the solent city scooter club dave tooley mallory park 1970       

Tales of adventure, stupidness, teenage sex desires, friendships a great time was had by all and I remember it just                                  

 

                      
 

Braggers and Bullshitters

 

Braggers and Bullshitters
By Dave Tooley

During my early days with the Solent City Scooter Club I would often hang around Rafferty Newman's Workshops on a Saturday morning with a few other club members.  Over a period of time I struck up a friendship with Geoff Stephens from the Hampshire Union club because he would seem to spend a lot of his time there also, although he was putting his energies to good use by working on his Wildcat racing bikes.  He would frequently take his bike out for a ride in the afternoon to bed the new piston rings in, and ask if I would like to accompany him in case of engine failure.  The problem with that was Geoff didn't change his riding style much from track to road.  Every bend was a challenge, and I very quickly learned that unless I enhanced the limits of my cornering ability I would soon be left for dead.  Staying with Geoff on the road was good training for what was to come later when I branched out into racing on the track. 

Many people think that Scooter Racing was easy because of their limited speed potential and cornering ability, but take it from someone who has done both, I never found riding against the Sports top riders easy at all.  Ask anyone who has duelled up front with the likes of Nev Frost, Nick Barnes, Ron Moss or Ray Kemp to name just a few; they will tell you that these guys rode really hard, and I mean HARD.  In wet or slippery conditions, somewhere like Lydden Hill or Mallory Park could be damned terrifying when you were up front with someone of their ilk right on your tail, trying to push you into making a mistake. 

geoff stevens

Geoff would be one of the fastest guys around in these conditions, and I learned a lot from him.  I just wish a few more members of our club could have taken up the sport, it may have quietened down a few braggers and bullshitters.

Note from MH

I remember whilst working for the Workshop, Geoff was testing the Wildcat 125 5 port Vega, he got me to go out with him on the 125 GP that Les was going to race at Mallory Park. Much to his annoyance the GP performed with exactly the same speed as the Vega. I later owned and raced the Vega, as an experiment I fitted my old Wall Phillips Fuel injector to it, WOW when it worked, the Injector made the bike into a flying machine, unfortunatly the Wall Phillips was not a reliable bit of kit, and I never had the confidence to use it in a race.

geoff stevens

geoff stevens workshop

 

 

● Solent City Scooter Club
□ The Clubs Formation
□ My First Scooter
□ The Weekly Meetings
□ Trips to Stoney Cross
□ The Meeting Places of the Club
□ The Club Warehouse
□ The Thorngate Halls Disco
□ The Club Newsletter
□ Miss Solent City
□ Grumpy Old Man Blog have some fun
● Scooter Picture Gallery
● Contact Us
● The Member List
□ Members Tales Then and Now
□ Angela Twigg
□ Dermot Omalley
□ David Seymour
□ John Coles Metalflake SX
□ Keith Champion
□ Muriel Rowe
□ Kenny Erridge
□ Mick Estlick
□ Colin Fry and Debbie
□ Dave Tooley
□ Trevor Aspden
□ Phil Blatch
□ Terry Langridge
□ Pete Boyle
□ John Searle and Jackie Catchpole
□ Pete Thomas
□ Marten Holdway
□ John Olde
□ Chris Bracey
□ Mick Platts (Digger)
□ Ken Jackson
□ Colin Thompson
● Articles on Scooter Racing
□ Scooter Racing
□ Crystal Palace
□ Mallory Park
□ Thruxton
□ Lydden Hill
□ Castle Combe
□ Black Death
□ Les Rafferty
● Scooter Rallys
□ The Southend Scooter Rally 1970
□ The Isle of Wight Rally 1970
□ The Comax Rally
● Other Tales to Tell
□ Tales from the River Bank
□ Suzuki Stinger
□ Speed Cop
□ Ned Newman
□ Taking the Mick
□ Memories from Daves garage
□ First Blood
□ Club Party
□ Martens Wildcat Gp225
□ Such a Teaser
□ Braggers and Bullshitters
□ End of an Era
● Other Websites of Interest

 

 

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