 | ||
        |
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| My First Motorcycle Design | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Feb 1969: My first try at a seat tank. On my 1968 Suzuki 500 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| I spent the winter of 1968-69 designing and making this seat tank. As I recall, it would hold five gallons of gas and a gallon of two stroke oil. The idea was to beat Kawasaki H-1 Triples at the drags and to show the world what a great designer I was. Well, I didn't beat many H-1s, but I did get the attention of Triumph. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| It looked better with clip-ons | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| I took this bike drag racing at the Indy 1/8 mile drags. It was light. I was light. We were very fast. One night after the heats, I parked it next to a beautiful, customized Triumph Bonneville that I had just dusted off. To my disappointment, nobody seemed to be interested in my slick design. Turns out it was too slick. It made your eyes zip right off onto something else. Anything else! Like the more complicated looking Bonnie. When it came time to redesign the BSA Rocket 3, I made sure that it would stop your eye. That is the basis of the distinctive "Z" profile. |  | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Suzuki and Hurricane | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Forty years later... | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| In 2007, Eric Bergman of Colorado commissioned Evan Wilcox of California to make an aluminum version of my Suzuki seat tank. Even better, he asked Evan to make the fairing that should have been made but never was. |  | |||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| A spectacular beauty! | ||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| My original Suzuki Seat-Tank is now on display at the AMA's Hall of Fame Museum | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Page updated Feb 23, 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
