By Lee Zimmerman

Some of the stories I have read in American Motorcyclist magazine have brought back great memories. The January 2018 issue’s story and photo about Gary Nixon’s Yamaha 250 took me back to my own memories of racing in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

My story is focused around the Yamaha DT-1 that several of my comrades and I purchased while we were stationed in Japan. In 1968, the Kawasaki 238 rotary valve was the best thing going until the DT-1 came out.

The DT-1 was a true motocross racer. For $717, a buyer got a road-worthy dual-purpose motorcycle and a race worthy bike. After we bought ours, we installed Genuine Yamaha tuning kits on them.

The shop we bought the DT-1s from was also in the business of building factory road racing motorcycles. The shop was owned by a gentleman with the last name of Noguchi. We entered our DT-1s in hare scrambles and motocross races all over Japan with the Kanagawa Motorcycle Club. Noguchi would make modifications to our DT-1 after every race weekend.

One day when I was at his shop, I heard a bunch of pounding next to the building. I asked Noguchi what was going on. He showed me it was two men banging on metal to make a gas tanks for the factory road racers.

He then told me that every time we got our DT-1s back, he had made changes to the bikes without telling us. His goal was to see if the modifications he used to improve his road race motorcycles also would improve a motocross bike’s performance.

He never told us what he had done to the bikes. My friends and I would have to study our bikes closely to discover what he had modified—and not every bike had the same changes. Some of his tinkering worked, and some didn’t.

The most significant change we found was some crazy porting, which I transferred to my 1973 Yamaha MX 250. The swingarms of our bikes also got extended, so the bikes weren’t as prone to wheelie.

The Yamaha AT-1s all had bigger carburetors that Noguchi had no use for, so he had several around. I managed to make one of them work with some jetting on my BSA 650 Lightning Rocket.

Noguchi never wanted any payment other than a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. I still can picture him standing on his shop porch holding the bottle up with a big grin on his face as I was leaving.

I have so many more stories like this one and I look forward to sharing them.

W. Lee Zimmerman is AMA Charter Life Member from Peoria, Ariz.