Yep, 1973, I remember early Sunday mornings thru the tip of Indiana, and across Illinois, everyone's yard had at least 2 little oil wells, just strokin away, beat the hell outa raisin chickens, and sellin eggs, just sit on the porch and watch the cars go by, and watch the meter on the oil tank, didn't want it to overflow. DAD, I got away from the SOHC Honda in 2005, and never looked back, I run an undersized motor, that doesn't require any special parts inside, and they are CHEAP, I have yet to put in any new parts, when I tear one down to cut the case, no need to, compression is still what the rebuild book says, and so little ring tension, unless you flooded it with dust, it wouldn't wear, same with brgs, look good, use em. That little motor has made me a lot of money, and cost me hardly anything. It is as competative as I want it to be, imagine how long I would be allowed to run it, if I "worked" on it, it's a top 5 car about anytime we go out. My first car was one that Ronnie had driven for Dwenger, with the "two smoke" in it, I still have the motorplate that they ran with the Konig, and then the Honda. You're right, no one ever considered the driver as a factor, and the chain drive only let them get the gear low enough for it to do it's thing, after the chain drive was "banned", they went to an old Casale quick change, and chg gears were available down to 16-1, and I still got em! I have no trouble getting my 14,500 rpm, 600cc motor on the pipe, but I am working on a newer ring and pinion that will let me do other things, and allow others to buy the parts necessary to make this happen. The final thing with the Konig was, they cut the cc's so low, it was just time to move on, so the same guy had to show them all over again, that it wasn't the motor. The only thing I've ran into so far with the high RPM's, is the nose brg in the rear end, so I've gone to a different brg, and of course more expensive, but in all these seasons, it has been one brg bought, so it ain't like changin one everytime you change oil. Yeh, we travelled in packs, and everyone had at least 10 extra gallons of gas on board, plus if push came to shove, we could always get gas off one of the locals. When all that started, we were on our normal Sunday morning trip, and were going thru the tank farms in lower Illinois, and I woke up the wife, and had her take some pictures, there were those silly asses, out there on Sunday, adding new tanks, and making the old one's taller, evidently they hadn't got the word about the oil shortage! Oh well, it did one thing, they got paid good to do it, and the oil and gas also got paid for! Bob