Herre is an article I ran-across, I like to read stuff like what this guy was able to do in his life. He was a CA Bay-Area shop owner who was well-respected for his skills but who died at only 66. I think there are many more tales about him to be told. Here is one:
A GIANT HAS FALLEN: KENNY
AUGUSTINE, 1947-2013
The Bay Area moto-community—actually, the world’s moto-community—lost a bright light on September 19th, when Kenny Augustine passed away from apparent heart failure in his San Rafael shop, Kinetic Analysis. He was 66 years old. Early-on he worked at Amal Precision,a motorcycle sales/ service and machine shop in Dumont New Jersey. There he was influenced by owner Oscar Liebmann, a master machinist who along with his sons raced high- performance motorcycles. ('fire-medic' note: I believe this was who built the Butler & Smith BMW Superbike which won the title at the beginning of the series, a good place to apprentice!).
Here's a great anecdote about Kenny (no guarantee of truthfulness, but a great story):
A race team that was campaigning a CB900F in Superbike racing brought Kenny a cylinder head to port. What they didn’t tell him was that they had also
hired Jerry Branch to port a cylinder head and that they intended to play the two of them against each other in a competition for the greatest flow numbers. As was typical of Kenny, he was concerned with getting these numbers without a penalty
in velocity through the ports so that the area under the curve would not suffer (i.e. the engine would not be peaky and pull strongly from low rpm). So, at some point he said “enough” and would not continue trying to get bigger numbers. The team, not used to seeing port shapes of the type that would produce the results Kenny was after, decided by looking at the head that what Kenny had done “could not work,” that he didn’t know what he was doing, installed the other cylinder head on the bike, and usedKenny’s cylinder head as a doorstop. A year or two later, an engineer from Honda was visiting the race team’s shop and picked the cylinder head/doorstop up off the floor. Inspecting it closely, sticking his fingers into the ports, etc., he eventually asked in heavily Japanese-accented English, “Who do this?” (Imagine Kenny telling the story and mimicking the accent). The team scoffed and tried to wave him off in a dismissive manner, but the engineer wasn’t having any of it. To their amazement, he insisted that they give him Kenny’s contact information and took the cylinder head with him. It turns out that Honda was in a bind because they realized they were not ready to release the VF1000F for the 1983 model year and needed an emergency stopgap between the CB900F and the VF1000F. That stopgap was to be the CB1100F.However,the problem was that the ports were barely suitable for the CB900F because that cylinder head was already a derivation of the CB750F. The engineer realized that Kenny’s port shapes were just what was needed to hasten development so that the CB1100F could be released in time. They paid Kenny $3500 for the rights to use the design.
http://citybike.com//includes/upload/back_issue/cb_2013-11.pdf
A GIANT HAS FALLEN: KENNY
AUGUSTINE, 1947-2013
The Bay Area moto-community—actually, the world’s moto-community—lost a bright light on September 19th, when Kenny Augustine passed away from apparent heart failure in his San Rafael shop, Kinetic Analysis. He was 66 years old. Early-on he worked at Amal Precision,a motorcycle sales/ service and machine shop in Dumont New Jersey. There he was influenced by owner Oscar Liebmann, a master machinist who along with his sons raced high- performance motorcycles. ('fire-medic' note: I believe this was who built the Butler & Smith BMW Superbike which won the title at the beginning of the series, a good place to apprentice!).
Here's a great anecdote about Kenny (no guarantee of truthfulness, but a great story):
A race team that was campaigning a CB900F in Superbike racing brought Kenny a cylinder head to port. What they didn’t tell him was that they had also
hired Jerry Branch to port a cylinder head and that they intended to play the two of them against each other in a competition for the greatest flow numbers. As was typical of Kenny, he was concerned with getting these numbers without a penalty
in velocity through the ports so that the area under the curve would not suffer (i.e. the engine would not be peaky and pull strongly from low rpm). So, at some point he said “enough” and would not continue trying to get bigger numbers. The team, not used to seeing port shapes of the type that would produce the results Kenny was after, decided by looking at the head that what Kenny had done “could not work,” that he didn’t know what he was doing, installed the other cylinder head on the bike, and usedKenny’s cylinder head as a doorstop. A year or two later, an engineer from Honda was visiting the race team’s shop and picked the cylinder head/doorstop up off the floor. Inspecting it closely, sticking his fingers into the ports, etc., he eventually asked in heavily Japanese-accented English, “Who do this?” (Imagine Kenny telling the story and mimicking the accent). The team scoffed and tried to wave him off in a dismissive manner, but the engineer wasn’t having any of it. To their amazement, he insisted that they give him Kenny’s contact information and took the cylinder head with him. It turns out that Honda was in a bind because they realized they were not ready to release the VF1000F for the 1983 model year and needed an emergency stopgap between the CB900F and the VF1000F. That stopgap was to be the CB1100F.However,the problem was that the ports were barely suitable for the CB900F because that cylinder head was already a derivation of the CB750F. The engineer realized that Kenny’s port shapes were just what was needed to hasten development so that the CB1100F could be released in time. They paid Kenny $3500 for the rights to use the design.
http://citybike.com//includes/upload/back_issue/cb_2013-11.pdf
