-graph voltmeter. Also DIY 'quick release' instrument fairing. Odometer is a replacement. Actual miles over 100k.

PPPS – Why did I write this story? Because of an email I recently received which linked my friend Paolo’s very nice blog essay about today’s over-the-top-amazingly athletic, highly skilled stunt-riding hooligans.  (Deep breath)…Kids.

Hi Paolo,

Your OMM essay for June 8 was terrific. I agree with you. And I take the cultural changes even farther. Soon after the second World War, just before I came along as a young rider, motorcycling attracted lots of moody and quietly dangerous rebels. It seemed almost like a home for dark souls who’d found the feelings and experiences of riding big unmuffled Harley’s and racy British bikes, and the supportive companionship of other riders who were doing the same thing, somehow helpful. Maybe it was WWII PTSD, maybe it was something else, but these guys didn’t quite fit into postwar suburban life.

A few years later mainstream American moto-culture changed with the arrival of millions of inexpensive and nearly maintance-free small bikes from Japan, and thirty years later it changed again when it became easy to record and share riding stunts and heroic accomplishments (and embarrassing failures) with large audiences.
 
By the time I was a young-middle-aged rider I was able to do decent stoppies, wheelies and donuts, and fly about twenty feet forward off a decent launching-berm. But no recordings exist, and because the technology had not yet arrived, it never occurred to me that anything I was doing as a budding moto-hooligan was even worth recording. It was more about me trying to learn how to manage the bike better for its own sake. The only person I was showing off for was myself.

About twenty years ago this part of our culture changed thanks to everyone having a smartphone with a camera, and the internet, where one’s nonsense can be so easily shared with such a wide audience. Some kids call such showing-off a ‘flex’ because this is what strong men and women who lift weights do at gymnasiums. I’ve picked up this word and have spoken it as a compliment when I see someone doing something impressive.

Our era was different. If a rider did something amazing, occasionally one would receive a compliment like “nice wheelie” or whatever. That was all.

Well, it’s now an hour after I finished writing the above paragraphs. I looked and searched but could not find the old story I was looking for, but I did find a list of modifications I’d made to the bike that was the star of the story, so I’ve just written its story down for you. It is attached. Tomorrow I’m going to share it with my co-workers and see if they think it would make a good blog post. If it’s ever used that way, I will give you credit for the inspiration.

Hope all is well there. Thanks for the inspiration to write the attached autobiographical story.

Andy

PPPS – Photos and videos capture and record accomplishments and events. Words and stories capture and record ideas and feelings. Both are important.

*Most bone-stock 750cc and larger UJM’s were way faster. And cheaper…Much cheaper. Thus, one or two good riding friends questioned my sanity. Some still do.

**Most involve either getting, or avoiding getting, speeding tickets.