Is that thing diesel?

by Paul Carter

  Over the next few hours we went over my plan, then he suddenly stood up and said, ‘Look, all this is just academic.’ (I couldn’t help smiling.) ‘You need to ride the bike. Follow me,’ he said.

  On the way to see Betty, Colin took me on a brief tour of the mechanical engineering building. They had a vast array of resources, from full CAD design level to fabrication. If they’d wanted to, they could have built a bus from scratch, or a Transformer, or both.

  I wish I’d had the chance to go to university when I was young, but that opportunity never presented itself. Where I came from, going to uni was not really an option; anyone who wasn’t doing serious time or addicted to heroin was considered a high achiever.

  We entered a large open-plan workshop full of milling machines, lathes, all manner of welding, drilling and cutting gear immaculately presented for the keen young student to play around with. Colin stopped by the open doors of a small window-lined room and stretched out his arm as if to make a formal introduction. ‘There she is, Betty the Bio Bike.’

  I walked into the room and stopped to look at her from a distance. She was bigger than I imagined.

  ‘We had her stored in the basement,’ Colin said. ‘I asked the workshop guys to bring her out and prep her for you.’

  I approached her the way cats do a new home. Then, circling her frame, I started firing questions at Colin. Soon I was on all fours poking my fingers inside the frame, and in less than a minute I was lying flat on my back looking at the drive system. The engine was bolted directly to the modified frame, which had to be widened to take the extra width of the heavy diesel single. There was no gearbox; to comply with the tight fabrication budget the students who built her three years earlier had opted for a Comet 500 series CVT (constant variable transmission) drive system instead of an expensive gearbox. The drive is transferred from the engine shaft by a spring-loaded round cup that extends towards the bike, squashing a rubber drive V-belt. The more you open up the throttle the faster the cup spins; the faster the cup spins the more the rubber drive belt is squashed; the squashing of the rubber belt expands it open, stretching it to the outer diameter of the spinning cup and thereby rotating it much faster. The rubber belt is connected in turn to the drive sprocket via a custom-made idler shaft system and from there via a conventional chain to the sprocket on the rear wheel.

  Much like a golf cart or many modern scooter drive systems, Betty was simply twist and go; she looked like the easiest bike in the world to ride. Colin explained to me that the bio-fuel is corrosive and over time eats the fuel lines, so these were made from a very heavy-duty hose. She had a custom-made fairing and instrument cluster displaying speed on an old-school cable-driven analogue gauge that also contained an old rolling mechanical odometer, engine RPM, oil temp and battery voltage. Everything else on the bike was as per the original 1997 Cagiva W16.

  The bike had been donated to the uni, as was the L100AE-DE Yanmar industrial engine—Japanese design but Italian built. It’s an extremely common engine, found on irrigation pumps or in boats. Finding parts would be easy, as would troubleshooting on the side of the road. In terms of consumables everything was off-the-shelf gear available from major suppliers. She was running Pirelli MT90 tires, again Italian, 21-inch on the front and seventeen-inch on the rear.

  Next I met Rob, Steve and Phil who worked in the uni’s workshop—great guys. What a fantastic place this must be to study; I envied the students the opportunity to learn from people like Colin and men with real industry experience like the workshop guys. I thought teaching must be very rewarding, too. Colin was completely devoted to his craft, and after meeting some of his students I could see that they were im- passioned by his method. ‘His lectures aren’t boring,’ one student told me. I heard later that Colin once walked into his class dressed as a gorilla.

  Colin had a helmet, jacket and gloves ready for me, and we rolled Betty out of the workshop. ‘Off you go,’ he said. ‘Take it for a good run, Paul.’

  I slotted the key into the ignition and turned it: the little red glow light came on; I hit the start button, and her starter motor sprang to life, the single piston pumping, her big round steel impeller spinning beneath its cover. As I twisted the throttle to get more fuel through the injectors I had to pull on the front brake to stop from lurching forward. Then it hit me, the most amazing aroma of cooking oil. It was an unmistakable food smell, a combination of fish ’n’ chips and greasy fry-up. I turned in the saddle and looked down at the light grey smoke puffing in time with the engine’s KA DONK, KA DONK, KA DONK.

  I took Betty out of the university grounds and we cautiously circled the block, before exploring further afield. Her riding position was very upright. The foot pegs were low, and directly under my knees, like riding on a Vespa. Sitting there with my legs at a strange angle, I felt as if I were sitting in an office in a typing pool, rather than on a fairly big Enduro bike. Betty’s handling characteristics were like nothing I’d felt before, but then again this bike was one of a kind. Her 160 kilos fell into corners halfway round on the right side, responding to minimal handlebar pressure more than any weight transfer. I assumed this was due to the big heavy impeller spinning at her centre of gravity. The opposite effect on the left had me hanging over and pulling her round. It wasn’t until I got onto a highway that I really started to worry: the vibration through the entire front end was massive, like holding onto a jackhammer. But having said all that, she worked, and worked well. Her top speed was 70 kph, not too bad considering that on this first ride I travelled 100 kilometres on just 2.9 litres of used cooking oil and waste animal fats.

  I pulled back into the university grounds that afternoon feeling both euphoric and more than a little worried. I was hopelessly out of my depth; even the janitor in that place had a better knowledge base on this stuff than me. Plus, Betty was only designed to get from Darwin to Adelaide. Now I was going to push the envelope and attempt to take her all the way round the continent. I knew it was a long shot, but what else was I going to do: fly home, forget the whole thing and mow the lawn? No way, this was a challenge.

  There was no real choice for me anyway. This motorcycle worked, it was registered and insured, and most importantly, it was free.

  I didn’t need to be at the Clipsal until the following morning, so I suggested we go and have a celebratory drink. ‘Sounds great,’ said Colin. One of Colin’s students, Kelly, came with us, as we wandered into the city. After a few drinks, Kelly had to leave; I grabbed a single malt and sat down, keen to talk more about Betty with Dr Kestell.

  He was direct. ‘Mate, Betty’s a good bike. The kids who put her together got the right learning curve constructing her, the race they won from Darwin to Adelaide was just icing really. She was never intended to cover that kind of distance.’ I sat back and said nothing.

  ‘Look, from what you’ve told me, she’s the only bike available. With enough spare parts you could make it.’ He flipped over a coaster and pulled a pen from his top pocket. I shifted around to see what he was doing. Total distance, roughly, he scribbled. ‘Average speed, right, that’s less than half the working life of the engine.’ I smiled. ‘Just keep the oil topped up, order enough drive belts, sprockets and filters, and the rest is easy to get. We can even give you a spare engine and CVT drive.’

  ‘What about the vibration?’ I asked, and he shrugged.

  ‘That engine is bolted to the frame, there’s no quick cheap fix for that. You might want to think about changing the seat too, mate, there’s no quick cheap fix for your arse either. Good luck to ya, cheers.’

  This is possibly the silliest thing I’ve ever tried to do, I thought.

  During the course of our conversation, I found out that Colin used to work for British Aerospace. ‘What did you do there?’ I was fascinated.

  ‘I was on the team that designed the Exocet Missile System,’ he said. Even I had heard of that. ‘And the Mart
in-Baker Ejection Seat.’

  I couldn’t believe it. ‘My father used one of them,’ I said, and we sat there talking late into the night, the bar emptying out around us; only a few punters parked on stools bar-side sat nursing beers and what looked like troubled lives.

  It turned out that Colin was far too interested in bikes to stop at Betty. ‘Well, we’re in the process of designing a bike to break the bio-fuel land speed record.’

  I sat forward; the hairs on my arm stood up. That would definitely be the silliest thing I’ve ever tried to do. ‘That’s getting a bit serious, mate,’ I said.

  He smiled. ‘Well, every aspect of it will be overseen by myself, and it’s a great experience for the students—they get right into it.’

  ‘Who’s riding it?’ I asked.

  He could see the look in my eye. ‘Well, no one yet.’

  ‘You’re in charge.’

  He sipped his whisky. ‘Mmm.’ He nodded.

  ‘And you used to be a rocket scientist,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I suppose you could put it that way.’

  He knew what I was going to say way before I said it.

  ‘I want to do it,’ I said.

  He finished his drink and eyeballed me through the bottom of his glass. I sat up straighter, and tried to look like a man responsible enough not to crash a bloody fast experimental bio-fuelled bike in a land speed record attempt. He leaned across the table and shook my hand.

  The Clipsal 500 hit me the next morning. Southwell was wound up like a kid in a toy shop. He led me up into a private stand trackside, handed me a cold beer and beamed. ‘You’re gonna fuckin love this, mate.’

  By the end of the first day I was happily pissed. I was also surprised at the sheer number of really hammered middle-aged guys I saw staggering about with empty beer cartons on their heads. One guy had a huge Holden flag tied around his neck; running flat out in his underpants across an open stretch of grass and yelling wildly his cape flapping behind him, he looked like a semi-naked overweight superhero. He was closely followed by ‘Ford Man’, also in a cape and underpants.

  Shaun was in his element. We looked at the strippers, drank too much, put on silly hats, smoked cigars, and talked about cars, bikes, tits ’n shit. Clipsal might as well be called Man World.

  ‘You know they limited everyone at Bathurst to one carton per day this year,’ he leaned in to yell at me over the roar of the cars, spit hitting my inner ear. ‘Heaps of blokes snuck in at night and buried cartons all over the place, then the next day there were hundreds of piss-heads wandering about with those collapsible shovels looking for their beer.’

  I looked at him. ‘That was you, wasn’t it, mate?’

  One day at the races was enough for me, though; the next day I was at the uni again, this time with my head in the High Performance Diesel Motorcycle (HPDM) project. At this stage it was physically nothing more than a car engine and a rear swing arm sitting on a big table, but the plans were impressive. The wiring harness alone spilling out of the engine was intimidating, like rainbow-coloured spaghetti hanging out in every direction. Each individual wire would have to be dealt with in order to get that engine started. I heard later that after weeks of testing, the students finally got it going by wiring up the cigarette lighter.

  On my last night in Adelaide, Shaun and I sat down in a great little restaurant and actually had an intelligent, mature conversation. I was as surprised by this as he was. He was extremely supportive of my plans for Betty, as mad as it must have sounded to him. It was good to sit there and talk about our lives and futures; I saw a side of him that I suspect few people do.

  The next day Colin saw me off back to Perth. We had made a plan for me to return in two weeks so I could spend a few days with Rob and Steve in the workshop getting familiar with Betty: practising changing out filters, lines, sprockets, injectors, blown tyres, chains, the idler shaft setup and the CVT drive—basically everything. I already had an extensive list of parts and consumables as well as complete detailed manuals for the bike engine—both would be put to good use after my next trip to Adelaide as Betty would then be freighted to Perth so I could get down to the business of pulling her to pieces and putting her back together again. I could practise changing out the entire engine if need be. For the first time since this idea raised its head and poked me in the eye, I was confident I could make it happen. I’d then put her in the back of the support truck, along with the spare parts, and drive from Perth to Adelaide, from where I’d start my journey the next day.

  The two weeks dragged while I waited to return to Adelaide. On my first day back in the office I tried to remain focused on my job, and resisted the urge to jump on the phone and start organising; I couldn’t wait to start planning. I came home from work to find that Clare, bless her, had gone to a specialty map store in the city and come home with an excellent, detailed map book of Australia as well as a giant fold-out map.

  After supper I disappeared into the garage, opened up the fold-out map and lay on the floor looking at it. I had a rough idea of the route I wanted to take, but now I started to mark it out and break it up into various stages. I reckoned there would be seven in all, so I would need seven different support drivers, as no one person could take three months off work to accompany me. I listed some names in the corner of the map, opened a beer and picked up the phone. Now was as good a time as any to enlist my helpers. Six of the guys were old mates from the rigs, and then there was my father-in-law, Phil—he had to be there. We hadn’t spent much time together other than the odd weekend visit, but I’d been sleeping with his daughter for the last seven years—it was about time I got to know the guy.

  By the early hours of the morning I’d almost worked through my list. Waking guys up got me a great response: ‘Do you know what fuckin time it is, Pauli?’ But once they’d calmed down, they quickly got interested. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of ‘You’re gonna what?’, but without fail they said yes.

  Now, yes was good, yes works, but when it comes to guys who work in the oilfield, yes means shit. Not because the guy who says yes doesn’t mean it, it’s just that in the oilfield shit happens. In the last ten years I was working offshore I said yes to everything—weddings, Christmases, birthdays, funerals, armed hold-ups—but didn’t actually make it to any of them. So the yes from the six who work in oil was taken with a bucket of salt.

  Still, I was so grateful for their enthusiam; I would think that most people would consider themselves lucky if they could count on one hand the people that would do shit like this with them. During the course of my life I have managed to hold on to a small community of friends that will not only do this kind of shit with me, but often; without knowing it, again and again these guys save the day.

  My support truck driver for the first stage—from Adelaide to Melbourne—was a bloke called Howard Fletcher who I met in Brunei back in 1995. He was now based in Brisbane, still in drilling but deskbound. Howard and I are the same age, same height, same build, and we’ve both got the same mad-keen motorcycle thing going on, but that’s where the similarities end. Howard is quiet, calm, and doesn’t fly off the handle like I do. He’s also sound with mechanics and has bags of experience driving trucks, which is why I wanted to line him up first.

  Second stage, Melbourne to Sydney, was supposed to be Neil Boath, a rig manager and rider, a typical hard-core drilling hand. I met him on a jack up in Bangladesh and we’ve been mates ever since. He said yes, but before the month was up Neil was sent to the Middle East and Shane Edwards stepped in. Shane is 40 years old and fitter than I was at twenty, another crazy rider. Shane’s not oilfield, he doesn’t take drugs, smoke, swear much, or fart in public, but he is one of the funniest blokes I’ve ever been drunk with. He’s also one of those super-capable guys who can fix anything or anyone; he’s generous to a fault and never late for anything. Most weekends Clare and I have breakfas
t with Shane and his wife Katrina, who’s in possession of the most distracting cleavage in Western Australia. Her sense of humour often makes coffee come out my nose. Another friend at these breakfasts is Jools, who runs a funeral home, always looks amazing, spoils my daughter, and always has a story to tell. She’s the woman you want to deal with you when you die; the thought of getting burned or embalmed by her sits well with me. I’ve always had a Sophia Loren fantasy that involved a bit of cooking and pain; it’s just a shame that when it does finally happen, I’ll be dead.

  My father-in-law, Filthy Phil as I call him, was on board for stage three. He was only too happy to drive for me, which was great. I’ve got to set the record straight, though: Phil is only known as Filthy because every time I go over to visit him in Sydney he’s in the back shed with his head in an engine and grease up to his ears. Filthy’s shed is bigger than their house and goes beyond the realms of any man’s world-shed scenario. It’s a real working man’s shed, with a classic vintage Plymouth project and enough spare parts, tools, and bits of man stuff to make Steptoe himself develop a man crush. He’s even got his own forklift. Filthy is a talented man: he works as a panel beater, truck driver, mechanic and rebuilder of all things with wheels and engines. He knows the roads like the back of his filthy hand. He would get me from Sydney to Brisbane, no worries.

  There’s a driller who appears in my first book, a young, well-built maniac of a Scotsman by the name of Donald. Everyone else calls him Alistair. After sixteen years of knowing him, I still don’t quite know why I call him Donald, though I really should know considering he’s one of my closest mates. Once on an offshore drilling rig Donald was having a bad day on the drill floor and in a memorable moment picked up the tool pusher and attempted to throw him over the side and into the South China Sea. We managed to stop him, and that was the last time I stood next to Donald on a drill floor.