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Cruiser Competitors
Throw Rods and Spill Guts
By Tim Hailey
Photos by Matt Polito
Racers in Prostar’s Yamaha Hot Rod Cruiser class have had plenty
to sweat and vent about in the last few weeks. After another
dominating performance (this time at Montgomery) by Rick  McWaters
on his Terry Reed
motored Harley, Prostar officials tore down McWaters’ bike and
both of Nigel Patrick’s factory-backed Yamahas. After further
inspection by the AMA, McWaters’ bike was found to have altered
valve angles, a violation of the class rules. McWaters was disqualified
from the Montgomery win and had all points for wins and records
revoked from the Indy and Atco races as well—in effect taking
the championship in the Yamaha sponsored class away from McWaters
and giving it to Patrick’s #1 rider, Mark Underwood.
Any controversy about removing points from races where the bike
was not checked and found to be illegal was averted when McWaters
and Reed rolled over and admitted to having cheated all year,
voluntarily relinquishing all points. But emotions throughout
the class have stayed at a rolling boil—about the cheating,
about the rules, and about how the whole mess was dealt with.
When the Shit Hit the Spokes
“It’s been an emotional roller coaster this week,” said Patrick,
whose bikes were found to be legal. “I’m glad Scooter got good
enough tech people to enforce the rules. At the same time I
can’t help but think that they’ve (McWaters and Reed) cheated
us out of a dream season. To have worked our tail off all year
and come up short, and then realize we’ve been running against
someone who’s been cheating all year—I’d like to ask Rick and
Terry what they’ve been thinking.”
“There’s no easy way to explain about bending the rules, which
I did,” said Reed. “I’ve been building exotic engines for a
lot of years and I know you don’t go about getting a performance
advantage by doing what everybody else does. I don’t feel guilt
in my own heart because a true engine builder sits down and
says ‘Here’s what I need to do to go fast.’ Guys like George
Bryce and Byron Hines would understand what I did. All it was
was a machining capability that I had to put the big valve in
there. It’s not an unfair advantage like nitrous or anything.
We’re still running smaller cross section valves than they have.
The way it was, the bikes were pretty close.”
“The modification
is not good for a slight gain but a huge gain,” countered Skip
Dowling of Orient Express. Orient has fielded two to three Yamahas
at every race this year and ran two all last season.
“Me personally?” 2001 class champ and Harley rider Jon Cornell
said when asked about the scandal. “It really pisses me off.
It’s screwed everybody. I busted my balls all season long figuring
out where I’m going to get that extra tenth. I know where I’m
at and I’m on the gray edge. I knew the horsepower had to be
25 more than I had. We’re all in the same Northern Ohio sewing
circle and someone came up to me and said ‘Hey Jon. Those two
motors you’re racing against all year are illegal.’” So Cornell
stopped beating his head against the groove and skipped Montgomery.
“I should have been bucking heads with Underwood at Montgomery.”
“The person who’s hurt the most by this is Rick,” Reed said
about McWaters. “He’s a great rider. I don’t like losing to
him every week. He’s a machine.”
Patrick wasn’t so sure that McWaters was so deserving of sympathy,
and instead offered up the plight of his riders, including Michael
Ray, who raced against McWaters in the Montgomery final. “That
was the kid’s first time on one of these bikes. It took away
everything he should have gotten.”
Let’s Get Technical
Reed uses as his defense his perceived disparity between the
Yamaha’s 4 valve head vs. his Harley’s two valve. “We run in
a naturally aspirated engine class,” said Reed. “No other class
like this runs 2 valve engines against multi valve engines without
employing a predetermined weight break.
“The intake valve/valves cross sectional area is directly proportional
to the intake port air flow. I sat down last December and calculated
what size valve I thought my FXD must have to match the intake
valve cross section of a Warrior with 38mm valves. The resulting
mathematical calculations told me they needed to be about 2.112"
diameter. Well, with my experience modifying Harley 2 valve
heads, I know that you can only fit a 2" in there, and it is
a real tight fit. A 2 inch valve properly ported will flow about
280CFM at 25"W.C. I felt that a properly ported Warrior would
flow about 315CFM. That is well over 10% more air flow than
my 2 inch valve. I then calculated a 2.100" for air flow and
came up with numbers in the 310 range. At that point I did some
trig to figure out how much the angle would have to be altered
to keep the intake valve from crashing into the exhaust valve
during camshaft overlap. The result was about 1 degree. I then
welded up a sample head, went to my machine shop, machined and
ported a prototype unit to be flow tested. I went to my Superflow
SF600 bench, and about 45 minutes later, I had collected the
data I'd been looking for. With the intake manifold installed
the port flowed 308.8 CFM at 25"W.C. Typically, if you increase
an intake port’s air flow a given amount, let’s say 10%, then
you can expect approximately the same percentage power increase.
I now felt that my 2 valve head could compete against a 4 valve
bike. Can you imagine how much less power our Harley’s would
make with a 2"/280 CFM configuration? I’d say about 15 to 20
less horsepower! That is about 35 hundredths of a second slower.
I think it is safe to say that we would not have been at all
competitive against the 4 valve Yamaha Warriors!”
“Obviously, I’ve spent the last ten years building Harley-Davidson
engines,” said Patrick, who’s built a lucrative business doing
just that. “Them saying that they can’t compete like this (under
the existing rules) is wrong. If they stayed within the rules
and worked a little harder, they’d find that they can. Here’s
the thing with the Harley: there is a proliferation of aftermarket
parts out there that we don’t have. We literally have to grind
our own parts. Admittedly, our heads will flow more air, but
you can put cams with 750 to 800 lift in the Harley. There’s
no way we can do that with the Yamaha. Where we score in head
flow, we can’t open the valve high enough to take advantage
of that. I think I’m in a better position to answer that since
I’ve worked with both. The valve angle that Terry used, as I
understand it, we actually make a head like that. The Harley
would have such an advantage like that.”
“Where most only see the rule infraction, on paper we were still
playing at a disadvantage,” countered Reed. “The Yamaha’s were
1775cc, over 100cc’s larger, and my valve cross section was
equal at best. We also ran just one Mikuni carburetor vs. their
twin Lectrons or twin injectors. If the truth was known, I'll
bet they were running upwards of 39 or 40mm intake valves. Skip
told me his bike had ‘around 38mm valves.’ Look how good the
Patrick bike ran. You can bet they were bigger than Skip’s bike.”
“If he actually thinks the rules should be changed, he shouldn’t
build an illegal bike and compete,” said Patrick. “‘Let’s make
the rules like we want them and go racing.’ I could never take
satisfaction from doing something so illegal to such a critical
part.”
Reed also maintains that he built the heads for McWaters before
he saw the rulebook, and by that time they were already too
deep into their wallet to back out of the project. “That’s ridiculous,”
said Dowling. “The rules clearly stated in 2001 that this was
not legal. That’s deceptive.”
And as for rules, Dowling is an advocate of the road test to
prove that Hot Rod Cruisers are in fact streetable. “The only
thing that limits us is the size of the gas tank,” Patrick said
about his bikes’ ability to complete a road course. “We can
change that and it won’t slow us.”
But the (unconfirmed) word on the street is that next year’s
rules will do away with charging systems and any suggestion
of a road test. “Next year is going to be some real freaking
hot rods,” said Cornell. “We’ll be running some cams that are
in the Pro Stock car territory.”
McWaters and Prostar Statements Relight the
Fire
So just when the pot was starting to simmer, Prostar posted
a press release that Reed admitted the rules infraction and
that both him and McWaters would lose their points for the year.
It also included a McWaters apology and statements commending
the integrity of the offending duo. That press release can be
read here on dragbike.com.
“I thought it was good of these guys to come clean, but this
statement is letting them weasel out,” said Dowling. “It makes
it look like they misunderstood and they’re being such sportsmen
to come clean. I’ve been mad and I’ve been pissed off and I
had hoped the statement that went in there would help. How can
you say it was hard fought when you were racing with 20 hp more
than you’re supposed to have? They should not be commended.
It’s not even a gray area. I think the statement should be made,
but it should not be commended.”
“People aren’t reading the whole thing,” said Prostar’s Scooter
Kizer. “They’re reading bits and pieces, just enough to get
pissed off. They (McWaters and Reed) didn’t have to come forward
and say anything. We didn’t have anything against Terry Reed.
If they would not have done that (admitted to cheating the whole
year), Rick McWaters would have ended up in third place, and
Terry would have been somewhere in the top ten.”
By withdrawing their points for the season, McWaters and Reed
definitely took some heat off of Prostar, squelching inevitable
rumors of the sanctioning body bedding down with the manufacturers.
Perhaps the conciliatory words were payback for this favor.
But Patrick already felt that Prostar was bending over backwards
to make sure that Yamaha was not getting favors. “Rick (McWaters)
was not torn down at Atlanta even though he set two records,
advanced the record by half a second, was first in the 9’s,
and was not torn down. We set the record by a tenth at Richmond,
and we were torn down. We’ve been looked at way more than anyone
else. I know that Mark (Underwood) and Scooter don’t get along
and I thought maybe that’s the price I was paying for that.
I think he (Scooter) overcompensated for our factory involvement.”
Of course, this would have been a fascinating story at mid-season,
setting up a second half run for the title amongst the legal
bikes. Why Montgomery and not earlier? “We tore him (McWaters)
down in Indy but found nothing illegal,” Kizer wrote recently
on the dragbike.com forum. “Checking the valve angle is not
something that can accurately be done in the field. After the
Indy event, I contacted AMA about my concerns and we developed
a go-no go tool to look for valve angle changes. This is only
a tool that warrants further inspection. Precision valve angle
measurements must be made on a measuring surface, so we sent
the heads to AMA for final inspection. Prior to the Montgomery
event, we had no reason to suspect foul play. Yes, it would
have been great for everyone if we found this out earlier in
the year, but it took us this long to discover the truth.”
Much of the credit can be given to new Chief Technical Inspector
Brian Chambers. A Philadelphia friend of Carl Steiffenhoffer,
Chambers seems to possess the ability, interest and integrity
to do the job correctly. Maybe Prostar can convince him to stick
around.
“Hat’s off to Scooter,” said Cornell. “He got the job done.
I’m not done with him (Reed), though. I won’t be happy if they’re
back next year.”
The Back Half
“When I look back over the season, I think we would have won
a lot of races and set a lot of records,” said Patrick. “The
races where I think we had an advantage, the race got rained
out and Rick did his chassis work at the next race and caught
up. The combination we had at Richmond could have run all season.
We lost a lot of reliability chasing an illegal bike.”
Dowling agreed that the often less-than-championship form shown
by the Patrick Yamahas was due to unfair competition. “Part
of that is that they’re leaning on it hard. I’m concerned because
Yamaha’s yet to say whether they’re interested in this for next
year.”
“McWaters and Reed should be out for one year,” Cornell. “I
don’t want to see them out (at the track) next year. We all
work so hard at this. I’ll be at Gainesville and I’m going to
have a petition. I don’t feel comfortable running against them
next year. What have they got to lose?”
“Who does that hurt?” asks Kizer about a one year suspension.
“That doesn’t hurt those guys. That just hurts the class.
We have had a number of racers caught cheating over the years
and they continue to be respected racers. Every major
racing sanction has dealt with cheaters and you don't see them
banning them for life.”
“They should be penalized,” insisted Cornell. “Rick got all
the cash for the season.”
The purloined purses were also a sore spot for Patrick. “Is
he (Reed) going to bring out the checkbooks and start writing
checks? It cost us about $6000. I don’t have any sympathy at
all.”
“It also makes me look like ‘Oh yeah, that’s why Cornell was
kicking ass all last year,’” said Jon. “That’s one of the reasons
I want to come (to Gainesville).”
“I really hope Jon
shows up and goes fast,” said Patrick. “That will vindicate
him.”
Indeed, there was a much talked about incident at Indy this
year after Cornell went 136 mph on a qualifying pass. Apparently,
Reed was walking around saying that Cornell was cheating. “It
pissed Reed off,” said Cornell. “He thinks he can outbuild me.
I walked over to his pits. I said ‘Hey Pal! Let’s go to tech
right now. I want to take your money.’”
Reed turned down the offer to take both bikes to tech, and apologized
to Cornell at Atco. “He knew he was illegal and thought I was
going to go to Scooter and get him torn down. That’s where that
(the apology) was coming from,” speculated Cornell. And true
enough, some have speculated that that is precisely how McWaters
came to be torn down at Montgomery.
“When you’re doing it out of your pocket like we are, I didn’t
want to go out and run eighth or ninth,” said Reed. “You’re
there to win and no other reason. This was not intended to be
Pro Stock Cruiser, it’s Hot Rod Cruiser. I looked at their budget
and I looked at how intelligent Nigel is. I just made my mind
up that, rules or no rules, that I’m not going to out there
and make an ass out of myself, I’m going to go out there and
win.”
“This isn't a mistake where you mix the gas jugs up, this is
premeditated,” continued Patrick. “They’ve cheated the whole
class. It’s had a big impact on everything that’s gone on in
the class. You can’t really put a cost on it. It’s too high.”
Indeed, the impending championship has a bitterness to its taste
for Patrick. “No one really wins. We’ve done nothing wrong."
“What I’m going to
try to do in Gainesville is win the race, set the new ET record,
and get enough points that no one will be able to doubt that
we deserve the championship. See if we can go 9.70—I think we
can.”
And Patrick finally got to do what winners get to do—thank his
sponsors. “Thanks obviously to Yamaha for their support over
the year, they’ve been really supportive. And JE Pistons have
been real responsive. The guys at the shop here—Leroy Reinig—he’s
given up a lot of time this year.”
“After 24 years of drag racing this is the weirdest thing I’ve
ever had happen to me. I hope it all comes out good in the end.”
Tim
Hailey can be reached at timhailey@earthlink.net
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