Austrian Leo
On picking up my copy of OBA 95, I was keen to check out the story of the Jawa 500. Back in the early ‘sixties my Merrylands Club mate Leo Brunbauer and I had called in to sticky beak at bikes at Burling and Simmons’ shop at Auburn. We saw a new Jawa 500 single road model on display and wandered over to inspect it, as one does. ‘Austrian Leo’ as we all called him, was a very capable and clever mechanic that I met and worked with at a Holden dealership at Parramatta. As he rode an Ariel Square Four to work we soon started talking bikes. Anyhow we were checking out this Jawa which was an overhead cam single, not as it turned out, the model mentioned in the OBA issue, Leo told me an interesting story about a similar bike he worked on in Austria. The bike presented to him for repair had a very loud rattle at a particular rev range which was difficult to pinpoint. Leo found the noise was coming from the front down tube of the frame. The engine was very heavy, and to reinforce the frame a piece of chain was welded under tension inside the down tube. It appeared to be a production process. The chain was re welded, problem fixed. As Leo was not prone to Bulltish I had no doubt of the veracity of the story. For a NSW title event at the Wollongong scrambles Leo built a 350 Ariel motor into an AJS swinging arm frame and got a podium finish in the state Junior title event behind big names. I rode the bike in a minor event and was amazed at how well it was set up. I lost contact with ‘Austrian Leo’ a few months later; on inquiry I was told he went off to New Zealand in pursuit of a pretty Austrian Girl. Our loss was NZ’s gain. Often wonder how he got on – maybe someone in the motorcycle fraternity over there knows?