Featured Sprint End Of Road For My Sprint Love Affair

Truth be told my 96 was actually two years old and I was riding with a couple of my buds from my apartment to a go Kart track for an afternoon of having some fun. Just got back from riding to GP race in Montreal Canada, 1800 miles each way and was out for a day with my buds. As we came down the inclined road we were riding on my best friend was in lead on his Buell with me behind and my other buddy on a HD Full Dresser behind me.
During my years of racing on ice, dirt TT and flat track I had the habit of trailing one or two fingers on the brake leveler which I unfortunately carried over into my street riding. Coming down the hill grade in three gear I was going a bit fast and went to down shift to second and actually miss shifted and hit first gear, needless to say the rev's where a bit to high and when the bike snapped my trailing fingers gripped the front brake leveler and the front tire was about 4-6 inches off the ground. When it came down the front was locked up and I went down on the left side to the pavement. I held on to keep my beauty from flipping down the asphalt but it cost me a broken left collar bone and a temple impact to the roadway, luckily I was wearing my Shoei X-8 Wayne Rainey replica helmet.
Ground the left side of my beautiful girl hard and had to replace much of body work: front fairing, shield, left rear side panel & seat, foot pegs, center stand, kick stand. shiftier, and left side tail pipe, seat and rear rim. Thank god I had full coverage insurance and replaced everything with brand new parts, appox. $4,500 dollars in value. I have the new fairing, shield, the compete tail section, the new seat and spare rim all in my garage and have never put it on it as I repaired the left side of the fairing using my body work skills, painted the lower half in gun metal grey metallic. All other minor things were replaced but I keep all the new plastic hanging in my garage for over twenty years. I am going to give my customized fairing, with shield the complete tail section with seat to my bud to hang from the rafters in his race shop. Will be putting all the new plastic on the bike and selling it to someone who will appreciate having a well maintained Sprint that I know will run for another 30-40 thousand miles. New fairing hanging and new tail section under towel below.
Everything is a perfect match it will kook like brand new when I swap the plastic out. My life long racing mechanic friend whom I bought it from right out of the crate already has three serious interested people as he knows the bike as well as me cause he is the only person that I let Work on it over the past 20+ years. Doug Smith of Competition Cycle in Sioux Falls, SD. Proceeds are going to cover my Formula One trip to the Circuit of the Americas race in November with my two closest riding and racing high school buds. We are going all out and are going to have one hell of a good time no matter what.
Micheal's 2000 Ferrari on display with my Ferrari
inspired Sprint at the Manley Tire store in the small town of Valley Springs, SD. Population 155 people. They had he display car because that year they were the leading seller of Bridgestone tires in all of South Dakota. Could not pass on the once in a life time photo opt that I lucked into. I have been a die hard F1 since being station in Germany from 1980-1983. Been to German GP twice and Montreal Canada once. Bucket list item number one covered!!!

Brand new in 1997
Final Black Hills ride Last year 2018
Damn it has been some much fun. Triumph really made this one right and I know that it is bullet proof, Hats off to the triumph factory workers who built my dream bike.

 

Been a little rough this week, have been adjusting my medications with my fabulous Home Hospice Medical Team.
Pain management, sleep management, and overall physical strength, the lack there of, have keep me pretty much sidelined.
I have been able to do some looking back through photo albums and came across something I wanted to share. Here are my buds that are going to share my F1 GP trip with.
We were a motley crew back in 1983: #89 - Robert "Dean Bob" Johnson
#21 - Bob Koons "Koon Dog"
#24 - Tim Schultz "My 1983 Championship Season"
and
#9 - Todd Borstad (Another racing friend)

Picture taken at University Speedway - Brookings, SD
Summer of 1983 - Dirt TT track - 200X A Modified's "Haul Ass 4 stroke class"

Even sidelined I try to be positive and hope for better days to come.

My one regret to not be able to go to Seattle three weeks ago is missing out with riding with my nephew who was really looking forward to it as we have not ridin together as he was to young. Not now, grow into a great young man. My nephew Jacob Kohler "Jake" and his brand new 2019 Indian Scout
Sharp bike, he is working on some customizing already, true biker I think.

 

Well it's been over a month and a half since I've heard her sweet sound of the three cylinder bank of power so after a few light errands I uncovered her, set fuel cock to prime and fired it up. She has always been cold blooded on the initial start up but after slowing reducing choke and playing with the idle screw she runs where I like her to be.
Next on the agenda was to move her to the center of my garage stall so I begin to remove the old customized body work, fairing, windshield, and the complete tail section and seat.
Very quickly I discovered how weak my physical side has deteriorated as I struggled to move the old girl. Luckily a co-worker called me with a question on a construction project and I got him to stop by and help me move the bike to where I can begin to put all the brand new plastic on. I plan on taking my time and get a helping hand when in need as I need to get things swapped over so I can sell her. Never thought those words would be uttered by me. It is heart breaking but I know she'll have a good second home and someone is going to end up with a gem of a motorcycle.
I'll continue to update my progress and add a few photos so you all can see the transformation. Hope you all enjoy my continued postings, in a strange way it is kinda therapeutic for me and I enjoy it more than I thought I would.
More to come.

 

Day one of transformation to brand new original body work:
Had a friend come over this morning to mow and trim my yard as i just can't do it. It is nice to have friends and coworkers that are calling me and asking if there is anything they can do to help me out. Sometimes when your an extremely independent person such as myself it's very hard to surrender but I am going to do it as it is also good for the people that care enough to really want to assist in anyway possible.

Tail section removed
Will reinforce inside with various wood blocking so it will hold shape when hung up in my buddy's shop. Front fairing with shield next. Signals & Mirrors are first and are a bit tricky but my small hands work well to get the nuts loose as the mirrors pin the fairing to the under steel support carriage system. It's off in one piece and ready to be reinforced for hanging in the shop rafters. Will be using the work frame work that is currently holding the new one to shape, including the hanging chains and hooks. Had to do some bodywork and special reinforcing after the crash and had to some additional fasteners for the front sections. I think it work out well as the seams needed to be tight as the crash opened things up a bit. Day one a success, I had no doubts in myself as I can do most things on this bike blindfolded and in the dark that's the way it is when you have 20 plus years of practice. Even being so physically challenged it took a couple of hours but was very enjoyable and made me happy to be tinkering again.
Day off tomorrow I think, will do some cleaning and prepare for installation of the new body works come Saturday/Sunday. My little brother is coming over to help out, when I was racing he was always there to be my pit crew and we always had fun even on the dark days.
More to come.......................................

 

Wire-Wheels, Wow that is nice looking 95!!

Transformation continued on Saturday morning when a former coworker stopped by my garage. My profession for the past 20 years has been as a Project Manager for a General Contracting Corporation doing mid to large size commercial construction projects. Mark Rave has been my favorite Construction Site Superintendent to work with as we make a great team. I run the administrate side; Dealing with Owners, Architects, Engineers, Consultants, Contracted Subcontractors and Material Suppliers. Mark runs field operations day to day; including overseeing all prime and trade contractors working at the sites. We just completed a 8 million dollar school expansion were we added onto an existing elementary by adding middle school and high school areas approximately 80,000 sf added. We were currently starting a new 92,000 sf 14 million dollar Elementary School located right in our backyard. My competitive bidding on the job won us the contract and I was still able to project a good profit margin for the company. Made the Bosses day on this one. Project site is only 3 miles from our office/shop in Harrisburg,SD.

Onto the transformation:
Having trouble uploading photos so I am going to try and do a Part II to this Thread.
Thread Title will be: New Beginning for My 96 Sprint Without Me