Classic Scooterist February / March 2017 preview

THE RALLYMASTER

REPLACING VESPA WHEEL BEARINGS

shrouded in mystery

MOTOVESPA 150s BUILT IN MADRID RESTORED IN BARKING

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BSRA CHAMPIONSHIP

PRESENTATIONS

PUBLISHING BYGONES SCOOTER & SCOOTERIST MAGAZINE

BLAST FROM THE PAST

‘VENI, VIDI, VICI’

The 1968 Fish River Canyon expedition SCOOTERAMA! – A FELICITOUS FANFARE OF FACTS, FEEDBACK & FACES

February/March 2017 Issue 113

THE LAMBRETTA SILURO

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Issue 113 February/March 2017 Founding Editor: Mau Spencer 01507 529408 mauspencer@classicscooterist.com Publisher: Dan Savage Contributors: Gill Beecham; Pete Davies, Dave Dry; Ashley Lenton; Andrew Spencer; Phillip Tooth; Chris Wainwright and Andy Westlake.

Apologies to anyone we’ve forgotten.

Some of the articles within these pages express the opinions of the contributors and are not necessarily those of Classic Scooterist.

Design: Fran Lovely Picture desk: Paul Fincham, Jonathan Schofield Divisional advertising manager: Martin Freeman mfreeman@mortons.co.uk Advertising: Emma Buxton-Rockley 01507 529410 ebuxton-rockley@mortons.co.uk Subscription manager: Paul Deacon Circulation manager: Steve O’Hara Marketing manager: Charlotte Park Publishing director: Dan Savage Commercial director: Nigel Hole Editorial address: CLASSIC SCOOTERIST MAGAZINE PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincs LN9 6LZ www.scooteristscene.com General queries and back issues: 01507 529529 (24hr answerphone) Archivist: Jane Skayman 01507 529423 jskayman@mortons.co.uk Next issue (114) published: March 15, 2017 Editorial deadline: February 10, 2017 CLASSIC SCOOTERIST (ISSN:1756-9494) is published bi-monthly by Mortons Media Group Ltd, PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincolnshire LN9 6LZ UK. USA subscriptions are $36 per year from Motorsport Publications LLC, 7164 Cty Rd N #441, Bancroft WI 54921. Periodical Postage is paid at Wisconsin Rapids, WI. Postmaster: Send address changes to CLASSIC SCOOTERIST, Motorsport Publications LLC, 7164 Cty Rd N #441, Bancroft WI 54921. 715-572-4595 Email: chris@classicbikebooks.com www.classicbikebooks.com Distribution: COMAG Tavistock Road, West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 7QE Subscription: Full subscription rates (but see page 18 for offer): (12 months 6 issues, inc post and packing) – UK £22.50. Export rates are also available – see page 18 for more details.

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34 CONTENTS 4

8

Back when we had hair

Nostalgic memories from times gone by

Scooterama

A felicitous fanfare of facts, feedback and faces

16 ‘One Step Beyond’ All aboard The Brighton Ska Train!

20 “You’ve got mail”

Readers express their views, ask questions and show us their pictures

22 What’s going on?

A look at the scooterist calendar

23 Events round-up

Coverage of recent events

28 Stan’s MotoVespa 150s Having trouble finding a copy of this magazine?

Why not Just Ask your local newsagent to reserve you a copy each month?

Salvaging the past

34 The Honda Juno KA

A scooter ahead of its time

36 The Rallymaster – and then some!

Promoting an image

40 Looking the business!

Iso Milano (Diva) De Luxe 150

46 Back in the day

The 1958 Earls Court Show

48 Tabby’s Indian GP200 Good things come to those who wait

54 Publishing bygones Scooter & Scooterist magazine

58 Inside story

The Stadium brand lives on

64 Trials & tribulations Brid or bust!

66 Too good for the garage

68 The 1968 River Canyon Expedition

A Vespa resting among the rocks provides some strange images

74 Vespa front wheel bearing replacement

A job for the home workshop enthusiast

78 Three Chairs

Concluding our epic saga

80 Scooter clubs

Meet and greet your local club

82 Luna Owners Club

A club profile for the Luna-tics

83 Back to the Sixties

A Cheetah in Carnaby Street

86 Scooterist classifieds

For all your wants and needs

Is a scooter merelyy another form of transport? p

90 Blast from the p past The Lambretta Siluro

Best ridden – or best hidden?

T

alking to a scooterist at a recent custom show, he was a little disappointed that the scooterist who’d won the ‘ridden’ class, had only actually ridden it in from a van.

‘Ridden’ classes always appear to cause controversy with show organisers saying it’s not always easy to monitor. It could be argued that a look underneath a scooter would make it obvious as to whether it’s been ridden – but then again, I know genuine riders who covet their scooter so much that they’ll use special

covers to protect the paintwork and on arriving at a rally, they’ll spend hours cleaning and preparing it for the custom show – which can make it hard to tell whether it was ridden there or not.

But is there a better way to distinguish between ‘ridden’ and ‘show’ classes? Could show organisers not make it a condition of entry that a copy of the current MOT certificate is displayed alongside the scooter in ‘ridden’ classes? MOT certificates nowadays show the mileage recorded at the last test, so it should

be fairly easy to see how many miles have been done since – and if that turns out to be only 50-or-so, then that must cast doubt on the owner’s ‘ridden’ claim.

There is a small flaw in my thinking – older veteran scooters that no longer need an MOT. Well, let’s be honest, there’s not many people who’d be riding veteran scooters any sort of distance to enter a ‘ridden’ class anyway – but that said, I’m sure someone out there might g disagree on that point.

MAUSPENCER@CLASSICSCOOTERIST.COM

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A M A R E T O SCO

CK & FACES A FELICITOUS FANFARE OF FACTS, FEEDBA ooterist.com ☎ 01507 529408 sicsc le, Lincs LN9 6LZ ✉ mauspencer@clas ✎ Classic Scooterist, PO Box 99, Horncast

Helmets and Eddy Grimstead

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Two evocative pictures of a 1960s scooterboy – possibly two different individuals as it happens. One features a GS 160, the other a GS 150. The pictures are from newsprint – hence the poor quality – and were originally featured in an article in Motorcycle Mechanics on the subject of the Eddy Grimstead organisation, where the ‘deerstalker’ styled helmet was displayed on the pegboards

alongside a myriad of scooter accessories. It would therefore be fair to guess that the pictures were posed outside one of their near-legendary shops.

One of the more notable points about these pictures, and despite it not being a legal requirement at that time, is that crash helmets are being worn – was it cold at the time? This assumption is reinforced by an amusing anecdote from Greg Kinge:

“You are so right about the ‘skid lid’, and as I recall back in the day, a helmet was excellent winter kit for keeping the barnet dry and ears warm, but frowned upon by the teenage scooter-riding Mod masses. I remember getting pulled by the local plod on my scoot circa ’68 because I was helmetless.

Because of this they suspected I may have stolen the bike! Before the constables allowed me to proceed I was lectured about the merits of head protection relative to motorcyclists and guess what?

Yep, totally ignored every word until ’73 when helmet wearing became mandatory.”

Monza rally is on

Late news has just come in confirming that the 70th Lambretta Anniversary World Rally will be taking place on May 19-21, 2017. The world famous motor racing circuit, Autodromo di Monza – the third oldest racetrack in the world – will be the venue.

Planned activities will include established event features like trade stalls, DJs and The Lambrettas playing a live set; there will also be a rideout to Innocenti’s old Lambretta factory (26km away). Further information will be published as we receive it.

SIP expands exhaust warranty SIP is extending the statutory warranty on Road exhaust systems.

All new systems purchased as of now will come with a three-year Premium guarantee promise.

SALVAGING THE PAST

MotoVespa 150s

Back in the day, one of the scooters Stan Pennington owned was a Messerschmitt-Vespa GS 150 and since then he’s always had a hankering to purchase another one and restore it himself – but things don’t always quite work out as planned…

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s a teenager in the late 1950s Stan purchased his first scooter, a Lambretta LD 150, which he and his dad hand-painted. This was to be Stan’s first opportunity to get out and about riding with his pals.

During the 1960s, Stan lived with his parents and their house was within walking distance of Eddy Grimstead’s shop in the Beckton Road. Initially the shop just dealt with bicycles, but then it started selling scooters and one day while looking in the shop window, Stan spotted a TV 175 Series 2 with just about every ‘extra’ imaginable on it including crashbars, front/rear carriers, two spare wheels, leopard skin covers. Not only did it have all the accessories, but it was also fitted with a Hepolite piston, so Stan made the decision right there and then that he was ‘aving that’. But he was only 16 years old at the time – too young to take out a hire purchase agreement himself – so he went home to speak to his mum and dad.

His dad didn’t want to know but eventually Stan’s mum persuaded him to change his mind. He stipulated that as long at Stan could pay for it, he could have it and he, Stan’s dad, would sign the HP agreement. The deposit was £70 (a lot of money back then), but Stan managed to raise it by getting a job in a local pub working Friday night, Saturday dinnertime, Saturday night, and Sunday night. A week later, he was riding down the street on it.

“You should have seen my face,” said Stan.

“Even better, my mates’ faces – I can still picture it now.”

Back in the day, Stan and his mates used to ride their scooters all over the south east – Yarmouth, Clacton, Hastings – they went everywhere. They did some crazy things too; in one incident Stan recalls riding back from Sheerness with a cap on instead of a crash helmet (they weren’t compulsory in those days) in the pouring rain and wearing sunglasses (even though it was night-time) so that the water wouldn’t sting his eyes. The rain hadn’t let up while they were in Sheerness, but luckily Stan had taken his scooter cover with him and so he slept under that on the rocks.

Another outing he fondly remembers was a trip to Hastings. His scooter was out of commission, but his mate agreed to take him as pillion (even though his mate’s girlfriend had said he couldn’t go). So his mate engineered a row with her then stormed off, leaving him and Stan to ride off into the sun. It was freezing on the way there, so they stopped off at a 24-hour launderette to spend time enjoying a coffee and a warm-up. Arriving in Hastings, they realised they hadn’t even taken a tent with them – so they slept under a boat on the beach – happy days!

MAUSPENCER@CLASSICSCOOTERIST.COM

29

AHEAD OF ITS TIME

Honda Juno KA

Soichrio Honda didn’t hang about. Only seven years after he wheeled the first motorcycle out of his small wooden workshop (basically a bicycle with a little clip-on twostroke engine) he was ready to make the most advanced scooter the world had seen.

F

uturistic metallic green bodywork gave a nod to the sort of vehicle a sci-fi hero would ride when he saved Planet Earth from the invasion of ‘Radar Men from the Moon’, but when the Juno KA was launched in 1954, it was really built to ‘Zap!’ the Fuji Rabbit and ‘Pow!’ Mitsubishi’s Pigeon.

Soichrio chose fibreglass reinforced with polyester resin to make the bodywork.

Fibreglass had, of course, been used before the Second World War in the construction of small boats and, after the conflict, by enthusiasts to make hand-built cars. But it was only when Chevrolet chose the wonder

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material for the curvaceous Corvette, which debuted at the January 1953 Motorama show in New York, that glass reinforced plastic (GRP) moved into the mainstream.

Soichrio imported glass fibre matting and resin from the US and ordered his team to make the moulds. But producing body parts wasn’t as easy as he had hoped – the first attempts produced pin-holed panels and loose glass fibres that stuck out, and the paint they used for steel didn’t stay on GRP for long.

That didn’t faze Soichrio, who proclaimed: “Of seeing and listening and trying, the most important is trying.” They got it right in the end.

Bristol’s Carole Nash Classic MotorCycle Show always brings out rarities and the 2016 event was no exception with a host of unusual scooters on display. Rubbing handlebars with an IWL Berlin, and a rare Coswio Jika Pandora on the Vintage Motor Scooter Club stand was one with a curvy Latin lovely adorning the legshields.

F

inished in a stunning red and white livery the beautifully restored scoot could on first glance have been a typical model from one of the ‘big two’, but closer examination revealed it was an Iso Milano (or ‘Diva’ as it was known in the rest of the world). It was only built between 1957 and 1960 – when the parent company then decided to concentrate its efforts on the Gran Turismo car market.

It’s regarded as one of the best scooters of its generation, and one which is now highly prized among collectors and aficionados.

Imported into the UK by Stuart & Payne Ltd of Broad Street, London EC2, and later sold

by Doug Miles of 75 High Street, Droitwich (interesting, that was four years after the last one rolled out of the Bresso factory) the Iso Milano is now owned by West Country enthusiast John Cross, who later in the year invited me along to take his rare beast for a spin. However before we fired it up John told me a little about how he came to get the Milano; 40 years after he had his first one: “When I was a kid, our scout troop inherited a go-kart powered by an old Villiers engine.

We soon got to know a lot about the mechanics, as it needed plenty of tinkering

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to keep it going. I decided to get a motorbike to tear around the fields behind where we lived and then one day my mate Jed alerted me that while he was doing his paper round, he’d seen one dumped in a backyard. The following Saturday we went round to see it, but on arrival I discovered it wasn’t a motorbike, but an old scooter with the name of Iso Milano on the legshields. The main thing was it had an engine (which was seized) but the owner was only too pleased to get rid of it, so we started to push it home.

“We hadn’t got very far when a police car pulled-up alongside. The officer asked us: ‘What do you think you two are doing then?’

Taking a closer look, he could see that the scooter was just a rusty wreck and we weren’t going to be riding it, so he let us go. Back home we took the head off and after enlisting some help from my dad – he didn't like two wheelers, but as he worked at the REME, he knew a lot about engines – he told us the best thing to do was to pour plenty of diesel down the bore and then use a piece of wood, along with a big hammer. After just a few clonks, the piston was free. With the head secured and some new petroil in the tank, we soon had it fired-up.

PUBLISHING BYGONES

Scooter & Scooterist magazine It was down to just one magazine to keep the scooterist scene up to date with everything that was going on in the world of scooters from September 1973 up to August 1987. Scooter & Scooterist was the brainchild of Norrie Kerr, who, with the help of his wife Janet, produced and printed everything from scratch. Norrie explains how it all came about...

T

he magazine started with a desire to gather scooter news. We had to type it, print it, collate it, post it, and get it to scooterists, who would appreciate it and use it. I had been helping on Scooter World magazine to gather info, FBSC news, and reports – you name it, I tried to supply it. Both Scooter World editors (Jon Stevens, who resigned as editor a year before it closed down, and Jeff Armitstead, who was editor for the last year of production) were most grateful in print for my input over the few years that I’d helped them. Scooter World closed its doors forever in August 1972.

There was another scooter magazine, Club & Circuit (a clubman’s magazine which blossomed in and around London) aimed mostly at LASCA clubs (London Area Scooter Clubs Association) and surrounding areas.

Sadly, around early 1973, C&C editor Spyke, decided to shut down production. It was therefore a natural progression for me when Scooter World and C&C closed their doors, to take up the cudgel and start my own scooter magazine, Scooter & Scooterist, (or S&S as it was best known). I decided to start S&S magazine during September 1973 (my 27th birthday).

The first thing to do was to get a name for the new magazine. I spoke with various people and the past editors who were helpful.

Spyke thought S&S was too close a title to C&C, but my thinking was my choice of name reflected what the magazine was about: scooters and scooterists. The next point of call was the equipment to produce S&S (remember this was way before computers, and photocopiers were office machines with high running costs). I found myself searching

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Exchange and Mart, getting costs and ideas of what to use. We didn’t just get someone to print it for us; we did the lot, even popping it into the post office to get it delivered. My father had been a printer stationer and the printing thing was in my blood.

Gestetner duplicators were a starting point. A hand model was bought (hand model meant the user cranked the handle once for every one single-sided sheet produced); a typewriter was next. It was easy to buy old typewriters, but we wanted something that would last a few years. We found one and we then looked to source the wax sheets to fit

the Gestetner, the paper to produce the end product, and the other items we needed for the journey we were about to take.

It all sounded too good to be true, producing our own magazine. Bear in mind, scooterists had no high street magazine.

Power & Pedal, Scootering & Lightweights, Practical Scooterist, Scooter and Three Wheeler, Scooter News Weekly, et al, had all gone, and Scooter World had just disappeared into oblivion. Club members at least had their club magazines, Jet Set and Vespa News, so we were in fact filling an essential void.

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

Brid or bust!

The Bridlington scooter rally has always been a favourite of mine and nothing, I guess, beats the ride up and the ride back from Leicester. On this occasion (2002) I had chosen a slightly unconventional way of getting there – not unconventional in terms of my ride, but how it was to initially be done.

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t the time I was a member of the Leicester Phoenix Scooter Club and when I first joined in 1999 my ride was a standard Li 150 Special. That was sold to someone in the Merseyside area and other scooters came and went until I decided that I wanted another Special – this time an Li 125 Special. A chance visit to Armandos in Sheffield meant I had the chance to locate a 1966 model (chosen due to the year of my birth) and a decision was then taken that although the scooter could have been ridden as it was, I wanted it customised.

Now, when I say customised I was working on the basis of a ‘sort-of’ 1960s dealer special. Think Eddy Grimstead meets Horners and you may be somewhere about right in terms of paintwork and tuning. Over the coming months the Li 125 Special went from a metallic blue machine to a base gold and candy red eye-catcher. Allied to this was an upgrade in the engine department of a factory inspired 175 set-up to give the scooter just a bit more mph! I had taken to calling this pseudo dealer special ‘The Sidewinder’ and even mocked-up a fake advert for it using the original Lambretta Concessionaires Pacemaker advert.

When I initially went to pick-up the scooter at the annual Armandos Open Day, I noticed a nasty scratch/gouge on the right-hand side rear running board. No worries, it could go back to the painter. So when I eventually picked the scooter up, it was on the Friday of the annual Bridlington rally – not really the best preparation for a newly-built engine is it?.

Complete with my kit for the weekend I wheeled the scooter out of the shop and made my way out of Sheffield. I had decided to head towards the A19 in order to get to York and then the A64 from York to the A166 to Bridlington.

Not far from the outskirts of Sheffield I realised my first mistake. I hadn’t checked the fuel tank for fuel. Suffice to say a stop at the nearest petrol station was required and luckily for me, an Esso petrol station appeared on the horizon.

While filling-up I was too busy looking round at what was going on and hadn’t realised that I’d filled the tank up too much. In fact, I’d put that much fuel in that there was no room for oil!

I went and paid and then pushed the scooter to the side of the petrol station where I put it on the stand and promptly started her up (my thought process being that by running the engine, the fuel would start to go down, I could add oil and be on my merry way).

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IO N

Johnnie Johnson Graham Nell Tony Beckley Aubrey Jackson Terry Davidson Peter Derichs

C

V E S PA E X P E

DI T

FISH 19 6 8

APE

.W.A.

R CANYON S RIVE

The heroes on the rim

Vespas resting among the rocks may provide some strange images – but there’s nothing stranger than what took place in south west Africa (in what’s now known as Namibia) during 1968.

The words of Julius Caesar, ‘Veni, vidi, vici’ used in the title of this article translate from Latin into English as ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’.

This is a story of three Vespas and their fearless team on an epic adventure.

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I

n 1968 the Cape Town Vespa Club took on the biggest canyon in the southern hemisphere, the Fish River Canyon situated in Namibia. It is the largest canyon in the southern hemisphere and is the second largest canyon in the world (the USA’s Grand Canyon being the largest). It’s also considered to be one of Southern Africa’s toughest hikes. The river is seasonal, flowing in the rainy season from January to April and can become a raging torrent. In the dry and peak hiking season (May to September) there’s almost no water with the exception of one or two long pools. It’s mostly made-up of a series of smaller pools of varying sizes (sometimes just puddles) separated by huge boulders and other obstacles like fine soft ftt sand and thick caked mud.

Earlier, the Cape Town Vespa Club had made a bet that some its own members would be the first to take a vehicle through the canyon and three scooters sponsored by Grosvenor Motors were tuned for ‘canyon conditions’ by six friends Johnnie Johnson (expedition leader), Graham Nell (club captain), Tony

It was a long way down!

Beckley, Terry Davidson, Peter Derichs and Aubrey Jackson. These sponsored scooters, when donated, weren’t operational or roadworthy and had to be rebuilt with spares – also thankfully supplied by Grosvenor Motors who had the Vespa franchise at that time.

The Vespas were painted in the colours of Namibian ‘indigenous’ animals.

All this had begun with a dream of being the first to put down tyre tracks inside the canyon.

The six men knew that the expedition would entail severe exertion and hardship. Therefore intense physical training was a top priority.

KEEPING THE WHEELS TURNING Backplate showing brake shoes after removal of the wheel

1

Vespa front wheel bearing replacement

PROBLEM SOLVER

Unlike latter two-stroke Vespas (specifically the PX), the GS 160 and SS180 have the distinct advantage that the wheel bearings can be replaced in the home workshop.

This is without requiring the removal of the forks or the hub to aid this repair.

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THE SAGA REACHES ITS EPIC CONCLUSION

A tale of three chairs

Aftfter t deciding that Lambrettas were not the answer to a successful sidecar outfit, Nick and Muff designed and built Hairy Chair Mk 3, using a Vespa 180SS engine in a 90SS chassis. It was a radical design and Hairy 3 proved more than a handful on its initial competitive outing during the 1974 Isle of Man Rally. The crew returned to Liverpool assuming that only a far-reaching rethink would keep the Hairy Project on track…

This story was originally published as four episodes in Scooter & Scooterist magazine.

S&S was the brainchild of Norrie Kerr who wrote, edited and produced the magazine for 14 years almost single-handed. With his kind permission the S&S archives have been opened and this article made available to one of the original authors, Andrew (‘Muff’) Spencer, who has revised, edited and annotated it.

W

hen Hairy 3 returned from the Island aft fter t the 1974 event, she was left untouched for some time. The crew were dispirited and anyway, we had found out by now that a re-bore was definitely needed.

However, the season for checking the Tour of Wales route came round again and we needed the Chair. A ‘new’ old barrel and piston fell into our hands, and they were in much better condition than the old ones. Secondly, we removed the forks to straighten a bend caused by a sideswipe during the Day Trial.

Then the brainwave struck. You can’t really straighten forks in a vice with a hammer – but what if you cut part-way through them, straighten them and then re-weld? The next step was to see if some handling improvement could be brought about at the same time.

Finally, a ‘v’ was cut a few inches below the lower steering bearing and the forks were straightened, but at the same time, pulled forwards. This had the effect of increasing the rake and trail of the steering. When rewelded and inserted, these modified forks gave the outfit a slightly longer wheelbase and ensured that more of the outfit’s weight was thrown forward. Other refinements were made, including a slight rebuild of the chair to incorporate a scrambles-style grab rail.

Much to our amazement, it was like waving a magic wand. Overnight, what had been an ill-handling ‘pig's ear’ turned into a responsive and competitive ‘silk purse’! Hairy steered, cornered and drifted just like the real thing!

GOING THE EXTRA MILE

We started taking the now renamed ‘Hairy 3a’ to places where previously we would never have dreamed it possible and certainly where Hairies 1, 2 and 3 would never have turned a wheel. Through the year our confidence grew and we could hardly wait for the 1975 Isle of Man Rally to come round – but this, it turned out, was going to be held in September for the first time.

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Nick & Muff on Hairy 3a in ‘full flight’ on a fast track near the Gooseneck corner on the TT course. You can see Nick applying some ‘opposite lock’ as we power-slide round a right-hand curve. And, yes, the sidecar wheel is off the ground! – note the pair of slightly worried expressions (the pointed thing at the front of the sidecar is a petrol funnel).

It was about this time that our two-wheeled allegiances began to shift away from scooters to off-road motorcycles. In organising our Tour of Wales event we had come into contact with the North Wales Trail Riders group and had seen first-hand how much more suitable a specifically designed two-wheeler was when it came to serious off-road riding. Having said that, the Trail Riders were both amused and impressed by our efforts in keeping up with them on our small-wheeled, solo Vespas on the occasions when we joined them on trail rides. They were even more amused when we turned up on Hairy 3a to take part in the occasional run. It was during these days out that we both came to the conclusion that we were definitely going to ‘upgrade’ to motorbikes before too long!

The week before the Isle of Man, we went out on Hairy for a final test run with the Trail Riders. As had become our pre-Isle of Man tradition, we did some horrible damage to Hairy on that run and only had the welding repairs finished the day before the boat sailed!

It may well have been the haste involved in the

final preparations for the event (or perhaps it was just good, old-fashioned carelessness), but we somehow managed to misplace the letter from the rally organisers giving us our competition number and final regulations.

However, we had some kind of memory that the letter had mentioned the number 460. After all we had been No 402 in the previous year’s event, so 460 seemed entirely reasonable.

CONFUSED?

On arrival at Douglas we set off to the TT Grandstand to ‘sign-on’. We gave our number and waited for our paperwork. The confused official looked at his sheets and said: “There must be some mistake – you’ve already signed-on!” We looked at each other in surprise and then explained that we were a sidecar entry and gave our names.

Eventually, after shuffling his documentation for a while, the official gave the somewhat peeved response: “You’re actually No 570!”

Reluctantly, he gave us our paperwork on the understanding we would have the right number on the machine in time for scrutineering.