OLD BIKE AUSTRALASIA: 25competitive advantage. I went onto twin ignition
after that but the glow plug was a really interesting
concept.”
Life changed slightly when Charlie was called up
for National Service and spent six months at
Amberley Air Base in Queensland. Being around
aircraft suited him fine until it was time to return to
normal duties. Following his apprenticeship, Charlie
opened his own business, the Dandenong Two
Stroke Repair Company, which went well enough to
pay for his racing, and to keep his flying hours up. “I
was hiring a Cessna 172 belonging to a farmer, who
kept it at Moorabbin airport. He wouldn’t take any
money for the flying I was doing in it, and I kept
saying that I should be paying for it because I was
using it and taking my friends up. Then he said,
‘Would you consider coming to work for me?’
because he didn’t have a flying licence but he had
two planes. This sounded interesting to me so I put
a manager in the Two Stroke Repair business and I
went up to his property Burrabogie Station in Hay in
1959, a 46,000 acre sheep property which was very
famous for rams, and I liked it. I was more a
mechanic because being a private pilot I wasn’t
entitled to fly for a living so I just flew him when he
needed to go somewhere. It was still a bit illegal
but that’s how we got over it.”
The station had plenty of sheds and pieces of
equipment, one being an old lathe. It was actually a
wood lathe but had thread cutting gears, and Charlie
began to use it to make parts for his racing Bantam,
one such was his own carburettor, the castings for
which were made from melted down scrap
aluminium obtained from the Ford Motor Company in
Melbourne. He eventually made five of the ‘CE’ carbs- one for his great friend Les Lewis, another for Les’
son Leslie, and three for himself. The thinking behind
the carb was that conventional racing carbs like the
Amal GP and TT were overly long, with the main jet
at the bottom of the carb. “You had to put the carb at
an angle to miss the crankcase on a Bantam or a
Bultaco, and this was wrong because the gas has to
come down at an unusual angle and then come up
through the transfer ports. So the beauty of this carb
was we could get a very low profile by taking the
main jet from the bottom and putting it in the side,
and it was adjustable with your fingers. This was a bit
dangerous because in practice you could just reach
down and adjust the main jet as you’re flying down
the straight. It was a tapered needle and when you
got the right setting I just tied it off with a fine bit of
wire and it worked very well and we got the perfect
angle for a two stroke. There’s nothing magic in a two
stroke, it’s just all the little things that add up, and
this is just one of the many things.” CHARLIE EDWARDS
Salty Creek 1968: Charlie outside Kevin Fraser and Greg Primmer.Charlie on his Hagon
Bultaco dicing with Herb
Jefferson’s ESO.