Dobeck

by Daniel Figueroa IV from https://www.wmnf.org These days, motorcyclists live and die by their Dyno sheets, the ultimate measure of an engine’s power. But when the machines came out in the late 80s, it was a women in Florida who bought one of the first units and helped reshape the world of motorcycling. Fifty years later Pam Brown remembers how she got her start wrenching on engines with her dad. They’d work on Volkswagen parts together because he happened to need a hand and she was the one who was around. But when he bought her brothers some single-speed mini bikes, small motorcycles, they were off limits. “He said I could not ride a motorcycle because you are a girl,” Brown recalled. “Girls don’t ride motorcycles.” Fortunately for her, Brown’s neighbor had a crush and a full-fledged motorcycle. “Jimmy Keeler, that’s right” she said. “Eighty cc Binelli.” He let her take a ride. She let the clutch out a little too quick and popped an accidental wheelie, sped down a hill and went – maybe a little too quickly – into a turn. But she made it. And she fell in love. Brown is one half of the couple behind Cycle-Rama, a high performance machine shop in Pinellas Park known over the world for building some of the most coveted aftermarket engine parts in the V-Twin motorcycle world. She’s been there for 38 of the shop’s 45-year existence. But it was in 1989 that Pam Brown put her foot down and made a purchase that helped reshape the world of powersports. The chassis dynamometer In the late 80s, Mark Dobeck invented the first chassis dynamometer. Before that, a mechanic had to ride a bike to tune it and measuring horsepower and torque was mostly a guessing game. Dobeck’s Dyno allowed […]