On the line

It has been an extremely busy two months since the last column. The big news at MXworksbike.com is we are in the early stages of planning and building a permanent brick and mortar museum dedicated to professional motocross. The museum will carry the same theme as this site and will have fantastic exhibits featuring the bikes in this collection (over 60 works bikes so far) and the riders that rode them. Our goal is to preserve motocross history from the late 50's through the late 80's. The site has been narrowed down to two possible locations for a building and concept drawings will soon be under way. We have been accumulating bikes and memorabilia for years now and it only seems right to have it all on display in one place. Many top riders have been going out of their way recently to help us acquire their original race worn gear, awards and other memorabilia to display with the bikes. Bob Hannah has been a huge help lately with his stuff and located a lot of his original gear and trophies. It's in remarkable condition and some of it is displayed in the memorabilia section on this site. Lot's of history there. How cool will it be to see everything all at once under one roof? Speaking of Bob Hannah, if you haven't seen the new Bob Hannah MX files DVD, you need to check it out. It's loaded with all kinds of "Hurricane" trivia and is a must have! I learned a lot from watching it and I thought I knew everything. You can order it at www.BobHannah.com.

Six time 250 World Champion Joel Robert spent the last 10 days of May with us and as usual we had a great time. Lots of great stories were recorded, photos identified and plans for a couple of Joel Robert projects are under way. Stay tuned. One interesting thing we did while he was here, we took Sten Lundin's 1961 World Championship Lito out, fired it up and took it for a spin. I was very surprised at how much power that bike has and how wide the power-band is. It seems like you could leave it in one gear all day. The sound it makes is like nothing else, pure music. Joel told me that 2 weeks after he clinched the 1964 250 World Championship in Finland, he raced against Sten on his Lito at Mettet Belgium. Joel won the race on a CZ 360 twin pipe and Sten got second on the Lito. That was during the time 2 strokes were coming in and the 4 strokes were starting to go out. By the way, Sten's Lito will be featured in the new VMX magazine and is on the cover. See pic below.

We were saddened to hear that two former Canadian  factory Yamaha riders Tom Kratzer and Bill McLean recently passed away from cancer. Tom's OW13 and Bill's OW11 are in this collection. Tom and Bill, both whose careers were in the mid 70's, were two of Canada's best. I was fortunate to speak with both riders on the phone about their bikes and careers and both seemed like real gentlemen. Our prayers go out to their families.

I want to thank everyone that has bought a DVD or photo CD from us on this site. All the money raised goes directly back into the site or collection. The films are by far the best I've seen and if you haven't seen them yet, check out the store section.

Terry Good     June 9, 2008

                                    Bill McLean and Tom Kratzer both pictured on the right will be missed.