[jaytee]

Pete it'll be good to see Two Faced Too on display at the Hot Rod Drags
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cktLlDhKtgI

[ukdrn]

Pete thank you for the history lesson, it's not only a fantastic looking bike but a very quick one.
As John says it would be great to see the bike next year and even better if we could see it run

Jon

[TwoFaced]

Many thanks for the kind comments. I would like to appear with it. Used to do a lot of shows etc but have another health issue (not the cancer last year) that comes and goes and is very debilitating and it makes it very difficult to plan ahead and keep promises. I have always previously been reliable. The only way I raced during the last season on my Hayabusa, was to see how I am a few days before the meeting and if OK then I do it, but it makes pre-entering unreliable because I don't know weeks ahead if I will be well on the day. I don't want to go into too many complicated medical explanations at this stage. Suffice it to say that I have had a small op which may or may not cure the problem. However, I shall keep going one way or the other as long as I am upright! I am just as enthusiastic now as I was when I first began sprinting 47 years ago in 1964 with a double-engined 1000cc (two 500cc Triumphs----the capacity limit then was 1,000cc !) machine I called Coup de 'essai, which I believe is French for 'A First Attempt'. I was 23 then! Cheers for now, Pete.

[ukdrn]

Well lets hope your health problem get sorted Pete that's the main thing and if you ever feel good enough to take the bike to one our nostalgia meetings that would be a bonus for us all.

[TwoFaced]

Many thanks for that, I'm ok at moment and have been for past couple of months. Further to my last post (not THE Last Post I hope LOL) there are one or two other obstacles to running the old Two Faced bike these days. (b & w Picture enclosed from Topcliffe, June 68).I do not wish to be controversial on here but I have had a battle in continuing to run it over the past few years. For instance, I want to keep it as it was in the sixties. There aren't any 4 x 18 inch rear slick tyres available now (I have searched extensively) and I am running on 30 and 40 year old rear tyres. (front's not a problem). Cannot fit a wider one at back without extensive mod's and don't really want to spoil its character. I approached Avon tyres a few times and the last time about 5 years ago resulted in some very heated exchanges. They threatened to approach the ACU to stop me riding it because if an old Avon rear slick burst, it would bring them into disrepute! I hit back with:- 'Make me a tyre then' and 'Contact the ACU if you like, we don't run under ACU rules at Northern events!' The individual concerned (no names) also berrated me for 'embarking' (I've been in this sport since 64 !) on such a dangerous activity at my age!!! I hit the roof and wrote to Avon's Managing Director and he got a bollocking. Apparently he then searched the factory for the old 4 x 18 die that was used to make the Avon slick for George Brown but couldn't find it. Through third parties I eventually got an e-mail confirmation from ACU that it's not up to the scutineers to decide if a tyre is safe, the final decision rests with the competitor. So that was that lot sorted out but there are still other issues. Sorry to write an essay but.... I cannot now run the bike at Elvington because of the noise issue there which has 'killed-off' many of the older bikes and NSA sprint club members. I ran the bike at York a few years ago but burnt the clutch out. I am hoping to take it to Kirkbride this coming season. Was going to, this year, but didn't due to problems. Many southern tracks have noise issues and one of our club officials had said in our magazine that, "Pete Williams could fit silencers on his bike if he put his mind to it..." Can you believe a top-fuel competition bike (which it WAS in its day) running on 95% nitro, being fitted with silencers? If they collected unburnt fuel there would be a serious fire or explosion risk. The suggestion was ludicrous but it has brought me into conflict and this sport should be a FUN sport. I can therefore run at some sprints but not all. There is also another rule that I have tried to have removed from the ACU book (many southern meetings are ACU) and believe it or not, it is under the Heading of 'Behaviour' (and mis-spelt behavior) and says that wheelspinning on the track is forbidden and will result in exclusion! Can you believe it?! This rule is also in the Drag-racing regulations! I was told by various parties that it was mistakenly copied and pasted into the rules from the Road Race regs. I have been assured time and again it will be removed but it's still there. OK most machines break that rule but any over-zealous ACU official seeing me do a 200 yard 'burn out' on my way down the track could cause an issue. If some of the Americans saw these rules they'd surely laugh at them. If I'd still been secretary as I was in the 80's I would have sorted this out before now! Finally, I could NOT enter a modern drag-race on this bike because the drag-race regulations state that a competition bike on nitro must have twin-disc brakes on the front and hydraulic forks. I have no intentions of fitting twin discs. Although my forks are telescopic they are off a BSA Bantam ! and only have springs and not oil! Also, I do not have a lanyard, difficult with two separate magnetos that have to earth-out and NOT go open circuit like usual ign-switches.There are other regs too but I don't want to bore you, so if I brought my bike along, under what regs would I be riding? phew! Anyway a few pics now of my first double-engined bike Coup de Essai mentioned previously, will follow and sorry for hogging the page. Pete

[TwoFaced]

First pic of Coup de Essai is its early construction in 1963. I bought an old 500cc Triumph and proceeded to saw the frame in two. I bought another engine and bolted that into the front sawn-off part of the frame. I then offered the two up together until it 'looked about right'. How to join them? Well I don't recall any home-welders being available in those days. I trained as an electrician at Rylands in Warrington which involved working on 415 volt three-phase stuff, overhead cranes, wire-drawing machine, 6,000KV transformers and the more mundane 240volt office electrics. Also electric Stacatrucs. AAAAHHHHH stacatrucs, they had very big battery-chargers to charge those up and there was one dismantled one, lying on the floor and surplus to requirements, so I purloined its transformer. A trip to Rylands fitting/welding shop and I was provided with some welder-leads and mask. I connected up the transormer to the mains and attached the leads and gave it a try as a welder. It worked! It only had two outputs though, high and not quite as high, so when welding the thin tubing I had to strike the rod on and off, so as not to blow any holes in it. That's how I joined it together, using soft-as-s--t electrical type steel conduit. But it did the job and never broke!

[TwoFaced]

Next pic is of Coup de Essai partly built and leaning against my open garage door at Padgate where I lived then, again this would be 1963

[TwoFaced]

Next pic is the finished Coup de'Essai bike at my Padgate Lane house. It looks a bit like American Don Hyland's twin-engined Triumph (Parasite) that ran at the 1964 Woodvale dragfestival, but it wasn't intentional

[TwoFaced]

I think this pic of Coup de'Essai (I think that's the correct spelling) is either at Santa Pod in the very early days or maybe Graveley. It ran on straight methanol and was 1,000cc. That was the maximum capacity limit then. It did 13.8 for the 1/4 with a terminal of 96mph. Rather sedate really but about on a par with the E-type Jaguar car that was popular around that time! The max capacity limit was later raised to 1300cc because of these big double-engined bikes that the Americans were bringing over. Later on in the 1970's/80's when I was secretary I was instrumental in getting the capacity limit raised to 2,000cc and later on to 3,500cc. (Graham Sykes later got an open 'limit' introduced). In 1977/8 I introduced the Junior classes into sprints as there weren't any then. The junior classess progressed through the 1980's and then they were eventually 'adopted' by the drag-race clubs, so I am particularly proud of some of my achievements 'behind the scenes'. Pete

[TwoFaced]

My final pic for the moment (thank God ye say) is of the American double engined Triumph The Two Timer and I think I took this pic at the 1965 drag-festival (not 64) and it was certainly at Woodvale because those are the only ones I went to. In fact I was so 'taken' with the looks of this bike (it looks more like a road motorcycle with its 'normal' type fuel tank instead of just a piece of drag-race machinery) that I modelled my own Two Faced along similar lines. So here's the pic of The Two Timer. Please feel free to use any of my pics, they are all my own copyright. Cheers for now, Pete Williams.