THE DEAN MACHINE

I use the head on one of GM uprights

The mags on Jawa and japs were quite temperamental, some worse than others, thing is back in the day they were used on pretty much every engine so you got many different makes and models used especially on japs, on the engines themselves having rebuilt a few japs now I’m surprised they lasted till the 60s, especially the early ones,,they were real flintstone technology,they didn’t have gaskets so oil literally came out of every join, obviously they weren’t back then because there was no such thing but the 2 chrome pushrod tubes on the front of the engine are now replaced with cut down shower curtain rails with a bit of bicycle inner tube in the bottom as a seal,when the 2 valve Jawa came along is was a massive step forward in quality and reliability

This is my jap I race currently

I still ride veteran speedway stuff,,I raced in the jap championship on Saturday at the iow on a 1958 jap 4a, I’ve never raced motox bike, I’ve rode one and have recently brought a 1980s YZ at auction

I was more bothered about the sentiment of the bike than the money but yes it was

Last year I did a bit of messing about with one of my weslake’s, I made a inlet manifold so I could fit a modern blixt laydown carb on to it,after a bit of messing about with jets I took it to Leicester for a blast and it was really good for 6 laps and then the conrod snapped destroying the engine, engine plates and frame and ignition box

Delorto made different slides with different cut always for different power delivery

Something I have noticed in speedway is when something new comes around you usually find someone had already done it decades before like when gravity fed floatless carbs came out it was like wow but if you know your history wal Phillips has been doing this decades before on japs

No they pretty much the same, better quality materials and everyone pretty much went for short stroke over long stroke but I have seen a couple of top riders experimenting with long strokes again, the carburettor was the big difference, the first laydown used upright carbs converted to laydown and this created a problem similar to turbo lag on an 80s turbo car where when you apply acceleration there is a slight gap before power kicks in but by the time the BZ carb came out around 98 that problem had gone

It’s for tubeless tyres, spokes are on lugs on rim so no holes like conventional wheels which would let air through, as I said yet another expense added with no benefit to the sport, something I can’t understand about tubeless tyres in speedway is how they stay on the rim, they don’t use tyre locks apparently and in speedway we have all seen how a tyre distorts on the corners I just can’t believe they don’t lose air but apparently they don’t, I got hold of one a couple of weeks back and they have a slightly different inner wall but look identical to a normal tyre, I thought maybe they use a mouse like in motox but they don’t

One thing than infuriates me is when a company sponsors a rider with their products and then the rider sells the products, I see it so many times, it’s not a new thing either, sometimes it may be part of the deal with the riders but a lot of times it’s not

As I pointed out on another topic kings Lynn is the last track you want to be at if you’re not on it, it’s a daunting place to go at the best of times because of the nature of the racing surface, I believe boughen has some sort of mental block that he needs to sort and then goes and then gets a race win, that’s not a rider lacking confidence

At Carmarthen in 2002 we had shale from the GP at Cardiff and it wouldn’t bind so me and Gordon meakins went at midnight to roll waste oil drums all over the track and then prep the track, next morning it rained hard and the track was a nice rainbow colour but it did bind the shale

Speedway is full of BS, half the riders haven’t a clue why they use something they just see a top rider use it and think they have to as well, the riders at the top understand that speedway is very rider specific, what works for 1 rider won’t work for another and around 50% of riders throw money at something that doesn’t work, I remember when I worked for Adam skornicki him telling me at a meeting his bike packed up and Jason crump lent him a bike, he said it was the worst bike he had ever raced, it didn’t want to turn but obviously it worked for Jason

Because speedway is run by the riders, F1 isn’t run by the drivers, the solid block tyre was an attempt to slow the sport down and was met with dummies out the pram from all concerned, the sport will continue to run away cost and speed wise because there is no Bernie eccleston type character at the helm dictating the sport, there are various examples of expensive parts that have had no beneficial impact for the sport, tubeless tyres and the wheels needed,, karger ignition boxes, blixt carbs,hydraulic valves being some examples

My point to your point was you could make the bikes like they used to be and make the racing closer/better with the modern bike, the number of valves isn’t the problem, it’s the way they are set up,flywheels, cam’s everything on the modern engine is there to make it rev, I’m not sure of exact weight but a modern GM is probably 1/2 the weight of a jap. I raced a jap at the weekend and you really have to man handle the bike into the turns, the modern bike pretty much goes in to the turns on its own but so did weslake’s and other uprights

It’s the basic principle of the more they rev the louder they are and the original silencers were straight through ones till about 10 years ago, then they put a metal block half way along the silencer which caused extra back pressure and heat so engines had to be altered to suit the back pressure and heat shields were introduced because the silencers were getting so hot, this was the cause of the cheating when riders were drilling holes in the block and then the current silencers have the same hole in them that the cheaters were doing, it’s writing stuff like this and reading it back you realise how stupid speedway really is

The limiter was introduced and the limit is set higher than the actual revs achieved during a race, I brought a new anlas tyre last year for the upright championship on the Isle of Wight and used it again this year, so it can do 10 races when the limit is lowered to around 10,000, as bad as the tyre is it is being expected to do a burn out for 5 mins at 11,000+revs, that’s asking a lot of any tyre

The 2valve/4 valve argument is largely redundant, it’s has no real bearing on the current state of the sport, bikes are no faster now in real time speed than they were 40 years ago, what has changed dramatically is the speed of the back wheel, engine revs now are ridiculously and unnecessarily high, japs revved up to around 6000, 2valve Jawa revved up 7500 revs, 4 valve weslake were up to around 9500 and upright GMs to around 11500, the modern GM can max out at around 13500 revs although during a race you would be lucky to hit 12,000 revs but as I said earlier overall times over 4 laps haven’t really changed, the increase in revs is causing the tyres to disintegrate and it’s causing the tracks to disintegrate and it’s also made the bikes flat out power rather than throttle control, the modern silencer has reduced the usual power down to about 2000 revs, anything out side that usable rev range and you will not go anywhere, imo the introduction of a 10,500 rev limit via the rev limiter, a better tyre and a better silencer would make the bikes easier to control, you could also do things like smaller cam lift or heavier flywheels or softer compression to reduce the overall revs of the engine, it’s not too hard to implement these measures but unfortunately the sport is run by the riders for the riders via the tuners so don’t expect anything to change anytime soon

I don’t think the track is his problem, I just think it will magnify it but if he can overcome his issue KL will have a match winner in their ranks

It might, if he can get over his confidence issue then you could have a match winner, Anyone can practice and be good at any track, racing with 3 others is another matter all together, kings Lynn is a good track with good home track advantage because of its clay base it’s 100% grip all the time and it can be an intimidating place if you’re not fully on it and as it’s clear to see boughen isn’t that guy at the moment

Because clearly boughen is lacking confidence and as I’ve said kings Lynn is a confidence track

Did the riders get a say in where they went ? Or was it just like rider allocation like back in the day, if I was a rider lacking in confidence the last place I’d want to go is a track like kings Lynn, nothing wrong with kings Lynn but you have to be on it to ride there

Oxford’s head have dropped now, you can see it in the body language of the riders, only heeps and gilkes looks like it matters

Brennen’s start then was interesting