A friend was building a custom bike. He bought a Dave Yetman frame, which was an expression of an important principle: that straight tubes, subject only to tension or compression, result in a much stiffer structure than do curved tubes. That being so, smaller than normal frame tubes could be used with no loss of stiffness.

Normal frame tubes in those days were in the range of one inch to an inch-and-an-eighth, 16 gage wall thickness.

Accordingly, 5/8 tubing should make a really light, stiff frame.

There were precedents – Cotton, a small English maker, had built straight-tube chassis in the 1920s, and the great champion Stanley Woods got his start on one. They had the rep of being stable and responsive.

In a bedroom town of Boston, Massachusetts, lived Domenic Ravesi. He had a cam-grinding machine in his basement. Local riders told us his cams let 250 and 305 Hondas rev to 14,000. There were murmurs that Mr. Ravesi had received “multi-sine cam profiles” from an unnamed MIT professor. Mmm.

Now how about a 350 kit for my friend’s 305 Honda? And to supply it with air-fuel mixture, a pair of genuinely racy-looking Dell’Orto remote-float carbs. No word of what they were originally jetted for. Also another bad sign – wise persons, if required to work with carburetors, choose those for which all tuning parts are readily available – main jets, idle jets, needles, needle jets, slides in various cutaway heights. We had nothing because we knew nothing.

A swoopy-looking fiberglass tank arrived. None of us was a welder-fabricator, so imagine the lash-up. Bungee cords. How about reliable means of conducting fuel from tank to float bowls? Could be potential problems there, too.

One style of cookery insists that the meal resulting from the combination of excellent ingredients cannot help but be excellent. If only it were so simple.

We arrived at the venue, unloaded, gassed-up, and our collective creation wouldn’t run. Dutifully, we went through the hallowed checks. Yes, there is compression. There is fuel. Timing is correctly set. We have spark.

It didn’t run. This, we were informed, placed us among the most junior and least knowledgeable of would-be racers: those who take their bike to the track to work on it.

We became red-faced with frustration. We imagined our problem to be the carburetors. The engine would run weakly on one cylinder. As we showed signs of being fresh out of ideas, my wife asked, “These carby things –do they both do the same job?”

“Yes,” we mumbled together.

“Then that means if one cylinder is running and the other isn’t, and if you think the problem is with a carb, if you put the right carb on the left and vice-versa, it should be the other cylinder that runs. Then you’d know at least one thing.”

Her irony was rich, intended or otherwise, for at that moment, we did not know even one thing.

Now the magic decoder ring of experience and hindsight. Ravesi’s cam was able to reach all those empty high rpm because it combined long duration with not a lot of lift. Long valve timing means a gradual and weak intake signal (the pulse of partial vacuum in the carb throat that gets fuel moving) and leanness. I would learn all about this shortly – from two-strokes. The poor thing needed to be jetted up.

Then – most embarrassing of all – it caught fire as a predictable result of a fuel leak combined with not having the contact-breaker cover in place while trying to start the engine. Fuel plus air plus a source of ignition = fire. Failing to achieve internal combustion, we had better success with the external kind.

Like so many before us, we all soon came to the same conclusion. Since we had failed at souping up streetbikes, we must all buy production racers – bike made for racing, for which parts that fit are available from the dealer. Bikes that start and run. That, in the moment, was Yamaha’s two-stroke parallel twin, the 250 cc TD1-B.