Sunday 22 February 2009

Great Clunkers follow-up



When we first started the blog we'd look at others, specifically Max Schaaf's 4Q Conditioning, and say 'Wow, he gets a lot of comments and we don't get any.' We even had our patron saint put out this plea. But now we get plenty of comments, and some are amazing. The fastest man on two wheels, Rocky Robinson, left a comment on the post about himself a couple of weeks ago. Then Donald from South Africa commented on Great Clunkers, and emailed this in. Cheers Donald.
The bikes look very similar, and must be the same bike, but the one in Donald's photos is obviously a sprinter, so I still don't understand why the original clunker had knobblies.

"I left a comment on your "clunkers" post regarding the first photo [The comment was 'That first one looks a bit like Burt Munro's Velocette, apart from the knobblies. I've got photos, I'll send them to you. You can see both of Burt's bikes, the Indian and the Velo, at E. Hayes & Sons Hardware in Invercargill, New Zealand].
Here's a couple of photos of what I believe it is. I was in NZ in 07 and travelled a couple of days out of my way to see Burt Munro's hometown, Invercargill. I was disappointed with the museum where I had to pay a $10 entry fee to see a bunch of props from the movie "The Worlds Fastest Indian", and I couldn't even take photos! There was nothing original of Burt's, mostly just random bikes that had no connection to him. Later that day while sitting in a cafe with my girlfriend and perusing a local bike mag, I read that Burt's bikes were at the hardware store down the street from us. E. Hayes & Son's (I hope I got that right) was a Velo and Indian dealer and good friends of Burtg. They had his bikes on display among the lawnmowers and garden tools! We rushed over there and I was allowed to take photos and even twist the throttle on the original record making
Indian! I much prefered the Velocette, I wish that had been featured in the film as well!

Follow the link to my Flickr page
Regards, Donald Hosier, SA Motorcycles, South Africa

Also, Hugo Wilson from Classic Bike emailed to say this about the original Great Clunkers post...
'Bike in the top picture is a fairly dramatically hacked about with Velocette, probably a 350 MAC (I'd have to count the fins on the barrel to check) that is even more bastardised than mine. Second one is, I think a Harley. Third an Indian. Bottom one an Enfield.'

Keep the comments coming.

1 comment:

By Hand and By Brain said...

RAD!!! I personally like to read those comments- KEEP EM COMING!