Garage Build

1982 Suzuki RM80 Tribute Builds

These Garage Builds aren’t your typical Garage Builds, as they have deep meaning to Robert Naughton. Robert was a successful AMA Professional SX/MX racer from Arizona in the 1980s, finishing fourth overall in the 125 West Region in the 1986 AMA Supercross Championship, and then taking second overall in ’87. Before all that, Naughton was racing minicycles in Arizona and became friends with a promising young rider named Kyle Fleming, who was good enough in earn a factory support ride with the Suzuki R&D team (R&D standing for master engine-builders Rudy and Dean Dickenson)

Tragically, in August 1982, shortly after the Ponca City NMA Grand National Championship, Fleming and two of his Suzuki R&D teammates, Bruce Bunch and Rick Hemme, were all killed when the car they were riding in was struck by a train. (Brett Smith wrote the definitive article about the whole tragedy called “The Darkest Day in Motocross” which you can find on his website wewentfast.com.)

Even with the heaviest of hearts, Fleming’s parents continued to take the young Robert Naughton racing after Kyle’s passing and he quickly improved to the point where he turned professional. Ironically, Naughton’s earned national number in ’87 was #54, the same number that Kyle Fleming ran, and then he earned it again for 1988!

Years later Naughton wanted to pay tribute to his lost friend, as well as #2 Rick Hemme and #8 Bruce Bunch. He found and bought three 1982 Suzuki RM80s just like the ones the boys used to race, though they weren’t in the best of shape. So, Robert teamed up with Paul DeLanoit at PGD Moto Builds to build these beautiful replicas, which he brought to this year’s Glendale SX to display.

The 1982 Suzuki RM80 was kind of an in-between bike as the ’81 machine was a dual-shock, air-cooled minicycle while the ’83 version had the Full-Floater single-shock rear suspension with water-cooling, so finding parts was a little bit of a task. Robert really wanted to keep these Suzukis as stock as they were back when the “Stock class” was truly that—you even had to run stock bars and grips! He found a local enthusiast named Barry Noblitt to make the silencers, and you really can’t tell the stock versions from the ones Noblitt made. The fuel tanks were restored by another local Phoenix native, Robert Temple, who restores a lot of OEM plastic on vintage bikes. Also Factory Edge split each engine and a lot of the internal parts were replaced, so these tribute machines are as factory as it gets.

I am a big believer in the universe talking to you somehow, and it seems it had a message for Robert when he earned #54 those two years. Naughton also branded his short-course off-road truck racing team with the #54, winning the Pro Lite division in 2007, all while still traveling with Kyle’s parents to the races, whom he stayed close to through the years. And when he decided to build these three tribute bikes, he did it at the ripe old age of—you guessed it—54!