The Hot Stocker

Trikes have a history of being ridiculed by Joe Public. When Sir Clive Sinclair released the C5 in 1985 even trike fans gave it a slating.

But Tri-Sport is my kind of pure funk. Visit an impressive collection of 2, 3, 4 and 5-wheeled oddities at the Sideburn Perverts Pinterest page. BP

Muscle

By Racefit.

Guy in Gore

The second show in Guy Martin's TV series, Speed, is on Channel 4 tonight. Eagle-eyed viewers may have spotted him wearing a Sideburn Gore Rider shirt in the first episode, when he was getting measured up for his 113mph bicycle. We still have a few of this pocket T-shirt in stock if you want one. Go to the Sideburn webshop. G

Red Max Triumph T120 Framer

Very tidy street tracker from Europe's dirt track and street tracker specialists Redmax. This is a frame the company have made in the UK and is based on a C&J race frame. They're available in twin shock, or like this example, monoshock.
The motor is a T120 650 twin, with a Mikuni carb and twin Redmax pipes. Wheels are 18s with Dunlop K180 street legal tyres.
Everything on the bike is available from Redmax. G

Standing on History

History lessons at school were mostly a bore. I did enjoy learning about how the Romans made straight roads and Hypocausts in hilly chilly Britain. But now the internet is my friend I do enjoy historical detective work to find the origins of things around me. Admittedly it's more the world according to the Antiques Roadshow than Darwin.

Me & Mrs P are in the process of laying an old wooden parquet floor in our new kitchen. Once the cacky bitumen used to hold the blocks in place in olden times was scraped off the bottom, the words 'DIP. Đurđenovac - Made in Yugoslavia' were just visible embossed into the wood.

It turns out that he red-brick parquet factory founded in 1909 is still standing.

The whole town (now eastern Croatia) was dedicated to the processing oak from local forests (but I think ours may be Beech). Our blocks were made some time in the '50s.

I made a custom scraper with male and female teeth to clean the edges of tongue-and-groove blocks.

Once we have glued them down herring bone style, they will be professionally sanded flat. We have excess blocks to experiment with stains and wax finishes. BP

Coolbeth on Ice

There's another great Inslide Line column, by Sideburn contributor Tyler Porter. He does a fantastic job of turning these out these insider's views on pro flat track every week. There are always a few snaps, but rarely they're more than in-jokes - they're not the point of the column. This photo of Kenny Coolbeth doing a bit of mid-winter training stopped me dead, though. G

The darkness and light of Peter Guld's TT Photos

Our friend Peter Guld from Hungary has travelled over to the TT for the last few years. A gallery of his photos are up on the Hungarian site TotalBike, they're very good.
The wreckage is from John Howarth's Bray Hill crash. The rider survived with a minor fracture, but spectators were badly hurt when the bike cartwheeled into the crowd. One of the lucky ones, who escaped with a broken leg, was Belgian custom bike building star, Fred Krugger. the crash resulted in the Senior being red-flagged for the second time in four years (and second time in its 100-plus year history). G

UK DTX bike for Sale

We've had a few people asking us if there are dirt track race bikes for sale in the UK. We're happy to promote race bikes for sale on the blog, but only bikes in the UK and Europe. The US has it covered with VFT.org and other sites.
We'll promote bikes for free BUT full-size dirt track bikes only. Not pit bikes, not mini bikes, not road bikes, not unconverted MX bikes. Email us with photos and details to dirt @ sideburnmagazine.com

This is a Yam 450 on 19s Redmax is selling for £1450.
We don't know anything about the bike or its condition, and we're not on commission, we're just trying to put riders on race bikes and into the DTRA. 

Get in touch with REDMAXSPEEDSHOP, Alresford, Hampshire  07907 529858 01962 736916 http://redmaxspeedshop.com/

Yinka Shonibare

I love a bit of British artist Yinka Shonibare. G

Superprestigio Dirt Track

Perma-smiling, Lorenzo-baiting, elbow-scraping, physics-defying, record-breaking, five-piece-boy-band-on-wheels, Marc Marquez sewed up the 2013 MotoGP title, the toughest for a good few years, in his rookie season then decided to celebrate wit a party, an indoor dirt track party on 11 January in Barcelona - the Superprestigio Dirt Track.

As Spain made a clean-sweep of the GP titles this year, it seemed a good idea to invite Moto2 champ Pol Espargaro and Moto3 winner Maverick (yes he really is named after a character in Top Gun) Vinales.

UPDATE: The Superprestigio class is purely for GP road racers. It seems they don't want some 'unknown' dirt track or supermoto riders spoiling the party.

Thanks to Kenny Noyes, himself a Moto2 racer and a former US national dirt track champ, four British DTRA riders are also competing on the night, and they're just about the most exciting riders we have. Alan Birtwistle, Tom and Tim Neave (SB10 cover star) and schoolboy Ollie Brindley qualified to compete through their performance at November's Dirt Track Festival, at Motorland Aragon, Spain.

As I understand it, Ollie will race in a junior class, while Alan, Tom and Tim will race in the Open, support class. We've seen these riders progress for the last few years and they've all put in a massive amount of time and money, racing and practising anything and anywhere. They're all lovely fellas, obviously the cream in the UK and all three have flown to the US to race, and in many cases, beat the best flat track amateurs in their class over there.

The bikes they will be racing are 450s in DTX spec but on 17 or 16.5in wheels, not the regular dirt track 19s, with Michelin supermoto wet tyres (not sure what Ollie is racing).

US journalist and columnist Mark 'The Backmarker' Gardiner pointed out, on a US website, that you can hardly have an event called Superprestigio Dirt Track and not invite the current best dirt tracker in the world, the GNC's undisputed #1, Brad Baker. The Spaniards saw sense and sent him an invite.
I saw a tiny clip of Brad practising on 17s at the Mt Salem indoor track. The unfamiliar tyres and wheel size was the only question mark in his mind about wether he could smoke these fancy Yooropeens, and he looked incredible.

I've just spoken to Anthony at the DTRA and he says Baker will be in the support class with the British riders, but hopefully there will be a best of the best where the best of the Open race the best of the Superprestigio class. Otherwise, it's a long way for Brad to fly to race in a support class.

If any road racer beats Brad Baker on a dirt oval it will be a hell of an upset. G

 Alan Birtwistle

 Tom Neave

 Ollie Brindley

Photos by Dutch Brothers Racing