BLUE COLLAR BMW

Shawn Baer’s budget-build Production Twin BLUE COLLAR BMW Words: Gary Inman Photos: Ed Subias

BLUE COLLAR BMW

LIMA HALF-MILE 2019, on the cusp of change in AFT’s SuperTwins era. The Grand National Championship has never been short of polish or professionalism, the bikes that compete in the US national series are the cream of flat track, but 2020 will see the sport make a further step up in the way it presents itself to the outside world. Pro motorsport can’t operate without major sponsors, that’s what enables it to be pro, and AFT’s latest round of changes is designed to attract more money to enable top riders to receive financial rewards that reflect the risks they take.

While every rider with pro pretensions dreams of earning a wage, it isn’t a reality for many, and not everyone fits in with AFT’s new direction. One such rider is 33-year-old Shawn Baer. Shawn has ridden a number of different marques: Triumph, for the Bonneville Performance team, then his own Kawasaki Ninja 650 framer, on which he scored top tens in the 2012 season as a privateer. ‘Then we raced the Mega Mile1 and I don’t know why, but we lost three engines in one day and we never got it back.’

Along with his father, Daryl, of Baer Racing Products (BRP), Shawn had the idea of building a KTM 9902 to replace his Kawasaki.

Appendix

1 Colonial Downs, Virginia, a 1.25-mile cushion oval. 2 We featured Shawn’s KTM 990 in SB20.

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‘Using a KTM meant we were starting with an engine that had 100 horsepower, not a Kawasaki with 54-60, where we were looking for an extra 40bhp to be competitive. I never had the financial backing, I work as a machinist during the week. The KTM allowed me to continue racing.’ If the KTM sounds like the ideal solution, a reliable 100bhp from stock, there is a downside. ‘Jeffrey Carver raced a Suzuki 1000 for Weirbach Racing and he said to me, “I don’t know how you [race those big twins]. I want something that handles.” The big KTM is harder to get around,’ admits Shawn. Baer has the physical build to hustle the heavy Austrian and revel in its privateerfriendly punch of tuneable cheap power. It’s likely he would have still been racing it now if the rules hadn’t changed to lower the engine capacity limit, essentially outlawing the KTM. Shawn still wanted to race at the highest level and liked what the KTM had offered, so began looking for an engine that was smaller, but similar. He landed on BMW’s F-series parallel twins, at that time already being developed for flat track by the legendary Ron Wood. ‘The BMW is producing 85-90bhp and I hope we can make 100 reliable horsepower. It’s a parallel twin with a 360-degree crank, the pistons rise and fall together. There are, I think, four different models and the GT is the one you want. I buy the engines off eBay for between $500 and $900.’ Shawn goes on to explain that all he changes is the cam, made for him by Web Cams; the ignition, which is a Performance Electronics PE3 system from Ohio, is the same unit Howerton Racing were using on the Bryan Smith Kawasaki; Rottweiler velocity stacks on standard BMW throttle bodies, and a Rekluse clutch, that he raves about. But, he admits, ‘When Ron Wood passed I lost my in with a man who’d won a race3 with the BMW.’ Shawn is now ploughing his own furrow – experimenting with cams, building motors without balancer shafts and, sometimes,

‘grenading’ engines. ‘I built a new engine and it let go on the fourth or fifth lap.

When I took the head off, one piston was completely missing. The conrod was still there, but there was no sign of the piston.

It was in the sump.’

Shawn isn’t overly pleased that we couldn’t wait to feature the bike, because he tries to build the nicest motorcycles he can, and when we shot this Baer BMW, at its very first outing, it wasn’t a reflection of the slick bikes he normally builds. However, he did agree that it is an important document of the development and, while it’s a bit rough around the edges, it couldn’t look any tougher. Shawn and his dad designed the chromoly chassis and it was welded together by John Klahr, a friend who builds roll cages for dirt track sprint cars, using Shawn’s own jig. The swingarm is made using 1in tubing, bigger than most chassis builders use, because Shawn likes the rigid feel it offers. The shock is a Penske; forks are Yamaha R6 in the family’s own BRP adjustable triple clamps, used by, among others, former Super Hooligan national champ, Andy DiBrino. Shawn’s generous uncle Ron paid for the alloy tank to be made by Mike Taylor, a fabricator based in Shawn’s home state of Pennsylvania. It houses a Kawasaki 650 fuel pump. ‘They never fail,’ says Shawn. In this early-development guise, the quick and dirty exhaust pipes are of Shawn’s own making – mild steel bends, bought online, and $40 end cans. ‘People have told me the bike would make more power if I had ‘down’ pipes,’ he says, referring to low, under-engine exhausts, ‘but I’m a guy stuck on the image of flat trackers and I think they should have ‘up’ pipes. Down pipes aren’t flat track.’ As noted, Shawn is a machinist by trade and those radical wheels are his own work. ‘I bought the blanks from California and machined them myself. I’ve been making my

(above) Bare metal and development parts will be transformed before the BMW’s next outing. Blingy Vortex sprocket stands out (opposite) Straight off the track, peppered with Ohio gravel

own wheels since 2010. People say you want power, but what you really want is traction. I started making heavy back wheels after Joe Kopp was caught filling his inner tube with water and the AMA changed the rules to stop that. Then he had a steel wheel made that weighed 60-70lbs, but that was banned too, so I started machining these heavy rear wheels [that are within AFT’s weight limits]. I wasn’t copying anyone and I’m proud that now everyone is using heavy rear wheels. When we spoke, in early 2020, Shawn didn’t seem sure where he and his bikes fitted into

Baer machines his own wheels from blanks, working up a heavy rear in the ever-crucial hunt for traction the new-era flat track scene. He’s competed in Expert Twins for years, but can’t commit to SuperTwins and the new requirement of committing to enter every race, or try for one of the limited wild-card spots, but Production Twins and the big non-nationals are options. Shawn is symbolic of the dirty-hands racer many fans feel is the core of flat track. As the very top of the sport goes through its transformation, riders like him will either mutate to survive or move to the non-national circuit to battle for the prize purses.

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