In 1976 we moved from Wollongong to the ACT. The move was prompted by an offer of employment with the ACT Education Department at a much better rate of pay than what I was currently receiving from the NSW department and the fact that my wife’s parents had moved there some time before and Helena saw it as an opportunity to continue being close to her family. It was a great idea for all of us and we bought a brand new house (the only time we have done so in our 40 years of marriage) and settled into life as Canberrans.
As detailed in My Motobiography, it didn’t take long for me to get involved in the motorcycle scene in Canberra and it was barely a year after arriving that I formed Canberra Road Racing Club and set off a chain of events that were to have far reaching consequences. But it was through attending a race meeting at Oran Park that I first came into contact with Allan Harding (pictured above). Allan, it turned out, was an inveterate “tinkerer” who divided his time between a number of esoteric pursuits like working at the Nuclear Laboratory at the ANU, restoring a “barn find” Vincent motorcycle, being a leader in Venturer Scouts and exploring underground caves. And motorcycle racing.
And it was Allan who led me back into contact with speedway, rekindling my childhood interest, and leading me to an active involvement in the sport that continues to this day. It was also Allan who sold me the Suzuki GT750 front end that would later adorn my Honda 500/4 and who drilled the stainless steel disks in the lab at the ANU, removing nearly 2kgs of metal thus ensuring that the disks not only looked pretty but also worked in the wet.
So, you see, connections. But it is the story of Allan’s own Suzuki that concerns me today. He was, as I said, somewhat of a mechanic and and engineer and it was while visiting his house in O’Connor one night that he showed me his “project”, a Suzuki 500 road racing motorcycle. At first glance you might almost think that the bike pictured above is a real TR500 grand prix bike, but, of course, it is not. It was, in fact, Allan’s own creation, a “budget” TR500, cobbled together in his own garage.
Working off plans sent to him from Barton Engineering in Wales (by letter, remember, this was pre-internet), Allan had turned a road-going Suzuki GT380 triple (pictured below) into what you see above.
The degree of difficulty posed by this conversion is staggering and, given that it was all accomplished at a distance of 11000 miles without the use of the internet or telephone still boggles my mind. It basically involved a compete re-engineering of the bike from the wheels up. Not content with converting the engine to 500cc capacity, fabricating his own expansion chambers and drilling the disk (to “factory” TR750 pattern which he took great delight in showing me) Allan also fabricated a new seat (to “works” pattern) and a new aluminium tank so that what eventually emerged was a bike that looked and sounded like the real thing. And it went pretty well too! A dedicated and passionate Suzuki man, Allan took pains to make sure that the bike was painted in the correct Suzuki livery and he even had a pair of Alan Hales’s Suzuki leathers which he word when riding the bike.
Allan and I and a young bloke from Venturers took the bike to an MCRC Club Day at Oran Park in what must have been early 1977 (Allan was still an MCRC member and transferred his membership to the fledgling CRRC when it was formed in October of that same year.) Al was a foundation member of CRRC and worked very hard to make sure that the new club was a success. (another connection). Despite a few teething problems the bike showed promise and was entered in the next open meeting, a “C”Grade day, also at Oran Park.
However, come scrutineering that day, a problem arose. Unlike the Club Day where the noise meter had not been employed, the meeting was held under an open meeting permit which meant that bikes were checked for noise and the Suzuki failed – badly. The home-made expansion chambers, built exactly as the plans said they should be, were helping the the engine develop good power and torque but they sent the noise meter off the scale when the bike was revved. Back to the pits. Allan took the “stingers” off the end of the pipes and stuffed them with crushed-up Coke cans. He took the bike back to scrutineering and it passed, just. Phew.
But it was a false dawn. As soon as practice started it became clear that restricting the chambers so that they would pass the noise meter had also ruined their ability to deliver the power and torque that the motor had previously delivered. The bike wouldn’t rev and it had been dramatically slowed by the process. We spent the rest of the day tinkering, seeking advice from other competitors and nibbling away at the edges of the problems, but to no avail. It was apparent that, in order to satisfy the technical requirements, the bike’s main advantage had been taken away.
The trip home in Allan’s Land Rover was quiet and sombre. The bike was pushed aside into the corner of the garage while research was done on how to solve the problem. Weeks became month without a solution appearing and, as the nature of the beast goes, the project went stale. It became clear that we had hit a technical wall that the good people at Bartons had not anticipated and, despite letters and correspondence suggesting all manner of solutions, none of them were viable.
Then, one night, Allan mentioned that he had had an offer on the engine from a Formula 500 speedway competitor and that he had decided to accept it. The motor went into a car and to this day I am still unsure of what happened to the rest of Allan’s diligent and clever engineering. Now I am pretty sure that Allan is going to read this and I am hopeful that he will be able to fill in the blanks and correct any errors that my memory of those events have brought into the story.
But it is a story that is worth telling as a testament to one man’s passion and dedication.
Now, remember I said before that Allan was restoring a “barn find” Vincent? Well, doing so brought him into the arcane word of Vincent people and so it wasn’t a surprise to me one day when he rang me and said, “Hey, Phil, I’ve got this really interesting guy staying at my place. He holds a world land speed record and I was wondering if you’d like him to come along to the cub meeting and tell the club members about it.” Would I WHAT? Some further details were added, and the next Wednesday night, Bob Burns himself spent an hour or so telling us all of his adventures at Bonneville in 1995 when he and fellow Kiwi, Russell Wright, had broken a world land speed record on a streamlined Vincent Black Lightning. He brought along some publicity B&W’s and was kind enough to sign mine for me as you can see above. Oh, and for the metric heads amongst us, 176 mph is 283 km/h, not bad for 1955, eh?
I have always regarded the story of Allan’s Suzuki as a fascinating one and feel privileged to have been able to see it unfold. I remain grateful to Allan for dragging me (unwillingly at the time) to Tralee to watch the midgets that night and tickled that, through him, I was able to meet and hear a genuine superstar of 1950’s motorcycling and a man who owned a world and speed record. If you’d like to read more about the story, please click on the ink below.
Vincent Black Lightning speed records.
And the connections have continued to this day. A coupe of years ago I got a Facebook friend request. You guessed it. Allan Harding. 🙂
