Scooterist Meltdown – Wunderland Kalkar | RALLERY

It’s been a long winter and with all the doom and gloom about I felt I needed a scooter fix and all the partying that goes along with it.

So I made a last-minute decision to pop over to Germany for the return of the Spirit of 84’s Scooterist Meltdown weekend. A welcome return after an enforced break due to the dreaded lurgy.

I was too late to join everyone on the overnight party boats from Hull & Felixstowe so had to settle for the Chunnel and a packet of Pringles.

Thankfully the weather gods were kind on the Friday, whilst it was chilly and windy at times, I only saw rain when I rode up through Belgium. The wind soon dried me out and I arrived at Wunderland in Kalkar to join the rest of the party animals.

After parking the scooter up alongside the Sunday Sport SC’s scooters in one of the halls (and then worrying all weekend that I’d come back to it covered in their Bember stickers?!) I found my room and after a couple of JD liveners with my neighbours we were off out to party.

All-inclusive

For those that aren’t aware, Meltdown is an all-inclusive weekend, with entertainment, accommodation, food and most importantly drink all included. I could tell it was going to be a good weekend when the barman poured me a Jäger filling two-thirds of a half-pint glass… the tone was set for a great weekend.

The Wunderland venue is huge and they’ve done a great job filling the old power station with bars, restaurants, games areas, more bars, accommodation and more bars and meandering corridors and staircases linking them all.

Wandering from bar to bar and room to room it was clear that everywhere was busy, with scooterists from all over Europe doing what scooterists do best – partying.

The majority of the DJs keeping the crowds on their feet were UK rally regulars. The Darkside crew had their own room that offered an alternative to the more “traditional” tunes being played in the main room. It was great bumping into so many friends and meeting new kindred spirits.

Aerial Salad

Turn another corner and in another bar a couple of live bands were playing and went down very well, with the room rammed on both nights. Friday night saw Palooka 5, a surf garage band, entertain the crowd and then on Saturday night Aerial Salad energised the crowd with a blistering punk set.

All-day breakfast?

The bars continued serving those left standing until 3 am and with several parties continuing back in the rooms it was nearly sunrise when many finally got to bed. Being a sucker for a fry up I forced myself to get up for breakfast, arriving as they were clearing it from the servery. Thankfully one of the staff took pity on me and allowed me to pile up a plate before it disappeared into the kitchen bin.

Trade and custom

Bleary-eyed, I joined the masses exploring the two main halls where the trade and custom show was set up. A wide variety of dealers were present offering parts, scooters, magazines, clothing (including willy warmers, I did say it was chilly!) and all manor of other scooterist stuff.

The trade stalls were set up around several clusters of ridden and full-blown custom scooters from across Europe. With all of the brightly decorated scooters and even more brightly decorated scooterists around the halls, there was certainly plenty to see. With more beer on tap it was a great atmosphere even after the excesses of the night before.

Big cock

The main stage played host to another band, Marquis Drive, who delivered a couple of storming sets with some interesting fancy dress outfits seen dancing in front of them, including a giant cock and an alien. 

Casa Performance

The stage was also being used throughout the day with various scooters being wheeled up to be shown off to the crowd, including the gorgeous work of art that is the new Casa Performance 250 LC Twin with its brand new exhaust layout. 

The Casa Performance stand drew a big crowd all weekend mainly to see the Twin. However, there was also a lot of interest in the all-new Sledge Hammer 333cc monster engine, housed in a lovely Series 1 for the show (there’s a rumour we may see that in Great Britain at ScooterExpo in May). Whilst we all have dreams of owning the CP twin (amongst dreams of other types of twins), the reality for most of us is the Sledge Hammer will be the “sensible” option for a low-revving, fuel-sipping, mile-munching, true rally machine.

Sledge Hammer

The Sledge Hammer makes use of a new crankcase induction version of the CasaCase and allows the use of the existing range of Casa goodies. It’s internally coupled with a new crank and barrel, with an additional transfer area replacing the inlet (which confused some people picking up the cylinder on display thinking it was for a Vespa large frame). This set-up offers a 79mm bore and 68mm stroke. The exact bhp and torque are still to be confirmed. We can expect this to be a torque monster capable of pulling tall gearing making it something that Greta would be slightly happier with (although she would prefer the Retrospective Electric engine option also on display in the show).

CP Twin

The CP Twin development continues with the current version offering a front tyre saving 76bhp. Those wheelie Gods amongst us may soon have an option for 85bhp though! CP appreciate that this may not be for everyone, so currently they are developing their own cylinders which will then offer us mere mortals a sensible 55bhp. The potential in the twin-engine is a testament to the superb development and time that Micky and Lorenzo have invested into this project. Micky did take the Twin outside and fired it up before giving a short demonstration ride (carefully on slick tyres in damp conditions).

Scooter Center

Across the hall, Scooter Center had the prototype for their new reed Induction RT kit on display, the BGM RT Pro Reed cylinder kit. The addition of a reed manifold to the RT kit is a popular option, so providing a reed option off the shelf makes very good sense. The barrel on display was the first prototype and it was interesting to see how they had progressively cut and then used packers glued in to finely adjust the engine characteristics and performance through many hours on the dyno. The aim is to achieve smooth power delivery and from the dyno graph they appear to be heading well on track.

A second evolution of this is now being tested on the dyno so it is hoped to have the kit being road tested soon. In the photos, you will see the early 3D printed versions which demonstrate what goes into the development of a new cylinder kit.

SIP

Next door to Scooter Center was SIP and they had on display their SIP/BFA 306cc large-frame Vespa engine in all its glory. They actually achieved the highest power on the dyno which was set up just outside the hall, with over 70bhp out of their sprinter.

It’s great to see that so many dealers are continuing to develop new high-performance parts for our beloved Italian shopping bikes and also that this development is allowing stronger parts to be made available for the less highly tuned motors.

Supersport clutch

SIP also had on display a new Supersport Clutch for the large frame Vespas, which is an evolution of the clutch which was initially developed by BFA to deal with the 70bhp SIP/BFA 306 motor. They have reviewed that design and reworked it to create a more affordable option, offering an almost indestructible clutch for engines up to 50bhp. It makes use of fewer plates (4) and lightweight CNC parts, capable of using up to 9 springs and all of which still fits under the standard PX clutch cover.

KR Automation

Mentioning CNC parts, KR Automation are a German company that have featured a few times over the years here on SLUK. It was great to see all of their CNC bling in the flesh, you can read all about their trick CNC engine casings, hubs, wheels, etc. in previous SLUK articles.

Programmable ignition

One product that has also been featured that drew some interest was their Vape ignition developed with Over Rev several years ago, this offers the option to select 16 ignition curves at the flick of a few toggle switches and as demonstrated on their race scooters is used to “iron out” the ignition as required. Using the different mounting plates they have developed, it also works for a variety of engines. 

KR had a couple of more niche products on display, continuing their CNC parts offering with a new selector developed for the old Wide frame Vespas. Given the 70-year-old design, replacement parts are becoming harder to source so this is something the fat-arsed Vespa owners have been waiting for. Also on display was another product specific to certain Vespa owners, a chain-driven gear selector to allow the standard single “wire” selector of a PK XL2 small frame engine to be used with more commonplace two cable operation setups.

TD Customs

Timo Drack’s TD Customs had a number of fabricated tools and goodies on display, however, the new Super Lui casing drew interest. It is a new engine casing from Tino Sacchi that will allow large frame, small block cylinder kits, etc to be used to boost the performance of the small frame Lambrettas, with a Super Mugello kit also coming soon that will offer 30bhp.

Motorino Diavolo

Motorino-Diavolo.de had a very compact and neat solution to a hidden master cylinder for disc brakes on the Vespa PX on display. If you are interested in keeping the original non-disc headset appearance. They have managed to fit a small master cylinder, sitting over the throttle tube, inside the headset. The operation of which comes from a rod that routes from the brake lever, through the traditional cable route which operates the master cylinder. The hose then connects to the master cylinder by the throttle wheel and routes down as the cable would traditionally do.

This kit does require a bit of fettling to fit, there are full instructions on their website if you are interested.

PLC Corse

Given how thirsty some of the new powerful Vespa engines are PLC Corse had a selection of their long-range fuel tanks on display. With the extra range those tanks give it was good that they shared a stall alongside a great range of comfortable seats from NISA.

Sucram 70

Away from all of the technical development “bling” if you were interested in understanding the workings of an original speedometer, or needed some repairs then Sucram 70 had a stall offering “exploded” layouts of several speedos. It was interesting seeing the intricate components laid out on the table. Although it was hard to concentrate as next to his stall a group of German scooterists were sampling schnaps which must have been strong as it made your trousers fall down around your ankles?! See photo!

Custom show

There really was a lot of fantastic engineering on display, with several other stalls offering specialist scooter parts, workshop tools, etc. The quality engineering continued with the custom and ridden scooters on display. It was great to see Jacko’s latest version of his Pig Iron Lambretta chop picking up a trophy after riding over from the UK.

TV200 cutdown

The standard of custom scooters on show was high. Carlos Newberry’s new vivid pink metalflake, TV200 cutdown, ‘I Am The Resurrection’, built by Dean Orton quite rightly picked up a trophy on its first outing. It was literally finished as it was being loaded into the van at Rimini Lambretta Centre.

Gary Wickham’s stunning Clash-themed “Breaking Rocks” deservedly won the Best of Show. The other results are listed below.

Speed Demons

Special mention for the Speed Demons SC that picked up the ‘Best Turned Out Ridden Scooter Club’ trophy and to the Sunday Sport’s SC Bembers who didn’t (there’s a long history of trophy shenanigans between those two clubs).

After the excitement of the day it was time for a freshen up before a bite to eat and back to the partying. The food at Wunderland was excellent and credit to the staff for keeping so many people fed over the weekend.

Also a big thank you to the bar staff who joined in with the typical scooterist humour whilst pouring very healthy measures of Jager (other drinks are also available). 

More partying

Saturday night was a repeat of Friday with more music from the Darkside and main room DJs and the band Aerial Salad and more partying. Understandably, a lot of people seemed a little more reserved on the Saturday night with many Brits facing a long ride home in uncertain weather conditions.

Grey skies, rain and strong winds greeted us on Sunday morning so a plate piled high with all manor of heart attack-inducing goodies helped to soak up the weekend’s excesses and prepare us for a chilly ride home.

Homeward bound

Riding across four countries back to the Chunnel, the rain wasn’t given a chance to fall as the wind was gusting so strongly. I felt like I’d done ten rounds with Tyson when I got to the check-in. The temperature had noticeably dropped when I got back into the UK and as I rode back up to Northamptonshire it dropped to minus 1.5 degrees. Thankfully that extra few rashers of bacon kept me toasty. 

Thank you

A huge thank you to Marcus, Mareike and all of the Spirit of 84 crew for putting on an excellent Scooterist Meltdown, roll on 2024. Although there are plenty more rallies, miles and smiles ahead of us before then.

Ride safe

Words and photos: Shaun

Additional images: Andy Gillard, Scooternova Magazine