Indy-area rider Ned Hart racing his Kawasaki GPz750 during a WERA race at Indianapolis Raceway Park sometime in the mid-1980s. I remember this bike clearly for the unfortunate thing that happened when Hart was prepping it for a coming race. (Larry Lawrence photo)

Indy-area rider Ned Hart racing his Kawasaki GPz750 during a WERA race at Indianapolis Raceway Park sometime in the mid-1980s. I remember this bike clearly for the unfortunate thing that happened when Hart was prepping it for a coming race.

He’d paid good money to have the engine built for Superbike racing. Hart got the bike home and then anxiously started going through it performing routine maintenance. One thing on his list was to change the oil. He opened the drain plug and was letting the oil drain when he turned his attention to putting in new sparkplugs.

After he was done installing the sparkplugs he was excited to fire up the bike and ride it around the neighborhood to get a feel for the newly-rebuilt and hopefully stronger Superbike motor.

You may be ahead of me here, but what happened next gives any part-time motorcycle mechanic cold chills. Hart, so eager to test the new motor, had forgotten about the oil draining. He fired up the bike and started riding it around the neighborhood. After a brief warm-up he gave the bike a pretty good twist of throttle, sure enough, the new motor was much more powerful than it had been in stock form.

Suddenly he started hearing knocking. Something was not right. He rode it straight back home and into his garage, the knocking getting ever worse. As he turned the corner, Ned looked on his garage floor and to his horror saw the oil drain plug laying there on the floor.

Needless to say the motor was ruined. Ned eventually got rid of the bike and bought a Honda VF750 to race.