From nerv Mon Aug 30 09:54 DST 1993 Subject: no subject (file transmission) To: freiss.pad Date: Mon, 30 Aug 93 9:53:41 DST From: Dr. Stuart Savory X-Mailer: xmail 2.4 (based on ELM 2.2 PL16) Status: O .sp 4 Hi Bikers, this a netcopy of my biker novel "Howl of the Mountain King". It is shareware, not free! To read send five dollars (in an envelope) to: Stu Savory Amselweg 4 D-33165 Lichtenau GERMANY Your contributions go toward a worthy cause (like me building a Triton!) Ciao, Stu Savory .bp .HF off .sp 4 .ft B .ce Howl of the Mountain King .sp 2 .ce Dramatis Personae .R .KE .sp 2 .vs 14p .ft R .P Professor Gander : Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Dresden, East Germany, during the early Fifties. Father of the Trabant and Wartburg two-stroke engines. Extremely brainy but rather authorative in manner. .P Pietrov Ismailovitch : Russian KGB Spy, who defected from the UK during World War Two. Finances likely technical High-Tech projects at Stalin's behest for propaganda purposes. Blackmails Professor Gander into building the two-stroke four racing motorbike, and Wolfgang into racing it. .P Wolfgang Wittmann : One of Gander's students. A natural talent as a racing motorcyclist. Not as bright as he would like to think he is. Boyfriend of Dagmar. .P Dagmar Hennig : A pretty and precocious young librarian at the university. Falls in love with Wolfgang & vice versa. .P Werner Kowalski : Professional speedway rider, brought in by the KGB to act as Wolfgangs motorcycle-racing trainer. .P Geoff Duke : Contemporary racing motorcyclist. World Champion during the early fifties. .P Ernie Claggs : Striving british reporter, specialising in motorcycle racing stories. Always craving for a scoop. Spent his wartime duty spy-hunting for MI6. .P "Spinky" Adams : Proprietor of a newspaper stall near to Clagg's lodgings. Rough and ready cheerful cockney who turns into a real friend for Claggs. .P Ernst Leverkus : German cub reporter, just learning the ropes. Scoops Mr. Claggs on several occasions. .P Mrs. Williams : Landlady of a bed-and breakfast house on the Isle of Man. Initially authoritarian, but a heart of gold. War-widowed friend of Ernie Claggs. .P Alma Joy : Mrs. Williams' bulldog bitch. .bp .sp 4 .ce 33 Chapter CONTENTS Page .sp 1 1 Uncle Joe's Dresden Dream 1 2 Powerhouse Plans 9 3 Bracebridge Street Blues 17 4 Bavarian Blue 26 5 Horex Imperator 34 6 Starting Small 44 7 Tricks of the Trade 51 8 The Arcore Angle 59 9 Testbench Tuning 68 10 Flight of the Eagle 77 11 Framing the Four 84 12 Learning the ground rules 92 13 Toeing the line 100 14 Hanging is good for you 107 15 Stopping and Steering 115 16 The Singing Saw 122 17 Getting it all together 130 18 Froede's flying four 141 19 The Italian affair 149 20 Mugello Madness 156 21 Around the Ring 164 22 It's all uphill from here 171 23 Island Impressions 180 24 Tourist trophies 186 25 Practice makes perfect 196 26 On the road to Ballacraine 205 27 The Road to Governor's Bridge 214 28 Junior 225 29 Senior 233 30 Gotcha ! 243 .bp .HF off .sp 4 .ft B .ce Chapter One .sp 2 .ce Uncle Joe's Dresden Dream .R .KE .sp 2 .vs 14p .ft R .P Professor Gander walked happily home from his laboratory at the Technical University of Dresden.He had just finished writing a research paper summarizing his measurements "On the optimal economy of two-stroke engines" to be submitted to the Academy of Science in Moscow. It was to be his second publication in 1952, he thought as he posted it in the mail box on the corner of the street where he lived. .P "There was a man here from the KGB for you!" gasped his wife as soon as he entered the hallway, "What's it about, Manfred? What do the KGB want with you, you're just a harmless scientist, no military secret work, and a registered member of the party." .P He sat down heavily, suddenly grey. "I don't know, I don't know" he whispered ashenly."What did he say?" .P "It was just twenty minutes ago. He drove up in an old Wehrmacht Mercedes, the kind they confiscated after the war was over. He just asked where you were, and said you were to help him on KGB business. Oh dear, it's like the Gestapo nightmare all over again.". She was almost weeping. .P "There, there. Don't get upset.There's no point, he will be back soon, and then we'll hear facts. I haven't done anything wrong, not even by the rules of the party." .P "Your lab-assistant Wolfgang is waiting in the living room, he came half an hour ago on his motorbike, you know, that old green Elefant. The KGB told him to wait here while they went to fetch you.But he doesn't know what it's about either." she added. The professor went into the living room, where Wolfgang cowered nervously on the dark wooden chair in the corner. .P "What do they want,Professor?" he burst out. .P "I don't know...." he began to reply as there came a single hard knock at the door. "But we'll find out soon" he finished up. .P A small neat man in a black leather overcoat entered the room and sat down at the table too, without asking. .P "Good evening Professor" he said quietly. "Let me introduce myself, I am Pietrov Ismailovitch from the KGB in Moscow. My friends call me Ismail. First of all, let me put your minds at rest. We need your scientific help on a propaganda project against the capitalist world; since we want to keep it secret as long as possible, you will be bound to silence, but since you are a loyal party member, and have a beautiful wife and baby daughter whose well-being is no doubt of continuing interest to you, we are sure of your cooperation". He smiled meaningfully. "Wolfgang here, I am sure really only wanted to borrow 'his' motorcycle, and return it later to the war-torn ruined shed where he found it. It is after all, as war-booty, the property of the state." He smiled meaningfully again. .P "Professor, you have a very good scientific reputation. Since you have been working for the state's program to rebuild the nation you have done research for the Ministry of Transport." he read from the notes in the dossier he took from his small brown briefcase with the hammer and sickle embossed below the massive lock. "You were designated the task to design engines for small personal cars, making them both easy to produce in a war-torn economy and of course cheap to run, given the scarcity of fuel." he continued reading. "You produced the engine for the Trabant and the Wartburg, both two-stroke twin engines of astounding simplicity. Your newest research results, which you posted in the way home tonight, will no doubt show a 24.3% increase in their fuel economy by redesigning the gas flow through the cylinder head." he added drily. .P "Yes, yes" said the professor resignedly. The KGB was very well informed as usual, so they must have been watching him for some time. Probably the new Polish janitor who cleaned out his paper-bin in the lab with such industrious regularity, he thought. .P "The capitalists are making considerable advances in their technology as you know." Ismailovitch continued. "The Politburo has decided that we will not only compete with them in terms of military atomic technology, but we will also show them up by beating them hollow in areas of their popular interest. The Politburo has decided that a Russian will be the first man to orbit our planet !" he bragged. .P "Well I can hardly help you there, my expertise is only in internal combustion engine design, and at 19 years of age Wolfgang's sole real ability seems to be riding a motorcycle at a speed at which mere mortals whiten with fright." .P "Exactly, my dear Professor. You see, my office has been assigned the task of demonstrating that our socialist technology is not only better in interplanetary rocketry, but is also better in the much more earth-bound realistic world of motor racing. So with you two, we have an ideal combination. You will be funded secretly by the KGB to build a racing motorcycle, and Wolfgang will ride it for the greater glory of all socialist peoples." He finished triumphantly. .P "Wow!" shouted Wolfgang, jumping to his feet in excitement, early fear now forgotten, "A real racer for me to ride!" he caroused gleefully. .P "Calm down, Tovaritsch!" Ismailovitsch ordered. "You will undergo serious theoretical and practical training, we cannot afford to have you ruin the socialist effort by crashing the machine due to sheer youthful hot-headedness." he added sternly. "Professor, you have all winter to build the machine, we expect you to compete next season. You will build a Senior machine, that is of a half liter capacity. Despite the good cause however, we have only limited funds available, and no factory help due to the secrecy of our project; this means you will have to hand-build just two engines, one as a spare, and one frame. Your laboratory is secluded enough, so that the necessary secrecy can be maintained." .P "The KGB will provide as much information as possible about competitors' motorcycles, starting with BMW." he said smiling knowingly. .P "Well that seems a very interesting suggestion, Comrade, uh Ismail, but of course I cannot guarantee success" the Professor put in cautiously. .P "Then you have failed to understand" said Ismailovitch, suddenly Gestapo-like in a steely tone of voice "This is not a suggestion, it is a requirement! And success is a requirement too, if you want to continue your luminous academic career. Alternatively, you could design new sleds in Siberia, and Wolfgang could push them through the ice." Sadistic sarcasm snarled stonily into his steely voice. .P "However, let us look at the bright side of things" he said, changing to a winning smile. "You are an ambitious person. Think of the international acclaim you will earn, let alone the glory of serving your state; you might even be granted membership of the Academy of Science in Moscow; and Wolfgang a Hero of the Soviet Union." He was waving the invisible carrot now, rather than baring his teeth. "Good lady, please bring us some glasses for a toast to begin this project" he added, suddenly pulling a cold bottle of Stolichnaya vodka from the official brown briefcase. .P "Prost, as you say in Germany" he proffered "I shall return each week to hear your progress report. Any bills for material you shall have sent to the Ministry of Transport, to Room number 007, my word is my bond" he added laughing at his insider joke. "Just for safe keeping, I shall take your passports and identity cards with me now" he finished, stood up, collected the proffered documents and left, stuffing the remains of the vodka back into his briefcase. .P "What a detestable man!" cried Mrs. Gander "Just the way he smiles sadistically while making those not-so-veiled threats of his, his name shouldn't be Pietrov Ismailovitch, it should be 'Comrade Smiley'!" she added. .P "Now now my dear. Agreed he is a nasty little man, but the idea is very tempting indeed, very tempting indeed. Just think of the academic fame it would bring me; why, I might even be asked to join the Academy of Sciences in Moscow as he said, if it works out all right. After all, why shouldn't it, a two-stroke is better than a four-stroke any day, if only because it gets twice the opportunity to produce power" he mused. .P "Well I think it's a good idea too" Wolfgang butted in "I could get to race with a real chance instead of just flailing about hopelessly on the Zundapp or even a more modern Horex Imperator. And while we build the racer, maybe Ismailovitch could arrange such a Horex Imperator or an NSU Rennfox for me to practice on. Then I would at least know the major german racetracks before racing in real earnest, because it always helps to know where the road goes.So please, Professor, let's do what he wants" Wolfgang pleaded. .P "It's not as simple as that, Wolfgang" replied the Professor "You would be changing from a long-stroke single to a much more powerful two-stroke with a narrower power-band. We will need more gears, you will have to change gear much more often, and if you are going much faster, as I fervently hope you would be, then you would need to brake much earlier, so that all the braking points you learn on a Horex are going to be much too late for the more powerful two-stroke." .P "Hold on just a minute!" his wife interrupted "This isn't a fait accompli you know! You heard what he said: there is no room for failure. If you build such a machine and it's not fast enough, or if Wolfgang falls off by being too impetuous, then I for one don't fancy spending the rest of my days in Siberia. Let's just call it off, the risk is too great!" she pleaded. .P "I don't think that's feasible" her husband added "Ismailovitch made it quite plain that we don't have a choice. He even took our passports, so that we couldn't even flee, for example to America, even if we wanted to. Wolfgang's suggestion is probably the best. Let him practice while we build the engine. The facilities of the university's casting foundries and their engineering workshops are good enough to build the parts we design in small quantities. And we can give a small number of the brighter Diploma-students specialised research areas to work in, that way they can contribute to the project without realising where the project as a whole is leading, which keeps them out of the clutches of the KGB, and let's them earn their diplomas while taking some of the work off of us." the Professor said thoughtfully. .P "Great! I knew you'd agree" cried Wolfgang "I'm going to rush off home now and read up all about the foreign victory bikes.I've kept all the cuttings about Geoff Duke's wins on his Norton in a scrap book you know!" he enthused. .P "Yes,I rather thought you might have done that." replied the Professor drily. .P "Well there's little point in reading up on Wiggerl Kraus' and Schorsch Meier's bikes and their wins in Germany since the war, because they were riding the pre-war supercharged BMWs and the FIM decreed in 1946 that supercharging wouldn't be allowed any more." replied Wolfgang knowledgably, having missed the Professor's good natured sarcasm. "So they only raced nationally with them, and we Germans weren't allowed to race internationally up until 1951" he finished breathlessly. .P "Tell me about BMW" said the Professor, his curiousity having got the better of him. His wife left the room disgustedly, seeing that the two men were implicitly committed to the racer project, despite her warnings and pleadings. .P "Well during the war some of the BMW people hid the supercharged racing bikes in cowsheds on private farms. Then they appeared 'miraculously' when things had settled down after the war. Basically they have a double-loop welded steel frame holding a horizontally opposed one-piece boxer engine, four-stroke of course. Long-stroke 72mm stroke and 66mm bore. Twin cams. Cardan-shaft drive. The first telescopic front forks. Supercharged, they give probably 40 kiloWatts at the rear wheel on petrol/benzol, going up to about 65 kW when run on alcohol for the pre-war record attempts. George (Schorsch) Meier and Wiggerl Kraus are the riders." Wolfgang recited with the unerring memory of the true fan. "Since 1949 BMW has been developing a normally aspirated version, and now, in the autumn of 1952, they reputedly have a new model in testing for next year, but it's an undercover project that nobody knows much about. It's being kept under wraps, even the press aren't allowed to see the new racers." .P "Well I expect that Ismailovitch has means, however devious they may be, and will inform us next week about the new BMW as he hinted before he left" commented the Professor drily. "But do you think their new machine will be at all competitive with the ubiquitous Nortons ?" he asked. .P "Maybe, maybe not" replied Wolfgang "Norton have introduced a new frame design which they call a 'Featherbed'. Its much better than their old 'Garden Gate' frames. The Nortons can out-handle any other machine these days, probably including next year's new BMW. You know, Professor, it won't be enough for you just to build a more powerful engine" he added thoughtfully "An awful lot depends on the way the frame handles. The 'Garden Gates' are said to have handled like a camel with a hinge in the middle, compared to the 'Featherbeds'. That's why Geoff Duke is much faster on them than on the old frames, even with basically the same engine. So we're going to need a stiff frame too. Plus the fact that on all the photographs in my scrap books for 1951 and 1952 that chap geoff Duke simply leans further into the corners than the other riders do, which makes him quicker in the curves too. I'm going to have to learn to lean over that far or further too, if I want to be as quick or quicker through the corners than Duke." he summed up. .P "Thankyou Wolfgang" said the Professor snapping the old exercise book shut in which he had been taking notes. "It is getting really late now, we've been talking for hours. My wife has probably gone to bed already. So you ride on home, sleep well, and I'll see you in the university's labs tomorrow at nine. Goodnight. And remember this is a secret project, despite your excitement, so don't go blabbing to your friends!" he admonished. .P Wolfgang Wittman chugged home on the old green Zundapp a very excited young man, knowing he would be unable to sleep that night. Arriving home, thinking 'What will the future hold?' he thumbed through his scrapbook of motorbike racing press-cuttings 'Words and photos by Earnie Claggs' before, overexcited, he nodded off to sleep on the couch, dreaming of future glory. .bp .HF off .sp 4 .ft B .ce Chapter Two .sp 2 .ce Powerhouse Plans .R .KE .sp 2 .vs 14p .ft R .P Nine o'clock sharp on a bright and crispy autumn Tuesday morning. Wolfgang braked the Zundapp to a halt, careful of the thin film of hoar frost on the southern side of the road which was still in the September shadow of the university buildings, and parked it hurriedly outside the grey anonymous doors of the engineering faculty. As he entered the lab he saw that Professor Gander had exceeded his usual punctuality and already had a beaker of 'Muckefuch Ersatz-Coffee' bubbling over a Bunsen burner. .P "Great, I'll have some of that too" said Wolfgang "It was chilly on the bike this morning, I should have put a sweater on under my woolen greatcoat. I'm brass monkeys, I can tell you!" .P "Right, sit down and drink this mugful, that'll get you unfrozen. Then we'll think about the project, OK?" .P "I wouldn't know where to start Professor. I started to read my collection of articles by Earnie Claggs, the english motorcycling journalist, but they are all about the Nortons and Freddie Friths KTT Velo of course. All four-strokes of course, I don't think Claggs knows what a two-stroke is!" Wolfgang expostulated. .P "Well,Let's consider the basic design issues first" said Professor Gander."What kind of machines do the current winners ride, like that chap Geoff Duke you talked about last night?" .P "They are mostly single cylinder air-cooled four-strokes. I know," said Wolfgang proudly "because I read Claggs' race reports. Then AJS has a twin, which has such overheating problems that they cast the cylinder head out of silver for optimum heat conduction, and cast a lot of cooling spines rather than fins onto the head, which is why it's nicknamed 'The Porcupine'." he continued breathlessly "And there are rumours that the Italians are building four- and even thinking of an eight-cylinder engine." he finished excitedly. .P "Thankyou Wolfgang," said Professor Gander drily, "but I was thinking more of two-stroke engines which is where our university's expertise lies...." .P "The DKW is a three cylinder 350 cc machine, if Ismailovitch could swipe their plans, we could build a 466cc four just by adding a cylinder. And if we overbored it a little, we could get it up to a half a liter.The 350 only delivers 23 kiloWatt however, so a four might reach 30 kW." suggested Wolfgang. "That's not enough to be competitive" he went on "the four stroke single 350s like the AJS 7R deliver about 26 kW and a good five hundred probably 33 at the rear wheel." .P "There is no way that I am going to steal the plans from Ingolstadt" thundered the Professor in reply, his academic pride thoroughly offended "We are quite capable of producing a better design here at Dresden, even better than the state's MZ factory at Zschopau" he seethed as he mentioned his arch rivals for the claim to local academic fame. .P "All right, all right. Calm down, it was only a suggestion" sulked Wolfgang. .P "Yes, well....Harrrummph. Let us consider some theoretical issues then" said the Professor, calming down. "Simple dimensional analysis shows us that, ignoring friction, the more cylinders the better. For a given swept volume, the torque delivered should be proportional to the brake mean effective pressure (known as BMEP) times the area over which it works. this means that the effect is proportional to the cube root of the number of cylinders..." he lectured. "However, all we have as a starting base is the 600cc two- stroke twin from the Trabant car design, which delivers only 18 kiloWatt; and the university's dynamometer only goes up to 30 kW. If we want to aim for over 60kW, in order to have as much power as possible in hand over potential opponents, then this has several consequences. First, and most obvious, the Trabant engine is not a suitable starting point. Second, the DKW research at Ingolstadt, as I know from their published research papers, indicate that Schnrle's sculpted piston-head to control the gas flow is a dead end. Third, the MZ engineers at Zschopau have shown that asymmetrical port timing as achieved by a side-mounted disc valve if much better than the symmetrical piston-controlled inlet port of our Trabant design. And finally we are going to have to use a single- cylinder test-bench set-up, in order to stay within the limitations of our little dynamometer. So, given that the disc valve design needs free access to one side of the crankcase (in order to mount the necessary carburettors), we are left with the only logical choice of a square- or Vee-four engine. Really of course it must be two parallel twins each with it's own crankshaft, so that each crankshaft has a disc valve on the left and on the right. We will need to have a central gear train to couple the two twins, a chain drive would allow too much backlash. The next consequence is therefore liquid cooling, so that the rear two cylinders to not overheat from the heat produced by the front pair. And a 90 degree angle between the cylinder banks for good balance." .P "Well that's that then" chirped Wolfgang "A water cooled disc-valved 90 degree Vee- four. Nothing easier to knock up in one short winter!" .P "Don't be sarcastic, laddie." replied Professor Gander. "Deep thought, rather like playing chess, will save us a lot of experimentation. This could be the base for a whole series, a 125cc single, a 250cc twin and a 500cc four. Maybe even a sleeved down 350cc three to show up DKW" he crowed, eyes alight with enthusiasm. "I'm going over to the library now to read up as much of the current research literature as possible; you can start by setting up the drawing boards and overhauling the dynamometer!" .P So while Wolfgang busied himself in Gander's laboratories, the Professor himself put on his old war-time issue grey greatcoat and walked the five hundred meters through the still frosty autumn air to the university library, rebuilt after the infamous fire bombing of 1945. There he met Dagmar, the pert little blond librarian with the upturned snub nose and the most amazing bright blue eyes, who had her heart set on his lab assistant Wolfgang. After listening to his requests, Dagmar went and got him a couple of standard textbooks on internal combustion engineering and the research papers published by the DKW engineers from Ingolstadt in western, capitalist, Germany. DKW had restarted in Ingolstadt after the war because the original Auto Union factories (Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer) had been confiscated by the russian conquerors and cannibalised, so DKW had no works any more in eastern Germany. .P Professor Gander first read from an internal combustion engineering textbook 'For reliable operation, the average speed of a piston in its cylinder should not exceed 17 meters per second, for short term use such as record attempt engines, twenty one meters per second is the absolute maximum.' If the bore of the cylinder is the same as the stroke (a socalled square cylinder) then that would be just over 54 mm for 125 cc, he calculated using his slide rule. That would give 10000 rpm for 18 m/sec. Now for a square 500cc single, that means 86mm bore and stroke, that means 6270 rpm for 18 m/sec. So for a 90% short stroke, that is a still healthy 90% stoke to bore ratio, that would give 10000 rpm at a conservative 17 m/s average piston speed, with a stroke of 50.6 mm. So at 90%, the bore must be 56 mm giving a swept volume of 498cc. If the same torque can be achieved as the 500cc single, then the extra revs alone give us 60% more power. So if the Manx Norton gives about 40 kiloWatts, or 54 PS as they call it on the english scale, then we should get 64kW or 85 PS which should make us at least 20% faster on the straights, he mused. He then turned to read the DKW research papers, and set about interpolating and extrapolating the power and torque curves given there, and trying in his mind's eye to correlate them with the different shapes of the dome-shaped pistons, patented by Schnrle, as shown in the appendices of the DKW papers. After three hours, he gave up, perplexed. The main factor appears to be that it is important to swirl the fresh mixture entering from the transfer ports, and to make the fresh gas form a jet, separating it from the old, spent gasses rushing out of the exhaust port, he mused. The problem with the dome-shaped pistons is that they both reduce the possible compression ratios, and lead to a rather contorted shape for the combustion chamber at the point when ignition takes place, he thought. So what one really needs is not these engineering reports, but rather some aerodynamic knowledge about the hot gas dynamics. .P "That's it" he squealed, "I'll go to the aerodynamics labs and talk to Grasmann." .P He grabbed his coat and, without bothering to put it on, ran across the road to Grasmann's office. Ignoring the sign on the door 'Institute for jet engines and gas dynamics, Diplom Engineer Grasmann. Do not enter without knocking!' he burst into Grasmann's office and immediately started explaining the problem in a hasty torrent of technical words. .P .P "I planned on using an exponentially expanding megaphone" said Professor Gander, "but your advice would imply that I close it off with a wall and a small exit pipe, rather like the DKW research indicates." .P "I don't know that paper, show me" said Grasmann. .P "Here it is. But just a moment, you said that would only work at one resonant frequency. So it would be better to have several restrictions at various positions, or to alter the length of the pipe as a function of the speed of rotation of the engine. But that sounds mechanically complicated. It might be better to design the exhaust for the best frequency, say my 10000 rpm I calculated earlier, and then have some kind of sleeve valve to raise and lower the exhaust port position in the cylinder (as a function of engine speed),to stop the productive hot gases leaving the cylinder too early at lower revs. After all, the MZ research on disc valves indicates that they produce a lot of peak power, but are rather weak on torque lower down. Their torque curve is not flat like the four-strokes' are, but has a pronounced peak, which makes the power delivery even peakier, since power equals torque times revs." lectured Professor Gander. .P "That sounds good" said Grasmann "Also if you use an exponential expansion starting at the exhaust port, then you should probably not use a vertical cut-off plate like DKW, but rather close the megaphone off with a reverse cone leading into a small diameter pipe. The reverse cone will help to spread the resonance effect across a wider range of engine speeds, so your engine won't be as 'peaky' as the MZ results show, but will still resonate at peak revs properly. Lend me your slide rule, and I'll use these DKW tables and some Me262 numbers of my own and, let me see now. Ummmm, just a minute, there, that's it, I suggest these dimensions for your exhaust pipe for you to achieve peak power at 10000 rpm" he said, pushing an old used envelope across the table to Professor Gander. On the back of the envelope he had scribbled his gas flow equations and the resulting numeric solution for his suggested exhaust pipe. .P "Thankyou. I'll get Wolfgang to weld up an exhaust chamber to these sizes, and we'll try it out on the dynamometer when we get started. We are going to build a little 125cc single first, and tune that on the brake, before building the four." Gander explained "So it'll be a couple of months before we are ready, but I'll keep in touch and tell you of our results." he said hurrying off. .P "Just be sure to give me credit when you publish your research results paper" called Grasmann after the rapidly disappearing back "Because, I'm leaving the university next week to go to work for the race department of Adler, in Frankfurt. So we may not see much of each other in the future" he explained, little realising what parallel paths their research would follow over the coming year. .P Back in his lab, Professor Gander saw that Wolfgang had set up two drawing boards on the well lighted side over by the big bay windows that looked out across the campus towards the library. He had even clamped one of these new-fangled neon strip lights along the top each drawing board, obviously with the intention of working nights as well as by daylight. Not a bad idea with the short winter days ahead, he thought. The dynamometer had obviously been cleaned, for it glistened with an oily sheen and the big brake pads had been renewed while he had been in the library. Wolfgang was reading another of Claggs' race reports about Geoff Duke's victories that past summer. .P "Just as well that one of us can read english" remarked the Professor sitting down to write down the results of his discussion with Engineer Grasmann in his grubby little exercise book. Then he gave Grasmann's sketch to Wolfgang and said "Our collegue Grasmann is leaving us to tune two-strokes for Adler in Frankfurt. But before he leaves he calculated this new type of exhaust system for us. He calls it an acoustic resonance pipe. Seeing as you've already set up the drawing boards, why don't you redraw his sketch as a proper blueprint?" he offered "Meanwhile, let me read some of those Earnie Claggs' race reports, to see if he says what other racing machine constructors are doing for next season." .bp .HF off .sp 4 .ft B .ce Chapter Three .sp 2 .ce Bracebridge Street Blues .R .KE .sp 2 .vs 14p .ft R .P Ernie Claggs sat quietly in front of his battered old travelling typewriter flexing his intertwined fingers and staring at the still-barren sheet of paper in it. No inspiration today, he thought, the muse has fled me. He fiddled with his pipe, a Meerschaum 'acquired' as war booty during his time with MI6 working in counter-espionage in Germany during and just after the war. The delicious smell of Black Russian Sobranie tobacco, or 'evil old socks' as his landlady called it, rapidly filled the room, causing the landlady's cats to leave in high disdain. The 1952 racing season was drawing to a close, and as a freelance writer he needed to produce material to sell to the motorcycle press over the coming winter if he was to be able to pay the rent. And there were always other writers, like Vic Willoughby or Bob Whatshisname eager to improve their journalistic reputations by writing articles that took the bread from his mouth, he reflected almost bitterly. "What I need," he said aloud "is a longer story that I can serialise, with enough emotional content that even the sports pages of the gutter press buy my copy". Silence echoed its empty reply loudly through his head. "Like a temporarily dumb cat" he punned to himself "No mews today!". Earnie was a great one for puns. The cat has left the room so I can write now, his brain continued, no mews is good muse.It was his greatest joy to invent subtle hidden puns that would explode several minutes or even hours later in his readers' minds. He had enjoyed the work at MI6 because it had involved hidden secrets too. "In an ideal world, I would be a comedian, not just a journalist" he mused. Still no inspiration Idly he read the label on the typewriter. "Smith" it read. .P "Eureka! That's it!" he shouted aloud "Gilbert Smith. Managing director at Norton! He's upset with Geoff Duke, I know. I'll do a piece on the Bracebridge street Nortons. Interview Smith, Joe Craig and Geoff Duke and needle them about their relationships and plans for the 1953 season." He ran down the stairs through the hall, forgetting to put his jacket on, but automatically grabbed his weather-beaten old 'Sherlock Holmes' deerstalker and trotted over the road to the bright red call-box. At Norton, he got through to Gilbert Smith's secretary and arranged an interview for the following morning, and a further one with Joe Craig for the afternoon. Then he trotted, still excited by the flash of inspiration, on down to the station and bought a return ticket to Bracebridge Street for the 'morrow. Satisfied, he trotted back to his digs and , self-satisfied, made himself a cuppa and relit the pipe which had smouldered forlornly to a finish in his absence, dropping ashes into the typewriter. "Just as well the landlady didn't see that" he thought "or I would have been subject to a half-hour tirade on the dangers of fire." The thought of the word fire sent shivers down his spine. He had been an official MI6 observer on board a Lancaster that night in '45 when they had bombed the hell out of (or rather into) Dresden. His conscience still plagued him every time he thought of the fire-storm. Irritated and feeling guilty, he blew the ashes out of the Smith and inserted a virginal sheet of white bonded paper into the typewriter. .P "First I need an attention-grabbing headline, to make the readers sit up and pay attention, then I should write some background material about the 1951 season, and Duke's success on Nortons" he said to himself scanning through his old notes. Never throw anything away was his motto: one that had made his filing system famous within MI6. His tea grew cold. Then he sat down in front of the typewriter again, and, guiltily remembering to extinguish his pipe, began to write: .sp 2 "Will Geoff Duke leave Norton? Fast fighter favours factory fours!" he wrote in doubly spaced capital letters at the top of the sheet. That'll get 'em hooked, he thought, now for the deep background meat for them to sink their teeth into, before we get back to the intrigues! .sp 2 'Geoff Duke, our lancashire lad, is 29 now. He'll be 30 next year, maybe to old for motorbike racing. And Norton aren't too pleased with him now. Geoff joined Norton in January of 1948. Gilbert Smith (Norton's managing director) promised him support for the 1948 Senior Clubman's TT, but the ACU rejected his entry on the basis of inexperience (sic!). Accepted for the 350cc Manx Grand Prix, he was leading the race (on his very first island tour; eat your hearts out, TT-selectors!) when forced to retire due to a split oil tank. Joe Craig, Norton's team manager and chief development engineer was much impressed by angle at which young Duke cranked the garden-gate Norton through Brandish Corner. This led to a place alongside the works' team under Steve Lancefield's Management in 1949 ; Joe Craig liasing with BRM who had been given the task of building the ill-fated straight four for Norton, a task at which they failed terribly. Of course our Geoff won the Clubman's TT, despite having only an International Norton instead of a factory Manx. His fast cornering speed saved the day when, forgetting the International's abominably small front brake drum, he almost overran the Governor's Bridge Corner. Having been thrown off in the Skerries 100, which put him into Dublin hospital for a week, he turned up for MGP practice week with his leg still in plaster. Plucky little Geoff Duke won the 1949 Senior MGP of course, no questions asked! .P .P In 1950, Smith put our Geoff in the official works team. With Artie Bell and our Geoff, Norton bagged no less than 21 world records at Montlh‚ry. Duke, a bright lancashire lad, recognised here the importance of wind resistance on top speed. So he trotted on home to St Helens, where the local tailor, one Frank Barker, sewed him an extremely close-fitting one-piece lightweight leather racing suit. This was Duke's invention, which was soon adopted by other riders in the following seasons. If only Duke had thought to patent the idea, he would have been a richer lad by now. As it was, Barker changed completely from regular tailoring to the sole business of making racing leathers for riders. Norton were as tight-fisted as ever, and didn't even want to pay for the repairs to the broken rear axle of the Montlh‚ry transporter, because the van was Duke's private property, they claimed. No wonder our Geoff was somewhat p*ss*d off at them. Barker made Duke a pair of pull-on close-fit racing boots too, having seen how the wind pressure caused normal boots to flatter in the wind. Geoff had to pay for these out of his own pocket too, no wonder he's upset with Norton now. .P Joe Craig had built new Nortons for 1950, with a duplex looped McCandless' frame, which Harold Daniell nicknamed "The Featherbed" due to their vastly improved handling over the earlier garden-gate frames. The name stuck. Daniell, who was 41 that year, came third in the Junior TT. A local paper ran the headline 'Britain's fastest Granpa prefers a featherbed.' Our Geoff won the Senior TT, but Norton still scolded him because his tank was run dry as he crossed the line. .P At the Belgian grand Prix in Spa Duke had his first encounter with the all-new Gilera italian four. Of course the far more powerful four-cylinder Gilera just ran away from the Nortons and Les Graham's AJS Porcupine on the straights. Our bright Geoff though tucked in behind the Gilera for an aerodynamic tow along the straights, and then whipped out of the shadows to take them on the inside of the corners, using the superior road-holding of the featherbed Norton and the no less famous Duke angle-of-lean. However, it was all to no avail, as the Dunlops on all the works Nortons shed their treads. The same thing happened at the Dutch TT, throwing our Geoff off. At the Italian GP Les Graham's AJS ran away from the Gilera fours, which were sliding around like overpowered drunken pigs in the wet. .P At Monza, Masetti on the Gilera four which Taruffi had tuned specially, could pass our Geoff on the straights whilst sitting bolt upright. All of us watching journalists knew then that the days of the Norton singles were numbered. Imagine having a Norton frame for the Gilera; the handling would be magnificent and the power unbeatable. BRM still hadn't come up with a reliable car engine, let alone the four-pot for Norton. I think Monza in 1950 set the seed of doubt in our Geoff's mind. .P Last year (1951) Norton acquired a new Polish research engineer with some revolutionary ideas. His invention of the squished form of cylinder head together with a flat-topped piston gave the Nortons about 30% more power. The 350 for example now delivered 36 of the gee-gees at 8000 revs instead of only 28 ponies at 7200 rpm. True to form our Geoff won the Junior TT at record-breaking speed. For the Senior another italian four appeared, the then new and unproven MV four, with Les Graham (ex AJS) in the saddle. Lucky for the Norton singles, the MV four, so obviously superior on power, retired with valve-gear trouble at the end of only the second lap. At Spa-Francorchamps the Italians however got the unpleasant surprise when Bill Doran's twin AJS Porcupine ran away from them with the fastest practice lap. Duke however won the race for Norton, again by their combined cornering virtues. To Norton's annoyance however, he no longer wore the plain white Cromwell helmet with the Norton Logo written on the front. Instead he had a stripe down the centre and an oval on either side. No Norton Logo. Aha, we journalists thought, has there been some kind of disagreement? .P At the Dutch Grand Prix in Assen it poured with rain during the 350cc race and the entire Norton team fell off. Geoff looked rather chastised after a heated discussion with the Norton team management. Sneaking into the pits at that time I saw that he had tried to saw some cuts into the treads of his tyres, presumably to make them less prone to aquaplaning. If Norton had seen this I guessed I knew why Duke had got it in the neck! .P In France and in Monza the Gilera fours again just ran away from the works' Nortons. Although Duke became sportsman of the year for being the first rider winning a double world title in the same year, and Norton, through his efforts won the Manufacturer's championship, Duke had stated publicly that a British four was needed for this 1952 season. And BRM, and thus Norton failed to deliver! So Duke left Norton and set up a motorcycle business in his home town in Lancashire, although he refused to tell us journalists exactly why; everybody was keeping their lips sealed! .P This year, Duke raced cars several times for Aston Martin, but, I surmise, Smith had cajoled him into still riding for Norton, because he still appeared for the Norton team, despite the lack of the promised BRM four-cylinder engine. While the 350s are still competitive (Duke won the Swiss GP, The Isle of Man TT, the Dutch TT and the Belgian GP), the Senior 500cc bikes were outclassed. Duke retired in the Swiss GP and on the Island, and had to be content with second place in the Dutch TT and Belgian GP. The Bracebridge street machines could no longer take the more competitive stress of the Senior class, it seemed. Damaged cylinder heads and exhaust cam trouble, bad carburation and disintegrating clutch bearing cages are all witness to these problems this season. And Reg Armstrong was very lucky when winning the Senior TT that his primary chain waited until the very moment he crossed the finishing line before disintegrating and just plain dropping onto the road in front of the chequered flag! .P Trying too hard at the race in Schotten (Germany), our Geoff threw Number 84 down the road away in a big way and subsequently spent a three months in hospital. Norton were not pleased, as this seriously reduced their chances for the whole season, just to put it mildly.' .P Ernie Claggs peeled the sixth sheet of foolscap out of his trusty travelling typewriter and lit his pipe again, which was cold by now. "That'll get Smith and Duke talking. Maybe I'll give it to them to read just before I interview them. Then the sparks will fly. With any luck I'll get a scoop on the resulting verbal punchup." he said aloud to himself, gleeful in anticipation. "Now to bed, and tomorrow to Bracebridge street to hear them sing the blues!" he chortled. .P "Good Morning, Mr. Smith, thankyou for granting me this interview" said Ernie looking around Gilbert Smith's office at all of the photographs on the walls and the trophies on the shelves. "My name is Earnie Claggs, and I'm a free-lance motorcycling journalist...." .P "I am aware of that, Mr. Claggs, you do have a popular following you know, and our PR department keeps a scrap-book of all newspaper and magazine articles in which the name Norton appears you know. We did prefer your articles when they just straightforwardly reported our Norton successes you know. Polemic attacks about being outclassed by Italian designs is hardly conducive to the prosperity of the british motorcycle industry, as I'm sure you realise." .P "True, Mr. Smith, true. But it they also happen to sell better to the local and national non-trade papers, which happens to be my business. As long as you continue to win, you effectively get free publicity through my articles. So it's up to you really." Claggs explained sweetly. "However, let's not get off on the wrong foot. I just want to know about your relationship with Geoff Duke, and if he is going to be riding Nortons next season. After all he did grant me an interview while he was still in plaster, and he seems to think the Norton singles are no longer competitive....." .P "Geoff Duke is a part-owner of a motorcycle business in St. Helens in Lancashire. He is not an employee of Norton, as I'm sure you are aware, Mr. Claggs. It is my opinion that he spends too much time attending motorcycle club dinner/dances and too little time keeping fit for first-class racing! And I have told him so to his face!" Smith exploded. .P "Mr. Duke tells me he believes social occasions to be part of his obligations to your factory" Claggs said smoothly, pushing Smith still closer to the edge. "He says that he is forced to make desperate attempts to pass the Gileras in the corners, as for example in Spa and in Assen, and that constantly having to have to corner on the limit caused the terrible crash he had in Germany this summer." .P "No comment. I believe it was just a lack of concentration, after all he was leading at the time; the Gileras are unreliable you know." said Smith coldly. .P "The half-liter Nortons haven't been particularly free of breakdowns either" Claggs interjected "And the fours are obviously faster. Duke is on record as having said he needs a four to win next season in 1953. Where is the new water-cooled four-cylinder engine whose development you farmed out to BRM?" asked Claggs, skilfully disguising the rumour as a fait- accompli part of the question (a technique he had learnt in MI6). .P "Harumph..., Ah, well you see BRM are having trouble developing their 16 cylinder car engine, so they haven't been able to devote all the resources we expected to our four. But our four will just be a quarter of their two-liter 16 cylinder car engine. So if - er I mean when - they get that working over the coming winter, then our four would be immediately available" said Smith, on the defensive now. .P "Duke doesn't believe that. In fact a little bird called Austin Munks tells me that Duke has been talking to Commandatore Gilera, and that Ken Kavanagh wants to stay the number one rider at Norton and doesn't want Duke back here ?" suggested Claggs slyly. .P "What! Talking to Gilera behind my back !?!" stormed Smith, red faced again, "If that is true, then there is no place for Duke in the Norton Team!" .sp 1 GOTCHA ! thought Claggs silently but triumphantly, his scoop well and truly secured, more so than he had dreamed the day before, as he had extinguished his smouldering typewriter paper. .P The very next morning the headlines in the 'Birmingham Mail' screamed the Gilbert Smith quote at the astounded fans around the race-track at Silverstone. Not the least surprised being Geoff Duke himself who was busy practicing there on a 350 Norton! The Smith interview had paid off handsomely, thought Claggs as he saw the complete 'Duke/Norton'-story appear in the trade press the following week. .bp .HF off .sp 4 .ft B .ce Chapter Four .sp 2 .ce Bavarian Blue .R .KE .sp 2 .vs 14p .ft R .P The Professor and his wife sat quietly at home, watching the new-fangled black and white television that the Soviets had introduced to demonstrate the superiority of soviet technology. It was a rare privilege to own one of the new TV sets, and the Ganders enjoyed the associated status it gave them. Normally there was a waiting list of over a year for delivery of the new-fangled machines, but since the Professor had agreed to partake in the research project as proposed by Pietrov Ismailovitch, the burocratic hassles that they were used to, seemed to have lessened, he reflected. His wife had remarked over dinner earlier that, although she still had to queue up at the shops as usual, they seemed to be better stocked, at least they had no longer run out of meat at the butcher's shop when she got to the head of the queue, as had often happened in the past. And they greeted her by name now, and not just as an anonymous number in the queue. To himself, the Professor recognised the correlation for what it was, not just the whims of pure chance nor a sudden general improvement in the state's economic plan for 1952. His subconscious mind also nagged him with the saying 'What is suddenly given, may be even more quickly taken away.'. Although he had started into the project last week with heart and soul, he realised at a deeper level what influence Ismailovitch wielded. .P "The glorious people's soviet republics achieved another symbolic victory over the despicable capitalist nations" shouted the television announcer, "Today in Novo Zimlaya, a nuclear device was tested which exceeds my a factor of three the megatonnage of the largest explosion that the abominable Americans have ever produced. The evil forces of capitalism must be aware of the people's right to defend themselves. Long live Joseff Stalin. Long live the U.S.S.R". The sound of the russian national anthem swelled up, followed by the anthem of the Democratic Republic of Germany, played somewhat more quietly. Still more propaganda, he thought sickly. In the west they had advertisments instead of propaganda he knew, wondering what was really better or worse. 'Between the devil and the deep blue sea' replied his subconscious mind. .P Tap, tap, tap. A short and subdued triple rap of the door knocker interrupted his thoughts. "Probably Dagmar at the door, looking to see if Wolfgang is here, having failed to find him at home in his flat" he said to his wife, levering himself out of his chair and turning the sound of the television off, leaving the propaganda announcer gesticulating wildly, but now somewhat ridiculously. .P "I doubt it" she replied "Wolfgang stays late every night in your labs now, working on that nasty man's project. He hasn't mentioned it to Dagmar of course." .P Professor Gander went to answer the quiet raps at the door. .P "Good evening, Comrade" said Ismailovitch from the shadows, "I have some information for you." .P "Ahh, Errr, Umm... well you'd better come in then" he replied with ill-graced annoyance. "Darling, it's Comrade Smile... ah,er, Ismailovitch. Why don't you go upstairs and leave us alone." he finished lamely. .P "Goodnight madam, I am sure you will sleep well. One usually does on a meat diet and a full stomach" he hinted meaningfully. "Let us sit down and drink a Stolichnaya together, my friend" he continued, talking to the Professor "then I will give you some information as I promised last week". .P Professor Gander went and got some glasses and silently accepted the proffered vodka. Ismailovitch slid a cardboard folder out of the briefcase and laid it quietly on the table between them. .P "Prost, comrade" said Ismailovitch "Let me read your project notebook, that old exercise book you keep.I will return it to you tomorrow morning at your laboratory in the university at nine o'clock. Be there on time. Wolfgang should be there too. I will have a solo machine for him to practice on, and an instructor for him. Then he won't need to ride that old Zundapp sidecar to work each morning. This evening you will also read this dossier. Do not copy out of it, and return it to me tomorrow morning too." .P "What's in the dossier?" asked the Professor, eyeing the white and blue folder suspiciously that lay silently on the table between them. .P "Why its the file on the BMW bikes and their development department of course, just as promised you." replied Ismailovitch, feigning hurt in his voice. .P "Ah yes, of course, you did say something about BMW. But I don't expect it to be very interesting. After all the BMW is a four-stroke you know and we are building a two-stroke as we agreed with you. Apropos two-strokes, my collegue Diplom Engineer Grasmann is leaving the university and turning his expertise to tuning two-stroke engines for Adler in Frankfurt am Main. It would be more useful if you could get information about Adler for us. And why shouldn't I copy relevant parts from this dossier, you surely don't expect me to remember it all photographically?" The Professor had plucked up courage and was querulous. .P "You may make notes if you wish, but be sure to use your own phraseology. we wouldn't want your notes to be recognisably part of the report" said Ismailovitch, visibly in a huff because the KGB folder had not been received with the awaited respect. "And remember you are working for me, and not the other way around" he barked,smiling tightly and icily, then swallowed both their vodkas, and stuffing the bottle back into the dilapidated brown briefcase, left the house rapidly but as quietly as he had arrived just ten minutes previously. .P The Professor looked at the dossier that Ismailovitch had brought with him. It was a white and blue plain cardboard folder containing about five sheets of paper. There were no indications on the folder of its KGB origin. The folder was simply closed with a plain piece of string. The string bore a seal of red sealing wax. There was nothing stamped in the wax in the way that state documents were usually sealed. Gingerly, he broke the seal. No alarms sounded, no bells rang. Reassured, he took out the five sheets of paper. Carbon copies. Paper not watermarked. Roman alphabet used,written in german but without any umlauts. So the typewriter used had been neither german nor russian, he deduced. Silently he began to read the contents of the dossier: .P "Report on the racing motorcycle development plans of the Bavarian Motor Works (BMW)", he read. "The racer development began 1935 under Schleicher and Hopf. Horizontally opposed twin, crankshaft along the axis of the bike, attached directly to an engine-speed single-plate clutch, which in turns feeds a four-speed foot-change gearbox driving a cardan shaft to the rear wheel. The front of the crankshaft bears a gearwheel driving two shafts via crown-wheels. The shafts turn overhead camshafts which open the valves via trailing cam-levers. Two valves per cylinder, closed by hairpin springs on a closed cambox. A second gearwheel, twice as large, drives the magnetos sitting on top of the engine. BMW will stay with this same engine concept for the forseeable future, even for the non-supercharged engines. However, this year (1952) BMW introduced a new frame and suspension system. No symmetrical vertical short-travel springs at the rear any more. Now they have a sprung rear subframe with long-stroked and well damped springs holding it. The subframe rotates about an axis just behind the gearbox. This axis is borne by the frame proper. The new front suspension system has a long-armed leading link Earles' fork instead of the telescopic fork of previous years' models. The petrol tank is voluminous and hangs deep down to just above the magnetos. During this season, the frame was changed again. It is now (suspiciously?) similar to the successful 'Featherbed' frame that Norton introduced. Experiments are also being made with fuel-injection, instead of normal carburation. The current racing version injects the fuel into the front of the trumpet shaped polished inlet. There is a still secret version in their research laboratories that injects the fuel into the inlet tract just in front of the throttle. This throttle no longer has a circular cross- section, rather it is a thin flat sliding plate on the lab's prototype. .P The research department is also developing a production racer, but we estimate that they are at least eighteen months away from completion; it may not be available until 1954. For the unlikely event that development be completed in time for it to compete next (1953) season, we append such data as are available: .P It will be named RS53 or RS54, depending on the date it is made available for sale. Carburettors instead of fuel injection, the latter being regarded as very experimental. BMW plan to build 25 of these racers, to give the up-and-coming riders (such as Riedelbach) a chance too. The engine has a 72 mm stroke and a 66mm bore. The current compression ratio of the sole prototype is 8 to 1, and secret test runs on the dynamometer show 34 kW at 8500 rpm already. We expect that a higher compression ratio will be used (since higher octane petrol is available than the 'pool' petrol of the immediate post-war era. The power will rise accordingly, but since the piston speed is already 204 meters per second, the engine cannot be made to rev much faster without causing reliability problems. For comparison the 1952 Manx Norton has a bore of 79 mm and an extremely long stroke of 100mm, so even at only 6000 rpm it also has 20 m/sec average piston speed. .P This machine weighs barely 130 kilograms. We have taken full- frontal photographs and calculated the frontal area. We therefore estimate that this machine should be able to reach an unstreamlined speed of 195 km/h, depending on the stature of the riders. The BMW works riders this year were Walter Zeller, Hans and George Meier (separate dossiers on these men can be compiled if necessary). Zeller is the rider favoured by the factory; we expect other accomplished riders such as Wiggerl Kraus to retire from active racing soon, either this winter, or at the end of the coming season. .P There are also rumours that, because of political infighting within the company, BMW has threatened to withdraw support for a works team and most of the racing research department if they do not consistently beat the Nortons over the next two seasons. We think this is a very limited period of grace for such a new machine, bearing in mind the very experimental nature of some of the BMW technology. A small group is working on a very advanced long-term project for a short-stroke (64mm) large-bore (70mm) engine. Theoretically this should turn over at 9000 rpm and, if we extrapolate that improvements in the quality of the fuel will permit compression ratios of ten and a half within two years, then this engine might deliver 48 to 49 kiloWatts. .sp 1 Summary: since we expect Norton to produce a short-stroke engined Manx Norton for next season, with better cornering clearance than the BMW, we do not expect BMW to be a serious threat to Norton in 1953 or even 1954. Remember also that Norton riders such as Geoff Duke already know all of the international racing circuits, and because we Germans were banned from international racing until this season, the BMW riders still have to learn them. This only serves to emphasize our opinion that BMW will not be very successful in the senior class (500cc)." .P Professor Gander looked around absentmindedly for his old exercise book in order to make some notes before he came out of his daydream and remembered that Ismailovitch had borrowed it. Going to the chest of drawers in the corner of the living room he took out a single sheet of poor quality paper from the meager stock his wife had deposited there, and sat down at the table, asking himself what the essence of the contents of the folder was. The KGB were very thorough he thought, but the details of their four-stroke engine wasn't going to be of any use to him, other than giving him a lower limit for the power his own engine would have to produce. No, he thought, if these dossiers are going to be of any use, then I will have to tell them what kind of data we need. .P Thumbing through the five thin sheets of the closely typed report he began to take telegram-style notes which he would transfer to his project notebook when it was returned to him: .P First, a longitudinal crankshaft is a bad idea due to the gyroscopic forces caused by such an arrangement which will cause the bike to lean over depending on the engine speed, and as a secondary effect will cause the rear suspension to rise on each gear change. Second, we must investigate why they think the Earles' fork is preferable to a telescopic fork. We will perhaps need the assistance of a physicist here, he thought, seeing as how suspension systems are not my speciality. Third, we should stick to carburettors, fuel injection is too experimental in the short term; on the other side, the idea of flat-slided throttles will reduce the overall width by perhaps 4 centimeters, which is important as the carbs jut out of the sides of the disc valves. Fourth, keep the weight well below 130 kg, and minimise the frontal area of the bike. Finally Wolfgang should study the riding styles of the famous riders to see what they do better than their less good competitors. .P Well satisfied with the action-list he had just written, the Professor started to put his pencil down. Then he smiled inwardly and pencilled in a final note before going to bed: Sixthly, keep a duplicate copy of all notes, just in case Ismailovitch decides to borrow the exercise-book 'permanently'. After all it was Joseff Stalin himself who had said "Trust is good, but mistrust is better". .bp .HF off .sp 4 .ft B .ce Chapter Five .sp 2 .ce Horex Imperator .R .KE .sp 2 .vs 14p .ft R .P Tuesday's sun arose wearily, as if it was itself damp and chilly. A thin layer of altostratus cloud had shoved itself between the sun and the Dresden skyline during the night, following the high cirrus ice clouds of the previous afternoon. As the sun fought to gain altitude in the bleak autumn sky the clouds thickened and lowered, presenting the promise of rain. Wolfgang looked out of the window after an early breakfast, and recognising the approaching warm-front for what it was, took the black waxed-cotton Belstaff riding suit out of the cupboard.Being careful not to sit anywhere on the upholstery, he sat instead on the tiled floor of the hallway while he pulled on the trousers that he had freshly waxed the previous evening, mindful of the approaching winter season. A freshly waxed Belstaff can cause black marks on the chairs and thus black looks from landladies. Then he would be the one with the black marks, and it would take weeks to get back on speaking terms. He pulled on the old army issue boots that he used for riding, and standing up, donned the jacket. He put a small hand towel around his neck before doing up the neckstrap of the Belstaff. The english riding suit was very waterproof, he mused, but the towel stops the drops that ran down his Cromwell helmet from running down inside his collar. .P "Going to rain today, is it ?" asked his fellow-lodger, coming into the hall " Because you only put that lot on when you're expecting a downpour. And you're not usually wrong, so I'd best take an umbrella too." .P "You do that" laughed Wolfgang "There'll be that interminable drizzle all afternoon and rain all night before it clears up tomorrow". He walked outside to his trusty old Zundapp sidecar outfit, peeled the silvery-grey waterproof cover off, and stowed it in the sidecar boot. Now for the morning ritual of persuading the stubborn old donkey of an engine to fire. .P Wolfgang repeated the procedure silently to himself, like a pilot reading off a checklist. Ignition off. Turn over the engine on the kickstarter a couple of times to break the cold oil seals and move each valve. Petrol tap open. Choke closed. Throttle closed. Tickle the float one-two-three-four seconds; that's enough or she'll flood the sparking plug wet and then we'll be here for at least another ten minutes.Using the kickstarter, bring the piston up to top-dead-centre (TDC) against the compression. Make sure it's the right TDC by listening whether the carburettor inhales; you don't want to be on the exhaust stroke! Remember to pull the ignition timing-point lever back to the 'retarded' position ( that saves a bruised ankle). Check that the gears are in neutral and turn on the ignition. Open the throttle about one quarter to one third. Final checklist item: pray! With a mighty leap on the kickstarter the engine blubbered reluctantly into its usual grumbling, uneven throttle-closed running: Blub, Blub, Bang, Bang, Blub, Bang, Brrm, Brrrrrrrrm, Brrm, Bang, Pop, Brrrrrm, Brrrrrrm. .P As the engine warmed Wolfgang offered quick thanks to heaven that the Zundapp had started without more than its usual unwillingness, and pulled on his left glove. It was not without reason that he had nicknamed the outfit "Oremus", he thought. And the local catholic priest had thought he was a devout lad for doing so, without divining the real reason. .P Opening the choke, Wolfgang chugged off to Dagmar's house to collect her. Bundling her into the sidecar he drove first to the library, where he dropped her off. Then he continued to the research institute, parking the machine just inside the wide sliding doors of the machine hall. He deposited the Belstaff in the sidecar which he then locked. .P "Good Morning Professor" he said as he walked breezily into Gander's office. "Oh, and morning to you Comrade Ismailovitch" he added, suddenly noticing the two men sitting across from the Professor. .P "Punctual as usual, Wolfgang" smiled Ismailovitch "May I introduce Werner Kowalski. He's here to teach you to ride the racer." .P "But I already know how to ride a motorbike, I've been doing it for over a year on the Zundapp, I don't need teaching!" protested Wolfgang. .P Werner smiled silently, then in a voice of infinite gentleness said "You ride well Wolfgang. Very well indeed. But you ride instinctively. I'm just going to give you some hints and teach you some of the basic physics of riding. Plus, Pietrov here has obtained some advertising films from the Shell Oil company, so we'll be able to see world class riders in action and study their styles. As soon as we agree that you are up to their standard you can be sure that I will withdraw. Once you're past the basics you will develop your own style anyway, and I will neither obstruct nor be obtrusive. I'm just here to help." .P "Well that's all right then" said Wolfgang, mollified by Werner's gentle tone. "But we'll need something to practice on while the racer is being built, and not something as lame as my old Zundapp." .P "Exactly" replied Werner "Come with me, Pietrov and I have a little surprise out in the back yard." .P All four of them clattered downstairs, led by an eager young Wolfgang; Werner smiled to himself, inwardly satisfied that Wolfgang's initial resistance had been lessened. .P There in the yard, strapped onto a car-trailer stood a gleaming Horex Imperator. Or what at appeared to Wolfgang's first impression to be a Horex Imperator twin. Then he noticed that it just resembled the roadworthy series-bike. But there was no lighting system. And no stands. And twin megaphones instead of silencers. And a hunch-backed bucket seat. And an open,dry clutch instead of the usual enclosed wet clutch. And short clip-on handlebars. .P "It's a 'Renn-Imperator'" he breathed, eyes wide. "I've only ever seen photos, never seen one in the flesh. I'll bet it goes like clappers. Let's go out to the aerodrome and try it out around the perimeter roads" he pleaded. .P "No, Wolfgang" said Werner smiling quietly "We'll do that this afternoon. I have to give you some background information first, and get you acquainted with the machine before you go haring off into the wild blue yonder, or more likely into the hedge at the first corner. This isn't a comic strip you know!" .P They all went back upstairs and Ismailovitch, grinning unusually, offered to make some coffee. Werner began to talk in his quiet unhurried manner: .P "The Horex factory is in the Taunus woods at Homburg, to the north of Frankfurt on Main, not all that far from the Adler works you know. Karl Braun from Karlsruhe was German national sidecar champion as early as 1935 on a Horex parallel twin, with Badsching in the sidecar. After the war Horex introduced the 'Regina' model at the end of the 1949 season. The Regina is a modern bike, with sprung rear wheel, a duplex frame not unlike the Norton Featherbed, a front brake drum that fills the whole width of the axle and a telescopic fork up front. So the handling is quite good, although not up to Featherbed standards, it's a whole lot better than the KR35 used to be. Sch”n raced the 350 Regina single at Eilenriede in 1950, overtaking all the imported 7R AJSs,but the float chamber broke off due to excessive vibrations, so he didn't finish. But the 350 single collected an impressive number of wins on local tracks." .P Ismailovitch reentered the room, accompanied by a fantastic smell. "Fresh coffee, comrades, courtesy of the black market" he announced proudly. Professor Gander enjoyed a taste he hadn't had for the last eight years, wondering awhile about the dubious contacts that Ismailovitch had. Wolfgang, who had never tasted it before, just complained that it didn't really taste like 'Mucke-fuch' at all; much too strong. .P "As I was saying, before we were so pleasantly interrupted" said Werner, smiling over the brim of his cup "The 350 was a mayfly, just for the 1950 season, because the chief Horex development engineer, Oelerich, together with Schlachter and Reeb were secretly building a 500cc square- headed double overhead camshaft twin with large-finned aluminium cylinders, and hairpin valve-springs. Mr. Norton himself still held the patent on desmodromic gear, and, although none of his motorcycles used desmodromic valve control, he wasn't about to license his patent to any potential competitor ( although he is known to be negotiating with Mercedes Benz who want to use desmodromic valve gear in their Silver Arrow racing cars." .P "Tell us more technical details, especially about the motor" interrupted the Professor. .P "Very well" continued Werner "Their experiments last year led to the use of a reverse cone at the end of the megaphone, this had the effect of spreading the power band wider. Pietrov tells me that Grasmann has suggested a similar idea for your two-stroke. The twin delivers at least 34 kiloWatt and is geared for 193 km/h down the straight. And that is without the delphin fairing they developed." .P "What is a delphin fairing?" interrupted Wolfgang. .P "It's a piece of aluminium hammered to provide a streamlined airflow around the handlebars, steering head and front of the tank. The cylinders are left exposed for cooling reasons, so the riders legs are still out in the breeze. However, there is a small perspex screen on top and a downwardly curved extension on the front that replaces the mudguard. This mudguard-cum-fairing has the same profile characteristic of a porpoise or a delphin, and that's where the nickname same from. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the Horex rider can tuck himself down behind the screen, his arms inside the fairing, and so keep out of the wind. And that makes the bike a lot faster; reportedly they can pull two teeth higher on the rear sprocket along the straights of the Avus in Berlin." .P "Aha, the drag coefficient is decreased" murmered the Professor, taking notes avidly in his dilapidated old exercise-book which had been returned to him earlier. "You still haven't told me enough. What's the bore and stroke, and how fast does the engine turn over?" .P "It's 65 by 75 mm, and it turns at 7000 rpm, Professor" interjected Ismailovitch " And if you don't believe me , you can measure it yourself, because the machine that Werner just described is the one that's lashed onto the trailer standing in the back yard." Professor Gander was speechless. .P "Wow!" breathed Wolfgang "34 kW, that's 45 PS as the english count! That's getting competitive with a Manx Norton! And that's for me to practice on? Little old me? I just can't wait; lead me on, when do we start?" .P "Calm down, Wolfgang said Werner. We all know that a Horex can run away from a Porsche sports car for example. But you just said some very important words, so I'd like to repeat them back to you, and the implications thereof." .P "What words?" .P "Little old me. Practice. 45 PS. And when do we start. Those are important words Wolfgang" said Werner earnestly."There's no use going at this project as if you were a jokey cartoonist who merely races as a hobby, this is serious business. Firstly, little: It's true you are little, one meter sixtytwo to be exact and you weigh about 60 kilos. I weigh eighty kilos in my leathers and am one meter eightyone high. So both in terms of potential acceleration you have a twenty kilo advantage, and in terms of top speed as limited by frontal area you have a potential advantage too." .P "You race too?" exploded Wolfgang incredulously. .P "Well yes, Wolfgang, otherwise I wouldn't be here to teach you; there would be no point." explained Werner quietly. Continuing he said "The second word was 'old'. I'm 46 now Wolfgang, and getting slower with age you see, being more careful, less risky. You however are still in your teens. And although you have a great natural talent, you still take too many risks. So my job is to make you simply aware of what you are doing at all times on the race track. That way, any risks are calculated ones, based on deep situational knowledge and my experience. Not risks taken in youthful hot-bloodedness. So the next word was 'practice'. And you are going to need lots of it. But you also need to get really fit. Despite your meagre 60 kilos, you probably couldn't run a kilometer in less than three minutes" Werner smiled sweetly but knowingly. "Racing a motorbike is sheer hard physical work demanding a great deal of uninterrupted concentration and powers of observation. It's not just sitting on top and turning a twistgrip like it is on the Zundapp you have 'acquired'. .P Wolfgang turned light pink, whether from embarrassment or guilt, only he knew. .P Werner continued: "The next word was 45 PS. You must realise that if we are to win, Gander's design mus produce about 70 KiloWatt or 90 PS. After all the Gilera four stroke fours are up to around 70 PS. we can ignore the Nortons with their measly 50 PS. And that is a whole new dimension for you. You've been used to that Zundapp with twenty, maybe thirty PS. And we have to train you for 90 PS. So the Horex is just an intermediate step. It will get you used to a solo motorcycle and 50 PS, now that 'Oilyfoot' Oelrich has tuned it. But then you'll need another giant step. doubling the power again perhaps. So there's no point you learning exact braking points or what gear to be in on what corner, because Gander's two- stroke will be different again from the Horex. But the Horex is a necessary intermediate step." he admonished. "Finally, when do we start, I suggest right now, before the rain starts this afternoon. The Horex has raced one full season, so it is well run in, even if rather unreliable. Let's just drive the trailer out to the aerodrome and ride it around the perimeter track." .P No sooner said than done. At the seldomly used aerodrome they unloaded the Horex and warmed it up carefully. .P "Wolfgang, just drive it around, being careful not to drop it due to the gravel on the inside of each corner. When you've got the feel of it wave as you go past us, and Pietrov will use his stopwatch to time your laps. I will walk around the inside of the track, to see how you take the corners." Werner said "And if you go too fast too soon, or if you drop it, I will personally beat the living daylights out of you!". .P Wolfgang rode off for the first lap.And a second, and a third. Then he began going faster, now that he knew where the corners were. Lap six, and he almost overshot the righthander at the end of the long straight; the Horex' brakes weren't really up to the power if the engine and had faded slightly. Lap seven was slower being more cautious. At the end of lap nine Wolfgang waved at Pietrov as he passed him and really started piling on the coals. .P "I'll show them, with their emphasis on training" Wolfgang thought, "I've got the hang of this now, I'll show them how to race this Horex!". Lap ten: Two minutes and sixteen seconds. With a flying start Wolfgang tucked himself behind the flyscreen on the little aluminium 'Dolphin' and peeled off two minutes and fourteen seconds for lap eleven. During lap twelve he frightened himself again as the Horex' drum brakes faded a little, and turned in two minutes and fifteen seconds. Then he toured on, slowing down for a final circuit and stopped next to the excited trio abeam the trailer. .P "How was that " he beamed "fantastic, hey. Soon got the hang of it didn't I?". First spots of rain began to fall. .P "Not bad at all, Wolfgang" said Werner "Although you are taking the wrong line in places, braking too early and ignoring the road surface conditions too. But we'll soon get that sorted out, just a few months practice I promise you......" .P "What?" exploded Wolfgang "You loudmouth! Call yourself a trainer? If you and your old pot belly can do any better I'll eat my helmet!" he screamed angrily, alternating between red and white facial colours as he remembered how near he had been to sliding off. .P Werner said nothing.He just got on the Horex, put on his helmet which had been lying on the trailer, bump-started the engine again and nodded to Pietrov who had the stop-watch. Then he took off like a scalded cat, rear wheel spinning slightly, throwing up a little plume of rainwater. Rainwater flavoured with burnt rubber. As he changed up, the front wheel could be seen pawing the air before he disappeared from view into the first lefthander. The high whine of 7000 rpm dropped as he screamed past after his first lap, spraying a high wet plume behind him. .P "Two minutes ten seconds" said Pietrov with a straight face, "And in the wet from a standing start". Wolfgang looked incredulous. The second lap was two minutes even. Wolfgang looked chastised at the cold ticking evidence of Pietrov's stopwatch.The final lap was one minute fifty-eight. Wolfgang was mortified. Werner rolled the Horex quietly up to the trailer after his three laps and killed the engine. Apart from the creaking and cracking of the engine cooling you could have heard a pin drop. The rain was pouring steadily now. .P "As I was saying, Wolfgang, you need to improve your style a little. And that takes practice,practice, practice." .bp .HF off .sp 4 .ft B .ce Chapter Six .sp 2 .ce Starting small .R .KE .sp 2 .vs 14p .ft R .P Back in the university laboratories Professor Gander first of all made a hot cup of coffee for everyone, on the excuse that everybody was chilled by the rain and thus needed warming up. Really of course, he was hungry for Ismailovitch's fresh ground black market coffee. Secretly he spooned some into an envelope to take back to his wife, where he would brag that he himself had bought it on the black market. Silently the three of them, Wolfgang, Werner and himself sipped the dark smooth liquid blackness. .P "Ahhhh." sighed the Professor appreciatively, finishing his cup, "Now to business. Yesterday we decided to go for a two stroke disc-valve four. But for economic reasons, as well as ease of tuning, I think we should build a 125cc single first. This would have the advantage that we can test and tune it on our existing dynamometer. And we won't get any masking effects due to minor inequalities in the cylinders. Yesterday I read up on the necessary background information. I have decided that we shall build an oversquare cylinder, that is, the bore larger than the stroke. I suggest 56 mm bore and 50.6 mm stroke. That gives us 498cc for the four, and lets the engine rev reliably at 10000 and rev on up to 11500 if necessary. Our collegue Grasmann, who incidentally will be leaving us soon to tune two-stroke racers for Adler in Frankfurt, was kind enough to give me the benefit of his experience and has suggested a preliminary design for what he calls an acoustically resonant exhaust chamber." .P "Whoa, that's much too fast for me Professor" cried Wolfgang "Everybody else uses long-stroke small bored engines. Allegedly it gives them more low- and mid-range torque. Why do we have to go off into the unexplored territory of large bore short-stroke oversquare cylinders?" .P "It's a matter of logical necessity my lad" he replied condescendingly. "You see there is a known limit at which metal may rub against metal. So the average piston speed dictates the speed at which the engine may turn. And the more power strokes per minute the better. So shorter strokes make for more revs which make for more power. Now since the engine will be turning over faster, we have much less time to get the burnt mixture out of the cylinders and to transfer the fresh mixture from the crankcase into the combustion chamber. So the more ports we can have in the cylinder wall, and the wider the transfer ports are, the more mixture we can pump through the cylinder in the limited time available." .P "I understand" replied Wolfgang "Do go on, please." .P "Now the exhaust gases are under high pressure, so they more or less take care of themselves. Because the disc valves feed the mixture directly into the crankcase, we don't have to sacrifice any of the circumference of the cylinder for inlet ports, so we can dedicate most of it to transfer port area. However we will still need to have about eight or nine posts in the cylinder wall to stop the piston rings expanding out into the port areas under the pressure of their own springs. Because then they could jam in the ports and ruin the engine. So I suggest we use a single wide exhaust port, with a bridging post down the centre to stop the piston rings entering the port. That leaves us with room for seven transfer ports, separated by posts to keep the piston rings in place. And we'll splay the two transfer ports that are next to the bridged exhaust port slightly away from the exhaust ports. That will keep the fresh gas swirling in the cylinder longer with less chance of it sneaking out the side." .P "Talking of pistons and piston rings" Werner interrupted "It seems to me that it would be desirable to keep the oscillating masses as low as possible, so we should keep the pistons light and have as few rings as possible. Perhaps we don't really need two compression rings at the top and an oil scraper at the bottom. After all, on a racer we are not particularly concerned about a somewhat higher oil consumption." .P "True, true" continued the Professor, now in full flight of his technical dreams, and not easily stopped. "That is an excellent idea Werner, I might almost have said it myself" .P "You will, you undoubtedly will" said Werner sotto voce, smiling to himself. .P "We can choose then, between cast-iron cylinder liners which have the advantage of not being so sensitive to differential thermal expansion as aluminium liners; and alternatively aluminium liners, with the problems I just stated, and which would need to be nikasil-plated to achieve the necessary hardness. The cast iron cylinders probably need two rings, and with the aluminium liners we can probably get away with having just one, which would keep the pistons lighter as you suggested. I have another idea too: if we plate the pistons with molybdenum then we get a smooth finish and the necessary hardness and don't need to spend time running the pistons in." "Let's go for the single piston ring in a nikasil-coated aluminium cylinder then" said Werner "After all the engine is going to be liquid cooled so that should minimise any potential thermal distortion problems." .P "Yes. That's decided then." said the Professor, rapidly entering notes into his precious exercise book. "Grasmann also gave me a theoretical idea for the exhaust port. Something he's never tried out though. He suggests that we put a sleeve valve around the cylinder and use it to vary the position of the edge of the exhaust port depending on the engine speed." .P "Well that's not a particularly bright idea," interrupted Wolfgang scathingly "as any fool can see. If we use all of the circumference of the cylinder for transfer ports, then there are going to be so many cut-outs in the sleeve valve that we won't be able to guide it properly. Plus, if we connect that sleeve valve to the twistgrip then its position won't vary with engine speed but with the butterfly valves in the throttle." .P "Oh dearie me, oh dear." wailed the Professor "That's right." .P "I've got a suggestion" Werner put in gently "We could use a semi-cylindrical valve, twice the diameter of the exhaust pipe. Put it directly adjacent to the normal exhaust port. Then we could use the pulses from one of the new electrical rev-counters and rectify them to provide current for a little electric motor to open the valve as a true function of the engine speed. It wouldn't need to work over the whole range, I guess the top quarter of the rev range, above 7500, we will need the valve fully open anyway." .P "That sound terribly complicated," replied the Professor doubtfully, "and probably liable to vibration problems, you know how sensitive electrical systems are to vibration. Why I remember during the war ....." .P "Well then" Werner butted in, blocking off the boring reminiscences before they could get established. "I'll make you a deal. I'll build such a set-up with an electrically controlled semi-cylindrical valve in the cylinder head. And if it doesn't work like Grasmann says it should, then we'll replace it with a straight feed-through into the exhaust pipe, OK?" he said brightly. .P "Er, um, well yes. I don't suppose we can go wrong there, seeing as how it leaves us both options open. And Grasmann is a bright fellow after all, so there may be something in it. Okay" the Professor agreed, jotting yet another design decision into his dilapidated little exercise book. .P "Good, that's that then." breezed Werner briskly. "Now what about the inlet side?" .P "Disc valves we said" put in Wolfgang, more to show that he was still there and paying attention rather than in the hope of making any really constructive contribution. .P "Yes Werner. Disc valves." smiled Professor Gander gently. "After all they give us the potential advantage of asymmetrical inlet timing. But we don't really know either exactly when they should open, nor when they should close. And MZ haven't published the results of their research. I know, because your girl friend Dagmar tried looking them up for me in the library the other day. And there weren't any; MZ play their cards very close to their chests and keep it all a factory secret. I suppose we could ask Ismailovitch to try to find out. But we'll make up a half a dozen different discs, no lets say nine, with three different opening angles and three different closing angles and try them out ourselves. And if we put them on a finely splined shaft, then we can even vary their absolute angles finely too. That's probably faster than having Ismailovitch spying for secret results. After all, he had the BMW dossier more or less up his sleeve when we started. Let's see how long it takes him to find out data about the Adler machines. Besides the KGB is probably better able to collect data in the capitalist part of occupied Germany than in the soviet occupied zone of our DDR. And there's no way we want to go and ask the Stasi anything!" .P "Well OK" replied Wolfgang "and even I can understand that we need to pre-compress the mixture to force it through the transfer ports. The piston does that as it comes down. So to get a good compression we need to minimise the volume of the crankcase. So that means making the connecting-rod as narrow as possible and putting full size, narrow-clearance flywheels on the crankshaft instead of the bobweights you used on the Trabbi design. If we keep the piston skirts short too, then we can reduce the length of the con-rod which helps keep the crankcase volume small" Wolfgang said brightly, happy that he was able to contribute to the discussion again. .P Werner chipped in "Actually, when I referred to the inlet side, I was thinking more about the carburation, you know. We want to be able to lean the bike over hard, Professor, without having an unnecessarily high centre of gravity. This means minimising the width of the engine block. The corollary of that is that the carburettors must have very short stubs leading to the disc valves, almost no length at all in fact. And the inlet horns for the carbs will either have to be very short too, of we bend them forward through ninety degrees to get an additional ram-air effect at high speed." .P "Yes, I've recognised that problem and made some notes the other day" said the Professor flipping back in his notebook. "The average gas velocity dictates that we aim for 26,27, or 28 mm diameter inlet diameter at the carburettor throats. And the butterfly valves for the throttles are superfluous. we can cut down on overall width by using a flat slide, like on the BMW injectors. However neither Amal nor Dell' Orto make a flat-slide carb, so we'll have to make it ourselves. I'll put one of the students on the job; Michael can build them after he has finished the tyre friction measurements. He can build it in 28 mm and put constricting rings in if we need them smaller." .P "Okay. And the output side ? what about Grasmann's suggestion?" Wolfgang asked the Professor. .P "Ah yes. You're good at welding lad. Much better than I am. Here's Grasmann's sketch. You weld up an exhaust system like this over the next few weeks and we'll try it out. In the meantime I'll spend the next few days drawing up the blueprints for the motor incorporating all the decisions we made today. As I said, we'll build a 125cc single first and tune that, before we go on to the four. Werner, would you arrange with the university's experimental foundry facilities for them to cast the motor block in aluminium for us? Reserve some time with them for next week for us, I'll need a week to do all the drawings probably". .P "Will do, Prof." replied Wolfgang "But I need some data from you for my own purposes. This engine is going to have a very narrow power band, even compared with the Gilera. After all, it's oversquare, short stroked and uses that acoustic resonance trick to get more peak power. Now the Norton uses four gears. And the Gilera reputedly five. So if I'm going to design the gearbox for the four I need to know how many gears you think we'll need. And I'll need to know the maximum power output each gear needs to transmit, so I can decide on the width of each cog." .P "I guess we should have seven or eight gears, and we might achieve 90 kilowatts one day" said the Professor after some thought. .P "No way I can keep count of eight gears" interjected Wolfgang quickly. .P "He's right you know. With too many gears any rider will probably lose count. Anyway eight gears each capable of transferring 90 kW would make the whole assembly far too wide. I suggest six as a good compromise. With six you won't lose count, and I can build the box narrow enough. Besides if the idea of the exhaust port variable timing valve works as well, then that should spread the power somewhat." .P "All right then. Six. Now let's all get to work. we want to have the single running on the brake by the end of this month!" .bp .HF off .sp 4 .ft B .ce Chapter Seven .sp 2 .ce Tricks of the trade .R .KE .sp 2 .vs 14p .ft R .P "First things first" said Werner to Wolfgang and the other three students assembled in the lab. "As you all know, the cornering speed of a motorcycle depends on the radial acceleration that can be achieved. The theoretically possible radial acceleration obviously depend on the coefficient of friction between the rubber of the tires and the various types of road surface. We need to measure that. Anybody got any ideas how? That can be a degree project, but we need answers quickly." .P "I have a suggestion" piped up Michael, one of the brighter students. "I'll get half a dozen planks, take them down to the Department of Road Maintenance at the town hall, and ask them to coat them with the different types of tar, bitumen,asphalt of whatever they use. They can do it whenever they're out repairing the roads; they do that each autumn anyway before the winter ice ravages more potholes. And I'll cast a concrete slab myself. Then we'll suspend the Horex from a crane and lower it onto one of the coated planks. We then gradually tip the plank sideways until the Horex starts to slip, and measure the angle of the plank where the slip starts. Because that's what we really need to know. The angle, I mean" he finished excitedly. .P "Good idea Michael" Werner responded enthusiastically "You go off and get started. I'll ask comrade Pietrov to acquire different makes of racing tyres, and then you can do comparative measurements. The second problem though is to make the rider aware of how close he is to the maximum possible angle of lean. So we have a psychological problem and we need reliable means of measuring the lean angle when travelling at speed on possibly uneven surfaces. That's the purely mechanical problem; anybody got an idea ?" .P "Yes" replied Dieter, another of the students. "We can do two things. We can build a small accelerometer and mount it next to the revcounter in the riders field of view. We graduate the scale expanding it tangentially giving the angle of lean. Or we could attach a stiff piece of thick wire, probably a piece of welding rod would do, to the Horex front down tubes. We bend the rod downwards at about 45 degrees. Depending on the length of the rod we use the lower end will start to scratch the road surface earlier or later. The rider hears the scratching noise and knows when to stop leaning. Depending on the angles that Michael measures, we can make the rod a little bit longer, so that it warns us just before break-away would occur." he suggested. .P "Well maybe" said Werner "However, your accelerometer will probably be rather susceptible to bumpiness of the roads; you see it's not just a problem in theoretical physics, we have to consider the real world" he explained gently, to avoid undue disappointment on Dieter's part. "The rod sounds like a better idea, but you will have to bear a couple of things in mind. The rod will wear out at the lower end, and it must me stiff enough not to get bent back, but not thick enough to lever the bike off the road, like a side-stand sometimes does. I suggest you shape the lower end of the rod into a semicircle pointing backwards, that way the lowest point of the rod gives the acoustic warning, but has no real leverage on the frame. Try both ideas, Dieter, to see which is more practicable. Personally I think the rod will be the better idea, because the angle a rider leans over is mostly a psychological problem. So we make your rod long at first, and when Wolfgang can scratch it consistently without getting nervous, we shorten it. By repeating the procedure we can train you for large angles of lean near the limit, and consistently, without fear setting in Wolfgang. And Dieter can maybe patent the idea if it turns out to be good. You know, beginners only bank over about twenty degrees, riders on public roads about thirty, and racers like Schorsch Meier and Geoff Duke about forty to fortyfive. Wolfgang was leaning about thirty to thirtyfive degrees out at the aerodrome the other day." .P "What about us?" asked the other three students who had been silent until now "What should we do?" .P "Well one of the secrets of high speed racing is out- cornering the others. And that's not all done by angle of lean. The later I can brake for a corner, the longer I keep a higher speed, and so my average speed rises. Wolfgang was braking too early at the aerodrome, probably because he's more used to the weight of the Zundapp than the Horex which is lighter. So Bernie, you think about building a maximally efficient brake, one that doesn't get out of true continually like the simplex drum brake on the Horex. And that doesn't fade after repeated applications from two hundred km/h" Werner said. He went on "Then of course there's the suspension problem. I mentioned bumpy roads earlier. And some of the more difficult racetracks like Brnn in Tcheckoslovakia, of the Nrburgring and worst of all the Isle of Man, are more like a sequence of molehills attached to each other than like a smooth piece of tarmac, when taken at speed. So Henry, you think please about making a torsionally stiff frame. One that doesn't wave about at the slightest breeze, like the garden gates used to do. But avoid transgressing any possible Norton patents on the 'Featherbed'. After all, if they patent that this winter, and our frame is similar, we may not be able to use it. Let alone the legal hassles. Finally there's the front fork for Joe to think about. Do a comparative study of the telescopic fork, leading- and trailing-link forks, Earles types and of course girder forks, Joe. Go for maximum sensitivity but without causing wheel patter. Then suggest the best compromise. Build it, and then we'll attach it to your collegues frame, and I'll test it as soon as it's ready." .P "And I?" asked Wolfgang "What should I do?" .P "You are going to be a very busy young man" smiled Werner "You have to get yourself really fit. You have to learn to lean over another ten degrees of so. You have to learn to read road surfaces. You have to learn where, and how much, to accelerate and to break. And since your Diploma will be in engine tuning you have to help the Professor on the rainy days, in his lab. I will be teaching you what I can, and designing the gearbox, which is something I know a little about." .sp 1 - - - - - .sp 1 Michael came back a week later from the town hall's roads department. He had spent the week holding thick planks under various steam-rollers at different points around the district where different types of road surface were being laid. He now had a splendid collection of surfaced planks. He had also built a little wooden frame and had cast a concrete plank himself, using the same concrete mix recipe that the Autobahn people had used. It was correspondingly heavy. The Horex was suspended by ropes and pulleys above the first plank. The side of the plank was held up by stone blocks at the edge. Michael measured the angle with a protractor. Forty degrees. The Horex was lowered gently onto the planks and stayed put, not sliding sideways. Michael pulled on the rope, raising the Horex and moved the stone blocks at the side of the plank inwards by a centimeter. The protractor showed forty-two degrees. He lowered the Horex again to see if it slid.It didn't, so he repeated the procedure, his biceps muscles beginning to ache from hoisting the bike up and down. .P "Let's see" he mused, talking quietly to himself "We are going to try four different tyre manufacturers, Dunlop, Avon, Pirelli and Metzeler. Each produce two different racing rubber mixes, one with tread for wet,rainy, roads and the treadless ones for dry roads. Four times two is eight experiments. Then I'm going to need to try all angles, say between forty and fiftyfive degrees, in one degree steps. That's fifteen steps. Eight times fifteen is a hundred and twenty. Then the same again with the planks wet. That makes two hundred and forty. Then the same again with say ten percent above the manufacturers tire pressure recommendation and ten percent below. Three times two hundred and forty is, let me see, seven hundred and twenty. And in practice under real race conditions the tires warm up of course, due to their natural flexing and the hysteresis "S"-curve of the rubber,so I really ought to warm the tires before I do all of this. By the time I've hauled this heavy Horex up and down seven hundred and twenty times, I'm going to have a magnificent biceps if not a pulled back. So I'm going to change to pulleys with a higher ratio." .P Next morning Michael changed the pulleys and borrowed a gas-flask powered radiant heater from the university janitor and positioned it just below and in front of the rear tyre. Then every time he raised the Horex he turned the wheel one eighth of a turn, so that the warm section of the tire was lowered onto the plank. Of course heating the tire in this way meant that he had to spend a quarter of an hour heating it uniformly first and then adjusting the tire pressure. He had been out on the previous afternoon to watch Wolfgang's second practice session at the aerodrome, and had taken the opportunity of measuring the tire temperature at the end of ten laps. He began the onerous repetitive muscle-tiring task of taking the seven hundred and twenty measurements. .P "Three minutes on average per experiment" he said quietly to himself "That's twenty an hour. That's a hundred and twenty each day, allowing for set-up time, breaks, interruptions and lunch. So I'm going to be here bored to tears here for at least a week. And probably weak." he punned. so he went upstairs and borrowed the radio from the Professor's office, just for some distraction whilst he went through the chores repetitively. "I had expected a scientific research project to be a stimulating intellectual challenge" he confided to Werner at the end of the week, "but that was just sheer backbreaking hard work! Anyway here are the tables resulting from the measurements. And a bill for four gas-flasks from the janitor for us." .P "I'll send that to Ismailovitch to pay" promised Werner. .P Just then Dieter came into the room holding a small silver coloured tube proudly before him. "Here's the accelerometer" he said happily. .P "Tell us how it works please" smiled Werner, recognising that Dieter was bursting to tell them anyway. .P "Well I got hold of a piece of five millimeter bore copper piping from the janitor and chrome-plated it inside and out because I didn't want it developing verdegris in the wet. Then I went and got a four point nine millimeter steel ball bearing from the stores and weighed it. So I looked for a spring with a progression rate of about a tenth of that weight and an outside diameter of less than five millimeters. This means that the steel ball compresses the spring about ten centimeters normally and another ten centimeters when subject to a two gee acceleration. Two gee acceleration is what you would get if you could crank the bike over in a smooth curve at a sixty degree angle of lean. At fortyfive degrees of bank the steel ball deflects the spring just over four centimeters, that's the square root of two minus one" he added. "Then I cut a slot down the length of the tube, so that I could see the ball and cut off the spring where it emerged from the top of the tube. then I put in the ball bearing and marked the deflection due to its weight. Then I took it all apart again and soldered the ball bearing onto the spring, and then the spring into the tube. Knowing the static deflection," he finished up triumphantly, "and using a table of secants, I was able to calibrate the nonlinear scale in degrees of angle of bank, and engrave the scale in the tube on either side of the slot. So now we just attach this vertically next to the rev- counter on any motorbike, and the read-out tells the rider the angle of lean he's using!" .P "Not a bad try Dieter, but I doubt if it will work." said Wolfgang."You see the bike jumps about a lot, its not at all a smooth ride. And even if our new bike does handle a lot better than the Horex we will still have a problem because your device isn't damped in any way." Dieter looked crushed. .P "The idea is basically good, Dieter" put in Werner consolingly "But Wolfgang is right. You need damping. And with the slot in the copper tube it won't hold oil to dampen the spring. I suggest you put the ball-bearing and the spring into a glass tube, maybe an old large test tube would do the job. Make sure that the ball-bearing is a reasonably close fit in the tube, and then fill the tube with a thin oil to dampen the motion and stop the ball bouncing around a lot. Then we will have to rubber mount the glass tube next to the rev counter; the calibration stays the same of course. You may have to experiment with different kinds of oil until you find the right viscosity." .P Dieter left the room, visibly cheered up again. .P "Well, lets look at these friction tables of yours Michael" said Werner. .P "It's easier to look at the graphs I've drawn" put in Michael helpfully "As you can see, amongst the treadless tyres, the Avon performed consistently better than all of the others. And when I tried the hardness test with the blunt point indentation nail, the Avon proved to be built of a softer rubber than the others. Dunlop was the hardest. In the wet there isn't as much difference. The treaded Avon is harder than the treadless one, and is much of a muchness with the Pirelli rain tyre. Of course none of the treaded rain tyres hold the road as well as the treadless ones, but that was only to be expected." .P "Yes, that's true" said Werner "But Wolfgang, this is something you need to learn. Look at the table for the Avon here, for different road surfaces. Smooth Blue bitumen is twenty percent worse than the concrete. And the concrete is worse than regular asphalt. The best surface if the rough asphalt with the quartz stone chippings embedded in it, that's nearly twice as good when dry as the wet smooth blue bitumen. So you see, just like I was explaining last week, you need to be able to read the road, you have to recognise far ahead of the bike when the surface changes, and recognise the new surface for what it is. Especially in the wet, just look at the difference in these numbers in the wet!" .P "Yes, I see now" said Wolfgang thoughtfully. .P "Well done Michael, and thankyou for the backbreaking weeks work. We see that we should use Avon tyres, and we now know when they start to slide. So we can use Dieter's accelerometer and/or the bits of welding rod to warn us before breakaway.Of course, if the manufacturers produce new, softer tyres in the meanwhile, we will need to repeat the experiments, the results could change." Michael looked at him disgustedly, if looks could kill, Werner would have been fried on the spot. Werner continued, wrapping up: "Of course what is more important is that we now have the cornering clearance limits for the frame. The Professor is building the motor for minimum width, but it will still be a lot wider than a single is. So these cornering angles, with the suspension fully compressed, and the width of the engine dictate the height at which we mount the engine in the frame, and the size of tyres we use. So you can get started on the frame design now, Henry!" he finished. .bp .HF off .sp 4 .ft B .ce Chapter Eight .sp 2 .ce The Arcore Angle .R .KE .sp 2 .vs 14p .ft R .P 'The Motorcycle' appeared every Thursday. Price sixpence. Earnie Claggs marched briskly down the road from his digs to Mr. Adams' newspaper stall. Crisp autumn leaves stiff with the white faery coat of autumn's first hoar frost crunched underfoot. What a beautiful day he thought. He was almost trotting now, in eager anticipation. He expected to have at least half a column on page three due to his scoop on the Norton/Duke split. Even the first October sun smiled cheerfully upon his fortunes, he thought. .P "Good Morning, Mr.Claggs. Done yersel' proud this time, haven't yer" greeted Mr. Adams as Claggs hove into view. "Full page spread inside and yer big 'eadline on the front page. Yer our star reporter now. They'll all be wanting to read you every week now. That there Vic Willoughby and Bob Whatshisname are probably green wiv' envy. Just look at this. 'ere I'll even give it yer, yer don't have to pay when yer makes wiv' scoops like this'n! Look 'ere!" Adams was bubbling over with enthusiasm. He had even written about it on his chalk-board outside the stall. "Local journalist scuups front page. Read all abaht it. Get yer' paper from me stand 'ere!" .P "With headlines like those which your chalk board bears, Spinky old lad, you could be a journalist yourself. Mind you, we'd probably have to spend a year or two teaching you grammar and spelling first" teased Claggs, smiling. He took the proffered copy of 'The Motorcycle' and scanned the front page delightedly. .P "An' yer 'ad ne 'eadline in the Birmingham News a couple of days ago! Yer'll be winnin a Pulitzer prize yet, yer will!" enthused Adams. .P "Calm down, Spinky. The problem is going to be following this with more good quality stuff." Claggs said soberly. .P "Nuffin' to it Guv. Yer just phones Duke nah, an' asks 'im wot 'e finks abaht Norton, an' wot 'e is gorna do nex' year. Like I mean, wot bikes 'e ridin' then. 'Cause , sure as my ole ladies got chilblains, it ain't a Norton, I'll tell yer!" .P "I'll do that, Spinky, right now." replied Claggs and trotted off back to his digs. .P He made himself a cup of tea and thinking carefully, painstakingly wrote down a list of questions he wanted to ask Geoff Duke, just to make sure he didn't forget any of them, should he get carried away on the phone. Then he put his coat back on again and walked across the road to the bright red call box and dialed directory enquiries, asking for the St. Helens number. Noting it down for future reference, he dialed carefully. .P "Hallo, Pat Duke speaking, who's there?" a woman's soft voice answered quietly. .P "Er, this is Ernie Claggs, Mrs. Duke. I'd like to talk to your husband Geoff please." .P "Well you've just missed him. He left for the airport about a half an hour ago. Can I help you, you're the journalist that wrote about his squabble with Gilbert Smith in the Birmingham News a couple of days ago aren't you ?" .P "Yes, Mrs. Duke. That's me. You can help by telling me where to find him. And why aren't you flying with him, after all the racing season is over, you two could have a fine holiday" suggested Claggs, probing by a combination of blind journalistic instinct and MI6 methodology. .P "Well I can't fly now, because I get sick in the mornings, being pregnant. And the doctor doesn't think pregnant women should fly, in case it damages the baby. And I'm not allowed to tell you where he's going, Geoff gave me strict orders not to talk to journalists. And it's no use calling his motorcycle shop, because they're not allowed to talk to you either!" .P "Well congratulations, Pat, what are you going to call the baby?" asked Claggs while he rapidly tried to think of a way out of this impasse. .P "Well it depends of course, but if it's a boy we'll probably call him Peter. But that's really none of your business. So goodbye Mr. Claggs" she said shortly, hanging up on him. .P Claggs ran down the road and arrived puffing at the travel agents just past Mr. Adams' news-stand. As he ran past, he saw Adams laboriously rewriting his chalk-boards, tongue stuck out in the concentration necessary to achieve better grammar. Breathing heavily, he asked to borrow an ABC all-airlines timetable. Leafing through rapidly, he looked at his watch thinking: 'If Geoff Duke left home a half an hour ago, he's at the airport by now. And he must be flying abroad, because he if he were going to see Bert Hopwood or Doug Hele at BSA he would have driven his own car. And for AJS maybe taken the train. So Italy is a good bet.' .P Sure enough, there was a direct flight leaving for Milan within the next hour. "Gotcha!" shouted Claggs aloud, startling the girl behind the counter who had lent him the book. Quickly, he gave her the book back, and ran back down to the call-box, calling to Mr. Adams as he passed "Spinky, you spell 'scoops' with two 'Oh's not with two 'U's, old lad!". .P Scrabbling in his pocket for change, he decided on the almost traditional indirect tactic of MI6 again and phoned the airline. "Good Morning, Alitalia, this is Duke's Motorcycle Shop" he lied "Our boss, Mr. Geoff Duke,the famous racing motorcyclist, is flying with you to Milano today, and we think he may have forgotten one of his cases. How many pieces of luggage has he checked in?" he asked innocently. .P "He's checked three bags, sir. Mr.Duke is in the V.I.P lounge. Would you like to talk to him ?" Gotcha! thought Claggs. With three bags he's staying at least a week, if not two. .P "No that will not be necessary, he's got all three with him then. This must be someone else's bag. Just wish him a pleasant journey on behalf of the lads and his wife". Claggs hung up victoriously. Now he just needed to be in Milano to see what Duke was up to! .P Unfortunately, Claggs hated flying. Ever since that wartime night attack on Dresden in the Lancaster, with the black and orange flak hitting the 'plane and tearing great holes in the side he had vowed never to get in an airplane again. The Lancaster had limped home on the proverbial wing, three engines, and a prayer (Oremus). It was Claggs first, and he vowed, only flight. Never again. So he had a problem. "However if Duke is staying at least a week, then I can drive down there, and telegram my copy back to the papers if I find anything out" he said to himself. He walked back to his digs, carefully avoiding the fresh tar where the West Indian road repairmen were fixing the pavement. One of them was working ahead of the others, chalking on the loose paving stones which ones were to be tarred. On the flagstone in front of the big blue police box the west indian had chalked "Tar dis!". 'Who would be able to use the police box?,' thought Claggs idly in passing 'with all that hot asphalt outside; probably only somebody in urgent need of the doctor.' .P Back in his digs, Claggs rapidly packed a suitcase and put his trusty Smith Corona portable typewriter into the car too. Then he explained to his landlady that he would be abroad for a week or two, and paid her in advance. Suddenly he had a bright idea. He looked up the names of all the italian racing team bosses in his carefully kept filing system. Mr. Piero Taruffi of Gilera and the other two from MV Agusta and Moto Guzzi. Then he wrote a short telegram for each of them 'Please ask Mr.Duke to call Pat at home immediately on arrival'. Then he went down to the post office and arranged that the telegrams be sent to the Alitalia desk in Milano to lie there 'Poste Restante' before Duke's plane arrived. .P The drive down to Milano took him nearly two days. The channel crossing had been rough, due to an autumn storm rolling the ship a lot on the short trip from Dover to Calais. .P As he drove through France, Claggs green colour began to fade and his stomach stabilised again. "Still, anything is better than flying" he consoled himself". He drove over the St.Gotthard pass, which was still open and turned left in Bellinzona, towards Locarno.The trip over the alpine passes was beautiful, the weather being much warmer on the southern, italian, side of the Alps. He drove appreciatively past the serene beauty of Lago Maggiore, almost blindingly blue in the afternoon sun. Turning left towards Milano airport in Sesto Calende took him through Gallarate, the home of the up and coming MV factory of Count Agusta. Although he idled slowly past the test track, little Minox camera at the ready, his luck was out. MV were not testing their fours that afternoon. .P "Ah well, on to Milano airport" he thought, hoping that the idea with the telegrams had worked. At the Alitalia counter he asked innocently "I'm a friend of Mr.Duke. Are there any old telegrams still here, from the day before yesterday, for example addressed to Piero Taruffi?" .P "No sir. Mr. Taruffi collected his telegram when he collected Mr.Duke. But there were three telegrams concerning your friend Signor Duke, however the other two gentlemen never showed up. But we made sure he got the message through Signor Taruffi!" the girl replied proudly. .P "Gotcha!" thought Claggs. "So he's visiting Gilera at Arcore!" he chortled to himself. One of the old MI6 trick had worked for him again. He drove on further to Arcore and took a room on the small guest house opposite the appartments for visitors that Commendatore Gilera provided for his guests. .P Claggs woke up late the next morning, having missed the opportunity of seeing who walked down the road from the visitors' appartments opposite, past the baker's shop to the Gilera works. He cursed as he realised what a golden opportunity he had missed, but blamed it on his tiredness after the long drive. If the truth were known, Claggs was a perennial late riser. His landlady had often stormed at him for nearly missing breakfast, "You'll miss your own funeral, Mr. Claggs, you mark my words!" she used to say before serving him burnt toast, overdone eggs and the bacon fried almost to a crisp. She knew he always took a long lie in, especially on Saturdays and Monday mornings. .P He decided to walk down to the Gilera works and ask to be shown around, like a normal visitor. He wouldn't tell them he was a journalist unless they asked directly. So he waited patiently at the gate until ten o'clock and then joined a small crowd of fourteen to eighteen year-old schoolboys accompanied by their teachers, who had arranged for a guided tour of the factory. He pretended to be a teacher accompanying the group and walked in with the guided tour, effectively gate-crashing the factory that the Commendatore liked to keep closed to inquisitive journalists. .P As they walked around the factory they progressed closer and closer to the centre of the works. Suddenly they heard the roar of a four cylinder engine on open pipes as it burst into song. The boys got all excited and wanted to rush out to the test track to see what was obviously one of the works racers being tested. Claggs was dying to go take a look too, but he daren't open his mouth in case the guide realised that he was an english cuckoo in the italian schoolboy nest. So the entire group gnashed their teeth impatiently while the guide boringly explained what the various drilling machines were for. Meanwhile the sound of the four rose and fell as the machine lapped the test track rapidly. Once the engine wailed in pain as the rider missed a gear and selected a false neutral instead. But, Claggs knew, Gileras often missed gears. Just like Nortons had done when they changed from Sturmey-Archer to Burman gearboxes. But this one was a lot better. It only missed a gear once he counted on twelve laps. The engine died. After a minute it restarted. Meanwhile they were approaching the exit, and the teachers had bribed the guide (by appealing to italian national pride) to let the schoolboys watch the racer from behind the wire netting fence inside the factory grounds. Claggs slipped his little Minox camera into his pocket as they went past the gate guard. .P As the Gilera flashed past, Claggs recognised the helmet the rider was wearing. It was Alfredo Milani, a works rider. What a disappointment, he had been secretly hoping to get a photo of Duke practising on the Gilera. That would have been a scoop. .P "Oh well, I'll make the best of it while I'm here" he said to himself. He pulled the miniscule Minox spy camera surreptitiously from his coat pocket and snapped off a couple of shots of the Gilera as it came straight towards him on the approach to the corner. After only three laps Milano pulled up to a halt next to the mechanics at the trackside just 50 yards away. The whole school class rushed down to peer through the fence at the bike, and Claggs went with them. Hiding amongst the schoolboys he managed to get two or three surreptitious shots of the bike, broad side on. He couldn't understand what they were saying of course, but Alfredo Milani was waggling the gear-change lever approvingly and smiling happily. Claggs however had noticed that the lower corners of the crankcase had been scratched away, and there were scratch marks on the outer exhaust pipes, as if they had been grounded. He heard Milano say something about going to Monza for a real test tomorrow before he was forced to follow the school group being shooed out of the gate by the guide. As they left he noticed a Lancia Gran Tourismo car belonging to the Commendatore driving out through the factory gate. Unfortunately he couldn't see who was in it. But there was a white Cromwell helmet lying in the back window. And the helmet was emblazoned with the red rose of Lancashire! .P "Gotcha!" thought Claggs excitedly, for now he knew Duke was here! .P He was awoken next morning by the sound of the factory coffee-break hooter. Nine-thirty. Dammit, dammit, dammit, he thought, getting dressed in a hurry. Skipping breakfast he drove as quickly as possible to the banked Monza circuit, but was too late. He saw the Commendatore's Lancia being driven by Pie