BSSO Proddy Racer Strip Down
Team DSC race supremo Darren Scott offered to strip his multiple championship winning LCGB Production Class engine in front of the camera. We took note.
A couple of years ago Chalky White called up and offered a strip down, in front of the camera, of the BSSO Championship-winning Replay Group 4 race scooter. This kind of thing is very rare, but now, Team DSC race supremo Darren Scott has offered to strip his multiple championship-winning LCGB Production Class engine. Lightning can strike twice, it seems!
This bike was originally built to be raced by Steve ‘Hammy’ Hamilton, a scooter racing veteran with a habit of retiring due to injury…and then returning again, which has been his habit for several years now. After (another) broken shoulder, his retirement gave Justin Price the chance to jump aboard the DSC machine. So a date was set to meet up at AF Rayspeed where Ben Kemp was going to strip the motor in front of the camera. Now this was interesting for a variety of reasons. First-off, the Production Class is very rigidly controlled and the components used must remain standard and untuned.
The RB20 cylinders are provided ‘off the shelf’ along with a set Franspeed exhaust and a range of other off-the-shelf components, to provide a standardised package and ensure a level playing field. This has worked really well to provide super-competitive and relatively economic racing for the last few years.
But let’s address the proverbial elephant in the room. I’ve sat in the grandstands several times and listened as spectators discussed the possibilities of cheating. The general rhetoric goes: “Some of these machines have to be cheating.” “They must be doing some tuning… they are too fast.” “A proddy bike slipstreaming a Group 4 shouldn’t be happening, let alone passing one around the outside,” and so on. I’ve been around racing long enough to know that the top tuners like Chalky and Darren are not cheats. They are bloody good at what they do, take pride in their wins and do so with honour. But nonetheless, even I still found myself wondering if this superfast Production Class machine wasn’t tuned in some way… just like I had heard several people muttering. So on a bitter cold day in January there I was in the workshop of AF Rayspeed, with the bike ready to go on the bench after being brought straight from the last meeting.