Vince

Briggo, he was great value for the sport in the way he could attract good publicity let alone his skills as a rider. Keith, I have to admit to being a bit disappointed to hear this about Kyle. All those years of listening to good solid p*** taking I would have expected something a bit more original than specsavers

I think this is something that a lot of people haven't taken seriously enough over the years, including myself. Have seen concussed riders still racing many times and shrugged it off as being something that happens in motorcycle racing. With the benefit of hindsight it's something I now believe I got very wrong. Most times I am all for letting riders decide whether injuries are OK to ride with but anybody who is concussed isn't fit to make that decision and I now think those around them should be stopping them. I would also be in favour of a mandatory 14 day rest after any concussion and perhaps a longer spell if a rider is concussed twice within 30 days or something along those lines. There was a radio programme about it on Tuesday that I've not had chance to listen to yet but it's available here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05102tf

Was racing against my uncle in the 50's, still going in the 70's and running training schools at Weymouth in the 80's. Then when my son started riding Speedway in 2004 he was still around offering help and advice. He must have ben best part of 90 last time I saw him wandering around at the Talmag Trial and that's a pretty good walk at any age. One of life's good blokes and will be missed a great deal.

Im with TNT on this, there will always be somebody willing to cheat in any sport however there is nothing to say that there is wholesale cheating in British Speedway anything like that suggested by the opening poster. After all there would be little advantage to nitrous or a 590 motor around Eastbourne or Ipswich! Could be different on the bigger tracks abroad but it seems to me that most cheats get caught pretty quickly. As for wanderers spare fuel tank, tap and don't forget the give away line to the carb I think that would be better used to keep the spare power bands in.

The fixture list not being released until late used to be a major issue for us when my lad was riding. I used to have to book all my holiday and then rely on other people swapping with me in order to make the meetings. This is one place where Speedway loses out to other motorcycle disciplines when it comes to ease of getting into racing for newcomers. They can buy a bike and practice and race amateur meetings at weekends like other sports. However when they want to step up to NL it suddenly begins to get very difficult to fit in around most jobs. There's not much that can be practically done about it but it does remain a difficulty for Speedway that other motorcycle sports don't have.

Nitro stinks so I can't imagine anybody getting away with it these days although I do know for a fact it has been used in the past. I know it used to be put into the fuel but also can see no reason why a sponge couldn't be put inside a round slide where the venturi effect would suck it in. However I also suspect that most of it would be gone long before the tapes went up so any benefit would be psychological. There were most definitely practices before the old World finals. Apart from the things Gustix calls gamesmanship we have the silencer episode which was stopped fairly quickly and an advance/ retard switch that was also stopped as confirmed cheating. Otherwise we have lots of rumours and nothing to really support what I read as the opening posters claim that cheating was currently widespread.

Be interesting to know what these cheats are doing, easy to say and with the silencers it would seem likely but what is it that Wanderer thinks is going on now?

Have to say that in my experience the costs of engine servicing (we did our own engines but even paying somebody the same would apply) was small fry compared to the cost of travelling and time off work. Running all Speedway on Saturday or Sunday would result in good savings for many riders and allow many more to take up the sport I suspect, pity it's completely impractical really

The covers you found on Ebay are nowhere near up to the job and for something that would be you are looking at nearer £10k then you need to add in the cost of finding a way to fix it sensibly. I can say this with some confidence as a friend of mine who is an amateur rider owns a company that deals in materials used for yachts. Therefore he understands about UV resistance and the damage caused by repeatedly rolling sheets etc and he spent some time coming up with a way to cover a Speedway track. His idea was similar to that described by SCB with the outside permanently fixed to the top of the fence and a fixing system on the centre green. It would be a time consuming job putting the covers on and off as they would need a considerable amount of tension applied in order for the water to run off what would be a relatively shallow angle. That would also require that the outer fixing point be very strong. His idea was that the track would be prepared and watered heavily as soon as possible following a meeting and the cover put on only to be removed on the day of the meeting for final track prep. The thinking being that this would allow consistent track conditions no matter the weather, the track wouldn't sweat so much because there would be air flow from both sides under the cover. All great but you're probably talking a £14k investment with the material needing replacing every 5 to 7 years depending on location and the sport doesn't have that money spare especially on a system that is theoretically sound but unproven.

Without looking at the book I would say that you have to run methanol so would need to adapt for that. Think it has to be air cooled as well. I just can't see any significant advantage of the 2v jawa, certainly not any worth giving them a monopoly.

To be honest Ray I think you are way off the mark, the off road market is important in it's own right to the Japanese manufacturers. They put a lot of money into running teams and affiliate programs in the states. The influence of Motocross success is minimal on the road market. I couldn't find figures for Honda but to give you some idea of the scale North American sales of the Yamaha YZ450F for 2011 were 69000. That's just one model alongside that there is the WR450 Enduro bike which is almost identical and then the YZF and WR 250's as well as the YZ125 and that's just from Yamaha. Sales for Honda will be considerably higher. Worldwide the MX market is pretty big although dwarfed by the market for scooters. I have no idea of the market for Speedway engines but I can't imagine it being much more than 1000 per year which is why I say that the Japanese would have no interest in developing an engine. Should F2 Speedway ever take off I would imagine one of them might well be willing to supply engines only though.

I don't think Honda would be interested in building an engine especially for speedway. I would guess that there are dealerships in the states that sell more Honda mx bikes in a year than speedway engines are sold worldwide. No way are Honda selling off road bikes as loss leaders, the world market is huge.

One lap of the TT course is much the same as the distance between services for a Speedway engine though. Of course engines will blow up sometimes but I can think of exactly none that are anywhere near to the time limits of Speedway engines. You've had Speedway engines apart same as I have and it's not hard to see that reliability could be doubled or trebled with better lubrication and build quality. Just seeing one next to a modern Japanese engine is like a trip back to the 60's. I can't believe that in the past 30 years the life expectations of most engines have increased out of all expectation despite producing more power yet Speedway engines have stayed much the same and can't be improved.

Was it Arne Hendrikson used to ride Grasstrack with one leg,? not sure if he rode Speedway but was a friend of Briggo's.

So from now until the couple of years it takes GoSpeed to get their masterplan in place presumably clubs will be given completely free rein to promote as and how they wish. Including using video clips (excepting from Sky if that is a major issue) and any domain they feel suitable. After all two years in social media is a hell of a long time to waste and surely GoSpeed would have the advantage of seeing what worked best for individual clubs. It could all be tied in to a cohesive plan covering the sport once everything is in place!

Clearly at least 3 of us are interested!

I'd disagree strongly with the idea that MX engines don't run at peak rpm. Villopoto is riding a hard pack track that has obviously seen rain because it is heavily rutted in that video, therefore he won't be screaming the bike. Even so that bike is running pretty hard at times and even hits the limiter now and again in the air and his limiter will be a good chunk higher than on a stock bike. Find a video of somebody like Herlings in the sand or Barcia anywhere and you'll hear a bike scream! Water cooling is a major part of reliability on a mx bike but only because it runs for a long time. A Speedway bike running on methanol for a couple of minutes should be no problem with an efficient oil system. Fuel injection may help performance and emissions but bikes were no less reliable on carbs. To me the difference is the design and build quality, if one of the major Japanese manufacturers built a Speedway engine it would be many times more reliable than the current offerings. Can see Villipoto winning races in the GP but Cairoli getting the better of him simply because he knows the tracks and is used to the GP system. If he stays for a second year I could see Villipoto winning the Championship.

A 450 MX engine will rev to around 13500 rpm before the rev limiter kicks in so pretty similar to a Speedway engine. If you think a Speedway engine takes a beating go to any deep sand track and see what a MX bike goes through. At some of the beach races they will be absolutely flat on a big straight for as long as some entire Speedway races. There are differences such as in the weight of the crankshaft assembly that badly affect reliability but not to the extent that they are so much less reliable. That is down to design and build quality, If I get chance over the weekend I will photograph a Yamaha and Jawa cylinder head together and even in a photo you will see the difference in the quality of the castings. If I can find it I have a drawing of the oil system on a Yamaha as well, it's more complicated than an entire Speedway engine!

While it's true that any type of engine will have blow ups very few engines at any level have between service intervals of less than an hour which is about where Speedway engines are. You don't need new materials from Mars to extend engine longevity just using the best quality bearings and metals that are currently available will do so considerably, stuff like ceramic bearings, high grade alloys and top quality machining will do so to a good extent. Careful design, especially in the area of lubrication and cooling where current Speedway engines are very weak would bring the biggest gains in my opinion. The build quality and design of current Speedway engines is more comparable to a 1960's BSA than a modern Japanese motorcycle engine. Speedway engines are different to others in some ways because of the heavy rotating mass and the way they are ridden. To my way of thinking that alone isn't enough to anywhere near account for the fact that they are so much less reliable than comparable race engines. Modern mx engines have between 25 and 40 hour service intervals depending on the manufacturer and the 450 bikes will often do 3 or 4 times that amount in the hands of amateurs. Even at GP level they do a couple of hours hard use between rebuilds (just because works teams can and like a Speedway GP engine will be rebuilt after less than 15 minutes). I'm not arguing that this new engine is the best way forward for the sport only that I believe it is possible to build a Speedway engine that is many more times reliable than those currently in use.

Even easier to say that once under starters orders any rider moving backwards at all is disqualified with no replacement. Wouldn't take long to sink in!

Given that most seem to agree that the high revs on the start line are responsible for a lot of longevity problems what has happened to the rev limiter? Seemed like the riders that tested it had no issues and there is no doubt in my mind that it would help with reliability and be relatively cheap and easy to bring in and police. An improved oil system and a minimum stroke limit that did away with the extremely high revving engines around now would bring other benefits as well as increased reliability Before anybody says it I do understand about piston speed being increased along with stroke but just about every other component gets an easier life. In addition the longer stroke would do away with the need for very light flywheels giving bikes that handled deep dirt better and future proofing them against problems caused by inevitable decreases in future noise limits. While the idea of a single make engine is good I suspect the reality would be that Jawa (or whoever) would either or both reduce quality to meet a price or once there was no challenge to their monopoly increase prices. You can buy a brand new Chinese built pit bike engine that is reasonably competitive for under £400 but you will spend a lot of time replacing parts over a season. The parts are very cheap so that's fine if you do the work yourself and it's still cheap racing. However if you pay somebody else to work on your engine it would be much more cost effective to buy a more expensive better quality engine in the first place. Perhaps that is where the real savings are to be made by riders learning to do their own basic servicing and paying far less often for a full service. Personally I can't see any reason that a really well designed Speedway engine built with highest quality materials can't be made to run for 10 hours. A claiming rule for either complete bikes or engines would be the way to stop more expensive engines being further tuned. If this engine is £6000 then set a limit at £6500 and any race winner can have his engine claimed at the end of the meeting for that amount, even better if you do it with complete bikes because you could then restrict the amount spent on ancillaries as well.

Gater: Hancock and I would find it difficult to choose between him and Mauger for all time best. Racer: Tai. Sayfutdinov is more spectacular and very close but Tai on form seems to pass from unexpected angles. Ward is very spectacular indeed but fails to pass as often as he makes it at GP level. All time racer: Briggo was brilliant as was Peter Collins but with the rose tinted specs on my early days at Speedway were spent watching Christer Lofqvist pass people for fun at Poole so I'll go with him.

You can get fixed footrests, sure Max at Pegasus would have one. However like the other poster I would stick with the swinging one and get used to it, much safer.

Except the superprestigio wasn't aavailable in Europe on fanschoice. It might appear on the ama site in time

16 year old Brit Oliver Brindlay came 6th in the superfinal after being taken all the way to the fence in the first corner. This against some of the worlds very best motorcycle racers, qualifying for that final is in itself a fantastic achievement but he is on the pace as well. Great ride from the youngster and believe me he has the talent and attitude to become a top motorcycle racer no matter what sport he chooses. Marquez looks like becoming one of the all time greats and appears to be blindingly quick on any sort of bike. Found a video of the final here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7ldNazkMIU