A bike for Pendine sands

[howardsmed]

I built an engine many years ago for a friend who worked ( then) for Alistair Caldwell, McLarens manager back in the James Hunt F1 days. He has since moved on. His name is Joe, and he is the BEST welder i have ever seen, he built up the crankcases on my Ironhead Sportster, so we could bore them, to fit +6mm larger cylinders. His work is superb. like fish scales ( see pic)
We have an engine, ( a hot cammed 750 rephased) and an inclination to build a top speed bike, which we will run at Pendine Sands on the South Wales coast.
Joe and I will make the frame, we will have the bike as low as sidecar Kneeler outfit, which will reduce or frontal area to under 1/2 of a normal bike, sidecar front forks and a thin section rear tyre.
thought you might be interested, any more info, please email me

Howard

 

[Mailman]

I built an engine many years ago for a friend who worked ( then) for Alistair Caldwell, McLarens manager back in the James Hunt F1 days. He has since moved on. His name is Joe, and he is the BEST welder i have ever seen, he built up the crankcases on my Ironhead Sportster, so we could bore them, to fit +6mm larger cylinders. His work is superb. like fish scales ( see pic)
We have an engine, ( a hot cammed 750 rephased) and an inclination to build a top speed bike, which we will run at Pendine Sands on the South Wales coast.
Joe and I will make the frame, we will have the bike as low as sidecar Kneeler outfit, which will reduce or frontal area to under 1/2 of a normal bike, sidecar front forks and a thin section rear tyre.
thought you might be interested, any more info, please email me

Howard

That sounds like it would make for a great article for the forum! You could post photos and information on the build, right here in this thread you’ve already started. Sounds like a very interesting project and we all love that kind of thing. Please consider it, and good luck!

 

[howardsmed]

Hi

Yes i will post everything we do, i still do some work with Rick Forte ( who now runs Smedspeed) beehive valve springs, CNC sump plates ( for the oil filter conversion) are just some of the things he has added in the last couple of years. Incidentally the sump oil filter conversion, which i stated making in around 2010 has gone on to sell 400+ items

Joe is a fantastic engineer, we sit and discuss all sorts of engineering projects, to prove to himself he could, he made two life size female models, one in sheet copper and one in aluminium, try welding 1mm thick copper, its hard. All the shaping was done with an English wheel, he is skilled.

The weight of the bike is not very important, as we have a long run up, as we all know from Newtonian physics F=M x A. luckily we don't need much A, what we need is a lot of V ( velocity) the power of around 73hp ( rear wheel) which we know the engine has ( as its a carbon copy of Steve Manns CRMC winning XS650 engine) with much reduced frontal area will take us to maybe 140mph

luckily i am only the floor sweeper in this endeavour, and braver men than me will ride the thing.

we hope to start in a month when its slightly above freezing in my shed, frame will take week to complete.

Pendine is around May ( if Boris can stop organising parties to allow us to race!) we might be there

 

[Mailman]

Good! Looking forward to following this!

 

[WideAWAKE]

Good luck in your venture!

Look forward to seeing the bike.

Buddy in town pilots this 500cc triumph at Bonneville. Just put down a new world record at almost 130mph.

 

[howardsmed]

That looks great, a friend of mine who lives in Auckland ( New Zealand) bought a 1970 Triumph to do Bonneville, unfortunately he has nearly no engineering knowledge, he needed 65hp and the whole project it didn't go quite as planned, BUT he did race a Kawasaki ZX10 on the salt and i have a video of him doing 190mph,

thank you for your good wishes, we will try our best, luckily the engines are a proven item, i built them for so many years and the racing we did( and still do) improves the breed. The chassis should be a doddle to build

 

[Adamc]

Good! Looking forward to following this!

With you Bob. I’m all over this interesting project. Especially as I’m local to Pendine. Maybe Paul Sutton will follow also.