Helmut Fath
Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 7:29 pm
I wrote this little anecdote late the other night but deleted it as it was in the wrong thread. I hope you might find it amusing.
In the early 90’s my bother John was running the URS solo and sidecar team at demo’s mostly at classic events in Germany.
We had gone over for an event at Hockenheim which is of course Heltmut Fath’s own turf with Ursenbach about 20 clicks away for a VFV event. John had arranged for Helmut to do a few laps or so on the outfit and I had painted a couple of pudding basin helmets up but to say Helmut was not keen was an understatement as the local TV company had turned out its was hard enough to get him to get him to sit on it.
In the end I think he may have done one lap or something so Colin Seeley and Peter Rutherford who were with us were going to give it some serious berries. Early on it was discovered that the little hand bracket on the front of he chair for the passenger to hold had broken.
So it was all of us over to Helmut’s house at the top of the hill in Ursenbach. Good excuse for a look around for those of us that had never visited too. Paul Smetana the first test rider of the solo version and who lived at the bottom of the hill and we were all to have dinner there later. We gave Helmut the original bracket as a template to make a replacement from.
He looked at several times and went for his micrometer and measured it and went through all his stock checking on the dimensions and suitability. Once he selected a small piece of steel he cut it to length and started to bend by heat if I recall. All the time stopping and checking and making sure all was well and it was as close to the original as can be even checking with his micrometer several times during the process.
After about what seemed a very long time to produce really a very basic component, he handed back to John a total identical replacement part. We were all amazed at his attention to detail. I had got the reputation in the group as the joker and as he was putting his tools away, I said to Helmut so all could hear, ‘we actually need 10 of those just to be sure”. He gave me a wry smile and said in German; “Jamis all was good for a joke eh”.
In the early 90’s my bother John was running the URS solo and sidecar team at demo’s mostly at classic events in Germany.
We had gone over for an event at Hockenheim which is of course Heltmut Fath’s own turf with Ursenbach about 20 clicks away for a VFV event. John had arranged for Helmut to do a few laps or so on the outfit and I had painted a couple of pudding basin helmets up but to say Helmut was not keen was an understatement as the local TV company had turned out its was hard enough to get him to get him to sit on it.
In the end I think he may have done one lap or something so Colin Seeley and Peter Rutherford who were with us were going to give it some serious berries. Early on it was discovered that the little hand bracket on the front of he chair for the passenger to hold had broken.
So it was all of us over to Helmut’s house at the top of the hill in Ursenbach. Good excuse for a look around for those of us that had never visited too. Paul Smetana the first test rider of the solo version and who lived at the bottom of the hill and we were all to have dinner there later. We gave Helmut the original bracket as a template to make a replacement from.
He looked at several times and went for his micrometer and measured it and went through all his stock checking on the dimensions and suitability. Once he selected a small piece of steel he cut it to length and started to bend by heat if I recall. All the time stopping and checking and making sure all was well and it was as close to the original as can be even checking with his micrometer several times during the process.
After about what seemed a very long time to produce really a very basic component, he handed back to John a total identical replacement part. We were all amazed at his attention to detail. I had got the reputation in the group as the joker and as he was putting his tools away, I said to Helmut so all could hear, ‘we actually need 10 of those just to be sure”. He gave me a wry smile and said in German; “Jamis all was good for a joke eh”.
We used to have ex vauxhall toolmakers here that worked to really tight tolerances. Took ages to convince them that a lot of the time in our game it was unnecessary 