Getting out on the boat engined bike
On his visit to the Berlin factory, and while returning New Zealander Kim Newcombe's machinery, Dieter König offered Rod the Kiwi racer's position in the development department, as well as the works 500GP ride using a bike incorporating all the modifications that Kim and Rod had determined would be needed to stay competitive in 1974. These included lighter and better disc brakes, magnesium wheels, an aluminium radiator etc.
But after politely declining the offer, Rod ended up working briefly for Yamaha Europe in Amsterdam, before heading home to Melbourne, where, after some years with the local Yamaha importer, he establishedTingate Racing and quickly gained a reputation for superb workmanship in crafting monocoque chassis, aluminium tanks, expansion chambers and the like. However, his König days weren’t done.
“A year or so after Kim’s accident, Dieter sent me a motor to look at continuing development with, and I bought a Quaife gearbox to go with it,” says Rod. “I looked at it and thought how the front exhaust came over the top of the carburettor which heats up the intake charge, and how if you ran two pipes out of the bottom and the back two out of the top, it would work out better.
“You could get reasonable pipes underneath, and run an airbox down through the centre. But, the trouble was König was only a small factory, and Dieter just didn’t have the dollars to make new casting dies to revamp the engine, so it just sort of sat there for a while, then got tucked away under a bench when König shut down after Dieter’s death.”
In the meantime, his mate Peter Smith had bought a collection of parts from the König factory, including wheels, a radiator, fuel tank, seat and other parts – so eventually the idea came about to build a replica of the Newcombe bike as a tribute to Kim. And that tribute would use these bits from Peter and Rod’s motor.
“Kim’s own bikes had all been disassembled, and the engines used by the hydroplane racers,” says Tingate. “I spoke to Dieter years later, and he was sad that had happened. He and Kim were great like-minded friends, and he wished he’d kept at least one bike all together, to act as a memorial to Kim at the factory.
“There are various bikes all claiming to be Kim’s old one, but I’m sorry to say it’s simply not true – all three bikes he raced were broken up. I saw one at
