For quite a few years I have wanted to do a story on this bike but I haven’t had the full story. Other matters have intervened over the period and it wasn’t until just a few weeks ago that I decided I’d get my act together and complete the task. In matters like this, historical accuracy IS important and the lack thereof has delayed the process as well. Basically, I have had the start of the story and the end of it but not the bit in between and not the details that make the story interesting. So, here goes.
The bike is the Maxton/Yamaha of historic racer, Glenn Hindle. Son of the late and great Bryan Hindle, Glenn has been racing this bike for many years and with great success and, the first time I saw it, at the Island Classic many years ago, it raised my interest and my desire to find out more about it.
The bike has been almost unbeatable since its creation and, amongst other things, holds the lap record for its class at Phillip Island, for over 10 years. It has been totally reliable and has only failed to finish due to one or two crashes, and never to mechanical unreliability.
So, where did it come from and what is its story? Here I must acknowledge the extensive help of my old CRRC buddy, Steve Parlett who helps Glenn with the bike and, through him, the bike’s earlier rider, former MA official and road racer, Rob Madden.
You may be wondering just why this bike sparked my interest in the first place and I should explain that first. Firstly it is because the bike has a very special frame, a Maxton, English-built unit made by Maxton’s owner, Ron Williams. Secondly because the frame of this bike is the very same one that was used by young upcoming star, Ron Boulden, in the early stages of his career, and it was here that I first encountered it. In fact, I probably saw it being raced by Boulden the very first time that he rode it at a C Grade meeting at Albury’s Hume Weir circuit in early 1976.
It was immediately clear to me that Boulden was something pretty special and I noted him down as one to be watched.
Ron duelled all day with another rising C Grade star who went on to somewhat greater things in the ensuing years. Local hot-shot, Robbie Phillis debuted HIS brand new TZ that meeting also and, despite crashing the bike three times in private practice during the week, he starred on Sunday and showed us all that this unknown rider was definitely going to go places.
The third reason why the bike sparked my interest was the name sign-written on the fairing. Jack Ahearn was already a legendary figure in Australian road racing and his exploits as a privateer, riding in the fiercely competitive 500cc class in the European Grands Prix were known to us all. So, if he saw fit to sponsor this, hitherto-unknown rider on this slightly unusual bike, the bike and the rider must have something going for them.
Ron rode the Maxton for the rest of 1976, sponsored and assisted by Jack Ahearn and in January he celebrated his 18th birthday with a party (which I attended), the news that he had been ugraded to B Grade and a brand new Yamaha TZ250D machine.
The Maxton was fitted with the customary right foot gear change and left foot brake as favoured by European riders and set up for Jack Ahearn. Ron continued to ride it in that configuration.
Sidebar. It is common knowledge now, though it wasn’t then, that Ron’s 18th birthday party wasn’t his 18th at all. In order to get their son into road racing as early as possible, Ron’s parents had fudged his birth certificate records to make him a year older than he actually was. So, he had already been racing as a 16 year old for nearly a year and had, in fact practiced for the 1975 Castrol Six Hour (though he didn’t race) as a 15 year old. All of this is, of course, water under the bridge now but it is an interesting part of the story.
It didn’t take too long into 1977 for Ron’s team to realise that the later-model TZ 250, with its monoshock rear suspension and more adjustable front suspension was a much better package than the older twin-shock Maxton frame so they swapped the 350 motor out of the Maxton and slotted it into the D model frame.
And so, the Boulden connection with this special frame concluded.
But, how had it gotten there in the first place and what happened to it after it left the Boulden camp?
Here I again acknowledge the assistance of Steve Parlett and Rob Madden who had a great deal more to do with this frame than what I had thought.
In early 1975, Jack Ahearn approached Ron Williams of Maxton and asked him to build him a bike. It was the standard Maxton twin-shock frame, a Lockheed AP single front disk and mag wheels. It was fitted with a water-cooled TZ350A engine and it was in that configuration that Rob Madden rode the bike at the 1975 Isle of Man races. After only 7 miles of practice the engine seized, the result of a sheared water pump drive. The damage was repaired and the bike went out to practice the next time, this time lasting 28 miles before another mechanical gremlin stopped it again.
In order to at least get in some laps, Rob did some laps on a road bike while the Maxton was bring repaired and, in 350 qualifying on Thursday, he did a 95.6 mph lap from a standing start, pretty respectable. The 350 race was postponed on the Friday due to bad weather and Rob rode the bike to a 28th place including two pit stops at a race average of 92 mph when the race was finally run on the Saturday.
The bike was then returned to Australia and Rob believes that Jack rode it several times himself locally but no details are available. When it next appeared it was in Ron’s hands at Hume Weir, March 1976 but with a later TZ350C engine fitted.
My memory tells me that, when the Boulden team swapped out the later Yamaha 250 engine into the Maxton frame, they campaigned it for at least the next year, giving Ron the opportunity to ride in both the 250cc and the 350cc class. Sadly I do not have any photos of the Maxton with green plates and Steve says that he doesn’t remember that either. I do know that Ron did ride both a 250 AND a 350 during that period so I’ll stick by my somewhat foggy memory of this period of the bike’s history.
When Ron inked in his sponsorship deal with Toshiba Yamaha in 1978, the Maxton was returned to Jack Ahearn’s keeping and it disappeared from public view until it re-appeared in 1985.
Another sidebar. Jack Ahearn’s involvement in the Boulden effort has been questioned by several riders who rode at the time at least one of which has a VERY jaundiced view of Ron and his racing and can be safely ignored. However, personal experience affirms that, not only was Jack an involved sponsor but also an involved coach and mentor to the young Boulden boy.
At Oran Park, in early 1977. Ron was having one of his first rides on the 250 and, in that private practice session, was becoming increasingly frustrated with his inability to match the 350 times set by by him on the Maxton. After coming into the pits, Jack said, “Look, let me have a go.” Jack got on the bike and went out and did 5 laps, all of them notably faster than the times that Ron had been setting. When he returned to the pits Ron’s frustrations were even higher. I mean, Jack was a champion rider, no doubt, but he was in his 50s by this stage and Ron keenly felt that he shouldn’t have been faster than him. So Jack sat down and asked him to talk him through a lap of the circuit. As he did so, Jack noted the gear change points, braking markers, etc. At the end, Jack said to him, “Where do you use the rear brake?” Ron replied that he didn’t. “Well, there you are you, see, that’s the problem,” Jack replied. He then went on to give Ron a clinic on how to trail brake using the rear brake.
After lunch, Ron went out on the 250 again and returned a few laps later, his lap times being over a SECOND better than those that he had been setting in the morning session. Definitely a “hands on” sponsor.
Anyway, some time in 1978 the bike disappeared till 1985.
In 1985 a guy came into Rob Madden’s Honda dealership and told Rob that he had the Maxton. He had bought it some time earlier from Ron’s mum, Moyna (we don’t really know how come she had it) and Rob made an offer for it and bought it from him. Rob put a rider on the bike and it was raced a few times (again, details foggy.)
In 1988 Rob decided that he would dust the bike off and ride it in Historic racing since it was now eligible.
He raced it at Bathurst meeting and finished 3rd, the frame fitted with an air-cooled “period” Yamaha engine but the result was protested by another competitor who said that the bike was too “new” to qualify for the class. In order to confirm that the bike WAS legal, Rob contacted Ron Williams and asked for confirmation of build date. Ron answered that the frame WAS a 1975 frame and that the model had continued unaltered from the time that that design had begun being sold in 1970. So no worries about provenance.
Rob Madden confirms that a frame number was stamped into a metal plate attached to the lower rear engine mount but, sometime in its history the frame had been powder-coated and the number wasn’t visible. Making it visible now would require stripping the chrome-moly frame and Glenn wasn’t prepared to do that given that Williams was happy to confirm the bike’s age anyway. Rob was also most reluctant to meddle with the nickel/bronze welding that held the frame bits together. Williams also had confirmed that the frame was identical to the 1972 frame with the exception of brackets added to support the TZ radiator, an additional bracket off the tacho bracket to support the water temperature gauge and a new bracket to support the rear brake master cylinder for the hydraulic rear disk.
After a period of quiet again the bike, still in Rob’s care, was offered to Glenn Hindle in 2004/05 for Historic racing on the proviso that Glenn could ride it but he wasn’t allowed to play around with it. Quite how Rob thought that Glenn could race it without doing anything to it is unclear.
The bike has remained in Glenn’s ownership since then with the technical and mechanical fettling being done by the owner and any specialised work being done by Steve Parlett. Before purchasing the Maxton, Glenn had a TR3 that had been causing him all sorts of troubles but, by persistently nibbling away at the problems he was able to make it into a reliable and fast bike. When he purchased the Maxton, Glenn put the TZ engine out of it into his frame and sold the bike, putting his TR3 engine into the Maxton.
So, what has been done to the Maxton since it came into Glenn’s ownership? Amazingly, apart from general upkeep, very little. Yamaha air-cooled engines were known vibrators and the front down tubes of the early frames were prone to cracking so Steve has fitted another cross brace.
The bike still has the period-correct Maxton-pattern expansion chambers, made locally, and the motor runs standard barrels and standard crank. According to Steve, standard is best, “After all, the engine was built as a racing engine and the factory designers knew what they were doing.” “There are no fairies at the bottom of the garden,” he continued, “And I have seen dozens of riders who have wasted huge amounts of money on modifications to the engines that only succeeded in making them slower, thirstier and less reliable, all in the name of trying to get a bit of extra horsepower.”
There are no “trick” bits, Meteor pistons replace the Yamaha ones due to lack of supply of the genuine items. The squish has been slightly altered by ace tuner, Tony Hatton, to make the engine “gentler” and the “What we already know works” approach has seen outstanding speed and reliability. Front forks are now fully adjustable ones, rear shocks are Maxtons, made in the same factory that the frame was built in in 1975 and the front hub is TX500 Yamaha with Lockheed AP calipers gripping a standard Yamaha disk. The ignition is proprietary Hitachi and the carbs are standard size 34mm. The wheel rims are standard. The bike runs wire wheels instead of the previous mags for authenticity and everything is carefully assembled, regularly checked and correct tolerances are observed.
I found it very interesting when talking to Steve that his perceptions pretty much mirrored what Gary Thomas had said to me a couple of weeks ago about keeping the engine standard to get the best power and reliability. The factory knew best.
Another sidebar. Ron’s first appearance on the bike saw it running #42. Very soon afterwards the number changed to #59 and Ron kept that number throughout the rest of his racing life. #59 WAS Rob Madden’s registered ACU racing number and he first lent the number to Ron and then allowed Ron to apply for it as HIS registered number when Jack (who had also used the number #59) finally retired.
I feel very privileged to have seen a deal of this wonderful bike’s racing history and encouraged to know that it has been preserved, almost in its entirety from its build date in 1975, through the last 47 years. It is so easy for bikes to be broken up into bits and to disappear. The Maxton is not only a survivor but it is still being used for the purpose for which it was originally built.
