‘Dissatisfied’, from the Midlands...

The ISDT was originally intended to be the shop window for production machines and by and large the British industry had played fair on this. Yes there were the ‘on the day’ modifications to speed up maintenance work during the event – things such as Tommy bars for wheel removal, competition tyres and slightly different handlebars were seen as acceptable to the buying public. However, there were growing grumbles from the ordinary enthusiast at the sometimes radically different machines used by the teams while successes being touted as ‘same as you can buy’. Clearly this was not the case and certain things were highlighted by more than one reader to the point where editorial space was devoted to some semblance of explanation. One point raised was the spare cables taped in place on ISDT machines and the grumble was if a cable couldn’t last 1000 miles then surely the design was wrong. This was easily explained by the higher chance of accident damage in an event like the ISDT. Less easy to explain away were things such as alloy barrels and heads where production machines wore iron cable instead of rod operated rear brakes, air scoops on brake plates and better weather protection for electrics. Surely, complained readers, if these mods were better they should be incorporated in production models. The sentiment wasn’t hard to understand but missed the point that the ISDT had become less of a shop window for machines and more of a way to gain national prestige.