MAGIC METAL

n times past, a walk along Daytona’s pit lane during practice was a feast for the eyes, and one of the major attractions was the light-weight magnesium parts on factory bikes. My own home-built Kawasaki H2-R 750 had only the prosaic gray cast-aluminum ignition and primary gear covers carried over from the 1970–’71 500cc Triple. But on the factory bikes, those parts were finished with the gold chromic-acid process sometimes called Dow 19. Lovely because: unavailable, exotic, wonderful. In 1976, when Yamaha brought its four-cylinder monoshock 0W-31 you-can’t-have-it version of the TZ750 to Daytona, its