Keith G wrote:

"Patrick Turner" wrote in message
...


Keith G wrote:

"Eiron" wrote in message
...
Patrick Turner wrote:

I did like BSA and Matchless and Norton, oh, and Vincent. They
made
music.
Especially The Vincent, and at 166MPH on Conrod Straight at
Bathurst.

The older you get the faster you were. Let's have some more
details.

Yes, I'd be interested to hear how they clocked the speed -
especially
as the standard speedos were only calibrated to 150 mph (AFAIK)....??

Speeds were recorded by the marshals on the course.

OK, I didn't realise you were talking about a *timed event*!


On the day I was there his speed was announced on the PA.
Once Eric hit Conrod straight he just rocketed away from all the
others.

The single 500 7R-AJS and Nortons were doing 125mph, maybe more, im
Ron
Toomb's case.

The Conrod Straight is 1.9km long, or 1.2 miles, and at that time was
one long straight
without the chicane put there later.

So to get an extra 41mph with 1,000cc seems about right.
The bike wasn't a stock standard Vincent.

I have no idea what had been done to it.

Blower?


I have no idea.


Bear in mind Bert Munro's speed on a highly modified
Indian on the salt at Utah.

He still has the record for the World's Fastest Indian.

Love the film and watch it on a regular basis, that bloke is ever a hero
in my book - even if the movie fudges the facts!

Yes, that movie like all movies mucks about with
the procession of events in Bert's life, but 2 hours isn't long
enough to have everything in it.

But I think you'll find Bert's Indian was the fastest anyone got an
Indian to go.

Plenty of much faster bikes now, some with triple harley engines and so
on...

But Bert was just a low key poor ******* from a backwater country,
and he just goes to the US to go a little fast, and at a rather advanced
age.

Its a risk, life.

Hubert Opperman, the great Australian cyclist of the 1920s and 30s
said as he got older, " when your'e old, you have to be careful.
An old man is like an old tyre, and might be designed to stand the
pressure, but
maybe it'll burst. One never knows..."

He died on his exercise bike at 91.

What a man!




When I was a schoolkid my school was two doors up from the then
recently-closed Vincent factory and opposite, over the 'bowling green',
was George Brown's motorcycle shop. I was the only snot-nosed kid he let
hang around in there, looking at his 'Neros' and asking hundreds of
stoopid questions:

http://www.motorbike-search-engine.c...uper_nero.html

(Didn't realise/know back then the orange patches on his face was early
*plastic surgery*!!)

See: "George had a secret ambition to be the first British rider to top
200mph on British soil, over a measured distance. He had already been
docked on Super Nero over a finish line at Elvington Speed Meeting at
236mph." I also harbour a secret ambition to do 200mph (just the once)
on a bike before it's too late, but not sure I'll ever get it together.
My present bike:

http://www.apah69.dsl.pipex.com/mybi...%20GSX1400.jpg

...easily (and regularly) beats the above-mentioned 'AJS and Norton'
speeds (usually less than 3 minutes from me leaving my garage and after
a good warm-up, naturally!) -it's got the grunt but doesn't have the top
end....

Or a fairing....

That Nero was somethin.

IMHO, the Suzuki lacks the appeal of a large mainly amateur built v
twin.

Its what you do with the cc you got that counts, not so much the speed
go.

If you got a record riding a tiny tidler 50cc 4 stroke V twin, or even a
V6,
its really something, and you get to do mosquito sound effects.

But Nero must have swallowed years of a guy's life in time spent.

None of this bolt on a fairing, jump on and ride fast business.

Probably the latest Honda single 600c engines with 4 valve heads are
more powerful than
most home made or altered manx nortons or 7R ajs ever were.

In the old days they still had to learn that revs with an over square
engine that breathed well was the only way to real speed,
but when they built something to rev, old materials shattered too easy,
and at 125mph, an engine seizure can make life very precarious.

I'm now quite happy on my push bike, well away from the roads if
possible.

Patrick Turner.