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The deal with Motor Cycle was that they would provide the finance for a Lenco two speed transmission and a Crowerglide clutch, and in return John agreed to co-operate with the publishing of a series of detailed articles covering the construction of the new bike which at that time was un-named. The name came about as a result of a competition run by Motor Cycle and John chose ‘The Hobbit’ mainly because of the play on his name, and that he had been told that it was an ancient fire-breathing demon which he thought quite appropriate given the sort of performances he confidently expected from the bike. In common with the great majority of the population, he was blissfully unaware of J R Tolkien’s literary efforts at that time. John’s original intention had been to retain the Morgo Triumph motors but in December 1974 Harry Weslake, the eponymous owner of the famous engineering company, agreed to provide him with two of his impressive 4 valves per cylinder 850cc engines. This was a major step forward but it did bring certain complications. Without wishing to impugn the good name of Weslake, it is fair to say that their engineering excellence was not complemented by an equally competent approach to organising their manufacturing business. As a result the engines were delivered late and John subsequently had problems securing spares from them. This was subsequently rectified when Dave Nourish bought out the manufacturing rights for the engine and started supplying John with spares. In order to keep the Weslake engines adequately fed and watered the C75 Shorrocks superchargers previously used were replaced by C142 units supplied by the Allard Motor Company which more than doubled their capacity, these fed a 50/50 nitro methane/methanol fuel mix via a pair of 2” SU carburettors. Such major changes obviously required a completely new frame which set the engines further forward and the seat further back in an effort to improve traction. The ‘Square Four’ gears were retained to link the engines and a duplex primary chain was linked to an even larger 8” M&H slick mounted on a Minilite car wheel. Although John was now benefiting from some quite serious sponsorship, he was not entirely out of the woods in financial terms. It became necessary for him to take out a bank loan to finish off The Hobbit.
The bike was not ready until June 1975 when it was taken to an NDRC meeting at RNAY Wroughton on Sunday the 15th for a shakedown pass for which no time was recorded. Unfortunately John’s dream of running the first European 8 second run had been shattered the previous weekend by Keith Parnell who ran a magnificent 8.93/151.9 on his 750cc Rouge et Noir machine. John had been booked for some time to appear at Vargarda in Sweden over the weekend of 28 and 29 June. It was with some trepidation that he loaded the brand new and virtually untested Hobbit, together with Jeff Byne’s Hurricane, into his trusty Ford Transit van and set off. Fortunately, The Hobbit ran 9.6 seconds straight out of the van and this performance was very well received by the Swedish crowd. A series of match races between John and Danny Johnson took place at the European Grand Prix held at Santa Pod on 5 and 6 July 1975. John lost the first race with a 9.11/157 to Danny’s quicker and faster 8.65/166 clocking. John also lost the second race when he was unable to stay with Danny’s rapid 8.48/167 but he was very heartened by the losing 8.86/158 performance from The Hobbit. This was the first side-by-side 8 second motorcycle race in Europe. He had also clocked a very impressive 162.6 mph terminal speed in an earlier run that weekend. To cap it all, John memorably tore a large hole in the tarmac at this meeting whilst performing a static burn out against the barrier.
The August Bank Holiday meeting saw John lower his elapsed time slightly to 8.82 but he lost in the final of Top Bike to Ian Messenger on Pegasus when the rear chain let go. Another notable event at this meeting was the surprise entry of Dutchman Henk Vink on his brand new supercharged Kawasaki machine which had been built by his mechanic Jan Smit in Danny Johnson’s
workshop in the USA. The NDRC meeting held at Snetterton on 7 September saw John set the highest motorcycle terminal speed ever seen in Europe when he ran a storming 168 mph. On 20 and 21 September Danny Johnson and Tom Christenson were due to match race one another at the Pod. Round one went to Danny with a holeshot 8.52/164 over TC’s quicker 8.37/162. Danny broke an engine sprocket in the second match up which TC took with another impressive 8.47/165 lap. With Danny Johnson out of the reckoning, the organisers asked John to step in for the third race. This was a surprising request because John had been experiencing horrendous handling problems with The Hobbit all weekend. He had actually failed to qualify in Top Bike because he crossed the centre line on two occasions. The handling problems were so severe that in desperation John actually resorted to setting up the clip-on handlebars with one further forward than the other in the hope that this would make the bike easier to control. Anyway, John managed to stay in his lane but a courageous 9.15/159 effort was never going to stop Christenson who blasted out an 8.37/153. John’s handling problems were soon traced to the rear end of the frame which was distorting under the loads being applied to it. When it was stripped down and examined, the left side was found to be three eighths of an inch shorter than the right! Clearly some emergency surgery was needed, and urgently at that because the next meeting was only a week away. The handling problems were exacerbated by the weight of the clutch and final drive which were mounted on the left hand side. The clutch was a substantial bit of kit and had been designed for use with small block Chevrolet engines. As an interesting aside, this unit still resides in The Hobbit and John has never changed the linings to this day.
John was back on form with a vengeance at the G-Max Trophy meeting on 28 September when he laid down magnificent runs of 8.47/170.65 and 8.49/172.41. Even the American riders were unable to match the massive terminal speeds which John was achieving. John’s meeting was marred when the rear brake calliper came off the bike after the burn out in the semi finals of Top bike. A match race had been arranged with Tom Christenson which was eagerly awaited because on paper John was in with a very good chance, and he was well aware that the added stimulus of competition could well extract an even better performance. Disaster struck during the rolling burn out when John grabbed at the front brake a little too hard and the front slick tyre (which was wet) locked and he dropped The Hobbit. John describes this as one of his greatest racing disappointments for the reasons explained above. The Hobbit raised the terminal speed record yet higher when John clocked 8.81/173.31 on a damp track at the Santa Pod Fireworks Spectacular! John rounded off the year by attending both the Motor Cycle News ‘Man of the Year’ awards and the Daily Express ‘Sportsman of the Year’ luncheon in November. The Manchester edition of the Express ran a feature on John on the same day. 1976 Success started very early in 1976 for John when he was awarded the Kelly Springfield trophy at the BDR & HRA awards night. This trophy was awarded to the competitor who had done the most to forward the sport and this was the first time it had gone to a bike rider. The Weslake engines had performed faultlessly all through 1975 but problems surfaced when John stripped them down over the winter break. When he brought the pistons up to what should have been top dead centre, he found that two of them were lower in the bores than their brothers. Further examination showed that the massive power being developed had actually bent
two of the con rods. Another casualty, and a very surprising one at that, was the Lenco two speed overdrive unit which failed and had to be junked in favour of a stronger B&J underdrive two speed. This was an advantage in a number of ways. The final drive from the B&J unit was mounted on the right side of the bike which helped balance the huge Crowerglide clutch which was now able to be mounted further inboard thus helping the balance still further. The clutch would be turning 25% faster than previously by virtue of the B&J being an underdrive unit which allowed for the use of smaller centrifugal weights leading to a more progressive take up of the drive. A triplex primary chain was fitted to further reinforce things along with the duplex final drive chain. All this work over-ran rather and John actually finished the re-build in the pits at the Easter meeting at the Pod! He only managed one shake down run at the very end of the meeting. Fortunately the changes had transformed the bike which now ran as straight as a die. Another major change for 1976 had been the firing sequence of the engines. Originally they had been set up as two twin cylinder engines. Anyone who has ridden a British twin cylinder bike of this period will not need to be reminded of the diabolical vibration these engines developed at full chat. The mind boggles as to what it must have been like stretched over The Hobbit going big licks with this method of timing. John decided to couple the engines 180° apart thus effectively making it a four cylinder and therefore theoretically much smoother. The problem with the ‘four cylinder’ timing was that it greatly increased the loading on the coupling gears between the engines and several crankshaft failures resulted with the ends being literally twisted off. On one occasion the box containing the coupling gears disintegrated! The solution was quite far-reaching and involved improved crankshaft bearings and purpose-built 50mm diameter drive shafts being pressed on to the ends of the crankshafts and welded in place. At the same time the compression ratio was reduced and the connecting rods were changed to steel items. If this were not enough, John decided mid-season to make a completely new frame!
Because of all these problems, 1976 did not produce any improved performances over 1975, the best clocking was a relatively modest 8.84/167. However, with the improved reliability John did win the national drag bike championship in the inaugural year that it was introduced under the stewardship of the Auto Cycle Union (‘ACU’). There was some controversy surrounding
this victory which concerned John’s semi-final race in the final round of the championship against Derek Chinn on Pegasus. John had the misfortune to throw the rear chain during his burn out and this could have been the end of things. However, Derek Chinn sportingly shut down Pegasus while John made the necessary repairs. A firm called Dindy Marketing sponsored a Top Bike Championship held over three rounds which John also won. John recalls the memorable (?) headline “Dindy do well?” which appeared in the motorcycle press in connection with this victory. 1977 John was once again invited to attend the Motor Cycle News ‘Man of the Year’ awards and was interviewed by the legendary Murray Walker, an experience which put all his problems with The Hobbit very much into perspective. The winter of 1976/77 saw John hard at work developing The Hobbit which went on a diet and lost almost 25 kg in weight. This involved a great deal of work and included re-manufacturing parts from lighter materials. A new fuel tank was made and fitted and the riding position altered by the introduction of straight handlebars in lieu of the clip-ons previously used. The most important development was the introduction of a fuel pump. This was made specially for John by the late Allan ‘Bootsie’ Herridge and used the internals from a car’s oil pump. This was a major step forward and apart from increasing fuel flow, it enabled approximately 75% of the fuel to be fed through the superchargers via the carburettors with the remainder going directly to port injection nozzles. This meant that the fuel mixture could be fine tuned for each cylinder thus evening out the fuel bias inherent within the inlet manifolds of both engines.
These measures were an instant success and the bike ran 8.4 second times in the high 160 mph range almost from the off. However, things never are entirely rosy and at the Silver Jubilee Big Go meeting in early June John experienced the worst mechanical failure of his career when the rear engine let go in a really big way.
John’s weekend was obviously over but he was asked by Jonny Munn if he would give him some advice developing his own twin-engined machine. John agreed and even took a check out run on Jonny’s bike. In July John took Tom Christenson’s Snetterton track record with an 8.72 second 170 mph blast and in August John travelled to Drachten in Holland. This meeting was held on the 13th and 14th and the Top Bike class was sponsored by none other than Henk Vink in his capacity as the main Dutch Kawasaki importer and dealer. He put up a large trophy called the ‘Kawasaki Top Bike Trophy’ which he probably hoped would be awarded to himself or at least a Kawasaki. However, John had other plans as you might expect. Henk and John had put down very similar qualifying performances with times of 8.7 and 8.8 seconds respectively. The qualifying runs provided useful experience of the available traction on this little used surface. This suggested that some changes to the clutch set-up would be advantageous. John therefore reduced the pack clearance and increased the centrifugal weights thus causing the clutch to lock up sooner than on previous runs. The result was a fine 8.38 second run in the first round against Anton de Vos and it set the meeting alight. This run was the fastest by a European rider and only five hundredths of a second slower than Tom Christenson’s absolute European record. Henk Vink had gone out in the first round to Jeff Byne on his double-engined Hurricane machine. John went on to run 8.59 seconds in the semi-final, and another 8.5 to beat John Clift to secure the Kawasaki trophy for a Weslake-powered machine! The Dutch crowd had never seen such fierce competition and they were absolutely enthralled by the performances put up by the British riders. One person was so inspired it motivated him to go on to greater things. His name? Roel Koedam who went on many years later to become the quickest and fastest top fuel bike rider in Europe with figures of 6.046 seconds and 235.89 mph and currently stands at number 5 on the all-time list. John was back at Santa Pod for the Bank Holiday meeting held from 27 to 29 August. He came the closest yet to a seven second run with a blistering 8.15/174.5 lap which he backed up with an 8.44/170.
The roles were reversed at the Santa Pod Fireworks Spectacular however. John and Henk had been running consistently in the eights and, unsurprisingly, they met in the final. Disaster struck for John when an oil pipe union sheared during the burnout leaving Henk the win which he took with an 8.65/153 pass. On his return to the pits Henk challenged John to a one-off match race. John hastily repaired The Hobbit in the darkness and the match race took place five minutes after the meeting had officially concluded. Many of the crowd stayed on and they were rewarded with an historic race which featured the first side-by-side eight second runs involving two European riders. Henk Vink took the honours in a close race with an 8.47/155 clocking to John’s losing 8.76/166 effort. The final event of note in 1977 was obtaining sponsorship from Phil Read in December. Phil had decided to sponsor riders in various forms of motorcycle racing and selected John in the sport of drag racing. 1978
For probably the first time in his career there were no major upgrades to The Hobbit over the winter break. The May Day International meeting held at the Pod on 29 and 30 April saw the return of the American riders in the form of Tom Christenson and Marion ‘The Big Oakie’ Owens (believe me, he was big!). Tom was riding his well-known double Norton Hogslayer and Marion brought his mighty 3500cc double Harley which he called Boss Hog. The visiting US riders had generally been so overwhelming superior in previous years that often they did not even take part in competition and contented themselves with exhibition runs. However, evidence that the old order was being swept away was not long in coming when Henk Vink put Tom Christenson on the trailer in the first round of competition. John drew Marion Owens in the semi-final and defeated him in what he describes as the most memorable race of his entire career. It was clear to me talking to John about it that it is imprinted on his mind. John pulled a hole shot off the line and gained an immediate advantage of perhaps half a bike length but they were locked together all the way down the quarter with the lead changing constantly. At the line John glanced across and found it impossible to judge who had got there first particularly as Marion’s terminal speed was a tad higher than his own. For the record the figures were a winning 8.46/169 to Marion’s quicker and faster, but losing, 8.42/171. I don’t know about you but looking across the track at 169 mph does not appeal to me much. Mind you, climbing on one of these things in the first place is not instantly attractive either. Click here to see a rather dodgy picture scanned from a newspaper article showing John with about a wheel length over Marion off the line in this race. On 11 June it was back to more mundane matters when John did some demonstration runs at a Pennine Drag Racing Club meeting on the very bumpy Melbourn strip in Yorkshire. Nevertheless, he managed to take both ends of the strip record with best figures of 9.42 seconds and 161 mph. John’s recollection of things is a total blur the bike being airborne most of the time! This record was to stand until 1981 when John and The Hobbit lowered it to a very respectable 9.04 seconds. A memorable match race with arch-rival Henk Vink took place at Snetterton later in the year. Both riders drew cherries on the first run as they tried to come to terms with the tricky NDRC timing lights.
At that time the NDRC lights differed from those at Santa Pod in that there was no separate staging beam. Instead the driver or rider staged by breaking the beam on the start line it self. The timing system started when the vehicle left and the beam was again intact. The problem was that if you had a skinny front wheel the slightest movement would lead to a red light in circumstances that would have been perfectly legal at Santa Pod. 1979
The performances John was producing had once again started to show up on the engines which were needing more and more maintenance. This was largely due to the fact that there had to be a compromise in the gearing to allow the bike to launch well, but this was at the expense of very high engine revolutions at the top end. John therefore decided to replace the B&J two speed gearbox with a three speed unit from the same manufacturer. This was the same three speed transmission that was commonly in use on Pro Comp (i.e. Top Methanol) dragsters and funny cars but it had never been used on a motorcycle in Europe before. Although it was horrendously expensive it has paid for itself because it is still installed on The Hobbit today. The installation of the three speed immediately showed in lower elapsed times and better reliability although the really huge terminal speeds were never to be seen again. John and Henk met up for a series of match races again at Mantorp Park at the international meeting held from the 18th to the 20th of May. Both suffered mechanical gremlins whilst doing practice runs. The following weekend saw the dynamic duo at the Big Go at Santa Pod. Henk defeated John Charlton in the first round 8.78/165 to 8.96/156, and took out John Clift in the semis 8.54/171 to 8.76/156. Meanwhile John advanced past Chris Richards with an 8.59/163, and Jeff Byne with an 8.63/168 to book a place in the final with Henk. Although it was very windy for the final, John posted the lowest elapsed time for the meeting with an 8.41/152 which was more than enough to beat Henk’s 9.15/111 when his supercharger seized up. The Summer International meeting saw the lowest elapsed time ever recorded in Europe when John laid down an epic 8.07/168.9 blast to defeat Jeff Byne in the final on 8 July. Click here to see that historic timing ticket. John went on to win at Sugarbeet County Raceway (Snetterton) on 9 September when he narrowly beat John Clift 8.54 to 8.57 seconds. John announced his retirement from racing at the Fireworks meeting held at Santa Pod on 3 and 4 November. The weather prevented him from adding one last title to his long list of achievements, but he still managed an 8.43 second pass on a damp track when racing Pete Woods on his 500cc Triumph in the first round of competition before rain stopped play. At the end of the meeting John was summoned out on to the start line by Henk Vink and his crew. To his great surprise, and even greater pleasure, he was presented with a trophy by Henk to commemorate his achievements in the sport and to mark the affection and respect in which he was held. The trophy was inscribed “To John Hobbs - you have been our most favourable competitor”. Needless to say this is one of John’s most treasured possessions.
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