Falun church
Lugnet Riksskid ski jump
Falun copper mine
Arne Kring's NOS Husqvarna collection
NOS 250 Husky
Arne Kring and a couple of Yahoo's
Hi everyone...
Today was a busy day of traveling for us. You wouldn't believe all the country and open space here in Sweden. The first stop for us today was a 2 hour drive to a city called Edsbyn to visit Arne Kring. Leif warned us that he has the reputation to be cranky and grumpy on occasion. I'll tell you that he couldn't have been more nicer to us. He took the time to talk to us and ask Jeff and I plenty of questions. He had some funny stories to tell himself.
Editors note: Arne would be a great guest to have someday at the Chehalis premier race.
Those of you who don't know who Arne Kring is... He was one of the first europeans to travel to race in the US as well as a World championship contender in the late 60's early 70's riding for the factory Husqvarna team. You wouldn't believe all the new Husqvarna parts and motorcycles this guy has. He purchased all the NOS Husqvarna parts that the factory had. Today he runs a successful bicycle, snow ski and lawnmower sales/repair business. Any of you Husqvarna nuts that may need a hard to find "new NOS" part.... He's you man...
After meeting Arne we drove to a city called Falun to do some shopping. Elyse and Stacee.... You'll be happy to know that "yes" we did buy you something! While in Falun we met a friend of Leif's named Tommy who will also be riding this weekend in Linkoping. After shopping we drove over to the Falun copper mine. It was an amazing sight for sure. One thing that you'll notice in Sweden is that the majority of the homes are painted red. The red paint comes from an extract of the copper mining process. This mine has been inactive for about 20 years. We also made a stop at the Lugnet Riksskid ski jump. There's a 90 meter jump as well as a 130.5 meter jump.
To kind of wind things down after returning to Leif's home we watched some videos from his band touring days. There's some funny stuff.... Those guys did have fun.... With you tube these days.... If I were any of Leif's bandmates I'd be awfully nice to him....
Tomorrow is just going to be a get the bikes ready for the weekend day then we're heading over to Leif's brothers house for a polar bear potluck dinner.... Can't wait!!!!
Looks like a great start to your trip. Jon is inspired by the bike line-up. "See Lynn, our house could look like that." Just a few more bikes to go. Enjoy your travels. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteJon & Lynn Wall
Looks like you guys were having a great time with Arne - those are some big smiles. McDonald's again tomorrow?
ReplyDeleteArne Kring 'a bit cranky at times'? The only time I noticed a bit of that was when his works HVA broke down ...again.
ReplyDeleteSeveral times the liner snapped in half, as there was too little metal between the huge ports, and the lower half fell into the crankcase, locking the con-rod.
Something that gave 'interesting' results.
A nervous tick at the corner of his eye when he was telling me this told of that....
Arne knew the factory had to try and match the Suzuki's, but he preferred to have a slower bike that handled and lasted a race, as they only counted the points together at the end of the season, and as the Suzuki's also broke with monotonous regularity (Robert broke 4-5 frames in a season, despite they changing it every 3 GP's) he had a better chance of actually winning the championship by taking regular points.
Not DNF'ing, nearly killing himself every time the engine locked solid on him.
All the engineers at the factory were also racers (a requirement) and it was their job to test and develop the bikes, NOT him! They also used several semi-professional riders (Palm, Torne, etc) to finalise the race-development.
Arne was hired to race the GP's, not develop bikes.
And, now recovered from his bad accident, he knew he only had a year or two left to win that championship he wanted. His family were on at him to quit. Another bad accident he didn't need.
But the factory weren't listening.
On of the problems was that Helmin and the lads were spending too much time and money working on the army contract, a dead-in-the-water project that HVA never made any money out of. I tested both the HVA and the Hägglund prototypes, and my view was that a normal gearbox coupled to a Jawa-type auto clutch was the answer. And do what an army instructor told me; teach the lazy conscript motorbike couriers to ride a bike, not try and design a bike a monkey could ride.
"It matters not how easy and undemanding a bike is to ride," he said, "in a war-situation you need something else; the ability to read a situation and ride your way out of it. Only a thorough training in the art of riding a bike will do that. Army couriers need to ride trials and enduros in their spare time. God help us the day the Russians come over the water, our guys will be cannon-fodder!"
Your blog including Arne Kring was a good read, nice to see he's ok and doing very well. For I recall him as a very nice man, down-to-earth, honest.
Not cranky at all.