10-11 July 2004

Classic bol d'or 2004 - magny-cours

In July 2004, the Van Dijk Endurance Team made their debut at the Classic Bol d’Or with old Endurance aces Harry van den Hout and Henk van der Mark. They were riding a replica of the factory triple that was raced by Georges Fougeray/Daniel Rouge at the 1974 Bol d’Or, exactly 30 year before.

One could describe the machine as a hybrid between the 1975 factory racer and an Electronica SFC. Engine-wise it is close to the 1975 racer, with the dynamo positioned to the front of the crankcase driven by a belt in exactly the same way to gain ground clearance and extend life of the main bearings of the crankshaft. Gijs van Dijk fitted 7/C cams in a big valve head with 36mm Dell'Ortos. The 180 crankshaft is very light and fitted with Carillo rods. In same style as the Electronica SFC, the ignition pickups sit in a sand cast primary cover. There's a close ratio gearbox too.

The front portion of the frame is more or less standard 3C, although it was made much stronger in the headstock area, the rear portion is more like an SFC and the swinging arm is an SFC item too.

The massive aluminium tank and seat are quite unique and were only used for this one racer.

The original racer was fitted with a full fairing but Gijs decided to fit an SFC fairing to have better cooling of the engine, but he admits he prefers its looks too...

Henk van der Mark (24h of Le Mans winner 1984) made his International Endurance debut on a Van Dijk Laverda back in  1980 so he was familiar with the big triple, which was evident because he managed to put the Laverda 5^th on the starting grid.. Harry van den Hout was a successful endurance rider in the second half of the 70ies in the Dutch Ecury Freyters.

In the first 1,5 hours of the race on Saturday evening, the two riders managed to reach 7th place. On Sunday Henk was riding in 4th spot which Harry he was not able to keep on the partly dry and partly wet track, so he fell back to 11th spot overall, which was the final result and not bad for a first time at the event.