by Robert Hopkin
•
20 Apr, 2020
The photo at the very top is of Pendine Sands in Carmarthenshire - a beautiful, rugged coastline made famous by it being the early home of UK Land Speed Racing attempts on the sands which, when the tide is right and the jellyfish have been persuaded away, becomes the racing venue for Land Speed Racing attempts twice a year in May and September. Somewhat helpfully, the classes run at Pendine Sands are the same as those at Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and, therefore, in theory at least, a record set at Pendine Sands can qualify as a Bonneville record too - without the need to spend a load of dosh in terms of getting your bike to Bonneville ... that said, the aim is still to go to Bonneville once we are confident with the engine/chassis package and the reason for that is that need to seek relevance in my life! Read on ... Some time ago, I watched a TV documentary (on 22 May 2015 on BBC2) called "Speed Dreams: The fastest place on Earth" all about a set of Brit motorcyclists/engineers preparing to travel to Bonneville Salt Flats with the aim of setting or breaking a Land Speed Record 'on the salt'. I thought nothing of it at the time; however, something the presenter [you can find her on LinkedIn under the name 'Land Speed Louise'] said at the end of the programme sunk into my brain and resonated - she said, "This [Bonneville Salt Flats] is where men come to seek relevance in their lives" ... whilst I totally agree with her, there are, I hasten to add, plenty of ladies that also seek that same relevance to their lives in Land Speed Racing! Against that backdrop ... I had just hung up my karting boots (Formula 210 National - the first and the oldest gearbox kart racing series using bored out and highly-tuned Villiers 9E 197cc motorcycle engines from the 1950s) - the term 'modified' is perhaps slightly misleading as they have had their capacity increased to 210cc and through porting, lightening and balancing, power has been upped from a modest 9bhp to 35+bhp along with the rev ceiling moving from 6,000 rpm to a gutsy 10,400 rpm. So, as I now had a couple of engines going spare, I thought - why not sling them into a frame and see what we can do about becoming the fastest 'vintage' Villiers on two wheels in the 250cc class? For those of you who know their Villiers stuff, I am not including the Villiers Starmaker engine which, in the hands of Peter Inchley in 1966, came 3rd in the Lightweight TT with an average speed of 91.43mph - also I do not have any data on the top speed of that particular 250cc road racing motorcycle. However, the main reason that I am not including this engine's performance in my quest to become the 'Fastest Vintage Villiers'-engined Motorcycle' is that the Starmaker engine was produced way after the 1956 cut-off date for vintage engines under the Bonneville SCTA Rules. That engine, being a 68mm bore x 68mm stroke 'square' engine and with 4-speed or (if you can find them) 6-speed gearbox along with its diaphragm clutch is a very different proposition to the long-stroke Villers 9E 197cc used for the Formula 210cc National karting engines, That said, I have a cunning plan to build a Starmaker/Stormer 250cc engine and see how we can develop it for Land Speed Racing! Starting off gently, for once, saw me attending the Straightliners Top Speed Weekend at Pendine Sands in May 2018 ... and the rest, as they say, is history! If you need more information about Top Speed events visit their website here: www.straightliners.events/index.php . Whilst there, I bumped into Lyndon Davies of Lyndon Davies Engineering (LDE) a creative engineering genius who is preparing the chassis and will be a driving force in this project. Lyndon is a seasoned LSR campaigner and nothing seems to faze him in terms of fabricating and 'making it fit' ... more information soon! Back to the 350cc campaign and this will take some time - we are only at the mock up stage and as you can see from the middle photo, the frame is posing a bit of a challenge (in that it is not quite 'square' although most of the dimensions are in order (see top left tech drawing). The middle photo show s us the bike with New Old Stock (NOS) 32mm forks from a Moto Guzzi V50 along with disc brake - as I have said before - not one for the purists! Like the South Wales coastline, the top right photo is also beautiful and rugged, being the conrod from Carrillo that will be married to a Phil Pearson crankshaft once the COVID-19 travel restrictions have been lifted and I can get my crankcases to Phil Pearson Engineering over at Great Yarmouth (see www.bsagoldstar.co.uk ) ! More to come ...