Top Trumps

Sideburn #19 sees the start of a new series on classic Top Trumps cards. As prepubescent youths, before we got our hands dirty, motorcycles (and dragsters, and trains, exotic cars, and cricketers) were battling each other by torch-light under bedsheets purely on their technical specification.

Our first featurette, is this wonderful Jawa 897 engined Hagon grass tracker photographed by Andy Baker of the Jerkyls. BP

In Aus we don't have any grasstracks so we use dirt tracks which have both right and left hand corners some of which are tight and require gear changes and brakes are required under the current rules. This bike is made up from what we could get our hands on. The chassis is a Hagon sand racer with a homemade swinging arm slightly longer than standard. The engine is a Jawa 987. Wheel adapters, brakes and exhaust are home made.
Here is some extra spec:
compression ratio 14:1; Carburettor Dell'orto 36mm round slide; Ignition is a Pal magneto; Gearbox is a Norton AMC 3-speed with 1st gear removed; wheels 23" front 19" rear; Brakes front Hagon drum, rear Yamaha disc (handlebar operated); suspension front is rubber bands, rear are Hagon shocks.
Cheers Geoff
[fettling the bike in the photo, who built the bike along with Steve Constable and Chris Murrey]

Hagon Forks

Can anyone help?

Sideburn Editors,
My dad and I race a little BSA b25 at the Bonneville Salt Flats (I've attached a few pictures of the bike). We're planning to build a frame similar to Alf Hagon's sprint bike (picture attached). We'd like to find a set of those vintage Hagon grasstrack/speedway forks, but boy are they hard to find over here in the States. Who in the UK might have some of those old
things sitting around? Any ideas?
Thanks,
Max Somers, Illinois

When McQueen raced a Douglas

I was researching a piece recently on Steve McQueen's relationship with Triumphs, and stumbled across these pics of him racing a 1920s Douglas flat twin in the mid 1950s at the Knatts Valley hillclimb in Kent, England. The bloke he's pitched against in the second shot is the great Alf Hagon, top speedway, grass track and drag racer of the '50s and beyond (these days the name is just as famous for his shocks and wheels). More info about these photos in an interview by Kandee Nelson with the photographer, Max Poultney, on Steve McQueen Online. MP