The 2714cc North London Garage Record Breaker
The early days of the motorcycle were characterised by rapid and often extraordinary engineering, engines were made with eye-wateringly large swept volumes and then often mounted in chassis that were little more than re-purposed bicycle frames.
The motorcycle you see here is an exact re-creation of the 1909 North London Garage record breaker, the original no longer exists so an enterprising Czech engineer named Pavel Malanik set about collecting images of it before embarking on a mission to build a new one from scratch.
There aren’t many people in the world who possess the skills and tooling necessary to machine a motorcycle engine from a block of raw metal.
And there are even fewer that can do it after looking at some 100+ year old images and making a few sketches. Pavel is one such person.
His first order of business was machining the crankcase from a block of aluminium, he decided to begin with the engine as it’s by far the most difficult part – especially when it has a capacity of 2714cc and needs to be capable of running at speeds in excess of 90mph.