Worms to Catch Read online

  After the course there was still something I couldn’t work out, so Sharon rang up XYZ, who make the CNC milling machine. They realised that it was to do with a certain code that was defaulting to imperial, not metric measurements.

  Now my head was filled with approach distances, tool radii, selecting boundaries, work offsets, feeds and speed in millimetres per minute. It all makes my brain hurt, but I like it. Sometimes I think I’ve got it all right, but I’ve missed a number and the tool flies into the job at 100 mph and knackers it, so I’ve had to learn.

  It probably took me six hours to draw the top yoke and get it ready for machining, but then it would take the CNC milling machine 15 hours to cut it. I’d set it going at ten at night and leave it cutting, and I’d wake up at four, worried, and have to go downstairs to check it.

  It would have been dead easy to find a place in Grimsby to do the machining, but whatever happened I knew I had to suss it and do it myself. It was important to me. I only buggered one big bit up, the bottom yoke. But now I can draw a part and program a CNC machine, which gives me a lot of satisfaction.

  Then the CNC milling machine’s motor shit itself, so I’m now a CNC machine fitter too. I wasn’t going to pay some bugger to come out and fix it.

  So, the triple wasn’t quite finished, but we were nearly two weeks from the live broadcast on Easter Monday. It was always the plan that I was going to ride the Krazy Horse Indian on this test, and that was all ready and looking bloody nice. After all, Ken had proved it worked at 57 mph. The TV bods said they wanted to see my bike running, but it wouldn’t start. Then it pissed oil all over the car park. It wasn’t the best first impression, I’ll admit that, but they needed to have faith in me. I knew it wasn’t ready. I knew I was cutting it fine, but the TV lot started really panicking. No one was saying a thing to me, but they were on to Andy Spellman, my agent, and I was hearing it from him. They were shitting themselves, but none of them would say it to my face and I don’t know why.

  My bike looked the same as it does now, and how it looked on telly, except it didn’t have a seat, just some padding taped on. Ken wasn’t impressed. He didn’t like the clutch and primary drive being all open. I’d made it clear from the start that my triple was going to be the number one bike and the Krazy Horse Indian Scout was the backup. After the TV lot saw my bike they didn’t want me to use it. They had seen what a good job Krazy Horse had done, so they asked them to build another Indian Scout, just the same. So now the backup bike had a backup bike.

  All this happened before I even got my leathers on to attempt my first ride on the wall. I don’t know if the distraction of the triple puking its oil up had anything to do with it, but I wasn’t feeling that nervous. I’d seen it done, I’d trained on the small wall and I know how to ride a motorbike. Let’s have it, I thought, as I walked into the wall of death.

  After the bike had a couple of minutes to warm up, Curly, the mechanic from Krazy Horse, took the tyre warmers off and I climbed on. I rode the track, slowly at first, then came in for a word from Ken. Then I rode the track until I was going at a speed where the bike wanted to go on to the wall, and I was forcing it to stay on the track. I stopped again, then went out, up to speed and on to the wall for a few laps.

  I was a bit wild at first, bouncing off the track, up the top, down the bottom. I felt a bit out of control. Ken was dead calm, but he was telling me I didn’t need to be going that fast to start with. He never once said I was going too slow, and he was right – back off and build up slowly. Like Ken had warned me, a tiny movement made a huge difference on the big wall. I had to be more precise than I was on the small one.

  I came in for a breather and a reset. I also let Curly check the bike over before I went out for more of the same. Once I’d reset myself and got the gist of it, I was alright. What I had underestimated was the G-force, even at the low speeds. I might have been in the early 60s, way off the 80-mph target, but I was already really feeling the effect of 3.5 g. I’d done all the G-force training, going up in the stunt plane with pilot Mark Greenfield, and had a day of training with the RAF fighter pilots, but I thought it was all a bit of TV bullshit to make something to show on telly. It wasn’t. I was the limiting factor of it all.

  While I didn’t feel nervous, a heart-rate monitor I wore clocked me at 190 bpm. I thought the only way for me to get my heart rate that high was to go like hell on a pushbike, so it must have been adrenaline.

  That first afternoon on the big wall made it clear that the riding position of the modified Indian, even though it was an improvement over the standard riding position, wasn’t perfect. For a road bike it would be spot on, but I felt the bars were still too far from the seat. When I got up enough speed to get on the wall, about 60 mph, I was already feeling 3 to 4 g, and, because of the angle of my body, the extra G-force was pushing my chest and head down towards the top of the petrol tank. It was as if a big hand was pressing the centre of my back. It was nothing to do with the back injury – I was totally over that. It was all down to the body position. Being pushed down like that made it hard for me to see where I was going.

  Ken Fox didn’t agree that there was anything wrong with the Scout. His view was, ‘It’s spot on. Just ride it.’ And at the lower wall speed of 57 mph it was, but go faster than that and you’re sat in the wrong place. Ken has a motorbike and he rides it, pissing with the cock he’s got. I’m used to racing bikes, and if something doesn’t feel right I change it. I change this, change that, change everything I can to improve it. In racing you tailor everything to make it easier to do what you want. I applied my road-racing methods to the wall of death bike, saying to Krazy Horse, ‘I don’t like this, can you change it?’

  After that first day on the big wall Dad said, ‘I’d use the Indian. I wouldn’t ride the triple,’ even though he’d been working hard on it with me. Curly had done a good job on the Indian and he had the same double-check work ethic of a good TT mechanic, that wasn’t a doubt. But that wasn’t the point. I didn’t need a boot up the arse to get the triple finished, but it just confirmed that I was definitely riding the triple, especially if my dad thought that.

  CHAPTER 5

  I was 100 metres from the work gates when …

  I HAD A bad run with the Transit vans, starting not long after I broke my back at the Ulster Grand Prix in August 2015. It was one thing after another, with the first coming on the way to work one morning. I’d had the use of Transits for years, but they’d always been work vans, either my dad’s or Moody’s, none with my name on the logbook. But FT13 AFK, a black Transit Custom, was mine. Before that I’d owned Vauxhall Astravans and a Volkswagen Transporter, but Transits were the vans I liked the most.

  I was still getting over my back injury, so I was only biking into work a couple of days a week and driving the rest of it while I built up my fitness. It was September, earlyish in the morning, and the autumn sun was dead low, just rising, when I turned into the industrial estate. I was 100 metres from the work gates when I drove into the back of a parked car transporter. It was a hell of a shock. The impact ripped the nearside of the van out, demolishing the headlight, pulling the suspension wishbone off and the driveshaft out, and buckling the floor up. I’d only just turned the corner, so I wasn’t going fast, maybe 20 mph, but I hit 15 tons of lorry that wasn’t about to move and bounced off the transporter on to the other side of the road. I’d been there about a minute, still trying to work out how I’d managed to crash into a parked truck, when another van came around the corner and did exactly the same thing.

  The transporter was parked opposite a junction, where it shouldn’t really have been, but it was my fault. He wasn’t moving, and I’d driven straight into him because I was blinded by the sun.

  The police turned up, heard what happened and were accusing me, and the other bloke who’d crashed, of driving without due care and attention. What could I say to that? I’d just driven into a stationary truck. Luckily, matey boy who’d crashed after me had an onboard vide
o camera in the cab of his van, and it showed you could not see a thing, so the police became a bit more understanding. Still, it didn’t change the fact that my van was a write-off. I couldn’t be without a van, so the same day I bought one from a local dealer who owed me a favour and got a good deal on a plain white Transit, with a poverty spec.

  I ended up buying the wreck from the insurance company too. It had been labelled a Category B write-off by the insurance assessors, which meant there were strict rules saying it couldn’t be used on the road again. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I’d owned it from new and driven it carefully – it had just clocked 95,000 on the original brake discs and pads – so I reckoned it was too good to scrap. I managed to buy the wreck back for £900 and got paid out decent insurance money too, so it could’ve been worse.

  The next Transit disaster, or near disaster, happened in December, when I went to my favourite butty van, Gina and Nicky’s, close to work. I’d driven up to get something to eat and parked all of 40 metres from the butty van. I climbed out and walked halfway to it when I remembered I’d left all my change in my van and walked back to get it. Then, when I opened the Transit door, I realised I had the money in my pocket after all. I emptied everything out of my overalls on to the front seat, picked out the loose change, left the work and van keys on the front seat, closed the door and walked back to the butty van.

  I got my grub, turned around and said, to no one in particular, ‘Where’s me van gone?’ A woman in the queue for her own dinner said someone had just climbed out of a car, jumped in the van and driven off. Keen fucker! There was no sight of it, and it was obvious it wasn’t just Moody or Belty playing a trick on me. It had been nicked. I ran back to work thinking, How am I going to tell Moody this?

  I got into the office, rang the coppers and told them exactly what happened. I knew that if the van was gone for good it would be coming out of my pocket. The insurance wouldn’t cover it because I’d left the keys in it. All that was going through my mind was, Shit, bugger, bastard! Then, half an hour later, the phone rang. It was the police, telling me they’d found the van. It turned out the thieves had driven it off the industrial estate, round the corner and parked on a posh street, or as posh as it gets in Grimsby, locked it up and left it. The police reckoned the thieves would leave it there until the dust settled then go back for it after dark. My work keys were still on the seat, so I got away quite lightly. I just had to have new locks put in the van. That cost £300, but it was obviously loads better than buying a new van and having all the security at Moody’s changed. Another narrow escape.

  The van that was nicked and missing for all of half an hour, thanks to the Grimsby police, was a work Transit, but I had the white poverty spec van, and then a grey Transit L2 H2 turned up from Ford as part of a deal I’d done with their TrustFord division, opening the new Transit plant at Dagenham, in January.

  On that day I met 15 of TrustFord’s apprentices, and we had a bit of banter. TrustFord is the company’s UK dealer network, and I was interviewed by their apprentice of the year, Ben Dodds. It sounds like Ford has got a good set-up for their apprentices. The courses they run teach them the ins and outs of the trade. When I did my apprenticeship, working on Volvo trucks for John Hebb, I did day release at a good college with good teachers, but we’d work on old knackers that didn’t have much relevance to what we were actually dealing with at Hebb. The TrustFord lads are learning about modern technology on the latest vans and cars.

  Dagenham is massive, with hundreds of brand new Transits parked on-site. I knew the vans were made in Turkey, but I didn’t know the engines were all built in Dagenham, then shipped out to Turkey, fitted into Transits they’ve assembled and then shipped back to England. It doesn’t sound very efficient, but that’s what happens.

  When the grey Transit L2 H2 (that’s the medium wheelbase, medium height option) turned up, I ended up giving the white van to my big sister Sal.

  About the same time, Warren Scott, the owner of Rye House speedway track, down in Hertfordshire, contacted me and Matt Layt about riding KTM 450s as part of a dirt-track team for him. Matt is a mate from my days riding British Superbikes and he’s got into dirt track. At the back end of January, I was over in West Yorkshire picking the KTM up in my two-week-old grey Transit when someone ploughed into the side of it at a junction. I wasn’t best pleased. I was upset for months when someone put a ding in the door of FT13 AFK after opening a door on it in a car park, but this was something else. Three Transits: one written off, one stolen and recovered, and another stoved-in, in less than five months. It’s a good job I’m insured.

  CHAPTER 6

  80.8 mph riding blind

  ONE WEEK BEFORE the live attempt, I started on more intensive training on the big wall while I continued to work on the Rob North triple. The TV lot were still panicking about me not being ready, but they were under more pressure than usual, because the show was going to be live. For me, though, from now on it was all about increasing my speed and finding out how much G-force I could deal with.

  I got Cammy on board to be the triple’s mechanic, checking it after every run and keeping it fettled, and I’m dead glad I did. He had been a mechanic for me at the TT and came to Pikes Peak with me. He came down on Monday, the first day of the week of practice, while I was at work. He went to my house and met Sharon, and drove to Manby with the triple in the van. It was nearly ready, but the gearbox was still shit. I left work that day about dinnertime for the 25-mile cycle ride to Manby. I cycled there on a few of the practice days so I could keep up my preparation for the Tour Divide, because I had to build up to 300 miles a week. I could see the hangar for miles – all the trucks, camper vans, satellite dishes – and I thought, That’s all for me, that is.

  The triple was finished to a state I was dead happy with, and the TV bods said, ‘OK, you’ve got it done,’ but I know they didn’t trust me. They love the idea that I’m a truck mechanic who does a bit of bike building and TV stuff, but really they think I’m a TV wanker. They don’t believe I build bikes. They weren’t happy to let me ride it on the wall until they had an independent engineer assess it and say it’s safe to ride. They asked me who I knew who could do that, and the first person I thought of was Mark Walker, who was one half of Martek, the folk who originally built my Pikes Peak bike. And he was handy, because he lived not far away. I gave the TV lot his number and they quickly arranged for him to come the next day.

  Mark did his assessment of the bike at the Manby hangar. He had a good look over it and said, ‘Yeah, spot on, but I’ve got to say something, so I’ll advise that you should have a cover on the clutch.’ He even liked that the clutch was open, but I knew he had to be seen to be doing something. I’m not sure what they thought this clutch was going to do. It makes sense to have the primary drive covered on a road racer, where it could come into contact with another rider, but this bike was built for the wall of death, with only me on it, and no other bikes or folk around.

  After Mark had given it the ‘official’ all-clear, except for the clutch cover, I said, ‘I’m here, I may as well have a go on the wall now that everyone is happy with the triple.’ Tom, the producer and project manager, and Ewan, the director, said I could ride it on the track, but not the wall. So I set off on the triple round the track. It felt alright, so I gave it a bit more throttle and went on the wall. They went off their tits: ‘Insurance! We said just go on the track!’ I explained that it was the bike, not me – it wanted to go on the wall. Nothing to do with me. From then on the bike never missed a beat or dripped a drop of oil.

  The gearbox selector mechanism was shit, though. You can see why the British bike industry went bust. It had a Heath Robinson system to do a really simple job. Me and my dad had been filing and fettling and fucking about and it still wasn’t any good, so my dad got in contact with Richard Peckett, who made famous race frames and bikes with a partner under the name P&M. He had a brand new part for the gearbox that we needed. We fitted the
new selector arm and straight away it was perfect. I made the smallest clutch cover you could imagine, just to keep everyone happy, and that was it. I’d done it on time. Everything I’d done was right, but it had been a non-stop rush since November and there were some little finishing jobs I’d have liked to have done, so Cammy got on with them. He drilled and lockwired all the things he thought needed it.

  I did wonder if the TV lot would say I had to ride the Indian and nothing else. If they could argue that I had to use the Indian for good, solid reasons, I’d have said, ‘Alright, then,’ and I’d have ridden the Indian. But if it was because I felt they didn’t trust my work on the triple I’d have told them they’d best get someone else to ride the wall. I know what I’m talking about – I’ve been building bikes since I was a kid and I’m a good mechanic. I wasn’t about to do something this dangerous on a bike I didn’t have faith in, but I know the insurance was probably a big part of it too.

  There’s usually the easy option and the shitty, wanky option, and I usually choose the shitty, wanky one. Like when I did Pikes Peak. Taking the TAS BMW Superbike would’ve been the easy route, and I’m not being a big head but I’d have won the race outright on it. Instead, I built the Martek turbo that was in a thousand bits and took that.

  Riding the Indian on the wall of death would have been the easy route. Krazy Horse did a brilliant job and we could’ve concentrated on one bike and got it loads better. By now, we had put rear suspension back on the Indian, fitting fancy K-Tech twin shocks. When they’re built for a road bike they have 250 psi of pressure in them. For the wall they had 550 psi, and they were still bottoming out. They were great until they bottomed out, but when they did it made it worse, because the back end had squatted and that altered the front geometry, effectively kicking the forks out. K-Tech would have altered the shocks for me and they were dead keen to help with my triple bike too, but I ended up using Hagon shocks because I wanted to do my own thing. Hagon make shocks for Rob North frames, so I asked if they could do something similar, but make them as stiff as they could with as short a distance of travel as they could, and they made me these dead simple shocks.