Altered stud locations, we all love 'em. True racing story.
1972, Suzuki TR750 had special cast cylinder and head, NOT derived from a street bike casting, as we did on the H2R's. Jody Nicholas won some races that year, (great guy, Jody) and, our fearless leader, Hansen, found the 3 head bolts that were moved in the specialty castings on the 'Zook. He made a real issue of it, being a mucky-muck in then AMA at the time. So, the competition rules committee went ahead and made a rules change, that ALL racing cylinder and head bolt/stud configurations/spacing, WOULD conform to stock street bike patterns, preferably, using stock street bike cylinders/heads as the basis of the racing cylinders/heads.
So, we got caught also, from Big Mouth Hansen being greedy in wanting to win races by committee, instead of riding them to win. It was at the very last of 1972, we began refering to anything that went wrong, as "Hansen-ing", as in "The left cylinder seized", "Nope, it was yet another radical case of 'Hansen-ing'".
This is why the GT750 evolved from a somewhat slug in its early years, to a hot rod in its later ones. WE got to swap left for right, right for left, no outer fins, heads sticking out past the lack of cylinder fins, and, performance dropping way off after a couple of laps, because the giant heat pump in the frame slowed way down. The 'Zook's just got faster, and faster, and, stayed cool.
Remember, the Honda's had a race kit to convert a street bike/engine to racer, Yamaha did a completely different bike in the TA/TZ, so, they were open to just about anything, but we, and the Suzuki guys, came up short in our ability to build specialty stuff for real fast performance.
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