Cheetah wrote:snip... for 1981 I bought a new GPZ 550 and went roadracing as seen in the third pic. I still have the bike and may race it again in the vintage racing club I belong to.
http://www.race-uscra.com/ snip
I had one of those 81' GPZ 550, loved it, bought it pre-delivery and had to wait 3 months for it to come in. raced in a few box stock class races at Sears Point in Sonoma Calif. I used to ride from my house in Santa Clara down to Santa Barbera and back on US 1 down the coast, tons of fun! Wish I still had her, sold it in 1984 when my ex was pregnant with our second.
That side car racing looks kinda hairy, guess you have to trust your rider!
in '08! My XL350R is still apart from my rebuild that began in May '08, & I have 4 BW80's that still need rebuilds & restoration, a '72 El Camino that needs a starter & restoration (& now, probably a tank flush & carb clean 
), a ' 71 Arctic Cat Cheetah that should be junked, plus 2 cars that need work (wifes --
) & my entire upstairs that needs electrical, insulation & sheetrock...............
- plus the black dust does not look so bad on it.
There was a street legal one on Ebay for a while.....it changed owners once & popped back up there, but the second owner was even farther away from here & wouldn't have been worth shipping. 
So, intake valve bent & motor has to come out to remove head. After waiting over a week for a used head, I took the intake valve out of that head & just swapped it out. Filled with carb cleaner & not a drop coming out! 
Now, putting the motor back in by myself was fun!! After arm-wrestling it for 4 hours, I decided to build a pulley that I could nail to the ceiling & run my ATV winch rope through it for a make-shift hoist. I used 2 muffler clamps, 2 large washers & on old wheel bearing off the BW. Worked great & the motor is now in & bolted up. Next Monday, I start the jigsaw puzzle of putting it back together -- that's the easy part! WOOHOO!!
