‘I felt this vibration, I knew the engine was seizing’
dangerous thing in motorcycle racing. The day before the 200 he crashed out of the 100-mile 250 race, while fighting for the lead with a young Kenny Roberts. An ambulance rushed him to hospital and that seemed like the end, because the AMA automatically pulled the licence of any rider who needed hospital treatment.
After hospital Emde returned to his hotel room, where he spent hours submerged in a hot bath of Epsom salts, hoping to soothe his battered right shoulder. Next morning the circuit doctors checked him over and reinstated his licence. He was ready to race and his hopes were still high.
And yet 200 miles on a little 350 was a long way, even though Emde’s bike was prepared by Dinesen, who didn’t try deploying silly tuning tricks, unlike many of his rivals.
“Mel was a great mechanic and so meticulous,” adds Emde. “There were people that really got into porting the cylinders, using different expansion chambers and all that stuff, but Mel used to say to me, ‘I think those guys in Japan are smarter than me’. He was really, really strict: this is the red line, don’t exceed it. A couple of times I did and the bike broke.”
Outgunned on and off track
While the factory teams had small armies of Japanese engineers, Emde’s crew numbered just two people: Dinesen on the spanners, Emde’s dad Floyd helping out and lap-scoring. Floyd had won the 1948 200, when the race was still held on Daytona beach.
Dinesen was a busy man throughout race week: reading sparkplugs to get the carburettor settings exactly right, then fitting a new crankshaft, new pistons and rings for race day. And then crossing his fingers.
“I got a pretty good start and moved by quite a few guys,” Emde continues. “But I could see a small pack pulling away – the Suzuki and Kawasaki triples – as expected.”
Then disaster. “On lap three I felt this vibration, so I knew the engine was seizing. I pulled in the clutch and aimed at pit lane, going about 150 miles an hour with a dead engine. At that point this inner voice said, if you go in, you won’t win. So I let the clutch out kinda slowly, the rear tyre started to skid, then it let loose. I downshifted and the engine was running fine.”
A post-race engine strip revealed a minor miracle – a piston circlip had popped out, marked the piston, damaged the ring, then disappeared out of the exhaust.
“The seizure took me back to around 25th, where I got involved with Phil Read, riding the John Player Norton. We had about the same speed – he’d draft by me and I’d draft by him – so we had about 15 laps together before I came in for fuel at halfway.”
Changing of the guard
This was a duel of great symbolism. Norton, the greatest name in the racing for half a century, battling with Yamaha, soon to be the new greatest name in racing. And a big, heavy 750cc four-stroke twin versus a light and super-compact 350cc two-stroke twin.
“The 350 was great to ride through the infield, then you came out onto the banking and back straightaway – two and a half miles, just getting as tight as you could into the fairing.”
By now the Kawasaki and Suzuki challenges were falling apart: tyre and ignition problems, mostly.
After Emde’s fuel stop – using a homemade quick-filler fabricated by his dad from a metal trash can, and a quick-fill dump spout – he was in the lead group, with Read and fellow TR3 privateers Ray Hempstead and Dave Smith. Both Read and Smith had fuel-stop problems, which left Emde and Hempstead fighting for victory.
And then another it’s-all-over moment. “All week long I knew I was going to win this race, then Geoff Perry on a factory Suzuki passed me to take the lead and my whole bubble kind of popped – there goes your win.”
What no one knew, including the lap scorers, was that Perry, riding an XR05 500cc twin, was actually unlapping himself after missing the start due to an oiled plug. It didn’t matter anyway, three laps from the chequered flag Perry’s chain snapped.
“Going into the last lap it was me leading, Ray just behind. Two years earlier I was running fifth, coming up to the finish line, when two guys drafted past me. So that was in my mind all the way around the banking, was he lining me up?”
Emde won the race, by 50 metres, earning $13,000 in prize money and bonuses, $88,000 or £65,000 in today’s money. He was also the first privateer winner in decades, the first on a twostroke and the first son of a former winner. Incredibly, Yamaha went on to win every Daytona 200 from 1972 until 1984, when the event switched to superbikes.
‘A piston circlip had popped out then disappeared out of the exhaust’