My name is Trevor Monn, and I’m a Harley Hooligan racer that lives in the small town of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. In 2016 flat track racing was something I had no background in or knowledge of. It was all new to me. I grew up racing amateur motocross on the east coast and in the winter we would travel and do some amateur nationals, but by the time I was 25, motocross had faded from my life. I crashed way too many times. There was a part of me that thought I needed to grow up, that racing was not going to cut it, and it was time to get a real-life job but the urge to race has always been there just sitting and waiting.
The start of 2016 is when I started seeing videos out of southern California, of guys flat track racing bikes that they were riding to the track. It was low budget; you didn’t need to spend $7,000 for a new bike to go race. This was your everyday street bike that guys would do little modifications to, and then go race it Saturday nights at the dirt tracks.
It was not long until I found out about Fast by Fisk dirt days in September 2016. I had no bike to race but I wanted to go check out Hooligan racing in person. I wanted to spy on some bikes, see what guys were doing, what worked and what didn’t, but what caught my eye was everyone was having a blast, everyone was helping each other, and it was just about spinning laps and having a good time. I needed to do this.
I found the way to fix my urge to race that was easy on my pockets and that I could race my favorite brand of motorcycle. You can’t pull a Harley up on the starting gate of a motocross track but on the dirt track Harleys were kings. I remember as a kid going to Hagerstown, Maryland, and watching the AMA series. Racing the half-mile, the Harleys would fly out of the corner WFO, the bright orange colors just blurring past. With Hooligan racing I could do that and it’s what I set out to do.
I had a 1980 Harley-Davidson Ironhead Sportster with a freshly rebuilt motor that just needed to be put back together. So I spent the winter getting all the parts I needed and quickly found out to do this right you had to spend some money. The first thing was getting a 19″ front wheel on the rear so I could run dirt track tires. There are kits you can buy for mag wheels that cost $300 to $350 but that was too much. I thought, why can’t a local machine shop do this? So I took my rear wheel and the front 19″ and I told them to make the spacer to step out the sprocket and brake rotor, and that I needed it to be the same size as the rear wheel. That worked for the bike! $150 bucks later I had me a rear 19″ wheel.
Next I looked for some bars and rear shocks. I picked up a set of Ohlins shocks dirt cheap at a swap meet and I went to my local motorcycle shop and ordered some bars, but time was starting to run out. Roland Sands had already released his 2017 Super Hooligan schedule and I planned on racing the Dixie Speedway round in Woodstock, Georgia, that was part of the American Flat Track program.
It was about two weeks before that third round of the Super Hooligan series at Dixie Speedway and my bike was complete. I was ready to race but had no way at all to get there so I started looking at rentals and pricing the route. I was working in my shop making sure everything was perfect on the bike when my buddy Dave comes to me and says, “My wife and I were looking and there is a campsite right by the track where there’s a big lake with bass.” Well, if anyone knows Dave, he loves motorcycles and he loves fishing. Another thing about Dave is that he has a toy hauler and he offered to haul me and my old orange Harley down to Dixie Speedway.
I was stoked! I had a way to the races with a good buddy. I didn’t have to make this big journey alone.
Follow along next month when I share my first Hooligan racing adventure. I can truly say it was something I’ll never forget.
For sponsorship opportunities, click here to download Trevor Monn’s resume and contact information.
