Engers - he drilled for speed

[Ian H]

Alf Engers rode the first sub-fifty minute 25. He was obsessed with the weight of his bikes. The pictures on this website give an idea of the lengths to which he went. How many holes can you see?

[clarion]

Scary! 

[IanDG]

one of my childhood heroes too. he also held an angling record for the heaviest carp once, and like the UCI/Obree thing he constantly got up the noses of the RTTC

[delthebike]

He also worked for Tetley and invented teabags.

[nuttycyclist]

To the garage Nutty!   There's work to be done!

[Salvatore]

Looks like a number 3 all over would have saved him a few grams.

In the 1980s I believe he was active in triathlons. A non-cyclist¹ triathlete friend, who knew nothing of his past, said he was the life and soul of the party at triathlons.

¹ She knew that the bigger the sprocket, the easier it was to climb. She thought the same applied at the front, and rode the (hilly) Bath triathlon on a 52-tooth chainring.

[Ian H]

In one picture you can see the brake hoods drilled to a honeycombe. Another shows the brake calipers similarly treated. Somewhere I saw a picture showing his seat pin lightened to within an inch of its life.

His first sub-hour was controversial, as I recall, because he got involved with slow-moving traffic near a roundabout and was accused of taking pace. He argued that he'd merely come up behind them and overtaken: what else was he to do?

[IanDG]

he also put straight bar brake levers behind the 'tops' of the bar because he said it was more stream lined. The RTTC introduced a rule along the lines that you must be able to reach and operate brake levers in the 'normal' riding position.

bit buggered with that rule with the intro of tri bars

[clifftaylor]

I had put This Link elsewhere, and it has some good Alf pictures, + 90 pages of other TT persons from yesteryear.