Alec Wise The brake man
Going fast is one thing, but for each action, there is an opposite reaction. In this case, stopping. The science of braking is understood by few, and championed by even fewer. Alec Wise was from the old school, and he knew his stuff.
“Dad was in the British army in WW2, was demobbed about 1946. In the early ‘fifties he moved up to Chapel-en-le Frith in Derbyshire, which is where the Ferodo factory was and was near where my mother came from. He was employed as test driver for all the Ferodo components, brakes, clutches etc, and they used to test under all conditions. In this area of Britain it got very cold in winter and was often snowed in with very treacherous roads. He soon moved to the Competition Department at Ferodo, and this department had fully equipped mobile workshops which supplied brake materials and other products. They did all the World Championship GPs and the TT of course, Formula 1 as we know it, and the international rally series. They travelled six months of the year so dad wasn’t at home that often.
“The work at the circuits involved machining linings and brake drums – this was before the days of disc brakes. During the TT he became very good friends with most of the Aussie riders, Barry Hodgkinson, Eric Hinton, Alan Burt, Keith Bryen, Bob Brown, Bob Mitchell and others, and I think Barry and Eric talked him into migrating to Australia. At the TT, everyone was there for a fortnight or longer, and
Alec used to organise a cricket ‘test match’ between the Aussies and the Brits.
“He stayed with Ferodo for seven or eight years, and we emigrated on assisted passage to Australia in early 1961; Alec, Nora, and four kids Tony, Janice, Christopher, Geraldine. We arrived in February 1961 and were taken to Wallgrove Hostel* in Rooty Hill near Blacktown, Sydney where the migrants from Britain were housed while they looked for work.
And so another chapter began. Dad didn’t have a job so he walked out to the Great Western Highway and hitch-hiked into Sydney. He found a job with Better Brakes because he’d had experience in the industry and had references from Ferodo.
“That first year in Australia we’d only arrived shortly before Bathurst at Easter – Easter Saturday was the ‚
first of April. We didn’t have a car and had very little money, so once again he walked to the Great Western Highway and hitch-hiked to Bathurst. Once he was there he found Barry Hodgkinson and a few others he knew and hung around with them. Barry had stopped racing and was one of the Travelling Marshals at the meeting, but Eric Hinton and his father Harry were there, and so was Allen Burt, Jack Ahearn, and Bob West from Victoria who had gone to Europe with Jack Findlay. Anyway over the weekend they all talked to him about setting up to do racing brakes again. Dad had bought some brake material with him but he needed a workshop that had a lathe big enough to take wheels and he got talking to Jack Carruthers who had a good workshop at Gladesville in Sydney. Jack had stopped his sidecar speedway racing but his son Kel was now riding on bikes that Jack had built up, as well as the four cylinder 250 Honda. There was another bloke, Jack Whitely, who had a big machine shop in Ultimo in the inner city and he had a lathe that was also suitable so dad started doing work from there as well.
“It didn’t take long before dad got a reputation as ‘the brake man’ and was doing brakes for top riders, and lots of the ordinary clubman racers too. He had all the tools like the brake clamps and the riveters. He also joined the Motorcycle Racing Club of NSW (MCRC) where the Hintons and lots of the good riders were members. He got onto the Competitions Committee and ended up as a pit marshal at Oran Park where MCRC were the promoters of the motorcycle meetings. Dad, Harry Hinton and Frank Shepherd did those jobs for ten years and he’d do the brakes at night and on the spare weekends. He became pretty good mates with Eric Debenham and they ended up living near each other down the South Coast. During this period he loaned his gear to someone and never got it back.
“One friendship that blossomed was with Sydney rider Ross Hannan, who recalls Alec with fond memories. “Alec was the original ‘brake man’, however it was never about making a business out of it, he just wanted to help sort out problems. He did my brakes before I went to race in Europe the first time.
Ferodo/Better Brakes/James Hardie were a pain in the arse. They were no help at all, then they did the wrong thing by me later**. Alec was a great guy who always put the sport first.”
Later, in the ‘seventies, when Historic Racing started, Alec got back into the sport because they were mainly running drum brakes. Tony worked with Honda for many years and moved to Queensland, as did daughter Janice. When Nora died he had trouble looking after himself so he moved to a care facility at Coomera near his children in Queensland. He died when he was 94.
These days, few people remember Alec Wise, but former Australian Champion Tony Hatton does. “I met Alec when he had his equipment stored at Jack Carruthers’ workshop at Gladesville, which was near my mother’s place. In those days nobody paid much attention to properly setting up brakes, but the process was quite a skill. Alec had the gear, the mandrels, rivets and linings and so on, and he showed us exactly how it was done with the right clearances for the drum to lining. I rode Ian Cork’s Norton for a year and won a lot of B Grade races on it. Alec had done the front brake and it was a much better thing. A lot of good riders rode Corky’s Norton and went well; Stan Ogden, Bill Dillow, Gordon Doble. Incidentally, Alec’s son Tony married Corky’s daughter Barbera. Alec was a popular bloke, would help anyone.”