Peter Williams

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Rohan, when I first moved to Benalla, I had an RD250LC. Our roads around here are too long and straight , and we have enthusiastic cops who work for a state government desperate for money. If you lose your licence around here you have a real problem coping with the distances , and every time you get booked you lose points. I drive a Mazda 6 with a six speed manual box, it spends most of it's time in top gear, however at least it is comfortable. It is a great big turn-off droning down a long straight road full of trucks with a small motorcycle. I 'd much rather spend quality time racing, or practicing on a circuit, even though it is extremely expensive.
 
Rohan, before the white man came to Australia our Aborigines used to use sheets of corrugated iron as blankets.
 
acotrel said:
Rohan, before the white man came to Australia our Aborigines used to use sheets of corrugated iron as blankets.
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Presumeably they built their own versions of steel mills to make them ????!!!

Some days your info is about as accurate as a 2 bob watch....
 
acotrel said:
Rohan, when I first moved to Benalla, I had an RD250LC. Our roads around here are too long and straight , and we have enthusiastic cops who work for a state government desperate for money. If you lose your licence around here you have a real problem coping with the distances , and every time you get booked you lose points. I drive a Mazda 6 with a six speed manual box, it spends most of it's time in top gear, however at least it is comfortable. It is a great big turn-off droning down a long straight road full of trucks with a small motorcycle. I 'd much rather spend quality time racing, or practicing on a circuit, even though it is extremely expensive.
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Forget little buzz bombs, you need to get your Seeley legal and on the road.
Every trip becomes an experience.... ?

There is that Sunday afternoon ride thing again...
 
Time Warp said:
There is only one way to see (and appreciate) India and that is from the seat of a Royal Enfield.
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Very nice.
Those tours are big business...
Meet a few folks doing the overland thing there too.
 
Peter Williams.
What a fantastic motorcycle,where less is more.

Peter Williams
 
I think that riding a motorcycle in India might be like riding one in Indonesia. My friend fell on his head there and had to risk flying back to Australia for medical attention, with a head injury.
 
really like that picture of Peter and his number 6 JPN

thanks for posting that, time warp
 
Rohan said:
"Luxury !
I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah. "

" And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you."

All Credits to Monthy Python....
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Sadly Rohan the three examples I used are all absolutely true.

Good to see the recentish photo of PW and his No 6 racer.

cheers
wakeup
 
wakeup said:
Matt talked about the dire times in the UK in the early 70s. I was there and one or two things spring to mind, sorry for going OT.

1/ At one time I was a draftsman working for the Government. We were subject to routine power cuts. So the administrators dreamed up the following solution. If you worked at a desk (not a draftsman) you got one candle, but if you were a draftsman you got TWO candles....luxury! This was during the winter when its dark before 8.30ish a.m. and after 3.30ish p.m. and pretty gloomy when its "daylight". To get a new candle you had to produce the dead stump of the old one.
2/ At the same place the heating medium was oil. The establishment had a monthly oil allocation. This allocation normally sufficed, but during a cold winter things could get tricky. One year the oil ran out with about 10 days to go. Uninsulated buildings require a lot of heat. At one stage I was standing at my drawing board, with a lit candle at each end of the parallel motion drawing board, with my lined motorcycle jacket and overtrousers on, welly boots with sea boot socks. The inside air temperature at the end of the working day was about 40 degrees F
3/ An earlier job was at a shipyard in Southampton, during the enforced 3 day week. That was really hard going.
Sometimes I wonder why we came to Australia, then I think about working and living in England in the 70s. cheers wakeup
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Refer the above to the far eastern places like India, for example, only the factory temperature is more likely to be around the 100 degree mark :?: :(
 
Time Warp said:
I don't do tours they are for old people.

Peter Williams.
What a fantastic motorcycle,where less is more.

Peter Williams
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I am so pleased that this thread finally had something about Peter WIlliams in it so lets repeat it.............

And lets repeat after me; Peter Williams had absolutely nothing to do with the Cosworth debacle...... Peter Williams had absolutely nothing to do with the Cosworth debacle...... Peter Williams had absolutely nothing to do with the Cosworth debacle......... Peter Williams had absolutely nothing to do with the Cosworth debacle..... Peter Williams had absolutely nothing to do with the Cosworth debacle....
 
I find it incredible that Peter Williams did so well with the Commando 750 against the two stroke Japanese bikes. Even though it was still early days for the Japanese, an H2R was an extremely rapid bike, and I think it had about 100 BHP on tap when set up right . When I was racing my 500cc Triumph years ago, most of the guys were riding two strokes. A fella told me how much he liked my bike, and that he thought it must be cheap racing. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Racing a two stroke bike in those days was a much easier option than struggling to get an old four stroke going fast enough to keep up. Later I built a methanol fuelled Suzuki T250 which made my Triumph look really stupid, problem was that I did not love it. I won a couple of races with it, then sold it in about 1982. The guy who bought it won 28 races and 5 historic championships. Three frames, and five motors later, it still exists with the same porting and chambers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-SOXVVdIZ4
 
PW did so well with the 750 Norton because
1/ He was a very good rider
2/ He is a very good Engineer
3/ He recognised that to be competitive with an 80ish HP motor he would have to think outside the box, emulating Carcano at Moto Guzzi from the '50s.

Clearly there should be no question that Giacomo Agostini was a very good rider, and the later versions of the 500MV were very quick and handled well. At Silverstone in 1973 PW on the monocoque JPN was dicing with Ago on the latest (last?) 500MV3 for the lead, for all but about 1/2 a lap, sadly the last 1/2 lap of a 20 lap race. To see PW making up tens of yards on a fast corner, tucked right in and drifting (!) at Woodcote, which at the time was a 125mph corner, demonstrated to me that he was a indeed a very good rider.
cheers
wakeup
 
wakeup said:
PW did so well with the 750 Norton because
1/ He was a very good rider
2/ He is a very good Engineer
3/ He recognised that to be competitive with an 80ish HP motor he would have to think outside the box, emulating Carcano at Moto Guzzi from the '50s.

Clearly there should be no question that Giacomo Agostini was a very good rider, and the later versions of the 500MV were very quick and handled well. At Silverstone in 1973 PW on the monocoque JPN was dicing with Ago on the latest (last?) 500MV3 for the lead, for all but about 1/2 a lap, sadly the last 1/2 lap of a 20 lap race. To see PW making up tens of yards on a fast corner, tucked right in and drifting (!) at Woodcote, which at the time was a 125mph corner, demonstrated to me that he was a indeed a very good rider.
cheers
wakeup
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He was a very very good rider.....lets call that 80ish, high 70s ish ;-)

He happens to be one of the nice guys too....

It is great we are talking about him with his replica bikes launched. I heard yesterday he has two sold already.....
 
The PW replicas look superb. However I think that like my own bike, there is not really an Australian race class which might suit them. F750 never existed in Australia in a form which did not include TZ750s or H2Rs, and was never really a class individually sanctioned by our controlling bodies, except as an unlimited class. You'd end up running against the superbikes.
 
Peter Williams is indeed a very nice guy.

I was very lucky to have dinner with him one night and talked one on one for a good lenght of time. I was realy surprised how polite and under stated he was.

Most top riders are very full of themselves but he was a perfect gentleman.
 
I believe that Peter Williams is a qualified engineer. You wouldn't expect him to be otherwise than reserved. Actually I find the guys who have been at the top quite funny. They are usually very quiet until you say something to them which can be construed as competitive. Our Ken Blake was a really lovely guy, however you wouldn't want to see him on the grid with his wild eyes on, or do anything which might make him fire up. I think the ones that come across as full of themselves are the second rate riders. Adrenalin takes its toll, and there is usually nothing in casual conversation which would make one of the top guys fire up. Phil Read might be an exception. I've only ever seen about two riders like him, and if I was in that league and up against him, I'd be very careful. We have one here in Australia and these days he is filthy rich. However years ago I watched him kicking another rider while racing, and he was like that in business. I would never buy anything from him, you were always going to come out last.
 
acotrel said:
which can be construed as competitive.

I once had the privilege of sharing an office with PW. At the time he was preparing his G50 at the digs I was in, and he gave me a ride home after work. He had arranged to meet someone else from work at the digs. The other person was riding a works hack Commando, he was immediately in front of us, PW was driving his race transporter Transit van. On the way was a fast "S" bend. I have never been round that corner as fast as that evening in his Tranny.
cheers
wakeup
Click to expand...
 
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