MAY 21st - A GOOD DAY TO FLY THE ATLANTIC!

At 7.52am on May 20th 1927, Charles Lindbergh gunned the engine of the "Spirit of St Louis" and aimed her down the dirt runway of Roosevelt Field, Long Island, USA. Heavily laden with fuel, the plane bounced down the muddy field, gradually became airborne and just about cleared the telephone wires at the end of the field. A small crowd of 500 well-wishers thought they had witnessed a miracle. On the evening of May 21st, he crossed the coast of France, followed the River Seine and after 33.5 hrs and 3500 miles, he touched down at Le Bourget Field, Paris at 10.22pm where he was mobbed by a crowd of 100,000. Lindbergh - "The Lone Eagle" - the first to fly across the atlantic solo, became an instant hero.

On his return to the USA, New York City gave him the largest ticker tape parade ever and the president awarded him the Distinguished Flying Cross. More importantly, Lindbergh was the inspiration for aviators all over the world to test man and machine to their limit.

On May 21st 1932, the 5th anniversary of Lindberg's Atlantic flight , Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 14hrs and 56min. She was awarded the National Geographic Society's gold medal from President Herbert Hoover and Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross. The world's most famous female aviator disappeared in 1937 as she attempted to become the first woman to fly around the world. She was last heard from on July 2nd 1937, about 100 miles from the tiny Pacific atoll of Howland Island. President Roosevelt authorised an immediate search but no trace was ever found of Eahart or her navigator, Fred Noonan. The disappearance of Amelia Earhart has spawned almost as many conspiracy theories as the Lindbergh kidnapping and the Kennedy assasination.

YES THERE'S MORE - AUTO RACE BIKES FROM THE 70s

I really can't believe how many motorcycle and bicycle images I've collected over the years. I have just bought myself a diskette reader and transferred literally hundreds of old images to my laptop, most of which I had completely forgotten about. My previous posts about the Japanese auto race bikes prompted me to find these particular pictures again. I have no idea where most of them came from but they do prove that there's more to the Japanese motorcycle industry than just Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha!

350cc Kyokuto KT

Meguro... Eventually became part of the Kawasaki empire. This engine bares a remarkable resemblence to the British J.A.P. unit

Another Meguro, this time with external cam-chain instead of the push rods in the previous picture.

TOYO - I really don't know much about this make at all, but they were succesful on the pre-1960 Japanese dirt tracks and continued to be so on the tarmac auto race tracks.

Another TOYO from the 1970s

AUTO RACE - THE BIKES "UPDATE"

We now know that this is not a Kyokuto, so what is the mystery twin cylinder engine in this Autoracer? It's a Toyo. Take a look at the image below and compare, this is a twin cylinder, DOHC Toyo with a 4-valve head... Thanks to Bennie Ludolphy in Hollland for his valuable information.

 I've dug out my old silver halide images and scanned in a photograph of a genuine 1971 Kyokuto KT2 engine to compare and it is clearly very different.

This particular engine has been fitted into a 1970s Jawa speedway rolling chassis and is a replica of the bike that was tested at Canterbury speedway in 1972. A similar set-up was also tested in Australia in a Hagon Chassis. The engine has been modified to run on methanol with the addition of an amal carburettor. The engine and chassis were restored by ace speedway collector, sometime poet and ex-Berwick rider Ian Paterson and form part of his magnificent Cinder to Shale collection. Ian also has a genuine HKS Hasegawa Auto Race bike in his collection (see below). This bike dates from the early 1980s and is similar to the bike Barry Briggs had on display at the old Speedway collection at Donington Park.

Finally, I have to apologise for the poor quality of this image, but this is the only picture I have ever found of an EiCoH Auto Race bike....

EiCoH, or Engine Company Honda to give it its full name, was a side project of Kazuo Honda, one of the family members behind the Kyokuto. Kazuo was also developing the JRM (Japanese Race Motor) for road racing at the same time. The EiCoH was a 500cc single based on his families KT2 unit but with some modifications. This photo from a Dutch magazine shows the complete 1967 EiCoH speedway bike, basically an Auto Race machine without the asymetric bars!

CHRIS TATTERSALL - Lancashire's Racing Blacksmith.

"Spud" Tattersall was a real pioneer speedway rider in the UK. He entered the very first dirt track meeting at Audeshaw, nr Manchester, in March 1928 and reached the final of the 350cc class on an A.J.S. He also competed in the very first dirt track meeting at Highfield Road Trotting Track in Blackpool in April of the same year. Chris went on to ride regularly at both the Blackpool dirt track venues, (Highfield Road and St Annes Road) before becoming a member of the Preston speedway squad from 1929 to 1932 Chis also rode at the two Barrow-In-Furness tracks in 1930 and 1931.

As well as his exploits on the dirt tracks, Chris was a big fan of the TT and first rode in the Junior TT in 1928, finishing 10th on a D.O.T. He went on to compete in the Lightweight TT every year from 1929 until the outbreak of war in 1939 with a best position of 5th in 1932 on his own CTS machine (Chris Tattersall of St Annes.). He also had a go at the Senior TT in 1931, 33, 35 and 37 and also the Junior TT again in 1931 but registered a DNF in all of these. When racing returned to the Isle Of Man in 1947, so did Chris with his CTS. He was back again in 1949 and continued to race at the TT until 1953... some 25 years after his debut. The photograph above shows Chris at the 1934 TT where he finished 7th in the lightweight event on his J.A.P. engined CTS

Incidentally, he was nicknamed "spud" due to his love of potatoes, often eating a plate of nothing else... mashed, boiled, roasted, fried, you name it he'd eat it as long as it was made of potatoes!
___________________________________________________________________
*Additional Information*

The National Motorcycle Museum, near Birmingham Airport, has recently purchased one of Chris Tattersall's old racing machines, a 1949 250cc CTS Python. Although CTS was assumed to stand for Chris Tattersall Special, it seems that the S actually stood for his home town of St Annes, near Blackpool. The original CTS of 1931 had a JAP engine but in the post-war years, when Tattersall was preparing machines for other riders machines,  the engines were 250cc Rudge Python four-valve units with four-speed gearboxes of the same make. Former blacksmith Tattersall and his sole employee Bill Dawes devised plunger rear suspension for the Rudge frame. The cycle parts on this particular bike are known to be from the CTS that Les Martin crashed when lying fifth in the 1949 250cc Lightweight TT. Coincidentally, Leslie.G.Martin was also a former speedway rider, having ridden for his home town team Burnley in the 1929 English Dirt Track League.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE SPEEDWAY BIKE

A Speedway bike is a simple piece of machinery... It has one gear, no brakes, minimal suspension at the front only and runs on methanol. A modern Speedway bike can actually accelerate to 60 mph faster than a Formula 1 Car and can reach up to speeds of 90mph on the relatively short straights of a speedway track.

1927 Harley-Davidson "Peashooter"

1928 Douglas DT5 (UK)

1929 Sunbeam Dirt-Track model (UK)

1930s Rudge Whitworth (UK)

1934 Harley-Davidson CAC

1935 Victor Martin/J.A.P. (UK)

1949 J.A.P. Speedway (UK)

1950s Rotrax JAP

1966 ESO (Czech)

1970 2-Valve Jawa (Czech)

1970s Model 890 Jawa (Czech)

1974 Mk1 Maely (Ken Maely - USA)

Weslake Mk5 (UK)

1980s GM500 (Giuseppe Marzotto - Italy)

Mk4 Godden (UK)

1990s GM laydown (Italy)

2005 laydown Jawa (Czech)

Billy Hamill's 2006 Jawa laydown (Czech)

Here are the FIM regulations and requirements for a modern day speedway bike...
Machines used must...
Weigh no less than 77kg (unfuelled)
Use a four-stroke, single cylinder engine with one carburettor and one spark plug and a maximum capacity of 500cc
Have guards fitted over moving engine parts where reasonable
Use an additional chain guard to prevent a hand or fingers being cut by a chain
Have a peg (Dutch Peg) fitted to prevent a broken chain flailing and injuring a rider or a fellow competitor
Use shatter resistant plastics where reasonable
Be fitted with a dirt deflector
Be fuelled by methanol with no other additives
Be fitted with an approved silencer - (a controversial item at the moment!)
Have a handlebar width greater than 650mm and less than 850mm.

Speedway Machines cannot...

Be constructed in any part from Titanium

Use uncoated ceramic parts

Use telemetry during a race except for timing purposes

Use any electronic components to control the engine

Use brakes of any form

Use a supercharger or a turbocharger of any kind.

THE WORLDS FASTEST MAORI

Bruce Cribb, "The Worlds Fastest Maori" This story adapted from an article in the NZ Herald on Feb 3rd. 2006 and published on the Taranaki Historic Speedway web-site

Bruce Brian Hoani Cribb was born on June 27th 1946 in Palmerston, New Zealand and made his debut in British speedway at the launch of the British league in 1965. He featured in 11 matches for the Poole "Pirates" in that season recording an average of 3.04. He showed slow but steady progress and it was five years later he scored his first full maximum, the same Year that Poole won the British League title. He moved to Exeter in 1970 and spent three years at the County Ground emerging as a top scorer despite being plagued with injuries. Bruce made 16 appearances for Exeter in 1970 from which he had a very healthy average of 9.47, and in 71 he was ever present and increased his average to 8.92 from his 37 matches. His average dropped in 1972 when he got 5.75 from 15 matches for the Falcons. Bruce left Exeter at the close of the 1972 season and joined up with Cradley Heath where he became a cult hero with the Black Country speedway fans. His battling performances in the top flight are still remembered today. He later had spells with Bristol, Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Berwick before returning to the County Ground in 1986. Head injuries from a horrific accident cut short his 1987 season to just one match, and although he bounced back to qaulify for the 1988 World Individual Ice Final, he rode only a handful of matches for Exeter averaging 3.24 from only 8 appearances. That was to be his final season before announcing his retirement, and Exeter staged a benefit meeting for him in 1989. Bruce's finest moment must have been when he teamed up with the legendary Ivan Mauger to secure New Zealand's only world team title in the 1979 finals at London's White City.

Lately, Bruce has dubbed himself  'The World's Fastest Maori' With his 500cc Jawa ice racing machine, having broken the track record in 16 out of 17 attempts at British speedway tracks and also done the same at the Rosebank track in Auckland, New Zealand. Bruce says: "I was in the world top 20 for ice riding at one time, but a lot of those guys were way ahead of me in skill. Yet they have tried this in Sweden and smashed up big time. I don't know why."  Bruce, whose late father Kiwi was a national speedway champion, was raised in Palmerston North before heading to the UK as a teenager to pursue his career. In the mid 1970's he answered an advertisement placed by the British speedway control board looking for riders willing to have a go at ice racing, whose strongholds include Sweden, Holland and the old Soviet Union territories. This took Bruce deep into the old USSR to Ufa (now the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan), about 1000km east of Moscow. It was a world away from the sort of riding Bruce was used to in Europe. Temperatures dipped to 40C below zero, the heated pits were located under the grandstand, ice walls and straw bales surrounded the track.

Bruce, who still lives near to the site of the old Cradley Heath track in England, managed to win a New Zealand title but rarely returned there otherwise. He was persuaded out of retirement to demonstrate the ice bike at the 75th anniversary of the Palmerston North, (NZ) in 2006. The obvious difference between the ice bike and a normal bike are the 5cm spikes protruding through the tyres - 240 of them on the drive wheel and 120 on the front. The powerful grip allows Bruce to reach amazing speeds on tyres pumped up to 55 psi. Bruce says: "There are no spikes on the side of the wheel. The spikes actually flex over into the track - you can go around a corner absolutely flat. Your hands touch the ground sometimes."

For more insight into the career of Bruce Cribb take a look at this piece on the SpeedwayPlus website