Lyall Sharer died on Could 8, 2023, at 81. Listening to of his passing, I recalled a dialog I had with him in 2007 at Sharer’s Cycle Heart in Verona, Wisc., his Triumph, Moto Guzzi, and Royal Enfield dealership.
Sharer recalled that he competed in his first bike scrambles competitors in 1957. That was the identical yr Bud Ekins rode a Triumph TR6 Trophy to victory within the Massive Bear Run, Bob Sandgren received the Catalina Grand Prix on a Triumph, and the primary Harley-Davidson Sportsters rolled off the meeting line.
“I had gotten a Harley-Davidson Hummer 125. I used to be about 17 and went to see the scrambles simply outdoors Madison, and I made a decision I needed to race. I went house, stripped the bike for racing, and received almost each occasion I entered,” he remembered with a smile.
Sharer was hooked on bikes, mechanics, and excessive efficiency. By 1963, he was spinning wrenches in a Triumph store and continued to compete on light-weight singles from H-D. Sharer received the Wisconsin state short-track championship on a Triumph in 1964, and in 1966 on an Aermacchi Harley-Davidson Dash single. In 1964, whereas nonetheless categorized a novice, he received the short-track title at Solar Prairie, Wisc., aboard a Triumph Tiger Cub, outrunning a subject that included Triumph-backed skilled riders.
Triumph manufacturing facility personnel took discover and approached him about how he managed to construct engines that outperformed factory-backed bikes. Sharer stated he shared some concepts, although not essentially all his efficiency secrets and techniques.
In 1966, he took a privately sponsored 500cc Matchless G50 to Daytona Worldwide Speedway for the Daytona 200, qualifying P3 on the beginning grid aboard the massive single. Sharer recalled working in P8 early within the race when a rider low-sided took Sharer’s machine down with him. Neither rider was significantly injured, however Sharer DNFed.
A yr later, Sharer’s flat-track efficiency had him ranked contained in the nationwide prime 20. Sadly, catastrophe struck on the Sedalia Mile in Missouri in August. Sharer was working within the prime 4 within the ultimate when he had a horrific crash.
“I don’t keep in mind an excessive amount of intimately, however on that monitor, you’d enter the turns at about 100 miles an hour, and that’s what I used to be doing when the crash occurred,” Sharer defined. “I hit the surface rail and received harm fairly unhealthy.”
A number of spinal, rib, and leg fractures, along with a ruptured kidney, seemingly ended his racing profession. When he was lastly up and round once more, Sharer opened Sharer Cycle Heart in 1968.
Nonetheless, racing was in Sharer’s blood. Inside a few years, he was again on the monitor, although not in the identical skilled circuit mode of the early days. He ran just a few races, and extra for the enjoyable of it. “[I] had different commitments, so all-out racing simply wasn’t potential,” Share defined.
In 1970, Sharer stayed linked with the monitor by serving to different riders win. He sponsored Cliff Carr and prepped the Kawasaki H1R 500cc two-stroke triple Carr later campaigned in Europe.
The next yr, Sharer turned a Triumph supplier, constructing and sponsoring profitable flat monitor machines campaigned by Carr, Mike Anderson, and Tom Bries.
As bike know-how advanced and racing turned more and more costly and troublesome for small-budget privateers, Sharer shifted his focus to his enterprise and the enterprise of getting enjoyable. He co-founded the Slimey Crud Motorbike Gang, which began the Slimey Crud Motorbike Gang Café Racer Run. Because of Cycle World’s Peter Egan and the opposite founding Slimey Cruds, that occasion goes on to today as a part of Lyall Sharer’s bike legacy.
Photographs courtesy of Lyall Sharer, and by Gary Ilminen
