[Compère] Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to the GP Paddock here at Stafford,
and you've brought the sunshine with you, so that's something we should be really grateful for.
We're here again with some superb bikes to look at, and more importantly to hear.
But we need to hear a bit about the story of the bikes, and I'm going to start
the proceedings off with this lovely Manx Norton, the Petty Manx, which belongs to
Steve here, Steve Ledsome. Steve, it's a lovely looking bike. It's something that looks as if
it's been well put together and well used, but well looked after as well. Tell us a wee bit about this
bike. It's an interesting bike, and I know you've had some good fun on it, and some good results.
So if you could just let us know a bit about it. [Steve] Okay, I think the best way describing the Petty
Manx, it's like the last sort of roll of the dice for the Manx really.
These frames, this particular frame is obviously not a Norton frame, it was designed by Ray Petty.
It's a little bit shorter. The engine's further forward, so it's more modern in the way
the engine's positioned. But it was like, as I say, it was the last chance really for Manx
Norton to do anything. The engine that's in this is a 92 bore. It's ultra short stroke. It's
pretty much Formula 1 inside. It's titanium valves, it's got a titanium conrad, one
piece crank. It's magnesium gearbox, the cylinder head the magnesium with aluminium skull. You know,
there's loads of titanium on it as well. Most the button bolts are titanium. Even the
clutch plated titanium on this one. The whole thing weighs about 250 pounds.
It makes about, not a huge horsepower by modern standards, it makes about 59 horsepower at the back
wheel, which is a significant improvement when an original Manx engine was making about 46 horsepower
at the crank, not at the back wheel. And it's a genuine sort of 140 mile an hour British
four-stroke single. It absolutely flies. [Compère] Well, you've had some good results on it Steve.
[Steve] Not massively good. I've done some open class racing in Holland with it and did
reasonably well. There's some of the VFB stuff which is like regulatory sort of stuff
in Germany. But it's been okay, you know, it's been all right. I'll go do a track day, go to
Spa or something like that. Very, very little gets past, and if it does get past it's usually a 750 or an 850 or a
big stroke or something. [Compère] And top speed of that bike if you were really pushing it on Manx gearing?
[Steve] Because it's so light, it's going to be touching 150 on Manx gearing. But with a different
fairing, they'd have to be a slightly bigger fairing, a little bit more cover on the front to get high. [Compère] So it's
got plenty beans. [Steve] It's got plenty, yeah. It'll rev to 8,000 / 8,300. It's out of the torque about 8,100.
An original Manx engine, an 86 bore, you know, as delivered into 1962, top on that was 7,200 rpm.
But it's just the modern technology, you know. Nikasil liners, ceramic matrix pistons, you know. So if you
wanted to race a bike in The Classic Club, which you want to do as little maintenance
as possible, you wouldn't go with an original Manx. You'd go with something like this which you
don't have to do a huge amount of maintenance to. You know, you could run it, unless you have
a catastrophic failure, you could run that engine pretty much for a season and then strip her at the
end. And to be honest, with synthetic oils you're not going to find a huge amount wrong. Just change
the bearings and that sort of stuff. [Compère] And of course you're lucky that you're perfectly comfortable
working on the bikes and spannering with them. [Steve] Yeah, single, four-strokes,
twins, triples, fours and two-strokes as well, big two-strokes TZs and all that sort of stuff.
[Compère] That's brilliant. Well everybody around, I think maybe we want to hear it. Do we want
to hear it fired up this lovely Petty Manx? Right guys, let's go for it and
get the Manx fired up. Thank you very much Steve for bringing it, thank you.
Let's have a big hand for Steve, and then we'll drown your applause out.
I don't know, where's Chris? Well here's Chris coming, here's the man we really need
with the solo starting mechanism. He's on his way, he's broken into a sprint even. Well done Chris.
He's been having a long lunch break. He's been doing this all morning.
So Steve's... [Indistinct talking]
Let's have a big cheer for the Petty Manx.
Thank you Steve, that was a joy. Nicely done. And Alex there giving it a rev as well. You
can't keep them down when it comes to revving motorbikes. He's never stopped.