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864
Joined
5/12/2008
Location
Lake Zurich, IL, USA
I'm hunting for information on the Wheelsmith company. It looks like they started as the American distributer of Maico. The early 70's were their heyday. Did they ever put out any catalogue? What parts did they sell? One of the reasons I'm asking is I have a 77 AW440. It's got the Wheelsmith logo on the jug. I am guessing it's just a porting job? It';s got some other stuff I'm trying to trace on it as well.
Thanks
Jeff
Thanks
Jeff
Wayne Mooradian
Owner
Performance Engineered Products Inc
HQ Phone: (909) 594-7487
he does this with old hondas all the time and will probabaly claim he isnt a Maico guy, then he will find one in the corner, most likely with some kind of magniseum forks, and more TI than youve ever seen
The Shop
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
The red 77 AW's are my favorite Maico's ever. As luck would have it, the pristinely restored Maico I got in a package deal from my shooting buddy is a 1976 AW250. It means nothing to me...lol.
Cooper motors was the West coast Maico distributor & Maico East was on the east Coast.
Wheelsmith was a local Southern California Performance shop for Maico's
It was owned by Greg Smith & my Best Friend was the Shop mechanic for a while.
They sold Maico & trick Maico parts, also did some trick porting & other trick mods to Maico's
Yes they did have several catalogs, I don't happen to have one. But you should be able to Google one & take a look.
Link is for a restored Wheelsmith full build that would have been the open class bike to have in 1974. Maico was ahead of everyone else in handling and usable power delivery then, but had a lot of details that could stand improvement. Wheelsmith stuff looked like bling but worked better than stock.Brake pedals, footpegs, chain guides, brake anchor arms, tanks, tall "GP" seats (sit down more in long motos), exhausts inc. upswept pipes, wheels rebuilt for reliability, engine & suspension hopup, etc. The big Maicos were just easier to ride fast longer, so pros gravitated to them and tried to fix their weak points, and Wheelsmith had the highest profile nationally for improving Maicos. Very cool if you have a Wheelsmith package racer.
A big thanks to bigfoot. It turns out the WM on the jugs is the initials for Wayne Mooradian. I always thought it was the W from Wheel and the m from the Smith part LOL. I copied and pasted part of his response I posted on the Maico FB page
"I'e been doing some research on Wheelsmith and was given the name of Wayne Mooradian turns out hes the WM stamped on the jugs of the Wheelsmith bikes. So he E-Mailed me back right away. yeah I was super stoked. These guys are the stars of early motocross, anyway I thought some might find his response interesting. I edited some out for FB
Yes I built all the engines for WHEELSMITH from April 1973 to March of 1979 .
Then I built some engines (but not all) from March 1979 to 1983 when they closed. When it closed I was an outside contractor.
The WM letters on the top cylinder fins are actually my initials.
I would grind them in with a quarter inch round nose rotary file bit.
That distinguishes the ones that I did from any of the others.
As for mods we had services for cutting and shimming gear boxes, modifying the clutches so they were easier to pull along with our own special 17–4 pH clutch springs, On the full race engines, Porting, match the cases, pin the main bearings in the cases, heat and fill in the crankcase areas with green Loctite to prevent the pinhole air leaks from the honeycomb prone Air leak pathways in the sandcastings.Ken Fuelner and Tim Buck ran a division of special metallurgy components from SPS western called BFI.
They made all of our special cylinder and engine case studs out of 4130 he treated materials.
They also made all of our titanium components as well as our special fork tubes
These components were used on all the factory bikes that we prepared for the European and American teams Ryers and we're available to customers as well.
.
How about a Real Wheelsmith Team Jersey!
Not that I earned it, It belonged to my Best Friend Steve Russell
He Worked for & was Sponsored by Wheelsmith.
Now in my very small moto collection
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