Well, it's been three years now. It has gotten better with time, but a day doesn't go by without a thought or mention of Henry. I've copy-pasted the story that Redline it mentioned:
Regarding riding dirty, one time Henry's dad needed to borrow his pickup, so Henry wired the license plate from his DOHC 750 to his fairly new '82 XR500, loaded it up and drove from Rosamond, CA (current home of APE) to our home town of Santa Maria, CA, (about 200 miles) with the intent of returning to Rosamond taking mostly back-roads and secondary highways as much as possible. There was, however, a stretch of I-5 between hwy 166 and 138 that he had to navigate that climbed from the southern end of the Central Valley over the Tejon Pass, AKA the Grapevine, as mentioned in the song "Hot rod Lincoln".
The trouble started when Henry decided to merge onto the interstate at the end of 166 on the dirt shoulder of the on-ramp, trailing a rooster tail of dust and dirt behind him while doing a balance wheelie at 65 MPH. This evidently pissed off the truck driver behind him, who tried to run over him. With the stock gearing, the XR maxed out about 75 MPH, and they were still on flat ground, and the semi was beginning to gain on him. He managed to stay ahead until they hit the grade, but he was probably WFO for 2 or more miles, and even with the threat behind him he still had to keep up with traffic while going up the pass, so the motor was working pretty hard. Almost at the summit, he started feeling a slight hesitation, kind of like the brake was being applied. Hmm, felt that before on a two-stroke, what was it? Oh yeah! The motor is seizing!!!
He pulled in the clutch and the motor stopped *right now*. It's hotter than a two dollar pistol, and the end of the dipstick is dry. He had about 1/2 quart of oil bungied onto the rear fender, which was enough to wet the end of the stick, and was frantically fanning the motor while looking for the angry truck driver who was sure to catch up. Luckily, the motor was only "soft seized", and cooled off enough to restart before that happened, and he was able to nurse the bike 40 or 50 miles back home once on hwy 138.
After the "soft seize", it was time for improvements, and being a single young man at the time, Henry threw the White Bros catalog at it: Wisco 10.5:1 piston, WB cam, Supertrap exhaust, and Mikuni 36mm carb. The cam and the carb are now thumping again today on my FT.
