THE DEAN MACHINE

I agree but I just feel that 1 or 2 of them fiqure in the plans

I have a gut feeling that Craig cook, Ben barker and nick morris all figure in some way in Birminghams plans

Zagar is a brilliant rider (when he is in the mood) otherwise he takes the money and runs and it’s a lot of money, not what Birmingham need at all, if they looking abroad again they need to look at hard riders like buczkowski or woryna, don’t know if they would come but they are exciting to watch but they still need a number 1 and for what’s available muselak seems the only rider left to fill the gap

They certainly need to pull something out that hat of tolleys

Spoke with lampart mechanic over the weekend, he says not coming over

Is Steve worral still riding? he seem to disappear after his illness last year, don’t think lampart is coming back

Rybnik have some former strong riders,2 former world champions, tungate is a decent rider and drabik can turn it on occasionally but realistically bottom 2, can Częstochowa out do them ?

Rybnik are a strange club, last time they came up they lost their top riders, I assume it comes down to money but remember when they had Troy batchelor who was still a decent rider at that point but wouldn’t use him regularly

Częstochowa look very poor so far, they are going to need the very best from their signings and I can’t see that happening

Unfortunately prices are bombing in the classic car and bike markets including speedway bikes, 2 valve Jawas are particularly bad, japs have pretty much halved in price, weslake’s seem to be holding up but have never really been high priced,there have always been dips and highs and it’s definitely a buyers market at the moment but this time I struggle to see where the next high is coming from, the older collectors are dying off and the younger generation are just not interested in classics, in the car market things like pre 1970 cars are not selling as the new collectors couldn’t care less, they think a classic is an escort XR3I or a sierra cosworth

As of yesterday I noticed lots of posts have disappeared, I was active in one about 2 or valve engines on speedway general discussions and it has gone, other posts have gone too ?

To convert, basically you have to move the sump/oil pick up so as it’s on the bottom when the engine is upright and the oil pipe (internal or external depending on engine) is above the center of the main shaft also the flywheels have to be rebalanced, unfortunately quite a few that were converted to laydown had the sump chopped off and welded up and a new one was machined further round the cases so it’s not really possible to convert them back, the first laydown GMs had both upright and laydown sumps on so easy to convert either way

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