Manky Monkey Motors

Taz & I spent a few hours today at the Vintage Motorcycle Club sprint meet at Eelmoor, near Rushmoor Arena, Surrey, at the invitation of Tony Oily Bike & Andy Forward. Andy's purple Triumph sprint bike & his road bike are both featured in the Motors section of the main website -when it's online. Once we've fixed the computery bugs we can hopefully add Tony's modified XS650 Yam.
An interesting meet. Always great to see old bikes -& equally old riders, caning it up the track. Rushmoor, in the middle of the Surrey heathlands, belongs to the Ministry of Defence & is a maze of dirt tracks & tarmac roads, winding through thick woodland. This morning there was a cross country relay race & a weekly banger racing meet also taking place, all within a mile or so of each other in the woods.
The VMCC event was very informal -a set of timing lights, some safety tape & a bloke with a flag at the far end of the track. Oh, & lots of very loud, very fast motorcycles. The pits were run from the backs of vans parked along the trackside while catering consisted of home made sandwiches & flasks of tea.
In the morning they ran an 1/8th mile sprint along a straight section of tarmac, then after a break for lunch the action moved to an 1/8th mile set of bends. Fascinating to see which bikes fared best on which tracks.
A very enjoyable day out. Many thanks for the invite -& the Smarties, chaps.
More photos when we get the main site back online.

Andy.

Tony.

Andy & Tony's steeds.

Our mate Bob on his beeyootiful Canadian 45, (waving Goodbye to Taz).

.

.

.

.

been thinking about a sprint Panther for awhile now, its been done but i just want it for fun and there is the chance Pendine sands is going to re-open for a few events......

Seem to remember a Panther from a while back, for some reason I think it was a lovely shade of yellow......

Thougt I'd add a few more snaps (one at a time tho)

Chris on his twin port Rudge

A very tidy Suzuki beasty (with nitrous, of course ;))

Another Soozie, based on a SV.

This Kwak was being ridden by a chap who's apparently leading the street-fighter points.

The twisty part of the day............

One of the good things about sprinting is it lets youngsters of all ages have a go, some of them are still at skool...... whereas dear old Frank is nearly 80.

Keith does sprint and hillclimbs, and used to do this on a V-Max !

Here's bike to drool over, Bob's two-of-everything JAP powered, Hagon-esque machine. Its still in need of some TLC as its only recently been built, but give it a bit of time............

There are classes for just about any bike, here's an example of one our competitors in 2002.

Sunday's timekeeper, Paul, was on his R1 powered outfit in 2009.

Starting technique: Get passenger over rear wheel, select first, hold on rev limiter, dump clutch, smoke tyre....... what else is there to say!

Sidecar passengers don't just sit there, this is a Baker Suzuki and Dave rides this on the revs ALL the time.

The rear tyre is the same size as smokin' Paul in the previous shot

The owner of the JAP was kind enough to loan me the red Hagon-framed 500cc Hagon Triumph last year, this is Andy and I at Wrougton, trouble is I seem to have forgotten where the track is........... ::).
Andy's bike is also a 500 but had been 'evolved' over the years (by Andy) and now runs sweet & strong, and draws a lot of well-earned admiration.

Here's a bit of history:

This was originally built for the 1964 Dragfest meetings by a chap by the name of Denis Jenkinson (use a search engine and you'll find he was one of our country's characters).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Jenkinson
http://www.mrhr.freeserve.co.uk/bertbrand/bertbrand.htm

Following the passing of Jenks, I found myself with the dismantled rolling chassis only (forks are LE Velocette back to front by the way), and kinda went from there, getting it as close as poss to original.
Got a 650 Triumph running methanol, then a DCOE40, had a manifold made, sourced a Norton laydown box, got the period style tyres (new ones - big bucks for the skinny front)
Fuel goes in the top frame tube, oil in the spine.

The pic shows it once I'd got it back to how it looked way back. Rode it at Wroughton and the Brighton Speed Trials.
 
Running methanol and Castrol R with straight thru pipes mad it smell as good as it sounded!!! ;D  ;D  ;D

Sold it a few years ago.............. sigh...............

This is Frank (whose somewhere close to 80) who was also riding on Sunday. He doesn't hang around either!
His bike is an orignal Brooklands race machine with the standard anti-corrosion system common of bikes of that era. (the oil doesn't always stay on the inside)

This pic is from Brighton.

Photo courtesy of nice chap called Kevin Dean  http://kevindean.zenfolio.com/p765989678
Loads of pics of old bikes n stuff

That looks like a whole lotta fun!!!!

It does. Was good to go and see something different too. Everyone was friendly and we didn't at all feel out of place. Was a good day out  ;D