Fast Eddie
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You’re all hooligans…
Superbike 7, March 1970 Cycle Magazine performance test
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baz
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I had a YR5 it was like the RD 350 but with a narrower power band!
concours
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I purchased my first motorcycle, stepping up from a "mini-bike;" in the spring of 1971. According to the dealer it was probably the first black and gold Roadster in Los Angeles; that because I road it home from the dealer an hour after the dealer's pick up truck rolled in from the San Pedro harbor. I bought that Commando purely because the magazines said it was the quickest of all and it was a good handler to boot. I then wore that poor bike out learning. Learning how to ride it. Learning how to maintain it.
I learned how to race it on the "Backside" of LA's Griffith Park. My red and green avatar depicts a map of the Backside. In my late teens and through my twenties, I lived less than five miles from that road. It was about ten miles long, running up about 600 feet in elevation from the San Fernando Valley and then south across a form of ridgeline to the world famous LA Observatory. It was good for racing because it was tight and slow and it had almost no traffic, no driveways, no stop signs, no houses. We called it the "Backside" because, relative to the city, it is on the backside of the mountain that the Griffith Park Observatory and the Hollywood sign are on. They are on the southside of the mountain and they face south, looking out over the city. Our road was on the back, or north, side of that mountain; looking out over Burbank and the south eastern end of the San Fernando Valley. I can't emphasize enough that the road was built before bulldozers. The road was built during the Great Depression as a make work project by men without heavy equipment. When their path was obstructed by a big tree or boulder, they routed the road around it. When they had to cross a gully or crest a small hill, they took it down into that gulley or climbed over that small hill. Those men did not chop hills to fill gulleys or cut or blast trees or boulders out of the way, they cut the road's path to accomodate the obstacle. So . . . . the finished road rises some 600 feet to sort of a ridgeline as it twists, turns, drops and climbs. We did have to share the road with LA City trash trucks as the city has a "sanitary landfill" in the Park. Their locked axle rear wheels polished the road surface. Other than the trash trucks, most Angelenos left it to us, as too difficult and slow. A perfect road for small and middle weight motorcycles, if you wanted to ride them hard. That's where I learned to road race. The police left us alone, probably because we didn't make trouble for them; we didn't get into accidents that they had to write up. Which is NOT to say that we didn't crash a lot. We did. It's just that our average speeds generally were so low that, when we did, we didn't hurt ourselves seriously and almost always we could pick up our scratched bikes and ride home. The surface was slurry seal over asphalt polished by those trucks and with dirt and pine needles a constant presence. A challenging and intimidating surface.
When I sold that "71 Roadster, it had Borrani wheels, a Fontana four shoe brake, well scraped foot pegs, a pair of scraped flat pea shooters, and 15,000 miles on it, most of those miles ridden in Griffith Park. Then I bought a '72 750 Ducati Sport and regretted it. Lousy geometry for my favorite road. Great for the triple digit "let's see if I can kill myself" US National Forest roads. Went on to many bikes, loved the RD350 Yamahas. Many years of fast riding, fortunately my '71 Norton's all around superbike capacities taught me how to ride fast and not crash. No crash at all for 40+ years. And then, October 2020, riding 50 MPH in slow lane of LA freeway got run over from behind.
As we all know, Commandos' performance still impresses.
I learned how to race it on the "Backside" of LA's Griffith Park. My red and green avatar depicts a map of the Backside. In my late teens and through my twenties, I lived less than five miles from that road. It was about ten miles long, running up about 600 feet in elevation from the San Fernando Valley and then south across a form of ridgeline to the world famous LA Observatory. It was good for racing because it was tight and slow and it had almost no traffic, no driveways, no stop signs, no houses. We called it the "Backside" because, relative to the city, it is on the backside of the mountain that the Griffith Park Observatory and the Hollywood sign are on. They are on the southside of the mountain and they face south, looking out over the city. Our road was on the back, or north, side of that mountain; looking out over Burbank and the south eastern end of the San Fernando Valley. I can't emphasize enough that the road was built before bulldozers. The road was built during the Great Depression as a make work project by men without heavy equipment. When their path was obstructed by a big tree or boulder, they routed the road around it. When they had to cross a gully or crest a small hill, they took it down into that gulley or climbed over that small hill. Those men did not chop hills to fill gulleys or cut or blast trees or boulders out of the way, they cut the road's path to accomodate the obstacle. So . . . . the finished road rises some 600 feet to sort of a ridgeline as it twists, turns, drops and climbs. We did have to share the road with LA City trash trucks as the city has a "sanitary landfill" in the Park. Their locked axle rear wheels polished the road surface. Other than the trash trucks, most Angelenos left it to us, as too difficult and slow. A perfect road for small and middle weight motorcycles, if you wanted to ride them hard. That's where I learned to road race. The police left us alone, probably because we didn't make trouble for them; we didn't get into accidents that they had to write up. Which is NOT to say that we didn't crash a lot. We did. It's just that our average speeds generally were so low that, when we did, we didn't hurt ourselves seriously and almost always we could pick up our scratched bikes and ride home. The surface was slurry seal over asphalt polished by those trucks and with dirt and pine needles a constant presence. A challenging and intimidating surface.
When I sold that "71 Roadster, it had Borrani wheels, a Fontana four shoe brake, well scraped foot pegs, a pair of scraped flat pea shooters, and 15,000 miles on it, most of those miles ridden in Griffith Park. Then I bought a '72 750 Ducati Sport and regretted it. Lousy geometry for my favorite road. Great for the triple digit "let's see if I can kill myself" US National Forest roads. Went on to many bikes, loved the RD350 Yamahas. Many years of fast riding, fortunately my '71 Norton's all around superbike capacities taught me how to ride fast and not crash. No crash at all for 40+ years. And then, October 2020, riding 50 MPH in slow lane of LA freeway got run over from behind.
As we all know, Commandos' performance still impresses.
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