Well managed to take in a meeting, plenty of eye candy, must admit really clean S2 Mille in the carpark was one of the bikes I wanted to take home.

#281 was product of 750SS, F3 and Paso and assembled the week before the event which I thought was pretty cool in the budget racing class/

Being the Barry Sheene Memorial there were a lot of GP 2strokes and Manx supermonos all of which was cool

I hear you! Everything looks like it should be there

Yeah some pretty good Ducati vs Guzzi races, I had almost forgotten what an angry Bevel drive sounds like

Minimalist front suspension travel on that 851 .......................... ?

A couple of pics of Chris Swallow on the 600 at the same Barry Sheene event. I will post some pics of the 750 f1 soon I am building for his father "Old Bill" who is coming across for the Classic festival in February.

Is that the beautiful engine you posted photos of a while back Glyn? What pistons did you finally use? MikeV

I used the 620ie pistons and machined the underside of the barrels to compensate for their shorter deck height. Actual compression is 10.9 to 1. Not great I know, but neither is the petrol here. The squish is set at 0.9mm using P grind cams. No flywheel and everything rotating inside is machined and drilled to death. I had 40mm Dellorto's on it but have now gone to 36mm and found more mid range. It gives useful power from 5,500 and really sets off at 8,000 climbing easily through to 12 -- and maybe beyond if we dare to use it. Change light set at 10.5 and limiter at 11 as there is always the next gear (six speed) to use without any disadvantage. Lets hope the 620 pistons are strong enough !
Ignition is an Ignitech TCIP4 unit. A brilliant piece of kit which has only served to illustrate to me how poor the std system really is. For the 750 engine I am fitting an 851 crank timing sensor to trigger from the cam drive gear face so I can junk the Kokusan pick ups as they were the only bit of the original system left on the 600, -- and yes, one failed at Hampton downs on start up just before a race, causing momentary chaos a I changed it for a spare. Consequently. we missed the grid and started from pit lane at the back of the field. Chris still came through to finish fourth in a shortened race of a mere 4 laps ! Lesson learned !!
Also running an air/fuel ratio meter from a Llamba sensor and found it saves loads of time setting the carbs on the day. It is almost like having a dyno in real time whilst on the track. Very useful indeed considering the nearest Dyno to my Workshop is 4 hours drive away.

Glyn.

Great to see "Old Bill" still turns the gashandle
I was a bit sceptical when He turned up at Francorchamps with a modified 860 (or darmah) but was proven wrong

ciao
ducadini

Wow, you were at the Spa meeting in 1987. Hot and sunny all weekend.

As this is the "News and events" section I can report on some very old news from a far distant race event in my past.

I built a bevel racer in early 87 using the engine from my own 900ss road bike with some tuning and built a special chassis copying the geometry of Bill's famous Velocette as far as possible. Physically impossible ! We entered it in the Norman Hyde championship in the UK that year.

Bill and I share the same birthday (July 15th) so wanted to mark the joint occasion with something special. He came up with the idea of entering the big race meeting At Spa over the weekend in mid July. Neither of us had ever seen Spa, or even raced outside the UK were quite exited about it.

Upon entering the paddock in my tiny VW Golf Caddy pickup, we very soon realised we were completely out of our depth here. Trick TT2's, F1's, BMW's and Guzzi's filled the paddock. Nothing like we had been used to in the UK. Anyway, it's just for fun this weekend. Where's the beer ?

Practice day and qualifying went quite well and the bike ran sweet enough. I think we something like fourth on the grid. Now its a trip into town for some birthday celebrations.
After a hearty meal in a bar with a great live band, and several very tasty Belgian beers, Bill developed the curious delusion that he could win it tomorrow. --- Hic --Yeah, right Bill, course you can mate, **!? --- hic.

The following morning we lit the bike up for the first race and he did just that. Won by eleven seconds. Then followed that by winning the second race by almost half a minute ! No one being more surprised than me , or Bill for that matter.

I remember to celebrate our good fortune we jumped into the duck pond on the edge of the paddock. However, the organisers took a dim view of that and kindly requested we clear off and put the ducks back on the pond.

The bike was never the prettiest bevel in the world, but very quick and handled well. I still have the engine under the bench. Over the weekend we had a great number of fellow competitors coming round to visit our shambles in the paddock who couldn't believe their own eyes. Only the bike, a fuel can, a few loose tools, half a tent and a primus stove. Not even a rear sprocket. We ran the whole year on the same gearing. How does that work ? We honestly only went to Spa because of the birthday thing and never thought about winning.

Oh, Bill also won the Norman Hyde championship that year in the UK, by a long way too. At the end of the last race he had scored over twice the amount of points than the runner up.

87, A truly magical year, with my very dear friend.

Great story Glyn. Do you have any photo's of the bevel racer from "back in the day"?

Cheers,
MikeA