'SUPER KIM' IN THE SOUTH AMERICAN PRESS

By Martina Rua
Special lanacion.com

"Ignacio Acebedo Sigrand (31), never imagined that the curiosity which led him to type the name of his maternal grandfather on his computer, would plunge him into the greatest adventure of his life.

In May 2008, bored in bed from a knee operation, Ignacio reflected how little he knew of the life of his grandfather, Roberto Sigrand, whose history belonged to a family past silenced from a bad relationship with his grandfather one of his sons.  He wrote Sigrand's name into a search engine. To the surprise of Ignacio, the name appeared on several sites, but one especially caught his attention.
"I found a blog from an American collector of motorcycles [The Vintagent] and saw my grandfather Roberto mounted to a motorcycle. I felt the urgent need to move towards that history, with the help of my aunt and my mother, who knew this bike, the Zenith SUPER KIM.   My grandfather had reached 250 km per hour resulting in the 30 South American speed records",  enthused Acebedo. But the powerful machine was lost after the death of Sigrand in1974 when the factory where the bike was displayed was sold, and the trail was lost.

Acebedo began a regular exchange of emails with Paul d'Orleans, American collector and the blog owner, who suggested the information about the history of the SUPER KIM was very valuable. "I immediately rejected that idea because the motivations were never profitable, but sought to give birth to the family history and know the bike," he says. This surprised d'Orleans and gave him the confidence to reveal that he had sold in 2002 to one of the largest collections of motorcycles in Germany and acted as intermediary to generate a match.

During these months of research he discovered that Roberto Ignacio Sigrand was anything but an ordinary man, "Born at sea in 1908, he grew up in Argentina, Bolivia and Paris, fell in love with an athlete who he saw in a magazine and chased her to France and married her, faced down Perón, went into exile in Chile and made history in national and global motorcycling, " he says, pointing to an old photo album with clippings from the 30s and 40 in Argentina. Months of emails back and forth with photos, videos and documents, then Ignacio decided to take a trip to Austria. The new owner of 'Super Kim', a German billionaire (who asked to remain anonymous for security), agreed to restore it to running condition and display it, in exchange for having the incredible story behind the motorcycle. "I met with the bike and first met my grandfather. It was an indescribable feeling, very intense and moving, not only the sound of an engine after 75 years standing,  it was a relief, a powerful cry."

The intervention of technology in family history Acebedo was so basic and essential. "The Internet, blogs, information exchanges with Europe and North America were the key to this reunion, the technology was vital and today we are all very happy," Acebedo closes.

A family's past and a history as fascinating as the most amazing novels, could have been veiled for ever, but the SUPER KIM insisted on living to roar again, 75 years later. "



[Thanks to Jorge Pullin for sending the  link!   Check out the original, with video, here.

If you want to read more about the amazing saga of 'Super Kim' and the Sigrand family, follow these posts.

The story of 'Super Kim' will continue on the Vintagent.  Ignacio has sent a mountain of information, which I am in the process of sorting, and will be shared here.  Stay tuned!]

THE RESURRECTION OF 'SUPER KIM'

Lying dormant like an Argentine volcano for 75 years, the amazing supercharged Zenith 'Super Kim' has been brought back to roaring life, after a surprisingly short stint on the workbench of Gernot Schuh of Austria. Longtime readers will recall the extensive story of the Sigrand family of Buenos Aires, certainly one of the most interesting in South American motorcycling history (click here for the relevant posts); Roberto Sigrand purchased a racing KTOR J.A.P.-engined 1925 Zenith from England while living temporarily in Europe (studying engineering), and brought the machine home, coming to dominate local speed events in solo and sidecar classes with his 1,000cc racer.

Around 1931, Sigrand began to extensively modify the big Zenith for an attempt at the World Motorcycle Speed Record, adding a large blower, plus all the elegant mechanical support necessary to make it all work. The machine was apparently run up to speed a few times, but remained mostly as a display in the 'Aros Kim' factory which Sigrand owned, as a testament to his engineering prowess.

The story of Why the machine was never truly used in anger will be published later; suffice it to say that it involves much family drama - paternal tensions, political pressures, sex, infidelity, sibling rivalry, even death. It's still a difficult subject for the family, and Ignacio is to be lauded for his efforts at bringing the saga to light, where perhaps the weight and shame of it may be dissolved, as the brilliance of their success is celebrated.

My connection with this machine is described in earlier posts; in sum, I owned and treasured it as perhaps one of the most amazing 'barn finds' ever in motorcycling - to my knowledge, there were simply NO other complete and unrestored supercharged 1920's motorcycles in the world. To have owned it for a time was a gift and a blessing, and a bit of a burden. I knew that any restoration work I commenced would break the magic spell of its sleep, and after a time I reached the conclusion that far deeper pockets than mine would be needed to do the Right Thing - a totally sympathetic restoration to full running condition, without compromising the total originality of the bike.

And I was right. The current owner has commissioned extensive and meticulous work on every aspect of the machine, with the dictum, 'new parts only where the old are missing or destroyed, no new finishes, everything as was wherever possible'. Gernot has fulfilled the task admirably.

He had quite a few surprises along the way! I knew from flashlight inspection that the interior of the combustion chambers were shiny like new, but Gernot's heart must have sagged when he discovered that water had lain in the timing chest and eaten the camshafts.

But, going deeper into the motor, almost every part was found to be 'as new' and in pristine condition - the bearings, crankshaft, rods, piston, etc, were all amazingly fresh and needed little to be brought back to life. New camshafts were made - to a grind which indicated their earlier unsupercharged life; too much valve timing overlap for truly successful forced induction, these were very 'hot' racing cams, which must have been used to set all those speed records around 1930. Supercharged engines prefer 'truck' timing, as lots of valve opening overlap tends to blow the induction charge right out the exhaust port!  But, the valve timing may have compensated for other faults.

The other great surprise during the rebuild was the engine capacity; 1700cc! The size of a Volkswagen engine - now commonplace on motorcycles, then an absolute Monster. A special crankshaft, rods, cylinders, and pistons were made for the huge displacement (note the special cylinder sleeve cutaways which accomodated the long crank throw).

I had assumed the supercharger, which must be matched in capacity to the engine displacment, had come from an 1100cc MG 'K' car, but it seems the Sigrand family owned a supercharged French sports car of the proper engine size - more on this later.

You can see from the 'finished' photos that the great smoking gun of the Zenith is an impressive machine, and I look forward to a test ride! Stay tuned...

THE SILVER GLOVE

An update for the Roberto Sigrand/ Zenith 'Super KIM' story...

Speedway racers receive interesting prizes for winning a race or championship - the 'Golden Helmet' and all that.
Here is the 'Guante de Plata', the 'Silver Glove', now tarnished dark with age, awarded to Roberto Sigrand at the Huracan Speedway in Buenos Aires, for first prize in the Argentine Handicap series, 1929-30.
Roberto's grandson Ignacio found it recently in a drawer of the family home... He is going to visit his abuela (grandmother) on July 1st, to look for more photographs of his grandfather. More posts to follow as we puzzle together a picture of this interesting man.

I found some period photographs of the Huracan (Hurricane) track in Buenos Aires, snapped immediately after completion. The sport of Dirt Track was new in South America, and racing stadia were built as a business endeavor, in conjunction with a visiting Dirt Track delegation from England and the US (Sprouts Elder). During the winter in England, these racers were looking for a profitable off-season in the South American summer of 1929.
I've found reference to two tracks built during this period; one in Montevideo, and the Huracan track in Buenos Aires - as can be seen in these photos from the grandstand, it's a large track with a very long straightaway.

Dirt Track had mixed fortunes financially in Argentina, and the local promoters were forever running out of money. At one point they were unable to pay the English riders, stranding them without boat fare to get back home! When the racers cabled England to ask their 'own' Speedway promoters for the £39 fare, the reply was 'SWIM!'. The riders had to earn their passage through yet more races, with a different promoter.

The bottom photo shows star rider Frank Varey at this track, who is riding a Scott! The yowling two-stroke was painted all red, and Varey wore a red jersey while racing, earning him the nickname 'El Diablo Rojo', which became his nom de plume back in England (the Red Devil).
Yes, Scott made a Dirt Track machine too, and in '28 had some placings at the Isle of Man, so these machines were hot stuff in the day. Scotts have a fully triangulated frame and handle beautifully, with a good power output for 1929. They tend to get hot over long distance races, with attendant reliability issues, and were the only major manufacturer never to win a 'Gold Star' at Brooklands.

The water cooling of Scott's two-stroke twin cylinder engines is based on the thermosiphon principle, ie there is no water pump between engine and radiator. As water is heated by the engine, it rises into the radiator, and is cooled, which descends back into the engine. Simple, and effective for normal touring use, but when pushed hard the limitations of the system begin to show. Dirt Track races were fairly short, with perhaps 20 mile 'stages' at a time, so perhaps the engines fared better in this sport than on longer road races. Varey did well with his machine, until he, like everyone else in Speedway, turned to J.A.P.-powered racers with specialty frames.

ROBERTO SIGRAND

By some strange confluence of events, while researching Dirt Track racing history, I came across the same fellow, Roberto Sigrand, who built my supercharged Zenith KTOR in Argentina sometime in the late 1920's. A little more digging through my books on Speedway produced this photograph of an English team of riders who tried to establish the sport in Argentina in 1929, going so far as to build a new track with stadium seating in Buenos Aires. Lo and behold, Roberto Sigrand is sitting on a DT Douglas, in a white sweater with 'FN' logo. Apparently Roberto's father, Camilo Sigrand, imported FN motorcycles (and guns! Fabrique Nationale was a Belgian arms factory, a duality shared by BSA - Birmingham Small Arms, and Royal Enfield - makers of the infamous Enfield rifles - 'Built like a Gun'). He also was a fine engineer, and produced his own motorcycle, the 'D-S' (Debladis-Sigrand) in France between 1914 and 1922, when he sold the company, and it became the DS-Malterre, produced until 1958! Camilo Sigrand raced his 'D-S' motorcycle in the very first Bol d'Or 24-hour race in Paris, 1922. The machine did very well, but did not complete the race.

Here's the coincidence part. That very same day, I was contacted by Sigrand's grandson Ignacio in Argentina, seeking the whereabouts of 'Super KIM', the Zenith, and offering family photos and press clippings about the bike. Spooky. I'll post more when it arrives.
Now, where is the Douglas?

Update; Ignacio Sigrand has sent photos of a few of his grandfather's effects; a set of medals won in the 1920's for motorcycle races (the first clearly is for Roberto Sigrand, the second was won by his father Camillo, the third by Roberto in a sidecar race in France. Apparently Roberto was a French national, and purchased a Zenith Super 8 directly from Freddie Barnes (the director of the Zenith motorcycle company, and a keen racing supporter). The Zenith apparently came from the factory with a KTOR racing engine, and possibly the Heavyweight Sturmey-Archer 'SB' (Special Brough) gearbox - although this may have been added later when the machine was supercharged.
In the 1930's, Sigrand created the 'KIM' piston ring company, and the two brilliant orange boxes are both for rings.
More pix as they arrive...

On the above photo, 'Super KIM' can be seen on the tank. Unfortunately, by the time I purchased the bike, a light film of rust had taken hold of the tank, and the logo is almost lost (see bottom photo).


The speedway Photo is from 'Speedway Panorama', by Ron Hoare (Haynes, 1979)