In their day Rokons were an open class "holeshot killer" with the best brakes in the business. If the clutch was set up right, there was nothing that would beat a Rokon to the first turn......Dave
Nice vintage and your dad did pretty good! Who were the losers who downvoted a rare vintage that is still out there being enjoyed? Feel free to post more!
First one of these I saw was in Guymon OK at a motocross. Guy let a friend hop on. Guy blipped throttle, bike took off, twisted wide open. Slammed right into Chevy P’up. Good times. Lol.
Oh, well. I got to ride the enduro version of this bike in the late-70s and this is exactly the way I remember it. Engine screaming with a weird disconnect to what was happening and no compression braking. I recall that Sachs engine having a remarkable ability to idle for long periods of time. The guy who owned it would typically start it and never turn it off until the end of the ride or the gas stop. I was impressed with the engine, not so much the torque converter transmission.
He was very out of practice the year we got this footage. He raced a lot when he was younger and quit for literally about 30 years before he started racing again. I'm just impressed he worked up the courage to try racing again. He usually gets into first place for a while in the races I've watched but he's a little less of a risk taker than the 18-25 year olds he ends up racing. He's 60 now. Mostly rides vintage classes with other people around his age but he ends up in weird mixed classes sometimes too. Doesn't practice enough and admits it. He's mostly just there to have fun again.
He let me ride it once and I crashed it at ~23 mph (fitbit detected I moved about that fast as I was ejected from the bike) on a motocross track trying to race someone significantly better than me that I should've just let pass me. It's is very, very fast. He sold it not too long ago but the closest thing I can compare it to is driving an electric car. Almost all the power is available just by turning the throttle. It was hard not to accidentally pop the front wheel of the ground if you didn't ease into the throttle. Fun rides when he let me use it!
He raced a lot before I was born and also did a lot of trials competitions and a good friend of his was the original owner of this exact Rokon. My dad wanted it for decades before the person finally gave in and sold it to him after he got sick of my dad badgering him for decades. Beautiful bike, unique sounding and looking, when he raced it in the last few years it was mostly just to get out and ride again. Vintage bike classes, all older stuff. Very, very fun to watch.
