…I passed my bike test. June 1965 actually. OK, so it was on a Lambretta 125, but I was 16 and daft (whereas now I’m 60 and dafter). There followed a succession of old nails (2 and 4 wheeled) until I washed up at art college and fell under the malign influence of Geoff Tunstall, father of Tom in today’s BSB, who introduced me to the glamour of wet March weekends at Elvington and 5am MGP practices.
Feeling that I was worth more than just pushing his Manx Nortons and G50s up to scrutineering and driving to the nearest pub for jugs of beer, in 1977 I bought a 450 Desmo that Geoff had used in a endurance race, entered my first meeting at Elvington and didn’t finish last!
Over the next 11 years I mainly raced what you young’uns call supermonos. In ’79 I got Dave Camier (father of Leon) to tune an SR500 and put it in one of his chassis and started doing the Kennings series and then the UK Singles championship, plus every club four stroke and singles series I could find. In ’82 I swapped the same engine into a chassis that Spondon built for me based on their 250 GP bike. Dog slow, but the best handling machine around. Still, I never expected to set the racing world alight: my best result at national level was a 5th at Cadwell in ’86, when I finished 10th in the final standings.
4 MGPs I did on the Spondon SR500 (1 DNF with a split fuel tank + 1 v. scary moment in ’85 practice when the Carillo rod let go flat out at the top of Bray Hill). Even at the back of the field, there’s nothing like rounding the Gooseneck on the last lap with all the spectators applauding you.
Missed ’86, then borrowed Geoff Tunstall’s TT-prepared Yamaha FZ750 for the ’87 Manx. Oh. My. God. Hitting the rev limiter in top on the drop down from the Creg is something everyone should experience. Unfortunately, on lap 3 of the race I hit the wreckage of someone else’s accident and won a helicopter trip and a week’s stay in Noble’s. Since the bike was a “you bend it, you mend it” deal, the mono had to go and that was my racing career over.
But, you can’t quit on a low, can you? So, in 1988 I borrowed a neglected road-going air-cooled FZ600 from a friend of a friend of a friend and ran it in the 600 Production TT (seems to me, I must have always raced slow bikes to divert attention from my lack of talent).
So that was it. Apart from a Wednesday afternoon at Mallory in 1996 thrashing round on Tom Tunstall’s Superteen Aprilia, I haven’t ridden a bike, road or track, since.
Until last year, when my boss, in lieu of an annual bonus, gave me his immaculate 2004 Bonneville with TORs and less than 3K on the clock. After which, I rediscovered why I gave up road riding when I started racing. It’s much scarier. So, I sold the Bonnie on ebay to a guy from Hamburg who already owned one but wanted a matching bike to keep at his holiday place in Portugal, and decide to find a cheap racer and do one more season before the Alzheimer’s sets in. Mind you, I did try to get into my old leathers the other day – it wasn’t pretty.
So, now I'm (very slowly) restoring this…
This is how it came to me, less the fairing and exhausts. Oil-in-frame chassis was built by Dave Pearce of Tigcraft around 1994. Front end is ZXR400L. Rear wheel is CCM R30. Swing arm and linkage is KR1S. Rear unit is remote reservoir Ohlins. There's no rear sub-frame – that seat unit is carbon-reinforced and bolts direct to the main spar (Dave doesn't make them anymore but he told me not to worry, he's seen them go end over end and not even crack).
Engine is a 604 lump from an Aprilia with a twin Dellorto conversion and (supposedly) Mez ported head, 860 cam, Wiseco 100mm piston (640cc) and who knows what else inside.
I'll be posting progress reports in "Projects" on where I'm at now, alongside pitiful cries for help (anyone fancy refreshing the motor and telling me what's really inside it?), in the meantime, thanks for reading.
