Mr CND

Exmoor beast

Exmoor beast

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Location
Minehead,Somerset, ENGLAND OF COURSE
It is with great sadness that I have just found out that my friend and engineering mentor Bruce Hazelgrove died of a heart attack. Bruce was an engineering talent the likes of which I haven’t seen before, he could design, draw, work out gear loadings, scrape white metal bearings, machine and weld. He had incredibly dexterity and could literally turn his hand to anything. He was the brains behind the Battlemax project and the CND Laverdas that you may know of plus lots of design fabrication for the car racing world. More recently he was featured in British classic bike magazines for recreating obsolete engine parts and crank cases.
We shared a workshop for a while and were good mates . Top bloke and very smart guy.
 
So sorry to hear..
The CND850 was a very special creation that fascinated me from the very first time I saw it. I had the machine under my wings for several years and I was amazed by the incredible eye for detail. Photos couldn’t do it justice, only in the flesh it shows what a true marvel it is.
Those silencers were a work of art and when I removed them for the first time I expected them to be heavy lumps, but they were feather light! The tank was beautifully made and extremely light too. I could thoroughly enjoy looking at the front mudguard which has an exquisite shape.
The engine was such a violent shaker that I feared that on the long run, most of those beautiful components would suffer, crack, or worse. I did several attempts to improve it, to little or no avail. It was more a show bike than a riders bike and so I decided to let it go.

It was a privilege to have owned it though. If there is a Cloud Nine, I bet Bruce Hazelgrove can be found there.

Marnix
 

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MarnixSFC said:
So sorry to hear..
The CND850 was a very special creation that fascinated me from the very first time I saw it. I had the machine under my wings for several years and I was amazed by the incredible eye for detail. Photos couldn’t do it justice, only in the flesh it shows what a true marvel it is.
Those silencers were a work of art and when I removed them for the first time I expected them to be heavy lumps, but they were feather light! The tank was beautifully made and extremely light too. I could thoroughly enjoy looking at the front mudguard which has an exquisite shape.
The engine was such a violent shaker that I feared that on the long run, most of those beautiful components would suffer, crack, or worse. I did several attempts to improve it, to little or no avail. It was more a show bike than a riders bike and so I decided to let it go.

It was a privilege to have owned it though. If there is a Cloud Nine, I bet Bruce Hazelgrove can be found there.

Marnix
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Ironically Bruce didn’t build the engine. The only pic I took back in the workshop shows Bruce with a Honda Hawk engine in one of his frames- box alloy from beaten sheet, incredibly light. Billet yokes and swing arm pivot are all in house. His own V twin engine being just out of shot, typical but I think I was using up the end of the film!
 

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Obviously a very talented guy to be building his own frames. Sadly we are losing a lot of the individuals who not only built bikes but knew what they were doing not to be replaced.
The CND looks amazing, a bit like the mid 70’s MV350 👍
 
MarnixSFC said:
The engine was such a violent shaker that I feared that on the long run, most of those beautiful components would suffer, crack, or worse. I did several attempts to improve it, to little or no avail. It was more a show bike than a riders bike and so I decided to let it go.

Marnix
Click to expand...
Did you go as deep as balance factor in trying to improve it, Marnix? If the engine ran similar balance specs to an SFC pr an SF then the only conclusion would seem to be that the frame is too light.
 
Had to go deep from the moment I got the bike due to a totally dissolved tank coating, which had plastic coated the carbs, inlet tracts, valves and was even visible on the piston tops. The 270 crank needed straightening, was done bij Van Dijk, but after that the engine still shook, so had the crank rebalanced by Dynamequil in Belgium which improved it a little, but not enough to my liking. Got to the point that I was going to fit a 360 engine just to see how that would behave, but quite a bit of machining was done to the CND engine to make it fit, which made swapping engines complicated. Then a keen punter came along and I let it go.

My genuine Swiss Egli has a very light chassis and I ran it with both the SF based original engine as well as one from a 1974 SFC, which both were/are behaving great.. Raced it at Assen last week, always a joy. The Segoni, also an Egli ispired spine frame, also has no issues.

My feeling is that the way the CND engine is mounted in the gorgeous frame may be the reason it is shaking like it does..

Marnix
 
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