Just in case there might be someone, somewhere, who rode a TM and actually liked it, I must add the following by way of clarification:

"If raw chitlins are all you've ever eaten, then boiled-possum liver will seem exotic and tasty!"

A TM-400 was, without a doubt, the boiled-possum liver of the moto-cross world.

Back in 1973 I was racing a Maico 400-Radial, indeed a high-dollar hunk of Teutonic trickery in its day. The sheer cost of a real open-class bike had always acted as what I think of as a "turkey-filter," and thereby keeping the tragically calamitous from occupying our ranks. The TM-400 changed all that, and our solitude was rudely shattered.

Whether by sales-slump or by design, the TM's price dropped so precipitously following the dreadful first-year models. Children with paper routes were seen to be paying cash for shiny, new TM-400 Suzukis. Bad though this was, the real problem was even worse: On a smooth start chute the dreadfully-suspended TM would actually out-drag my Maico to the first turn, whereupon it would promptly add insult to the Maico's injury by having the unmitigated gall of actually being able to stop when it arrived there. This meant I had exactly 20-minutes** plus two laps to wade, hip-deep, through a hoard of TM-400's, the combined total cost of which could not equal the price of a set of clutch plates for my Maico.

Owing to this financially fashioned fiasco, it suddenly became necessary that I spend the first half of every moto racing with the same guys that I had, in recent history, been able to lap twice in a 5-minute trophy dash. Those big, Snot-Yellow Moto-Monstrosities were exceedingly difficult to pass because, unlike their start chutes, early MX tracks had at least a few stutter bumps scattered about their surface. Even small ripples were more than sufficient to totally confound the evil beast that lay just beneath the TM's phlegm-colored paint. Don't even get me started on the orange-tanked first year models, which were somehow even worse.

Though ill-suited for most tracks, the big TM's would have been perfect for the annual bike races at Daytona... and I mean the road race up on the banks; they would never have allowed TM's on the bumpy infield MX track because of the liabilities involved. Imagine the carnage that would ensue should one of these baby-mustard yellow rupture-boxes manage to find a ripple in the MX track's surface, lapse into a terminal tank-slapper and then leap violently into the grandstands... which were located only 120 yards away. Not a seat in the house would be safe.

A good TM-400 (hack, cough!) at full chat down a choppy straightaway would swap side-to-side hard enough to completely block all 7 lanes of a 25-foot wide MX freeway. As you might imagine, this made passing one a tenuous affair at best. Could this bike really have been produced by the same folks who brought us Joel Robert's awesome RH-250? And while we're onto matters of National Security: Who the hang signed-off for these wretched things to be loosed on American soil? After all, I thought WE won the war!

The way I remember it, every time I would latch onto the hind-end of a wayward TM coming out of a tight corner, and had managed to get the big Maico's revs up out of the lousy Bing carburetor's load-up zone, the TM was already on the pipe and ricocheting drunkenly off both sides of the snow fence all the way down a 50-yard straight. And though its rider was greatly imperiled, the malevolent TM was happy as a dead pig in the sunshine to continue this behavior for however long fuel and the rider's metabolism could endure. This biological limitation would eventually lead me to secret of the TM's undoing.

Just as the Maico and I would close within striking distance of the TM and its punch-drunk rider I would have to death-grab the Maico's flaccid front-brake lever with both hands and then start dragging my feet in order to get slowed down for the next curve that loomed only 35 yards ahead. A Maico front-brake was weaker than New York chili and there was no use to even bother with the rear one as it would have already faded and bailed-out way back at the end of the start chute. Just as the toes of my size-12 Full Bores good and tight dug into the dirt, the TM ahead would invariably snag the next-highest gear and take out another 20-foot section of snow fence, then gingerly stop and idle through the turn, after which this whole otherwise-pitiful scenario would replay itself down the next straightaway. Nobody was ever man-enough to actually crack open the throttle of a TM while turning the handlebars, and I say "otherwise pitiful" because my own lack of sympathy seems justifiable. After all, the TM was doing all of this in FRONT of me.

Early-on I'd taken a lot of heat for being forced to follow TMs around, but I eventually found a chink in their armor... or rather, that of the rider. There are subtle biological limits in place and they define what the human body can be made to endure. I was able to capitalize on this weakness. I finally decided that the TM's "scorched-earth" policy of cross-country navigation could only be possible for short periods of time, dependent upon the rider's intestinal makeup. You see, a TM rider lives on the edge of catastrophe and can only hold his breath, and his "urge to evacuate," for so long until finally, something's got to... uhhh, give.

One Sunday afternoon as I stood trackside, watching practice, it suddenly came to me -- the secret of Anti-TM warfare! I noticed that TM-400 riders were limited to a maximum of about seven seconds of full-throttle operation, whereupon they were forced to back off. Judging from the drunken, tortured path they cut while navigating the course, I surmised that this was surely done to relax the strain on their colons. From that day forth, when out on the track, I would merely follow the fiendish TMs around, watch for the rider's "let-down" reflex and time my passes accordingly. Biology is a truly wondrous thing.

You know, as I write this and think back on it all, the TM-400 may very well have been the ultimate open-class weapon. I have decided that the proper use of one is like the game strategy of any good basketball team:

I know this may sound odd at first reading, but a superior grasp of history is often afforded by retrospection, during which seemingly insignificant details will often come to occupy center stage in the historical canvas even though, at the time of their occurrence, they may have seemed completely unimportant. And so it was that the TM-400's inability to succeed was brought on by just such a detail. Ultimately, the TM's failure to dominate the American moto-cross scene was not the fault of the motorcycle itself, but rather it was an apparel-related folly that caused its ultimate downfall. Brought low by a simple fashion tragedy! You see, in 1973 there were simply no available riding pants with sufficient latitude of crotch to carry the necessary biological accouterments needed to ride a TM-400 at full throttle over rough terrain. And now you know...

... the rest of the story!

Ray Crenshaw in SC (USA)
9/FEB/98

** NOTE: We raced 20-minute motos then because a Maico could not run longer than that between major overhauls.

jrc

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