Team Charm in 1993

Unfortunately we deleted most of the original articles that we wrote about our 1993 season. Currently we are rewriting the info from our 1993 season as time allows & memory serves.

The biggest single event in our 1993 season was the 24 hour race at nelson ledges that we entered. Steve did most of the planning for the event, while he relied on one of the riders (we had six of them) to help with some of the engine work. Ted Burnham assembled the engine that was a collection of new parts from some engines that we had. We had wiseco pistons in an otherwise basically stock motor that had the transmission & clutch modified to take the abuse of 24 hours of racing.

The riders for the event included Stephen Harris, Rich Sturges, Ted Burnham, Mike Sia, Kenny Abbott and David Back. It was a odd mix of riders with a lot of experience. Steve started out racing in New England with Ted Burnham who had a lot of experience crewing for Team Machine, the 1990 WERA middle weight superbike national endurance champions. Ted as also a fast rider. Mike Sia was a good friend of Ted. He wore briefs and smelled like after-shave. It also helped the he could ride a motorcycle fast & consistent. Kenny Abbott needs no introduction to racers from the mid Atlantic region, but suffice to say that he reasonably fast & brought a lot of hard work to the effort. Kenny had also ridden for us a number of times & is the only other person to highside a Team Charm motorcycle. Dave back had done five 24 hour races including the epic 30 hours of Rockingham. His experience at racing home tuned machines at dark would prove to be his saving grace if not for his concise understanding of electrical theory...

Pit crew consisted of original 2DrunkCrew member Tom Broligio, Leslie Stuges, "Sistah" Debbie Burnham, Jeff Davis, & a hole bunch of people whom we forget at the moment, but surely will e-mail me that us that we are ungrateful bastards.

Upon showing up the Steve dropped down to the high 1:18's in his first practice. This would prove to be within a half second of the best time he would do all weekend. The other member struggled with bike set up & were mostly in the low twenties. We spent most of Friday getting set up & deciding what to do with the lighting for the night riding. Stephen rode one practice session at night scaring himself silly & decided that since he was the fastest rider on the team (at that time, by his last set on Sunday afternoon Ted Burnham would get into the 1:16's range) he would do all his riding at day to make best use of his speed. Kenny Abbott & Dave Back would do most of the night riding, With the others sharing pretty much equally in the remaining time (six riders, 24 hours, 4 hours apiece).

Notes from the 24 hour race according to Stephen;

"We barely made our start for some reason that escapes me now.

When I was asleep the headlighting system, that I didn't help set up, started to fail intermittedly. I promptly got blamed for the problem. When I did wake up to investigate what was going on & saw how disarrayed things were in the pits I told Dave Back that if he felt the bike was unsafe to ride with the poor lighting we would park it till morning. He called me a pussy & promptly went out to do about a hour of solid 1:23's & 1:22's in the dark! He was on my shit list as he showed up late on Saturday morning & crashed the "b" bike in practice. After this I forgave his morning indiscretion.

As long I I live I will never forget coming around the last turn on the last lap & getting the checkered flag with the front straight away lined with several hundred racers, pit crew, officials and fans all cheering as the bikes ripped down by for the last time.

My butt hurt for a week afterwards.

I saw the best save of my life when some ZX-7 rider almost pitched it in one. I met the man afterwards, but his name escapes me."

Notes 24 hour race according to "2drunk Crew" pit crew member Mark Andy;

"...'93 was when I first started racing and was all enthused about the prospect. Team Charm promptly preyed on my naiveté and lured me into pitting for them at the 24 hour with the phrase "and you may as well bring your gear since we may need a backup rider".

The leathers stayed on the hanger apart from a ride in practice on the backup bike (I ran off in turn 12, turned into the pits, and found out Rich had been signaling me to come in anyway. Don't tell...)

I did have great fun helping to align the headlights on the track at night. We leaned the bike over to check 'em out a lot. The current theory is that all the battery acid promptly went out the overflow, causing the generator to overwork itself during the race. On the bright side (or perhaps non-bright), I was pretty damn good at changing an FZR600 battery by the end of the race.

Also remember Mike was mad at me for some strange reason. Apparently he's from the "don't smash a helmet into the ground more than once" school of thought. Seems I forgot to mention that I'd gotten a minor concussion wearing the helmet that he borrowed for the weekend. 'Course you woulda thought he'd have wondered about the scratches...

Oh and the best part of the weekend was about two hours before the finish when Rich tried to convince me that I should ride the last stint of the race (and pay for a 6th of the total cost). Hah ha! not quite that naive..."

Notes from the 24 hour race from rider David Back:

"Do I remember the '93 season...couldn't see, had to pit often, bike handled funny and was out classed, though not fast enough to win, ran great for what it was, and one might say.... it finished first in it's class.

I could share more memories from the '93 season...though most of mine were dark ones...it was fun though, as I love to ride at night, timing becomes critical, apexes are almost sudden reactions not a predetermined turn in point as in daylight riding. If you're lucky you may hook up with a faster bike with good lights, to do so just drop two seconds off the previous laps times and use the draft to keep up with them so it is much easier to see. "Our" covert plan was to wire both high and low beams to run at the same time. I added a relay to relieve the electrical draw through the switch, and some thought that could cause an electrical draw, and it does, very little, maybe half and amp, but it may save more than that by virtue of shortening the current flow to the head lamps, and it will reduce the chance of suffering switch overload failure. None the less as the sun left and night fell upon us the covert plan worked against us. The alternator was not a match for what was asked of it and caused many a pit stop and lost time and lost laps. It was such a shame, the bike ran great when it had enough voltage left in the battery. Soon we were out of freshly charged batteries and the real cause had to be found. That's when it was decided that 230 watts of head lamp draw was a bit excessive. Once the lighting was reduced the bike ran flawlessly. It's so unfortunate to have to have lost so much time with such a simple problem, something which is never a problem in normal racing, because normal racing is done during daylight. It's those wee hours in the dark night when one can find the real crazies. They are the ones who are running a daylight pace in total darkness...."

Notes from the 24hr race by racer Ted Burnham:

"I'm probably the worst person to tell a story about anything because due to some sort of personality disorder I typically focus on the mistakes I've made rather than the successes I've had. There was no way I was going to miss what I knew was going to be the final 24 hour race that WERA would ever run. I had scored at the last four for Team Machine and had vowed to be in the next one. I set out to find others of like mind and form a team. The simple fact that I was able to get that far is probably better than most guys would have done, so I'll count that a success. The fact that our team entered a bike and finished the race can also be considered a success. The plastic parts of the bike never hit the asphalt and no one got hurt so I'll chalk up two more. (Editor's Note, Dave Back did crash the "A" bike in practice) Every one on the team had a great time and we also left the track on speaking terms which probably puts us in the minority. That's as far as my pessimistic tendencies allow me to speak of success….
Team Charm Racing did not carry the number 911 to be cute. In my opinion EMERGENCY was the most accurate description of our effort. As such it was destined for disaster from the beginning. My brother Harold, a famous boat builder and ship's captain known for eloquent prose, once said "While building a boat you can't make a mistake you can't fix. You make your major colossal mistakes while designing the boat". Given the profession of some of our team members that's enough said. Any one else may require more details. To politely paraphrase a friend of mine who is not only a successful businessman, but also a successful endurance team owner; "Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance Period". Not just a tongue twister these are words to live by. There are lots of ways to loose any race and serious errors are often made on race tracks, mine however were of the major colossal species. In hopes that someone board enough to read this might benefit from knowing my mistakes I'll list the top four in order;

Proper Preparation: If you know that you will be racing at night, prepare your bike's lighting system and check it out well before the first night practice. That way you can practice at night instead of figuring out what's wrong with your head lights.

Proper Preparation: The Electrical system of a production motor cycle is designed to carry the load of the stock head lights. When running a stock head light an elaborate amperage consuming relay switch is not required; even though a bright young electrical engineer convinces you it is. (The said electrical engineer did redeem himself by bravely riding the bike with no headlight until WERA intelligently black flagged us.)

Proper Preparation: Even Though you think you're smart and buy a brand new battery for the race take the time to properly charge it and test it in the bike prior to the race. That way if it did some how slip through the rigorous Japanese quality control system defected, you can replace it at home while drinking a frosty beer instead of during the race while loosing valuable laps.

Proper Preparation: When you carefully, painstakingly inspect your wiring harness prior to the race and replace any wire or connector that even remotely looks like it might be broken or corroded, don't forget those two big fat mothers that connect the battery to the bike. Replace them with new ones so they wont break when you're frantically trying to jam the borrowed battery into your bike while loosing valuable laps.

In conclusion, we didn't do that badly. Like I said I'm a pessimist. It's much more than likely that if I had made all the mentioned preparations I would have thrown the perfectly prepared machine down the road while looking at the moon exiting the carrousel. By the way did you know the old man on the moon is actually a rabbit? That's another story…."

Last WERA endurance event in October of '93

Stephen ran the WERA October six hour Roebling Road event with guest rider Sam Fleming of Army of Darkness fame. The race was run in the pouring rain. The race marked the first & last time that Stephen ever lapped a majority of a grid of WERA endurance riders within a hour. He was running 1:40's & 1:39's at the Savannah track. It was interesting to note that Kurt Hall was doing 1:36's while the eventual winner Tray Batey was running in the 1:32 range, both on rain tires. Sam was doing very well with 1:44-1:42 type times. The team finished about half a lap from a podium finish in the middle weight class based on memory.

Notes from the 6 hour race according to Stephen;

"That race was the only time that I have ever gotten off a motorcycle & thought I held nothing back & did the very best that I possibly could have. I had a blast sliding the front & rear at the same time in turns three & nine. It was also the time that I have ever passed some of the riders that I did. Some of them came up to me asking what tires we were using, or what brand of coffee I was drinking. Persoanlly I think Sam would have gone faster if he was not worried about crashing a bike he didn't own."

Notes from the 6 hour race from fellow rider Sam Fleming;

"Ah the Savannah Six-hour. We drove the 600 miles on friday night, set up the pit in the rain, practiced half-heartedly in the rain, Steve started the race in the rain, Glenn Szarek crashed on the first lap in the rain, another rider slid from turn nine to the start/finish line in the rain, Steve harris rode the best race of his life in the rain.

I had been asked to run the race for two reasons, my capacity to convince friends to crew the pits and my ability to ride around without crashing.

While Steve set the track ablaze I slipped and slithered for 3 hours. The first one and a half hours I wondered what I was doing on a motorcycle on such a cold wet day and thinking that it couldn't get much worse. The second stint I spent wondering what I was doing out again and where had the front brakes gone? The last drop of rain fell when I crossed the finish line. Our crew was Tim Gooding and Alex Priest and our scorers were Sista (of Teddy "Works like a fuckin bastard" Burnham and her New York friend). We drove back to D.C. on Saturday night which means we did about thirty vehicle hours in thirty six people hours."