What have you been up to this week

[Marishka]

Sorry to hear the bad new MaTTe
Hope it all works out better n repaired.

[John Abbott]

Man that sucks big time Matte... Chin up buddy im sure you have knocked out bigger dings in your HQ race car perhaps? But hang in there mate. Glad your ok

[Rotti]

Man thats a run of crappy luck!
Im a mopar guy as well, definitely feel your pain regarding your mates val!
The bedford, what a pain in the bum, but, at least it was a low speed incident, we all could have been watching a totally different story on the news easily, so really, you had a stroke of awesome luck!!

[wendyh]

anyone know who's Bedford is in the INXS mini series on tv ?? its a brown one.

have a good one.

i now know whos beddy it was...its Stuuuz
from vic...spoke to him the the other day 
i have encouraged him to post up some pics

[Gunning]

gday all, this week i got a pitman arm puller and was able to remove bedford front axels and exchange for hq disc set up, geez having the right tools make a difference
hopefully in next week or two i can get an engine crane to take out engine and transmission

[Dano]

Hi all, had a corka of a day yesterday, I pulled the front end from Borrie, sick of the oil leaks and moving to a new home  (new almost white paving)  + I think it may have finally spat its chewy, It created a miss about a 2 weeks ago and after removing cleaning and replacing the plugs , new carby, and a tune it ran sweet for about a 1000 mtrs then, drastically behaved badly,  Soo I too spat me chewy and found another 350, now all I have to do is swap everything over, a few new improved mods, radiators etc and hopefully back on the road asap. watch this space.

Sorry to hear that Matte, that sucks......Peoples..... could be a thing with large rims, as I too lost a rear wheel years ago with 10" rims, the wheel nuts came loose and off she went, so check 'em regularly, hate for the worst to happen.

[MaTTe]

Dano, if you want a 4 barrel manifold for the chev I have an iron manifold sitting there you can have for free. I can build you a carby to go with it aswell if need be.

The biggest concern with wheel studs is to make sure they're not welded as they have no give. If I'd been aware they were welded I'd have changed them years ago. The joys of owning a van that someone else modified!

Cheers for the condolences everyone, I haven't yet touched the van which is such a shame as I have a large collection of speed parts awaiting install aswell.

I've been busy with the restoration of our old speedway sidecar, the infamous Tandem Jawa 1000 that many may know from Claremont speedway and other tracks around the country. I'll post a few photos below, but she's getting close to finished...

[MaTTe]

[Hobbit]

G'day Matte, I'd imagine you would need a long track like Claremont to race a gnarly beast like that, eh?  Nice resto. 

[MaTTe]

Hey Hobbit, the long track at Claremont truly demonstrated the abilities of this bike, however my grandad and the team were the first team to consistently travel to the eastern states to compete, this bike won the majority of events ever entered regardless of the track or state.

We have documented historic results to go with this particular bike as well as the predecessors my grandad built such as the 650 Triumph that used to beat the 1000 Vincent's, the Ariel Red Hunter that grandad hand made a camshaft for, the Tandem JAP, the Suzuki Water Bucket 3cyl, and the Yamaha TZ 700 which would hit powerband and window the block due to lack of traction regardless of how much power was restricted. All of these bikes won MANY races over the years with the riders Harry Taylor or Graeme Harris.

Once we have the bike fully restored, I will release some indepth historical information for anyone interested, we will have the bike setup to race in 'demonstration' events.

This particular bike used to beat the Vincent Black Lightning which regularly campaigned against it, the Lightning is a supercharged 1000, that motor taken from the sidecar and put in a drag bike frame ran a mid 8sec quarter mile. The Tandem Jawa, despite never having been on a drag strip, was faster.

A bit of insight for those who may be too young to remember these classic powerhouses ;-)