They can't pay me enough to ride that thing.............! KR

[maniacles]

Here's a good pic of that monster tz750 flat tracker!
http://www.superbikeplanet.com/yamiow/

Denver actually has some TZ greatness in our own Bill Vickery. He was a regular at the Bonneville salt flats. He held a few records for quite a few years!

I've been looking for old ta's or tz's of any vintage. Anyone have any leads?

[wyckedsin]

The UK is your best bet. The TZ wasn't really sold in the US for the streets, just a very limited run. I have ridden one, not a flat tracker but a streetbike. I had an engine at one time but it was too far gone for my skills so I traded it off. I wanted to put the motor in an FZR frame.

[maniacles]

Perhaps you are thinking of TZR's. They were euro streetbikes and pretty tasty! TZ and TA (air cooled) Yammies were purpose built GP road racers and were never streetbikes unless converted by whackos. You could buy them at the dealer but your racing resume would determine your level of factory support. Privateer spuds like me got to pay for the bike (18k$+ in the early 90's for a 250) and all the spares with no warranty. Payable all in advance, of course. Kenny got a free motorhome to go with his bike, bucks, babes and plane tix.

Tz specs and displacements depended on the rules of the season. They even made a 350 when that class existed on the world scene.
The 750 was the legendary beast with mega horses and lightswitch power delivery. All on scary 70's rubber! The TZ750 was designed to compete with the awesome suzuki rgs 750 in the world roadracing arena. Barry Sheene was an rgs zooky racer and his battles with Kenny were infamous.

This particular 750 was adapted to a flat track frame in an attempt to dominate the dirt scene. You had to be a winner at several types of racing to be crowned champion then (AMA). The bike was so wild and violent he made the statement "they don't pay me enough..........." I don't remeber if he won the race.

All the big 4 made race only bikes in very limited numbers. They don't have much value once they are a few years old and non competitive. But I still think they are cool!

[wyckedsin]

Nope I am thinking the TZ750. When that bike made its appearance for Superbike racing at the time the Homologation rules ment that 500 had to be sold in the nation they were being raced as a street bike. As I understand it only the shops that sponsored an actual TZ racer were allowed to sell the TZ streetbike. Most of those as you mention ended up being sold to privateer racers and stripped down for racing and taken off the street. Kenny Roberts was the one who said they don't pay him enough and yes he did win. He won so much on the TZ750 in the dirt/flat track scene that he got the TZ banned that same year. There is some question as to who's idea it was to put the TZ750 on the dirt track, whether it was the team Yamaha manager or the Home Office but either way they wanted Roberts to race it. The TZ750 made monstrous power for the time and had incredible acceleration that even by todays hyperbike standards is extremely impressive. They were easy to tune and it was simple to move the powerband around for the track they were running. Interestingly enough the motor configuration didn't take well to overboring or "de-boring". The 250/350/500's were all twins. The TZ motor was the base design for the RD250/350LC's with less cylinders. Later the RD became the RZ(watercooled) which evolved into the Banshee ATV engine.

[mtne]

Hey Nick, there are several TZ's in Christchurch which are likely going to be on the block in the next year. All ex race, all displayed allong with other race bikes about 15 in all. I asked how much and he said 2-5k kiwi depending on which ones...............

[maniacles]

Hey MtnE! Good to hear from you! TZ's down under? Hmmm! Do you have any contact info? Not like I can afford it or anything. I just put the Lotus on Ebay. Maybe that'll help.

Wycked, I've never seen any evidence of factory TZ streetbikes. They were GP bikes and not subject to homologation rules. There have been a few conversions, but nothing official. While TA and TZ technology certainly filtered down to the streetbikes in the form of RD's and RZ's, the GP bikes stayed on the track.

If you have any solid evidence I'd love to see it. What years were they available? How did they make it past the DOT when the streetbike based rzv and rgs 500's couldn't?

[wyckedsin]

When Motorcyclist/SportRider helped put together the Kenny Roberts bike which was a TZ converted to street they talked about the history of the TZ750's in American Roadracing. See, your looking at the GP aspect and you are right about them being exempt from that, but in the rules for the Superbike racing in the 70's the bikes had to be homologated. At the time the Superbike series was also being run under the same rules in Canada, the UK, and OZ. Since we are talking the 70's the DOT was a little easier to finagle then it was in the 80's and on. I will see if I can find the original story but I looked online for it and couldn't find it. Doesn't mean it isn't there, just I haven't found it yet.

[wyckedsin]

This may be one of the most awe-inspiring motorcycles ever built. In fact, even now, 26 years later, it is legendary as the bike that caused King Kenny Roberts to say: "They don’t pay me enough to ride that thing." Here’s the story: Roberts had won the 1973 and ’74 AMA Grand National Championships using twin-cylinder, four-stroke Yamahas on the dirt. But by ’75, Harley-Davidson’s XR750 had left the Yamaha behind in performance.


So Yamaha tuners pulled the TZ750 two-stroke, four-cylinder motor out of the road-racer that Roberts used to win Laguna Seca that year, and stuffed it into a dirt-track frame. The engine pumped out 125 horsepower, 50 more than a Yamaha twin. But the question was whether anyone would be able to control the beast.

Roberts tried it for the first time at the Indianapolis Mile, where he quickly discovered that brute power led to a bit of wheel spin. "Finding grip was a problem,’’ is the understated way Roberts explains it today.

The TZ could hit about 150 mph at the end of each straight. But balancing throttle and traction in the corners wasn’t easy.

Somehow, Roberts qualified for the 25-lap final. And off the line, he put himself in sixth place. But he admits that keeping the bike on the track took every bit of skill he possessed.

"In the main," Roberts recalls, "the cushion went right up to the hay bales. After the race, I had baling wire on the bike" from bouncing off the bales.

In spite of all that, Roberts closed on the leaders: Harley riders Rex Beauchamp, Corky Keener and Jay Springsteen. Then, on the last lap, "I got a terrific drive off turn three. I have no idea why. The tire was almost gone, three-quarters chunked.

"Coming off the last corner, I definitely had third, and I thought I could get second. I hit fifth gear and it was less than a quarter mile at 145, so everything happened quickly."

Somehow, Roberts got the TZ hooked up, and in the final feet of the race, blew past the Harley trio for the win.

It was a spectacular debut, but it was also the bike’s only moment of glory. Roberts tried to ride it at two more races, but reverted to his twin both times. At the end of the season, the AMA wrote new safety rules outlawing such machines in the future.

Eventually, this incredible motorcycle came into the hands of historian Steve Wright. It was previously on display at the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum at AMA headquarters in Pickerington, Ohio.

[maniacles]

Cool article! I remember reading about it in Cycle World's racing section just after it happened. (I'm like, old, or somthing).

No worries on the TZ thing. It's not that big a deal

[wyckedsin]

Some of the articles I did pull up talk about this guy named Freddie Spencer who beat Roberts and this other guy Sheene on a Production based TZ750 street bike against their Factory PRoduction Race Bikes circa 1978. But in other versions of the articles he was on a privateer race bike against their factory proddy race bikes. And yes I know its alright but it bugs the hell out of me when I read an article loaded with info like that which leaves some ambiguity. I am wondering if the dealers selling the privateer bikes gave the illusion of them being streetbikes and not race bikes.

[maniacles]

No Big. American bike mags since the 70's have been whores that will write anything that the bike companies pay them to write. I even used to respect Alan Cathcart till he said the Bimota Vdue's were flawless. They were such crap they sank the company.
What I could do is check with Bill Vickery. He's sold Yams and tz's since the early 70's. He'd know for sure. Next time I'm down there I'll ask.

[wyckedsin]

Keep in mind, the Demo Vdues WERE flawless and are still running flawlessly, it was the changes for the production Vdues that things got messy. There was a 2wheeltuesday episode a bit back where the new German privateer is putting the Vdues back together in an attempt to possibly find a new builder to bring them online. They got to see the difference between the Demo engines and the production engines. The engineer talked about how the cost cutting to get the proddy engines together cut down on some of the injector positioning that the demo engines had. Which lead to the piston seizing. Anyways I agree on the value of American magazine journalists. I have more respect for some of the UK mags when it comes to bike reporting as they tend to tell what they think regardless of who the highest advertiser is this month.