For Nick and Angus MacPhail....

This post was written after I said I'd stopped blogging for an indeterminate period, BUT ..........

I got home yesterday to find a wonderful link to the past in the Comments section of my previous post from Nick MacPhail who lives in the Channel Islands between the UK and France.  We've never met but may well have been within a few metres of each other in the days when I drag raced at the same time as his brother Angus - what a small world it is these days!  Angus' bike, Ag's Barra, was featured in a photo I took and put in an earlier post about innovative engineering HERE .  I won't repeat what Nick said as you can read it for yourself in the comments section of the previous post.  It's well worth reading and also, the YouTube link to Angus' fantastic drag bike "Jade Warrior" HERE  is a rare treat.

Yesterday, I accompanied my mate and riding partner Davey Uprichard who lives near Wellington up to Auckland for his IAM advanced riding first assessment ride under the eagle eye of Philip McDaid, Chief Examiner.  It was a real win-win day as in the morning, we were able to spend a few hours at the annual classic race meeting at Pukekohe, just south of Auckland in the company of another great mate and riding partner, Dave Easey from Auckland.  For a country of around 4.5M population, some amazing bikes come out of sheds at this time of the year, many of them startlingly innovative.  So Nick and Angus, this post is for you guys in recognition of your appreciation of both smart and rare engineering! (This is only a very small sample of the bikes that were present, both in the spectator park and in the pits).

Dave, Davey and yours truly at the track

Rare Morini 350 V twin from the early 70's

Laverda Jota 3 cylinder in what looks like a Spondon frame

Flawless vintage Morgan 3-wheeler with Matchless V twin motor

Weston race bike - looks like a speedway engine is fitted into a Norton frame

Beautiful Triumph Trident late 60's factory race replica

Weslake-engined race bike

XR Harley replicas - superb engineering

The photo below is of a Brough Superior lining up on the dummy grid for a vintage race.  All these bikes are raced hard with no concession for age or scarcity.  Given that the price of a Brough at a classic bike auction would probably be greater than the cost of a modern factory-supported superbike, the owner has exceedingly large balls!  He's also to be congratulated for not wrapping it in cotton wool and for sharing it with the rest of the population.

Beautiful Brough Superior

The bike below is one of the rarest bikes you'll find - a desmodromic-valved Manx Norton.  It was built by a Kiwi called Brian Thomas to a design by Doug Hele, who was a legendary designer at both Norton and Triumph.  It was their correspondence and friendship which led to Doug's bike being re-created.  A stunning piece of workmanship.

Desmodromic Manx Norton

The next bike was my personal favourite - a Kreidler 50cc racer from the 70's.  Winner of numerous world championships, the bike produced in the order of 11-15 horsepower at close to 17,000 rpm!  The engineering is simply exquisite and when you realise just how small it is, finding a talented rider with the weight of a 10 year old child must have been a nightmare!

One of the best examples of engineering perfection anywhere

Kreidler front view - mountain bikes have wider wheels!

Flawless Benelli Sei 6 cylinder from the 70's

Another exceptionally rare motorcycle is the bike below.  The Hesketh V twin was produced in the UK by Lord Hesketh who used to be involved with F1 car racing.  Manufactured in the 1980's, it was overpriced, unreliable and soon went out of production.  Nonetheless, still a good example of someone trying to innovate.

A Hesketh V 1000 in perfect condition

My mate Paul zoning in

Those photos end the relatively short stay at the Pukekohe race track.  We said our goodbyes to Dave Easey part-way up the Auckland motorway whilst Davey and I headed north west for a date with the Chief Examiner of the IAM.  Those who have previously read of the stress I went though to pass my tests will remember that the examination criteria are based on UK police rider standards - a daunting task for anyone!  I was enjoying Davey's discomfort and deliberately hadn't filled him in with the details.  If I had to suffer the pangs of apprehension, he bloody well could too - that's mates for you! It's interesting that one of Davey's first actions on arriving at Philip's premises was a rapid visit to the toilet.  You may well think it was a nervous one, but I couldn't possibly comment, hehe!

However, Davey and Philip are both Irishmen from not too far apart and within seconds, had lapsed into accents which took more than a bit to follow - probably to keep me totally in the dark!  After explaining what was going to happen and equipping Davey with a radio, we set off on an assessment ride of well over 100km covering a mixture of motorway, urban, and all forms of countryside riding.  It was my intention to sit out back, sniggering and chilling out but Philip put a stop to that by saying that it would be good observer training for me!

Philip and Davey about to set off

Half-way through the ride, we stopped for the first de-brief.  Philip told a delighted Davey that he was already riding at an advanced level and that the improvement areas were only small, rather than any major errors in technique.  Hardly surprising to me, given that Davey and I have ridden together so much and that I'd trust him with my life.

For the second part of the ride, Philip put me directly behind Davey to take the main observing role, but cunningly being able to watch me at the same time - no pressure then!!!  Because Davey is such a darned good rider, there (regrettably, haha!) wasn't an opportunity to "ping" him for anything major and it was a thoroughly enjoyable ride in a relaxed atmosphere.  Returning to base, there was a full debrief and Philip asked me to complete the formal report with 3 improvement opportunities for Davey to work on.  He was congratulated again on such a great performance, particularly for first time up and invited to join IAM as an Associate.   All that remains is for me to allocate him a mentor in the Wellington area and enjoy hearing about his rapid progress through the forthcoming check rides.

All in all, one of those sublime days - away from home riding bikes for 12 hours in great company, covering almost exactly 500 km and seeing some fabulously rare motorcycles to boot.  Oh, and returning home to local smoked fish and marinated mussels as an entrée and baked sticky ribs as a main course, washed down with good beer.  Real man-food courtesy of Jennie, bless her!!

Sincere thanks too to Philip for giving up his time on a voluntary basis to spread the message about high level safe riding, it's hugely appreciated.

Classic motorcycle race meeting, Auckland 2011

For a country with a 4 million population, NZ always seems to have a bigger percentage of "cool stuff" than it really ought, not that I'm complaining!  Old planes, rare cars, innovative boats and especially classic motorcycles.  Where the heck do they all come from?  Everyone's garden shed but mine it would seem!

A lot of the classic bikes turn up at the Pukekohe circuit in Auckland  for an annual 3-day meeting and I went up yesterday to watch.  I love it because you can wander anywhere and everywhere and the riders are incredibly friendly.  Also, there's no concession to the age of these bikes, they get seriously raced despite their age!

Yesterday was a particularly memorable day for me, for a whole range of disparate reasons.  I rode to the circuit with a local businessman who lives in the same road as me - didn't even know he rode bikes until late last year.  Bruce is a "mature" rider, albeit not quite as "mature" as me.  An ex-car racer with a long history of bikes too, his latest acquisition is a Hayabusa, so he's not mucking about!

Bruce gassing up before leaving Coromandel

We hadn't ridden together before so the first few km through the twisties were spent dialling in to each other (a much nicer way of saying sizing each other up, haha) and it soon became apparent that Bruce was seriously good with his roadcraft and teaming with someone you trust completely makes riding such a joy.  Both to and from the circuit, we didn't hang about but with the complete lack of stress, the whole ride was so wonderfully enjoyable.  That was the first memorable part of the day.

The second was arriving at the track and meeting fellow blogger Raftnn (Roger).  What an absolutely top guy he is and within seconds, we were chatting like we'd known each other for years; laughing away like a couple of schoolkids.  For the followers of Roger's blog, I'm delighted to say that he comes across as a nice guy in his blog but the real bloke is even nicer!  Sadly, we didn't have much time to spend shooting the breeze but we'll no doubt be getting together for a ride-out before too long.  Roger has a heap of great photos from yesterday on his blog, so I'll stick on some complementary ones and a link to Picasa web for the whole set.

Me and Roger enjoying the sun!

Another delight from the day was to see how many of the racers were seriously "mature" and I'm talking of well over 70.  Like the machines they rode, there was absolutely no concession to taking it easy and they're a fantastic advertisement to getting the most out of life.

Days where you ride bikes, talk bikes, eat and breathe bikes are truly days made in heaven.  This contented biker slept very well last night!

Here are a selection of photos: (click to enlarge)

My mate Paul from Coromandel with his trick 850cc Norton racer

BSA Gold Star with the motor hung from the frame

The most expensive bike at the meeting?  Brough Superior.  Rare as hen's teeth doesn't begin to describe it!

Nortons of all ages

Rare Benelli Sei 6 cyl 750 with 6 mufflers!

Close-up of flawless Henderson 4 cylinder

Nimbus 4 cylinder

A word or two about the next photo.  The Ducati Desmosedici RR shown below is to all intents and purposes a Moto GP/Superbike and costs over NZ$100000 if you can lay your hands on one. It took part in what might loosely be called a "demo" race although there wasn't much quarter given!  When it was being warmed up, it was akin to aural sex (not oral sex, for the grubby-minded)!  Now look at the age of the rider.  If you had seen the way he rocketed round the circuit, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it was a current race star on board!

Old meets new - a fantastic pairing

Yet another youthful rider - forever young

Lunchtime entertainment - P40 and Spitfire

The unmistakable silhouette of the Spitfire

McIntosh-framed Jawa - looked like 2 Manx Nortons mated together

Munch Mammoth powered by 1200cc NSU car engine

4 cylinder Cleveland

The incomparable Britten - a work of genuine genius

BMW Rennsport racer

Flawless HRD  Vincent 1000

Trying to start the Harley flat-tracker on rollers called for serious downward pressure!

Interesting Moto-Guzzi racer

What a day!  Here's the link to the full photo set: Pukekohe 2011

Classic British bikes

I took the following photos at a classic bike ride-in a few years back.  The emphasis was on a ride-in rather than drive 'em in on a trailer and ride them the last few hundred metres; some of them coming over over pretty long distances.  All were beautifully restored but they certainly weren't show ponies and on the open road section of the ride-in, some were being pushed along at a fair old pace!  These photos are just a small selection but it's wonderful that so many older bikes not only exist, but are used quite regularly:

 1963 AJS CSR 650

 1956 Triumph Tiger 110 650

 1960's Royal Enfield Constellation 700 - not all that reliable but nice-looking!

 1960's Norton Atlas 750

 Late 1950's Velocette Venom 500 (capable of a genuine 100 mph)

The following two pictures are of me, my BMW K100RS and some friends whilst at the classic bike weekend.  The Beemer is hardly a classic but the scenery in Taranaki province is really nice!   The first photo has Mt Taranaki, a 2500 metre high dormant volcano as a backdrop.  The second photo is with the same friends, parked up on an old timber stagecoach road bridge a few km from the classic meeting.  It was noteworthy in that it had been closed to traffic for some years due to rotten timbers but we managed to squeeze the bikes through the bollards and carefully ride them onto the bridge!

If there was one great thing about 1960's British bikes and earlier, it was that the seat heights were perfect for vertically-challenged people - nothing over 800mm.  At 5'8", many modern bikes rule themselves out of my consideration on seat height alone!

Innovation ain't what it used to be!

I suppose that having ridden for more than 40 years, you notice trends and can compare them with past periods of time. Looking backward doesn't mean I yearn for the bikes of yesteryear though as today's bikes are clearly superior in most respects.

To obtain performance increases in modern bikes, for the most part; it seems to mainly involve buying bolt-on goodies from specialist sources from around the world with perhaps less personal innovation to get that all-important boost or edge.

However, I have a (maybe half-baked) theory!  Less money and lack of easy access to tuning equipment or expertise may have driven greater self-reliance and an innovative approach in the past.  Nosing through some bike photographs I took a few decades ago, I thought I'd post a few of them and comment on some of the innovative features on these bikes.  With one exception, they're drag bikes, partly because I was campaigning a short-stroke Triumph drag bike called Icarus at the time (see: Growing up a bit) but also because they're a great example of interesting ways of pursuing outrageous performance!

Super Nero

The Vincent V twin-powered Super Nero was what might be described as the ancestor of "modern" drag bikes in Europe.  Its builder, George Brown, was a talented road racer in his earlier days who worked at the Vincent factory at one stage in his career. It's hardly surprising therefore that he chose this power plant for a series of  bikes, culminating in Super Nero.  George was a sprinter, as opposed to drag racer, preferring the battle against the clock over numerous distances as opposed to against a competitor over the quarter mile. The Vincent V twin had its origins in the mid 30's and it's testament to George's development skills, aided by a big supercharger  and alcohol-based fuel that Super Nero set a number of world and national records throughout the 60's in both solo and sidecar configuration. Over 4 decades later, Super Nero's performance is still incredible.  Over the flying quarter mile in 1968, he averaged 182 mph in both directions to set a new world record and in 1970, he averaged 190 mph in gusty and wet conditions.

His persistence in continuously improving Super Nero was legendary and his tenacity was further demonstrated by taking on the international motorcycling body, the FIM.  The FIM had an arbitrary age limit of 55 for international competitors and George had already exceeded this whilst he was still chasing international records.  His persistence paid off and the age limit was lifted, allowing George to set his 182 mph record at the age of 58!  Truly innovative and inspirational.

Alf Hagon's JAP

Alf Hagon was a champion grass track racer who got into quarter-miling in the early days of the sport in the UK.  Alf's bike also used a V twin with pre-WW2 origins; a British JAP.  His innovation was to build the bike as a real lightweight (some might say flimsy!) to increase power to weight ratio and whilst the early version had a 2 speed gearbox, the final version had a single speed countershaft and spectacularly smoked its slick for almost the entire quarter mile!  Alf also showed considerable balls by laying over the exposed cylinder heads, especially as drag motors can be likened to hand grenades with the pin pulled!  His ingenuity paid off in spades when in 1967, he achieved the Holy Grail of quarter-miling at that time, the first ever sub-10 second bike run on UK soil.  Even more remarkably, it was on a runway in indifferent condition, not a specialist drag strip.  Later that year, he became the first motorcycle in history to set an official 2-way quarter mile world record in the 9's.

Alf didn't rest on his laurels though. In 1968, he took his bike with higher gearing to a British air base with a 9000ft runway.  On what was essentially an unfaired bike with minimal suspension, he clocked a staggering 206.54 mph; becoming the first Englishman to exceed 200 mph.

It's funny how innovation seems prevalent  with V twin motors!  As well as Englishmen George Brown and Alf Hagon, Kiwis Burt Munro and John Britten also enjoyed considerable success on the international stage with their V twins; albeit some decades apart!


Pete Allan's Twin Triumph

Although twin-engined drag bikes made their 60's debut in the USA, Pete Allan was arguably the first UK drag racer to have one which ran both competitively and reliably.  Coupling the two motors together was not a straightforward exercise because of power pulses putting enormous stresses on the drive chains but Pete's beautiful engineering largely overcame this.  The American twins of this era were normally aspirated and used nitromethane to develop big dollops of horsepower.  Pete's bike used both nitro AND a big supercharger to produce outrageous horses!  The photo clearly shows the massive intake to the supercharger and the pressure release valve between the two engines (the rear engine has the head reversed to minimise intake piping and fuel condensing).  The pressure release valve also had considerable value as a safety device in event of a backfire when starting the bike on rollers!  Pete Allan emigrated to Australia in the early 70's and also competed at the highest level there. He's still well-known for his non-riding involvement in the drag and custom bike scene.

Twin-engined bikes are still on the drag race scene but are arguably more of an oddity than performing right at the top.  Probably the most famous and successful twin drag bike of all was The Hobbit, campaigned by John Hobbs from 1975 to 1979.  It had twin superchargers fed with nitromethane and at its peak, was covering the standing quarter mile in a fraction over 8 seconds with terminal speeds of around 180mph.  All this from engines which had their roots as early British road bikes!

Vic Phillip's Impulse drag bike

In the early-mid 60's,  Japanese 4 cylinder road bikes had yet to be launched but it was clear that multi-cylinders could offer significant horsepower advantages compared with twins or singles.  One of the early believers was Vic Phillips who built a sidecar drag bike using a tuned 1000cc Hillman Imp motor.  I lost touch with progress early in its development but as with the other bikes and builders mentioned here, it was a highly innovative approach with limited resources.  What's more, the standard of engineering was superb, one example being the flawless hand-made fairing.  The photos were taken by me at Santa Pod dragstrip, close to where I used to live prior to emigrating.

Money sure helps, but it's sheer hard work and clever thinking which carries the day!

Ag's Barra (Angus McPhails Barrow translated from Scottish English!)

When sprint/drag bikes are mentioned, the mental image is of big capacity monsters producing equally monstrous horsepower.  However, there are a number of smaller capacity classes where arguably; it is harder to achieve a favourable power to weight ratio compared with the big 'uns.  Angus McPhail raced a tuned 250cc Arial Arrow.  Conscious of the need to shed as much weight as possible to offset the relatively modest power of the 250cc engine, Angus went for a tiny hand-crafted monococque alloy frame, tiny wheels and equally tiny front suspension to minimise weight.  At least he didn't have far to fall if things went pear-shaped!

I'm a bit hazy on exactly how fast the bike was but if I remember correctly, it set a number of British records over several distances.  However, the main point was that it was yet another example of ingenuity rather than money yielding good results.

The next photo is of Icarus, my ultra-short stroke supercharged Triumph.  Details  HERE
(photo taken by Pete Miller)

The final example of ingenuity is not a drag bike, it's a circuit racer developed by the Triumph Factory.  The name has been proudly carried forward nearly 4 decades to grace Triumph's current 675cc sports bike:

The 1960's 500cc Triumph Daytona Factory Racer.

The Daytona 200 has been America's premier motorcycle race for several decades and it's fair to say that the earlier days were a Harley Davidson benefit with the factory-backed bikes cleaning up virtually every year.  The US bike market was where Triumph had its greatest sales and a win at Daytona would have a huge impact on increasing market share.  Doug Hele, chief development engineer of the Triumph factory and a US dealership set about building a twin carburettor 500 based on the Tiger 100 which was light, powerful, having a low drag coefficient to take it to around 150 mph and be very manoeuvrable for the tight infield turns. In 1967, Gary Nixon blitzed the field to take line honours and to celebrate, Triumph released the first Daytona road bike the same year.

The photo taken at Mallory Park in the UK shows a works Daytona raced by chief tester Percy Tait.  Note the huge amount of tread on the race tyres and the foam-lined brackets to isolate the carburettors from vibration and fuel foaming.  The bike's light weight and superb handling gave Percy many short circuit victories against the likes of Agostini on the MV Augusta 500 as well as other aces on factory machinery.  In 1969, it was even entered into the Belgian GP as a one-off which Percy led for several laps; eventually finishing second to Giacomo Agostini.

Well, there we are - money undoubtedly helps, but it's smart thinking (REAL engineering!) which can win the day when the money isn't there!