Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/751464
61 www.thunderpress.net THUNDER PRESS nDecember 2016n ing the money already spent. Not an option at this crucial juncture. It turned out Walter caved, Ricardo and Ottaway handled all the issues in just a few weeks and the competition debut of a 55 hp, 61" Harley-Davidson 8-valve racer was on time and spectacular! Shootout in Dodge City July 11, 1916, in Dodge City, Kansas, was damn hot! Not just from the noonday summer sun! The third annual Dodge City 300 Classic was well under way and spectators couldn't believe what they were see- ing. The fi rst lap of this "road race" (on dirt roads) saw the expected Indian out front. By the second it was a new Harley 8-valver. From then on, it was Harley-Davidson all the way! By race end H-D's 8-valve racers dominated, coming in fi rst and third, and setting a new track record. Indians fi nished fourth and fi fth, with the speedy Excelsior splitting the Harleys for second. All in all, a blockbuster beginning for the soon-to- be-named Harley "Model 1." By the end of the year, Harley had kicked ass all season, the United States declared war on Germany and that was that for motorcycle racing… for a time. Eight-valve oddities To be clear, the original Harley 8-valve racer was only marginally faster than the competition. What made them so successful, so quickly, was Ottaway's team management. The man had every detail worked out, to a degree not seen again until Mercedes- Benz went car racing in the late 30's. I mean Bill had the paid professional racers eating and sleeping right to keep them in shape. He had drills to make pit stops effi cient and fast. Same thing with refueling techniques and so on and so on. In other words… Ottaway was the epitome of a race boss. The men and machines under his supervision were absolutely as effi cient and effective as he could humanly make'em! He did it. Those men we should talk about some other time; they were amazing and deserve to be remembered. But for now, let's stick to the machines… and the beginning of the mysteries… so far. Much has been made of the fact that H-D priced their 8-valve twin and 4-valve single race bikes at a stratospheric $1,500 and $1,000, respectively. (Indian sold theirs for not much more than the road bikes… $350 for twins and $300 for singles.) The accepted notion is that it's because H-D didn't want anyone but a factory team rider to get their hands on the racers they made, while Indian wanted to pack the fi eld with theirs. But… as we'll see later… Harley 8-valvers did get into the hands of certain favored folks, mostly overseas and mostly post-war. Mystery number one: how'd that happen? There's also the matter of the 4-valve singles. They were essen- tially the twins with the front cylinder lopped off. Thing is, H-D had a per- fectly good vertical single at the time. Why not put the 4-valve top end on that? Some say it's because Ricardo proved that the intake tract on the sin- gles wouldn't or couldn't take advan- tage of the breathing potential in the heads… but to this day nobody knows for sure. Mystery number two: what about the "half-a-twin" singles? Then there's this: we've already seen that the 8-valve was developed in 1915 and raced in 1916, so why was it cataloged as the Model 17? Following H-D naming rituals from the time should have made it a Model 16… right? Right—mystery number three? As you'll see in photos here- abouts, the original 1916 8-valve racer was, for all intents and purposes, a racing top end on a single-cam, pro- duction bottom end. But before it was over, there were at least a couple more top ends and eventually a twin cam bottom end… the two bottom ends, at the time, referred to as "indirect" and "direct" acting. Mysterious! What that means, to me at least, is that Ottaway wasn't exactly 100 percent focused on war production. He was obviously researching ways to make the 8-valve racers better and faster during those years of confl ict. Because he knew when those overseas battles were over, there'd be plenty more fi ghts on American soil…in the speed wars on race tracks! (To be continued… mysteriously.) One of the fi rst and best at the game of catch up was the so-called "Big Valve" Excelsior. Make no mistake, these things were fast! Trouble was, they weren't exactly cutting-edge technology… more like existing tech refi ned. Soon enough, that would prove to be "too little, too late" in pre-war racing. Most of the race bikes in that long-ago time (excepting Indian, of course) were in the same boat as Excelsior. Then this monster came along! The Cyclone was an almost science fi c- tion-level bombshell of high-tech engineering, an all ball-bearing engine with bevel-driven overhead cams and more… eat your heart out, Ducati fans! This engine got attention! Sadly, it didn't come to much on the track. Explosively fast, they usually exploded before the end of the race… mostly bad luck, and primitive metallurgy, not poor design. Fact is, once the Cyclone's manufacturer (Joerns) faded from the scene, two other brands picked up where it left off. The OHC Reading Standard was an exact copy and Excelsior built an updated and improved version of their own to replace the Big Valve. Meanwhile, Harley-Davidson waited until everyone else in the game had shown their cards, then sprung this on them! The 1916 8-valve model literally took the racing world by storm! But the storm passed too quickly! After kicking butt for a season, the 8-valve was heard no more until 1919 and the resumption of racing. (We're going to get into that next month.) But for now it might be instructive to take a look at a few details. First, the Harley's 8-valves operate differently than the Indians (picture 2) by lining exhaust valves up fore and aft, while the Indian's are oriented side-to-side. The original is also the only 8-valve H-D to use exhaust pipes… four of them… one on each of four round ports. Last (for now) there's the fork… which looks like all the other forks on all the other bikes. That wouldn't last because in the same way the engine evolved over the next 13 years, so did the frame and forks. As you'll see… next issue!