Here we are at MCN London Motorcycle Show
where Suzuki have brought up their seven world championship winning bikes, and we've highlighted
the Barry Sheene bike that I'm standing in front of now, which is the XR14 which Barry won the
championship on in 1976. We also have Barry's RG500 from 1977 which is called the XR14A.
And what you're going to see later on in this video is that we actually started this bike up.
For us to be able to do that we had to refurbish these bikes back in 2016.
And to do that was quite an event. We actually used Barry's ex chief technician,
a chap called Martin Ogborne and another engineer called Nigel Everett. And we took the bikes down
to their workshop and they split them, and this particular one of the bike in front of me
has magnesium cases. Now the sad thing is with magnesium, it doesn't like water and there was
water and oil inside the engine. So when we separated the cylinders and it left the crankcases
there was a very big hole in the middle. Where it should be four separate holes for the cranks
it was one big hole. However, Martin and Nigel said 'oh that's not a problem, we've got some
guys at Exactweld in East Grinstead that can repair these cases.' I was a bit skeptical,
I must admit, but lo and behold they did it. Took them quite a lot of time because obviously when
you're welding up these cases, the problem is it can get very hot. And once magnesium gets very hot
it will distort. And once that happens then they're gone. So obviously, fingers crossed,
we got them back, everything was fine, we put it back together, and literally first start
on the button, no problem at all. It's absolutely fantastic.
And I say, we get these bikes at shows like this, do a start-up. We also take them to
parades. We had Freddie, which is Barry's son, ride the bike up at Goodwood last year in 2021.
And he also rode the XR14A as well. So yeah, fantastic to see these bikes started and being
paraded. I mean it really is part of our heritage and part of our skills. So it's fantastic.