If you?re into classic Porsche 911s, you?ve probably heard of the restorer Dutchmann. In his Johannesburg, South Africa workshop, Gavin Rooke painstakingly rebuilds classic Neunelfers to concours level, and ships his ?Weekend Racers? all over the world?ready to be thrashed around tracks, up hill climbs and through deserts.
But every so often Gavin and his craftsmen take on a special project, to keep their skills fresh: ?We seek inspiration from different people and their interests,? he says. One such individual is 65-year old Bobby Hack (below), a retired Speedway legend who lives in the Eastern Cape.

?I was hunting for a second-hand speedway bike to convert into a Dutchmann ?Desert Racer? and came across Bobby,? says Gavin. ?He?d hit some tough times, and needed to sell his old speedway parts.? ?As we got chatting, he mentioned he also owned a super-rare, complete 1968 Jawa 2-valve speedway bike. I convinced Bobby to work with us on a tandem project, to restore the Jawa to Dutchmann standard.?

A little background, in case you live outside the speedway hotbeds of Europe and Australia: the bikes have only a single gear and no brakes.
Their 500cc engines rev up to 11,000 rpm and run on methanol?which allows 16:1 compression ratios to produce upwards of 80 horsepower.

Gearing can be changed for different tracks and conditions, but only by changing the size of the rear wheel and the engine sprockets. Riders race around an oval track packed with shale and dirt, using th...