OK ...here's a story about Brett...a similar story has recently appeared in a local magazine
The World’s Fastest Waterbottle .
Brett de Stoop lives on the outer edge of Sydney, and orbits in the fringe of the motorcycle community . His one obsession is ultimate speed on the salt flats with his two-stroke three cylinder Suzuki’s. For the past five years he has worked non stop on development taking them from a memorable 35 year old road-bike to world record standard 232mph with largely his own ingenuity and back-yard work-shop.
What I most remembered about Brett from the first time I met him five years ago was something he said when we were talking about his bike and designing and building salt racing stuff.
"When I'm in the shed, you know, welding , it's like a peace, away from all the other stuff that gets into your head, and, it keeps me sane"; this, was all accompanied by hand motions as if he was washing his hair.
Brett was a tall hyperactive guy who always seemed to have at least two sentences on the go at once and was an accomplished gesticulator,he was kind of un-nerving, too much. And he was filthy, but under that he was a sharp looking piece of work in his blue and white leathers , mirror sunglasses , crew-cut and tan. We were out on the huge expanse of the salt pan that is Lake Gairdner where the Dry Lake Racers of Australia hold their annual Speedweek, the only organized salt lake racing event outside Bonneville in the U.S.
Brett had a bike with him that could only be described as a Frankenstein-like home built monster of, by and large, his own creation. Based on a Suzuki GT750 from the early seventies, Brett had up-scaled the motor and swathed it in an aluminium fairing and where it went wanting in the fit, finish and finesse, it shouted at anyone with working senses that it was here to do business, big business.
In historic terms the bike was a curio, known as a “Water-bottle” a water-cooled two stroke from the decade of flairs and sideburns, but there was an intangible attraction here…..Brett wasn’t a “restorer” and it was obvious he wasn’t just a mechanic. There was some hidden source of power here, some sort of mystery, he wasn’t just mad, or weird. He was driven.
It was Steve Barnett, another Waterbottle fan and owner who convinced Brett to go to Lake Gairdner and it was he who said to me in revered tones in 2006 “ that bike looks rough but when he gets it sorted out it’s going to go really, really fast. It makes tons of power and Brett, despite appearances, really knows what he’s talking about ”. When he said “despite appearances”, Steve was alluding to the point that Brett defied the usual quiet engineer type and seemed much more the barnstormer- as it turns out , that was the only part that wasn’t real.
It became obvious that Brett had gone down deeper than most when it came to his motor, the term “engine-builder” really refers to people who “assemble” engines Brett had actually built his. He’d made his own home foundry, despite advice that it wouldn't work and that it was way out of the capability of a "backyarder". Brett left school after year nine , he did a motor mechanics apprenticeship under his dad , but as far as formal training goes, that was pretty much it.
What drove Brett wasn’t ambition or ego , it was the violent death of his brother Rick two years older than he in 1997. A bodybuilder, Rick had been a Bandido’s member. One of the more notorious bike clubs in the country the Bandidos had figured in some of the most violent episodes of bike gang warfare , most notably the 1984 “Milperra Massacre” a hotel car-park shootout between the newly formed Bandidos and the Comancheros with whom they had recently split, seven people including a fourteen year girl were killed. Rick de Stoop was a bodyguard for Michael Kulakowski the national president. A vicious feud had broken out with the Rebels after allegations that Kulakowski was sleeping with the girlfriend of one of their members. In the basement of the Blackmarket nightclub on the 9th of November 1997 the two, along with the Bandidos Sergeant at Arms Sasha Milenkovic were shot dead at close range.
That bike I had first seen at Lake Gairdner was part therapy and part tribute , therapy for the terrible loss and grief but at the same time an ongoing and evolving monument to his brother who had been cut short. A mute object that he could fuss over and develop, and use to shut out the outside world. Still ,others reached in, Brett and his wife had three sons while others were attracted to this intense, obsessive guy who seemed to have a natural understanding of what made two-strokes go. John Scholar was a valuable counsel to Brett after his brother’s death but fittingly was a skilled engineer and taught Brett much of what he needed to bring his ideas to fruition, another, Jeff Clatworthy gave him the cam piston grinder he uses to finish the pistons the foundry forges for him and which he then machines at home.
In his first year at the lake Brett took the bike to 164.024 miles per hour which in the class was a record. Brett described how the bike began to weave at around 150 mph, the problem seemed to be cured by throttling on a little harder and then stopped at around 160mph but then returned with a vengeance as the bike decelerated which he then had to manage without the benefit of the throttle. The water tank Brett had built into the tail, he decided, was much to blame for this handling trait, and would be one of the first changes that would be made in the forthcoming year.
The following year, 2007, was marred by rain and the meet was cancelled just days before it was due to begin. Many of the racers were either already there or in transit so communication problems and a plain lack of contact details meant that many continued on toward the already cancelled event. Brett was one of them. He’d worked on the bike throughout the year and dragged it halfway across the country, only to find he’d done it in vain. He’d have to go home and wait for another year, with the questions of whether he’d improved his design unanswered as there is nowhere else to test something that is designed to run over seven miles at four times the legal speed limit.
Stories abound , and one that was heard was someone who’d taken a bike to the cancelled meet had stopped off somewhere in the Riverland, possibly Waikerie on their way back to Sydney where they’d seen an abandoned airstrip. As the story goes, after a couple of warm-up runs the rider gave the bike a proper wrist-full pushing it past 170mph, and then with the end of the strip fast approaching made a failed attempt to pull it up before running off the end of the strip, finding a drain and somersaulting off the bike, breaking a collar-bone . Unable to load the bike back into the trailer with just his father-in- law with him, the owner had then found a nearby pub and after getting to know some locals, enlisted them to head out to the illicit test strip and help them load the bike before returning to Sydney , non-stop, arm in a sling.
With some damage to the all aluminium body-work Brett had to make repairs . He soon realised, as with many facets of the bike, that he was wasting his time making repairs and slight modifications to something that he knew could be a whole lot better. Using the old body work as a “plug” Brett made some broad-scale improvements to its aerodynamic shape and created rigid fibreglass moulds of the body after smoothing and filling it with clay and polyester filler. He then cast a new body in fibreglass. This time he had the basic body, much smoother and better fitting than he’d had before with which he could trial a tail fin or if he damaged it again, simply cast another piece. This fitted with Brett’s contention that too many people waste their time “tinkering”, when they should step up to produce their own repeatable version that allows them to make an inherent break from the built-in limitations of something designed for economical mass-production. It was this moment that Brett had made the step that would lead to the real heart of his bike’s story, making his own motor.
Again in 2008, the Dry Lake Racers of Australia Speedweek was cancelled due to the condition of the salt at Lake Gairdner.
The motor that Brett had in the bike in 2006 was a heavily modified one. He had machined new sleeves from centrifugally cast stock to give him the bore he need for 1000cc, he had used epoxy to reshape the ports and upped the size of the Mikuni round slide carburettors from 40 to 42.5 mm throats but there were physical limitations to the architecture of the early seventies design, some economic, some limited by the current knowledge of the time.
Brett knew that in order to achieve his grander plan he had to free himself of two things, the physical limitations of the motor as built by Suzuki and also the 35 year old design and size of the ports. There was only one way to do it and that was to build his own larger, better flowing example which he could bolt to the standard crankcase. Producing a three dimensional cast object with internal passages and critical tolerances is a somewhat bigger undertaking than making fibreglass panels, about a million times bigger.
Brett went to a local foundry and the guy he spoke to said…
“Mate, golf is a hobby, this is not a hobby. You won’t be able to do it, you wont be able to get the cooling rates right, the metal will be junk, it won’t work. You won’t be able to stress-relieve the casting properly, you’ll be wasting your time”.
First Brett used the block he had already modified for the 06 motor, sawing it and widening it, bulking it, smoothing it and adding to it just the way he had with the aluminium bodywork. He built a 3D model of the space in the ports and water passages before casting it so as to be able to make the sand moulds he need for the casting process. There are dozens and dozens of moulds in the workshop each for a separate piece that will be formed from sand and epoxy to then be placed within the casting box to create the intake, exhaust and water-cooling passages , just to see all these pieces and imagine the complexity of assembling them let alone dreaming them up is truly bewildering. Brett built two ovens, a small one he could use to melt aluminium and a larger one big enough to do the reheat and gradual cooling necessary for the curing/stress relieving process after the initial casting. The larger one is also big enough to perform heat treatments on entire exhausts and frames after welding.
Brett managed to streamline the design /pattern-making/casting process by eliminating some of the steps which are used to formalise the relationship between the three disciplines “ I was doing it all myself, so I could afford to skip some of the steps they normally use. He poured the casting “upside down” and varied the holes through which the molten aluminium flowed to regulate the rate at which it cooled maintaining a large “jug” of metal above the casting to slow the freeze rate. The very first effort had some bubbles in it and the metal failed to make its way through the entire casting box but from the next example on he was in business. He took the block to the foundry, not to say “ I told you so” but to show them that he was capable and that he wanted more help and more advice, he now counts his former doubter as a close friend and number one fan.
Brett’s number two fan is his next door neighbour who turned up one day after trying to enjoy a beer with his mates only to have Brett ruin it by running tests of the race bike on his home built dynamometer. A dyno is a machine to measure the power and torque of a motor under load, the absolute figures aren’t so important as its repeatability, the point being it allows the operator to make adjustments and compare them and improve the motor in the process. When Brett’s neighbour arrived he saw Brett with the bike five feet off the ground , the back wheel mounted on a roller and a long handle operating disc brake on that roller. Attached to the disc brake calliper was a strain gauge that measured the force required to slow the motor.
“What the hell are you doing?”…he was angry, the sound of a race bike engine doing “power runs”, and a two stroke at that is not the perfect backdrop to a quiet afternoon having a beer with your mates….Brett got the point and immediately downed tools and spent the next four days building in the walls of the shed, and sound-proofing them. The next time he saw his neighbour he was standing staring at the shed in wonderment. The dyno shed is now lined with silver foil covered insulation and hanging in the middle of it is a mirror ball. When I first saw it there was a hibiscus pink 73 Waterbottle sitting there and a multi-colored light shining on the mirror ball, Brett, was in his element, he insisted, “it’s the kids disco”.
It is simply “fun” as he says, theatre that he can perform in. He lights up even when describing what he likes about it, let alone the process itself. He loves to talk about the process and his ideas but is also at pains to explain that the flash and dash is just a way of packaging what he does- adding a little humour and making the event part, the actual riding, the record setting, a celebration of all the effort he has put in between times. Brett calls the bike “Salt Fever” and has a silhouette of John Travolta’s, “Tony Manero”, hand on hip, on the side of the bike…. Travolta’s character is the King of the Disco on Saturday nights where he escapes, momentarily, the reality and awkwardness of his day to day life.
Alongside the image of Tony Manero is the name Walter Kaaden emblazoned on the side of the fairing; he is Brett’s patron saint. Kaaden, an East German, is held to be the father of two stroke performance who had great success in Grand Prix despite his limited Eastern Bloc resources...It was Kaaden who realized the importance of the sonic waves created by the combustion process and their reflection in the filling and extraction of the combustion chamber
“The Japanese refused to take cues from Kaaden and continued to regard the two stroke as a pump, like a four stroke ,but the two stroke is a pulse jet with a piston in it, resonance is king” says Brett gaining momentum ,
“ he was a genius! He shook, no, he thought the whole thing up, the Japanese were just tinkering, small steps”.
Brett loves the Kaaden story because he was an underdog who , in the end, was let down by his rider Ernst Degner defecting and taking with him some critical parts. The authorities wouldn’t let Kaaden past the iron curtain and so his genius was largely buried , and his ideas developed by others. But if you ask Brett about Kaaden he lights up, pointing at the name on the bike and says” he, he, was a fucking GENIUS”
So, it was three years between Brett's debut and his return to Lake Gairdner. He arrived in 2009 with the new bodywork, but it was the new fully cast barrels, the basis of the bigger improved motor that he'd developed that was the significant step. I heard and saw Brett's fastest run during Speedweek that year from the pits. Radios are on everywhere and the starters’ instructions and responses from the timers are a constant background to the goings on during the week .We paused when we heard " Bike 509 , rider 509", from the starter and turned to watch and wait for Brettie to appear from the mirage to the west. We could hear the bike rasping up through the gears then see it as a dot bouncing against the bright background before it took form and joined with its sound around the two-mile mark. It would have been at about the three mile mark when the bike sounded fully on song with the revs rising that we got the feeling that this was going to be good; little did we know.
He ran 210.169 mph, an astounding speed, he was jubilant and held court on his return replaying the run and the problem he'd had where he could tuck so the bike would accelerate but couldn't see with his head down.
It was after the 2009 meet that Brett went after the bugs that he knew were in the frame . Once again he wanted the fight the real fight, not a skirmish, not tinker but tackle the problems with a purpose built solution. The steering angles. referred to as the rake and trail are fixed on frames but are critical factors that influence high speed handling. Brett used the lower frame rail from the standard Waterbottle and built a more rigid example that fitted his requirements but also incorporated a brilliant method of adjusting the rake and trail independent of one another, the frame isn't just functional, it is beautiful too.The handling problems were gone, not based on a hunch, not hearsay but careful consideration of the knowns and a basic but scientific approach.He does however still have the “hot-rodders heart” and points to the decal on his bike for the “Club Animal NAC200+ Club” which he explains as the Naturally Aspirated Carbureted Club , referring to the fact that he is running no turbo-charging and no fuel injection….”just the old stuff”.
The DLRA’s 2010 Speedweek ended on Friday the 12th of March and one of the last people to run was Brett de Stoop, he ran 232 miles per hour on his home built Waterbottle in Altered Partial Streamlined Fuel class , nearly 15 mph faster than anyone had gone in that class before.The world standard is administered by the Federation International Motorcycle , they charge a fee and provide officials to supervise record attempts which are run over a course in opposite directions within a two hour period. In August 2004 an R1 Yamaha from Scott Guthrie Racing ran 215.353mph at Bonneville, the FIM have been to Lake Gairdner before but Brett’s was a one way run and thus to many isn’t a “real” record, but the potential is there. Accolades flowed from experienced riders and competitors and Brett was exuberant but eager to point out that he was far from finished.
Two stroke motors benefit from a long stroke counter to the “oversquare“ four stroke motor , Brett’s motor has a bore of 82mm which as he says is really ideal for a motor in the region of 1500cc, not 1000, thus he says the groundwork has been laid for him to head in both directions capacity wise , he hopes to build a 750 ,1350 and 1500cc versions to run in respective classes .He’s not kidding when he says “ I’ve still got lots of work to do”
