http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD_s4QBipKk&feature=youtu.beQ: What happens when you have a few cans one night?
A: You decide that it would be a good idea to enter the Australian Sidecar Pre-68 MX titles on a 1967 Kawasaki W1-650 sidecar 2 & ½ weeks before the event.
For a few weeks Shelpi had been badgering Ant to consider travelling to SA for the event but work commitments, a bike that hadn’t been tested in racing conditions and most importantly a rider and a passenger that had only (ever) done 6 laps of the Broadford track at the Bonanza was a fair stretch for anyone, let alone a couple of blokes with a combined age close to 100 that had no skills on a motocross sidecar.
It was obvious from the get-go that the outfit was not up to 200+ kg’s of humans hanging off it so it was off to WIX engineering with a paper napkin drawing of a new swing arm and mounting system. A few days later the chair has a new swing arm and wheel in place of the postie bike set up that was fitted some time back by Tim and Steve. A few additions were made to the chairs grab rail and the passenger’s foot area and we reckon that she’s good to go, all the time having no idea what the scrutineers would pick up.
From that point on it was almost a comedy show with all the cock-ups that occurred in the week leading up to the Friday trip to Adelaide. First off Ant has multiple phone calls with the management team at Parwan MX track to ensure that we could take the old girl out there for a test session. After an hour and a half trip to the complex the track manager promptly tells us that we can’t take it off the trailer, apparently he thought it was a speedway outfit, even though Ant had told him it was a MX outfit.
Fast forward to the morning we are ready to leave. I back the trailer up to load the Rat, we push her on to the trailer and the trailer all but falls over on its side thanks to the 200 off kg’s of Rat on one side of the trailer. At this point we were knackered as the trailer we used the previous weekend wasn’t available, it was this or pull the pin on the trip. 15 minutes of head scratching and we decide to load her onto the trailer sideways and share the weight between both wheels and the trailers draw bar, an hour later were loaded and on the way to SA.
Arriving into SA late Friday night we find our way to this lovely establishment called the Lindy Lodge Motel, amazing the difference between the internet pictures and the real thing made only worse by the night manager that couldn’t understand why we would want a room for two nights. We soon worked out that most of his clientele booked rooms by the hour, not the night.
Arriving at the track the next day the priority was to get signed in and try and get the Rat through scrutineering. The boys were pretty thorough on the check and we had a few things to attend to but nothing super serious. The next thing, riders briefing & practice. I guess we thought there would be this magical apparition that would occur where all of a sudden we would get all the skills we needed to get us through the weekend and it would be happy days; you can guess the reality of that.
From practice to the last race it was a freek’n steep learning curve, with the only constant being a machine that had been through this a few times before. So what was the take away from the weekend?
First & foremost it was the organisers and crew from ASA who welcomed us without question, in most cases giving us plenty of tips to get a couple of MX sidecar virgins through the weekend. Big shout out to Rocky Warren, Rob Schmidt and Kristy Schultz for guidance and assistance. Next to thank is our neighbours in the pits Potsy & Steve piloting the No55 Suzuki-GSX some of the most strait up people we have meet in our years of racing who gave us heaps of pointers and tips. The next strange thing (for us) was the banter on the start line between the competitors. I’ve been racing solos for many years and never does the complete grid stand around waiting for the previous race to finish chatting and geeing up each other wishing everyone a safe and competitive ride. Stranger still was that our class would come of the track post race back to the pits, wait for the last competitor then shake their hands and compliment each other after each and every race. Last but not least, big thanks to Pete (Shelpi) for opening the line of communication to get us over to SA then helping us through the first day jitters.
It takes a lot of motivation and effort to take a bike that had been cobbled together over way to many beers and Saturday nights into the bike that we rode this weekend just gone. I guess that it being green was enough for Ant to take on the project and it’s a credit to him for the way it turned out. Whilst I managed to hang on and use my 110+ kgs as ballast, Ant had to steer the beast and navigate his way through a right shift system, less than 3” of suspension travel and prepare a bike that needed nothing more than checking the tyre pressures and adjusting the chain over the whole weekend.
