A Revival Mission...

[jellywrestler]

Looking great, Greg.



Looks Mk4/5, but not the same as the Steve Roberts (and now Spyda's) Plastic fantastic.....I heard a rumour that when Croz landed back in NZ with the 1980 XR69 Suzuki gave him, it ended up in Whanganui at Colemans and a mould of the bodywork might have been made.....

The Plastic's fairing is def XR69 ish....The alloy bike is a little different again.

two people took copies, one very early in the peice then when it was in southwards mr coleman borrowed it and did the deed damaging some of the stickers etc. croz wasn't happy and took it back, don't blame him either.

[husaberg]

The std 250 curves are very like the std 500 - full advance is reached very late on.
Whatever the aftermarket ? one is, it's very like the E R&D boxes with the agressive advance curve and flat line following.

Interesting though. If I ran a Ninja in 250 prod or the 300 class, I'd have a few options to play with...

Some stuff i found the STD 500 is very slow advancing. not full until near peak........
I also included a VT250 spec TCI as i have one (i think)still in the Shed.
I have emailed the pics as you cant see pics on your 1970's internet connection

[Grumph]

Could you runa dyna 2000 module using the standard pick up?
They're a great little unit, especially when compared to the rubbish German one I had to work with recently.

Done quite a bit with them myself - including running the pickups "inverted" on Kev's GS1000 - which saves about 50mm of engine width.

BUT - the kawa pickups are on a large pcd vs the quite small pcd of the Dynas. Don't know how that would affect the advance curves - specifically the rpm at which it changes. I think it's on a time basis so everything would react later....but I could be wrong.

The E R&D box should sort it. And cheaper than a Dyna.....

[Grumph]

Well, Levels is done and dusted. The bike went as required all weekend. I'd told Ade to get into it a bit more on Sunday so he did...Had a fun little dice with Croz on an RGB. The kawa didn't look out of place.
What happens next ? Don't know yet. Have spoken to a suitable rider, wait and see.

What I was happy to see is that if we do race it seriously (cough) it shouldn't be out of place. In that group - pre 82 senior and pre 89 F3 - only DC on the big MacIntosh was into the 1 . 10 bracket. The next few 82's and the quickest F3 were in the 1 . 13 range.
Mark Taylor was doing 1 .13's on this bike in 1988/89....

Modern rubber is worth what ?

Heard today that the big CB350/4 I built for Pete Anderson a few years back finished up 3rd in it's class of pre 72 for the weekend in the hands of it's current owner. Well done.

[Triplenut]

Great seeing the old girl out there Greg, and the old rider

looked good and went well

pic below

cheers
Dave

[kiwimacchi]

Great seeing the old girl out there Greg, and the old rider

looked good and went well

pic below

cheers
Dave

Thanks for your comment Dave- only forgiven 'cos of the photo!
Who took it? Been looking for any from the meeting, you know, might be the last ride, and all.............. Ha ha.
Really keen to get 'Macchi put together after Levels!!

[Grumph]

There's a CAMS meeting at Ruapuna this weekend. If the race ignition box arrives in time - and i'm not too hopeful there - it'll get a run with a young gun aboard. Geoff Cain wanted to buy the bike late 90's to run his boy in F3. His boy is now an experienced rider with international experience too...
But he's never ridden this bike - yet. We'll see.
Anyway, it dawned on me that it'd never run on the extended Ruapuna....Pretty sure the gearing is what we used for short Ruapuna and Levels. But my spare front sprockets have been eaten up by certain GS1000 and Z1's...the spline is the same.
So a 1T bigger front has been ordered - just in case. Funnily enough it's the standard OE no of teeth - and width. We'd always run 530 but it's now on OE width 520.

Might happen, might not.

[guyhockley]

May be just the angle of the picture, but you look a bit cramped?

Quote from Graham Dyson of Nova:

"We use the generic dimensions adopted years ago by the big japanese manufacturers: 12 splines on a 22mm shaft, 13 on a 25mm shaft, 16 on a 30mm shaft and so on."

[Grumph]

The pic is kiwimacchi - AKA Ade...He fits fine. Just not getting down to it, LOL. Recent visitors at the time of the NZGP had a sit on it and commented how roomy it is. It's general seat/bars/pegs dimensions are very close to a Manx - which is the most comfortable race bike I ever rode so most of what i've built has similar diensions.

[guyhockley]

Oh, sorry. When you said last ride, I thought you meant yours.

[husaberg]

Okay Grumph
if you had any idea how many times i scanned this today.
This is the best i could do on my Laptop without the proper software

[Grumph]

Thanks - and well done. I'd been told about that article but had never seen it.

It'd be interesting to hear Tony's views on it now - and the political wrangling that forced him onto a ZX4 after two seasons on the twin.
At least he made money with the fours by selling them off at the end of each season, LOL.
I'd still like to find the pink twin.

My bike didn't run at Ruapuna at the weekend - the race ignition hasn't turned up.

[husaberg]

Thanks - and well done. I'd been told about that article but had never seen it.

It'd be interesting to hear Tony's views on it now - and the political wrangling that forced him onto a ZX4 after two seasons on the twin.
At least he made money with the fours by selling them off at the end of each season, LOL.
I'd still like to find the pink twin.

My bike didn't run at Ruapuna at the weekend - the race ignition hasn't turned up.

Kiwirider mags from the 80's are printed on some real low class uv unstable paper.
Plus trying to get in in place and to then stay on the scanner bed.
its still yellow and crinkled and straightening it out cut of tiny bits of the lower text but unless miss 11 gets off the Computer its going to stay that way.
i have a A3 scanner upstairs but i just couldn't be arsed.
i think there was write up arround the same time one more about going F3 racing that had a photo of Tonys bike and a run down of stuff as well.
i recall it was a series where they looked at all the classes. F3, buckets etc

[jellywrestler]

I'd still like to find the pink twin.

one of my fantasies too Greg....

[husaberg]

I found this on Tony about the Carbon 600 but 5 time i never realised that i thought i was 3 F3 in a row

Stolen off an arsebook feed of Cycleworks
Cycleworks - DAMON Gruenwald
15 December 2015 ·
Some time ago a very vibrant personality dominated racing in New Zealand, a certain Tony McMurdo. At the time, you could not miss seeing him at the track.
Always coloured in bright pink and lime green including bike, leathers and himself. Long red hair and always smiling, no way could you miss Tony.
For those of you out there that appreciate real craftsmanship, determination as well as good old fashioned ability, here is a little known, (these days anyway) and forgotten bike.

Tony McMurdo built and raced this Formula 2 bike in the same year.
By that I mean he was building it throughout the year, developing it as he went. I was involved with Tony for many years previously as well, during the time of him winning
Formula 3 an incredible 5 times (years) in a row. A truly amazing feat in itself. In any sport to be good enough and consistent enough, plus with a little good luck is
extremely hard to achieve. Tony McMurdo did. He dominated in the 1990s. After proving without doubt he was Formula 3 champ, he went on to create this 600 Formula 2 bike.
Starting with a ZXR400 frame we stuck the 600 motor in the aluminium frame, strengthening the frame as we thought required. Then a number of changes to get the handling the way
Tony wanted it.

Then Tony recreated the frame in carbon fibre, as well as the swingarm, fairings, fueltank, parts of the carbs as well as the muffler. Now to truly appreciate this you have to understand
that no-one knew much in those days about how strong carbon was or how to use it. The Britten was being built at the same sorta time. Carbon had been used for muffler skins
but not for anything like frames or wheels. Today it is widely used in motorcycle, bicycles and many other special projects.
Tony then took to every individual part and lightened anything he could. The concept was to build a lightweight 600 that handled like the ZXR 400s that Tony rode so well to victory.
The result was a spectacular bike. Tony finished 2nd that year to Bruce Anstey, who is currently a formidable Isle of Man TT Champion.
I think Tony rode very well, but the bike was only finished at the very end of the season.

He would be building the bike, throw it together, aerosol paint it, and go out and race in the weekend. Simply he did not get enough ride time.
Tony has retired now, gone on to other interests, but my time with him building bits for his race bikes as well as obviously the exhaust systems is important to me.
The ZXR400 was where I experimented a lot with various designs for lightweight full tapered header pipes. All Tony’s bikes were fitted with these, including his ZXR600 Special.

Last I heard the bike resides in a shipping container and stored, should be on display somewhere.

Cheers Damon

From memory Martin Van Boomen helped with the carbon
i have a small bit somewhere out of an aussie mag somewhere.



i found this pic as well not sure what the 39 hes astride is