Vintage Hillclimb videos: I was competing in the first one but I am not in the video.

Tim Weaver
July 4, 2016

Vintage Hillclimb videos: I was competing in the first one but I am not in the video.

Here’s a four minute You Tube video from the ’86 AMA Amateur National Hillclimb with some spectacular rides and crashes. This is the event where I got my National Championship in the 200cc class. Unfortunately my ride wasn’t spectacular enough to make the video. I motored over in around 18 seconds to take the win.

There are a few notable rides. One is of a Honda 750 bored and stroked to around a thousand cc’s that flat tore the hill up. Another one, that’s only shown a few seconds, is the 125 class winner, an orange Hodaka with the rear fender mounted to the swingarm over the tire. It’s noteworthy in that Hodaka had been out of production nine years and their air cooled 125 was a very dated design when they went out of business in ’77, much less having to compete against the modern water pumpers of the mid-80’s. The thing revved to the moon and the builder/rider managed to mess up his back on the winning run and never competed again. I guess that’s a good way to end your career!


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