James Ray Crenshaws TM400 experiences

[TooFastTim]

When I was looking for a (I thought) long lost and very funny report on the SC500 I found this by the same writer (from: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/rec.motorcycles.dirt/6D6QCEehXXQ). Enjoy.

"Aw shucks... Due to the overwhelming outpouring of requests for my
recently...

"What? What was that? Oh yeah..." Ok, so only one person asked.

Vintage Dave is right on with the Bultaco 360 El Bandito. You don't need
much high school Spanish to figure out what the name means, nor do you need
more than rip through 2nd gear to see how it got that name in the first
place. But there were several other Demon Seed types that readily explain
why I walk the way I do... which is barely.

I've got several stories and if you guys are in a real reading mood I reckon
I'll post 'em.

The TM-400 Suzuki was truly dreadful. A third generation of riders is now
hearing about and getting mauled by this machine. You need to keep one thing
in mind here, and that is the fact that MOST of the people reporting
near-death experiences on TM-400's are correct... but flawed. They don't
have the whole story as they were probably riding the MUCH IMPROVED
yellow-tanked models. Bad as the Yellow Tankers were, and they were bad, the
first year was orange and black and deadly. Vintage Dave, can I git an
"AMEN!" here?

They had "porkchop" flywheels and an internal rotor ignition. Can you say
"No Flywheel?" Yes, I thought you could. Truly evil.

OK, so here are the pages that I thought Suzuki should have put in the front
of the TM owner's manual.
jrc

*****
The TM-400 and Other Diseases

The worst thing about Suzuki?s TM-400 (well, not quite the worst, that?s
coming up shortly, a bit lower on the page) was that after they were
released and didn't sell well, the price dropped like a bowling ball, and as
far as I could tell by the way they littered all the moto-cross tracks here
in the Southeastern United States, supply was never a problem.

?Crunch all you want? we?ll make more!?

I was racing a Maico 400-Radial in 1973, indeed a high-dollar hunk of
Teutonic trickery in its day. The sheer cost of a real Open class bike had
always kept the turkeys out of the big class? until the TM-400, that is. The
price dropped so precipitously that children with paper routes could soon
afford them. Bad as that was, the real problem was this; on a smooth start
chute the calamitously suspended TM would actually out-drag my Maico to the
first turn, whereupon it would promptly add insult to the Maico's injury by
having the unmitigated gall of actually being able to stop when it arrived
there. This meant I had exactly 20-minutes** plus two laps to wade hip-deep
through a hoard of TM-400's whose combined total cost was less than a set of
clutch plates for my Maico. The inhumanity of it all!

Owing to this financially fashioned fiasco, it became suddenly necessary
that I spend the first half of every moto racing with guys I used to lap
twice in a one-lap trophy dash. Those big, yellow moto-monstrosities were
exceedingly difficult to pass because unlike their start chutes, even our
early MX tracks had at least a few stutter bumps scattered about their
surface and even the little ones were more than sufficient to totally
confound the evil beast that lay just beneath their snot-colored paint. Don?
t even get me started on the orange-tanked first year models, which were
somehow even worse.

Though ill-suited for most tracks, the big TM?s would have been perfect for
the bike races at Daytona, and I mean up on the banks, they wouldn't allow
TM?s on the bumpy infield MX track because of the liabilities involved with
having one lapse into a terminal tank-slapper and leaping violently into the
grandstands? which were only 120 yards away. A good TM-400 (Government
Intelligence?) at full chat down a choppy straightaway would swap
side-to-side hard enough to completely block all 7 lanes of a 25-foot wide
MX freeway. This made passing one a tenuous affair at best. Could this bike
really have been produced by the same folks that brought us Joel Robert?s
awesome RH-250? And while we?re onto matters of National Security, who
signed-off for these things to be loosed on American soil? After all, I
thought we won the war?

The way I remember it, every time I would latch onto the hind-end of a
wayward TM coming out of a tight corner and had managed to get the big
Maico's revs up out of the lousy Bing carburetor?s load-up zone, the TM was
already on the pipe and bouncing drunkenly off both sides of the snow fence
all the way down a 50 yard straight. And while its rider was greatly
imperiled, the TM was happy as a dead pig in the sunshine to continue this
behavior for as long as fuel, and the rider?s nerve, could endure. Just as
the Maico and I would close within striking distance of the TM and its
punch-drunk rider (we all knew that TM riders had to let off after every 15
seconds of full-throttle operation to relax the strain on their colons, and
we timed our passes thusly), I would have to death-grab the Maico?s flaccid
front-brake lever with both hands and then start dragging my feet in order
to get slowed down for the next curve that loomed only 50 yards ahead. A
Maico front brake was weaker than New York chili and there was no use to
even bother with the rear one, as it would have already faded and bailed-out
way back at the end of the start chute.

Just as the toes of my size 12 Full Bores dug in good and tight the TM ahead
would invariably snag the next highest gear and take out another 20-foot
section of snow fence, then gingerly stop and idle through the turn, after
which this whole otherwise-pitiful scenario would replay itself down the
next straightaway. Nobody was ever man-enough to actually open the throttle
of a TM while turning the handlebars, and I say ?otherwise pitiful? because
my own lack of sympathy seems justifiable. After all, the TM was doing all
of this in front of me.

You know, as I write this and think back on it all, the TM-400 may very well
have been the ultimate open-class weapon. I have decided that the proper use
of a TM is like the strategy of any good basketball team: Get an early lead
and plug-up the lane. I know this may sound odd at first reading, but a
superior grasp of history is often afforded by retrospection, during which
seemingly insignificant details will often come to occupy center-stage in
the historical canvas when, at the time of their occurrence, may have seemed
completely unimportant. And so it was that the TM-400?s inability to succeed
was brought on by just such a detail. Ultimately, its failure to dominate
the American moto-cross scene was not the fault of the motorcycle itself,
but rather it was an apparel-related folly that caused the TM-400?s ultimate
downfall. You see, in 1973 there were simply no available riding pants with
sufficient latitude of crotch to carry the necessary biological
accouterments needed to ride a TM-400 at full throttle over rough terrain.

And now you know? the rest of the story.
Ray Crenshaw in SC (USA)
9/FEB/98

** NOTE: We raced 20-minute motos then as Maico's would not run longer than
that between major overhauls.
jrc"

[Simo63]

Funny shite right there .. thanks for posting it TFT