The Roaring Season

CUSTAXIE50 wrote:If you go on to the net you will see the bike that is in the usa ,that they are saying he used on all his runs on the salt, so what has the bike in nz got to do with what Burt did at Bonneville.

true, but not the engine. He initially travelled back with the bike but then left it there and brought the motor back. When they outlawed his bike Roger Donaldson took him back to do a documentary so he built up a motor to use and sell with the bike. The one over there has been 'restored' to immaculate condition, The engine in the bike here still has the number 50R627 the original number likely restamped as it's unlikely those cases lasted all those years.

woody wrote:The Velocette is in a cafe in Parnell, Auckland. The owner ( Harvey ) bought it at auction to stop the bike being sold overseas.

The Hayes family brought both his Velocette and Indian and they remain in southland.

Old interview found!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/81594219/saved-from-a-skip--the-lost-burt-munro-interviews

Harris Family Racing from Hawkes Bay in a Ford powered Hot Rod and the Son in Law on a Bike from NZ so far

Well before you know it Bonnville will be all go,starts 9 aug runs for 7days any one know who will be running this year from nz.

Don't overlook Roger Donaldson's wonderful "scrapbook" - "The World's Fastest Indian" ISBN 978-1-86979-207-7.
It also comes with a DVD which includes original documentary of Burt at Bonneville - "Offerings to the God of Speed". Not to be missed!

Coulda ridden it home THAT would have been an adventure and maybe gotcha into the NZ Herald and up there with Burt as a legend !

Drifty,

Completely off topic I know but a couple of years ago we were in Shimla, India where a cash strapped American back packer was offering a genuine '50's Royal Enfield for next to nothing. In a country where just catching a train is a major drama, the logistics were too daunting but I kick myself now from the comfort and safety of home, a couple of thousand mile road trip might have interesting to say the least.

many thanks for the ISBN number
when i wa sin NZ in 1990 i went to a Turners misc auction in auckland and i saw an Indian bike up for auction in good nick bar someone had dropped it off stand/ stand broke and minor damage
i was so tempted to bid n buy it ( circa $2500 ish/£1k) as it looked smart and i really had no designs on buying bikes but it was 1 of those impulse moments to put my hand up and own but logic intervened when i thought how do I a winjun pom on my "travels" justify buying the bike and then ship it home !
Today it would not even enter my head and those here who know me will testify my hand would have been up and it woulda been bought before any kiwi had time to think about it

"Burt Munro Indian Legend of Speed" by George Begg. Published by Begg & Allen 2002. PO Box 8283 Christchurch NZ ISBN No 0-473-08906-8.
"One Good Run, The Legend of Burt Munro" by Tim Hanna. Penquin Books 2005. ISBN No 0-14-301974-0.

Both excellent, and both written from a different angle. Tim Hanna's book is probably slightly better and as with all his books the research has been exhaustive. I haven't got the details of the Roger Donaldson scrapbook, I have seen it and it looks good, but for info on Burt the two above are the way to go.

looks like i gotta get me a copy of the books
anyone have the book numbers so i can look em up over here
however I aim willing to accept loan of the books from generous kiwi to a poor pom
I can read now bring em back to kiwi land in november when i visit waheki island

driftwood wrote: fact or fiction same as his lemon tree watering trick

Works on ours!

Roger Donaldsons "Scrapbook..." is very cool too.

Good call, Gavin. I read the George Begg version a number of years ago and found it a good yarn. Tim Hanna also has put a lot of time and effort into a similar tome and his work is well worth a trawl as well. The movie has encapsulated the facts, fallacies and highlights of a number of trips Burt made to Bonneville into one ripping yarn. I recall from the time just what a threadbare effort Burt's trips were, real bones-of-yr-arse stuff, so to come away with a permanent record in a class that no longer runs due to safety constraints is without doubt a just epitaph to a genuine dedicated character of the time. Dunno about you, but I wept like a big sook all the way through the movie, not just at the tangible low-budget-kiwi-against-the-world feeling, but I also saw it as a metaphor to anyone who's ever really busted their hump against the odds to achieve anything, no matter how insignificant, as a personal goal in motorsport. We used to giggle each year when the Bonneville results would appear in the press, and say, "Bloody hell, the old bugger's done it again ! How does he do it ?"
Nice work, Burt !

Well there are two books, both well worth reading.

Carlo wrote:The film was the Readers Digest version of his life story. the full book would be even more interesting

Exactly. Burt's story needs no embellishment.

The film was the Readers Digest version of his life story. the full book would be even more interesting

who wants the real facts anyway?!
as a pom the film was just mucking fadgic to watch on its feat of engineering and Kiwi ness
not sure if the indian medicine mans dogs testicles potion for the old fellas peeing problem is fact or fiction same as his lemon tree watering trick or his own piston casting skills
I don't want anyone to shatter the myth or ruin the film for me i still enjoy watching now n then

Munro's engines.

If you look at the shelf of "Offerings to the God of Speed" that features in the movie, Roger Donaldson's excellent book and in the Hayes hardware store, there is a wonderful selection of mangled conrods. All hand built by Burt, of course.

We all know what happens when a conrod lets go, do we not? (Especially one made of caterpillar axle, his favourite conrod material.) It rarely stays confined within the relatively soft alloy cases. Based on these two simple facts I would say that our Mr Munro would be a regular customer of Indian crankcases. You can only repair them so many times and there was a mention in one of the features (one of the books I think, because the movie doesn't touch on it) that the cases were stuffed, having been damaged and repaired so many times.

Burt's 1920s Indian Scout, I reckon, was like grandad's axe - every part replaced many times over. The legend of setting speed records on his "40 year old motorsickle" is just one of the wonderful pieces of folklore that now surrounds one of NZ's greatest ever characters. Burt knew how to keep people enthralled all right, and must have kept the detail of what engines and bikes were what, all to himself. Even the books gloss over this area - and so there is doubt and confusion about which is "Burt's Bike" when the truth is, there is more than one.

I say this not to detract or denigrate from the man's achievements or the story in any way. To me it just adds to the story. Burt was one of my heroes ever since I read about him doing speed record runs on the public roads way back then.

In my view, having read various articles about Burt's bikes, there is more than one. After a while he found transporting the whole bike back and forth too difficult and only carried the engine. There is a genuine bike (with the triple tailfin clamshell) and an engine in Hayes Hardware store in Invers. The US bike is a genuine clamshell with the single tailfin and spare engine - which Burt sold at the end of his runs there (it may have even been before he was forced to give up).

There has been no mention of two frames, but I reckon the answer to the mystery is that at the end there were two bikes. Burt just took the engine back and forth.

The frame was never the original Indian frame and for someone with Burt's ability, knocking up a frame would have been no problem.

A lot of folklore has grown around Burt (and long may it last). For example, he only cast his own pistons, didn't machine them because his lathe was only a hobby lathe and not good enough to do final machining. The machining was done by a local company (an apprentice, David Giles, learned how to make them and in later years his business was making pistons for classic cars, particularly Jags). David Giles still runs Ikon engineering in Pakuranga and is one of this country's unknown success stories.

I got the guided tour of Ikon one day when they were modifying Mazda rotors with epoxy resin so they could develop 1000hp drag race engines from them,a scale working model of a Shea locomotive (Ikon has built a number of them) and the "train" that took the men and materials through the harbour Bridge clip-ons during its recent strengthening.

As far as I know the original Indian and a Velocette are still in the Hayes Hardware store on the main street of Invercargill.
http://www.ehayes.co.nz/burt-munro/
It's been a couple of years since I last saw them, but they've been there a long time, and it would have been big news if they'd been sold, especially the Indian.

Several replicas were made for the movie, I think by Phil Mauger in Chch (who races the ex Denny Hulme McLaren M23). I'm not sure who owns these bikes but they appear at shows from time to time, and probably travel the world. I had heard that an original streamlined shell that Burt left in the US has been rediscovered since the movie came out.

Custaxie50, the net is a pretty big place. Could you provide a link to the website that you were reading.

Cheers,
Malcolm

Edit: Just found this:
http://www.motorcycleclassics.com/black-side-down/munro-special-at-pebble-beach.aspx

Talk about over restored.