King of Daytona Beach
Born in Sept 1928, Dick Klamfoth grew up on an Ohio farm. His earliest motorcycle adventures were on his 61cc Harley-Davidson. After graduating from high school in 1946, he was able to get an opportunity on a decent race bike in 1947.
Dick: “This local rider named Frank Barselo had broken his leg. I got to be known a little bit for being pretty good at tearing my Harley apart and fixing it. So I said to Frank, who had married a farm girl who lived close to me, ‘hey you broke your leg, how’s about me fixing it and riding it?’
“He told me that he was okay with it but had a partner in it – they had bought it together. Floyd Nicodemus was his name, and he had to check with Floyd to see it if was okay with him. Anyhow, I told him that I would take the motorcycle and fix it up, paint it, and if I wrecked it that I would fix it up and take care of it.
“So, I go to see ‘Nick’ and he said ‘it was alright with me’ so I got to ride their Indian. I started out as a Novice and started winning races so the next season (1948) I moved up to Amateur. There were a lot of races starting to happen down here after the Second World War. That winter I talked with Smitty (Jim ‘Smitty’ Smith) and he had bought five or six Nortons. He didn’t have any money but the guys paid him to get them, distributed out of Hamilton, Ontario by J M McGill (the Norton North American distributor). So Smitty sold them to all the Expert riders… they were single-knocker Manx Nortons. Smitty said: ‘You’ve got to ride a Norton down at Daytona for me.’ I said okay… I’d never been down to Daytona.”
The closest challenger to the Manx was the Big Base Indian Scout, a special racing engine made in limited numbers (50 or so, although the reported production numbers vary). Ed Fisher was also in his debut race on the beach, riding the Indian. He said: “My first year was in 1948, I was entered in the 100-miler Amateur race. If my Sports Scout that I built had finished I know I could have run with Dick. It had the big base bottom end, truly the difference was that it had scrapers on the flywheels and got the oil out of the bottom end better. I worked for the Indian dealer in Lancaster and they agreed to sell me the big base bottom end. They sold me a magneto drive to put down into the oil pump drive to run the mag instead of where it should have been and the thing
