The Rather Remarkable Renwick

[Dave Hutchens]

[Bill Lymburn]

Dave, Many thanks for the Renwick story and your pics. Looks like you've got a challenge on there!! A very worthwhile challenge if I may say so. I've put a post on the Boret topic by mistake that I should have posted here.

[Richard Rollings]

What a brilliant read Be great to see it on track again, lots of hard (But rewarding) work to come though

Posts like this are what this site is all about

[steve-e]

You have yourself a project there Dave. This is one to follow on the rebuild

You can see from these photos how low the centre of gravity is, tis a proper kart of a thing. Like it, it shows much better than the diagrams I've seen.

[anp]

You could name that post of the year then

[RARING TO GO]

I am wondering how that chassis has faired internally with regards to corrosion? There are Borescopes available in the USA for 250usd with heads about 8mm which would be suitable for checking the inside through an 8mm hole.

[alanw]

Anybody know how many of these chasis were actually built, I remember old melville club t shirts and stickers etc
in the late 80s had a picture of a wedge shaped outfit, was that a Renwick? were there any raced up here in Scotland
Bill you maybe know the answer to that.
Happy new year to everyone
Alan Warden

[Bill Lymburn]

Anybody know how many of these chasis were actually built, I remember old melville club t shirts and stickers etc
in the late 80s had a picture of a wedge shaped outfit, was that a Renwick? were there any raced up here in Scotland
Bill you maybe know the answer to that.
Happy new year to everyone
Alan Warden

Alan, to the best of my knowledge John Renwick built 9 and another was built by Herve Truchet out of stainless. Yes there was one raced in Scotland by John Bottomley and Alan? Cumming. It had a Konig in it at that point, '76 or '77. Later, I believe it had a Honda installed and was raced by Gordon Brown.
Bill L.

[LCR1000]

Anybody know how many of these chasis were actually built, I remember old melville club t shirts and stickers etc
in the late 80s had a picture of a wedge shaped outfit, was that a Renwick? were there any raced up here in Scotland
Bill you maybe know the answer to that.
Happy new year to everyone
Alan Warden

Alan, to the best of my knowledge John Renwick built 9 and another was built by Herve Truchet out of stainless. Yes there was one raced in Scotland by John Bottomley and Alan? Cumming. It had a Konig in it at that point, '76 or '77. Later, I believe it had a Honda installed and was raced by Gordon Brown.
Bill L.

Right Bill .it was raced by the late Jackie Gordon and Gordon Brown from Eclipse Motorcycles If i remember right it had a 750 Honda in it .
Im sure Gordon Brown will tell the history if asked

[ACER]

Didn't they sell it to Pete Greig from Aberdeenshire,and,in a previous thread he cut it up!!!!!

[jhamiltonsmythe]

Anybody know how many of these chasis were actually built, I remember old melville club t shirts and stickers etc
in the late 80s had a picture of a wedge shaped outfit, was that a Renwick? were there any raced up here in Scotland
Bill you maybe know the answer to that.
Happy new year to everyone
Alan Warden

Alan, to the best of my knowledge John Renwick built 9 and another was built by Herve Truchet out of stainless. Yes there was one raced in Scotland by John Bottomley and Alan? Cumming. It had a Konig in it at that point, '76 or '77. Later, I believe it had a Honda installed and was raced by Gordon Brown.
Bill L.

I regularly drove John Bottomley and Ronnie Cumming to meetings in the seventies in the Ford Transit transporter,and helped out as mechanic.Also was a stand-in passenger as I only weighed ten stone and Ron was around sixteen! We did all the big meetings as well as knockhill etc up north.We all lived around Edinburgh at the time.The outfit was a Renwick wedge finished in orange with a tartan stripe around the middle.The engine was a very unreliable Konig.The exhaust note was enough to cause pain in your eardrums when revved up.It was a beggar for fouling plugs,and the steering was ultra sensitive meaning maintaining a smooth line was very difficult,weaving being the order of the day.John eventually sold it on and had a Terry Windle chassis built housing a Yoshimura tuned Kawasaki four stroke,finished in lime green naturally! Not so long later John declared he was sick of unreliable passengers (uhh!)took up car racing buying the then famous "Drambuie Imp".A very successful car in its day. I cant remember who bought the outfits now,anybody out there know?

[ianw]

There was another one, not a Renwick but a copy built by George O'Dell. It had 13" magnesium Minilight wheels on it.
I think George had it built in 1974/75 but never raced it in anger. Stuart Applegate once tiold me that he remembers George testing it at Paul Richard.
I bought it in 1992 along with 2 Konnig engines. It didn't run Konnigs though, it ran a TZ engine.
In the early 2000's I couldn't afford to restore it so I gave it to a Guy from Derby who promised me he would faithfully restore it.
Not long after he collected it I heard on the grapevine that he was thinking of putting a GSXR 1100 motor in it.

[ianw]

I need to make an apology to the gentleman who had the O'Dell chassis from me.
It seems the information I was given about fitting a GSXR1100 engine in the chassis was wrong.

[Baz]

Brilliant article on Nick and Gerry's Machine It is what got me into the biking world. I was working in a car dealership in Esher when I met Gerry He and I got a part time job working at Eagle Motors, ambulance chasing on the Kingston by-pass. I went to his home and in the garage was a pile of Reynolds tube A Vincent engine and a set of 3 Minilite wheels Gerry told me he was going to make a sidecar outfit with his then passenger Pete, different to any other yet seen with Car wheels Disc brakes and the Vincent twin. That was where it all started for me. He went on to win the British championship with now brother Nick as passenger. I spent most of each winter helping them in that garage and later in Richmond. We had to solve many technical questions and the closeness of the F 1 car teams of Brabham, McLaren, Williams etc. were at various times called on for assistance. My main job was helping to make the mould for the fairings to be made from to do this we put the chassis on a flat board with copies of the wheels on full bounce in place and a dummy engine e then surrounded it in with a wall of card board and filled the space with a 2 part foam they used to make Single seater race seats from. We were then left with a big block of foam with all the components inside. We then got hold of Gerry's mums Bread knife and literally carved the fairing, body cover and wheel fairing from it sanded it down covered it in a fine layer of fibreglass and filler Painted it to get it flat and shiny and sent it all away to the guy who made the mould and cast the fairings for all the Renwick Konigs as well as the models that followed.
Apart from the winter work I used to deal with the sponsors and Cookery as well as drive back from meetings when available. We persuaded Keith Collow from Shell to award the sidecars “ a Grand Prix d’Elegance to try to smarten up the image of the chairs A bottle of Champagne a cup and £25.00 and a sticker for the best looking out fit at each of the British championship rounds. I remember we were all devastated when we didn’t win the first one at Brands.

I learnt much from that time which stood me in good stead in my later career with Honda and Norton and have always had a soft spot for the hairs. I saw John Renwick in the Isle of man a few years ago taking part in a parade with the Renwick with the inboard disc brake Nick is still in Vehicle repairs in the Croydon area. Sadly Gerry was drowned in a sail racing incident some years ago.