PIP HIGHAM
Pip recalls the genius of his late brother Bill!
The overriding remit of pretty well everyone who reads CMM is, in my humble op, that we would rather spend a day-and-a-half creating a tool, bracket, tester, whatever, than go to the shop for a proprietary device that fills that particular void simply by buying a thing with a lump of hard-earned cash.
Sure it’s ok to buy screwdrivers and pliers (lots of them in reality), but occasionally the task is a bit obscure, or maybe nobody thought along the same, possibly slightly obtuse lines as yourself. Nowt wrong with that. I myself have been accused of having some strange ideas on occasion: humph, what do they know? A case in point concerns brother Bill and his enthusiasm for perfectly clean fuel tanks on his flock of bikes; this is, as I’m sure you’re all only too aware, a thorny and ever-increasing problem. Bill attacked it in his own inimitable fashion by building a device that would gently rotate his tank whilst the contents, a mixture of screws, washers and a carrier solution whittled away at the usually rusty but invariably mucky surface within.
Sound pretty normal so far? Sure it does, but then he realised that the process, tidy as it was, left much to be desired. Bill’s answer was to take the fix into another dimension by turning the tank through not one, but two axes whilst it was gently rotating... have you got that? It’s a tricky concept, but the net result is that the tank innards get molested from every direction, all while you are eating your lunch or waxing your moustache.
The same technique also applied to the next part of the process. With the tank suitably rinsed and dried squeaky clean, the motor is slowed down (of course it had a variable speed controller fitted, did you need to ask?) and with the tank liner solution plopped in, fire it up for half-anhour or so for a beautiful, evenly distributed lining without a thick crusty lump occupying the tank’s nether regions.
Having watched him make and re-make the device over a couple of months I started to think he was nuts. When I saw it in operation I realised I had totally missed the point. He couldn’t buy what he wanted, and the grin on his face as he demonstrated it made me realise that I had, and still have, much to learn.
Bill’s maverick attitude ran like a rich vein through anything he touched. He didn’t much care for the left-hand gear change on one of his SRS, so he poked the selector shaft through the offside casing and, hey-ho, the job was done. Well, W erm, nope, not by a long ch halk. Now, he was never a fan o f ‘one down and several up’ s hift patterns, he much p referred ‘one up, etc.’. So he set s about creating a modified shift s quadrant to reverse the pattern. p Take it from me, this is sn’t simple. It requires precision p and vision to come up with w the modified parts, and dedication d and ability to make them t viable.
Few people possess these attributes. a A few of my drag racing r pals do. Phil Bainbridge is i a case in point. A long-time Top T Fuel protagonist, Phil’s engineering solutions to the problems thrown up in the brutal world of Top Fuel bike racing are held in high regard worldwide. Timed pneumatic clutches and massively complex fuel systems are like tea and toast to guys like Phil, who is working on a three-cylinder supercharged and injected engine with virtually every component bespoke.
Self-effacing, energised and incredibly enthusiastic, Phil’s approach makes my attempts look puny by comparison. You’ve probably never heard of him, such is the world of bike drag racing, but believe me his credentials are 24-carat Titanium. Our small nation should be proud of its innovative past and, for reasons which escape me, drag bike ‘creatists’ have more than their fair share of the attributes and skills required to translate such theories into sculpted pieces of metal.
If I could create three groups of motorcyclists, the first would be riding modern stuff, wonderful but becoming increasingly difficult to ‘personalise’ for reasons of legality (insurance, DVLA directives, construction and use regulations etc.), and the fact that less components are fiddle-able with, given the restricted tools and knowledge of Joe Average.
The second group is us lot. We’ve got old bikes with brackets and switches and metal mudguards, but not too many plastic bits.
The third group, our ‘Noble gas’ equivalents, are the John Britten, Allen Millyard, Erik Buell breed, maybe with a bit of Malcolm Newell (of feet forward, Quasar/phasar notoriety), and possibly Phil Bainbridge mixed in for diversity. Would Bill have fitted in with any of the above? Nar, he wouldn’t want to be in any club that would allow people like him in, with all due respect to Groucho Marx...