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Dear All, I'm starting a new thread to pull away from discussion of a particular bike towards a more general judging issue.
Architect asked :
"Regardless of how a machine is judged, I have been surprised to see so many "100 Point" bikes recently. As someone with a very critical eye for my area of expertise, I find it hard to understand that nothing was wrong with a XX year old machine. Not trying to stir the pot or anything, but being realistic there is always something you can find, perhaps minor but it is there. 100 Points to me would be a bike from the Archives that left the assembly line and went into climate control storage and comes out only to be wiped down and shown. Everything else will have inaccuracies, minor or not.
I applaud all that attempt and succeed at restorations, just have an issue buying into 100 Points, my opinion. Perfection is a goal, but not achievable."
Well, I've seen at least two 100 point bikes after 60 Meets. I led the team on that unrestored Harley XLCH at Oley a while back. The dealer had bought ten of this notoriously slow selling model, then kept the last one in its crate until he retired and it was 35 years old. When I saw it, it had 3 miles on the odometer where it had been started up, with all the factory stickers still on it and absolutely no faults to be found. The second one was Pete Reeves' restored 1942 ELC, judged by Bruce Palmer and Bruce Linsday. Pete is a meticulous restorer of this low volume but well-documented model and, from memory, made 99.75 and then got the quarter point back on appeal.
Our rules say that any potential 100 point bike has to be signed-off by the Chief Judge or Event Chief Judge before awards are given. Technically a 100 point bike has had no faults found in 20 minutes of judging by a qualified team, so there could still be small items they missed. The '100 point' Australian bike on the Nov/Dec 2020 magazine cover had faults found later by our armchair critics, and any posting of very high points scores will always be a hostage to fortune, as we have seen recently.
Today we see a lot of unrestored motorcycles from the 1980s at our Meets, and I can understand some of them getting close to 100 points. These bikes were made in sufficient volume that some of them will have hardly been ridden, then dry stored until 35 years old. Lack of judging knowledge across all makes will also be an issue, as we take on minor or low volume makes for judging when we have no Marque Specialists. The new 21 day lead time is allowing us to research unusual makes, and we also declined to judge one Sunshine Meet entry for lack of qualified judges.
For the record, we have no '100 point medallion' or any plans to introduce one, so you 'only' need to make 95 points twice to get into Winners Circle, from where you can compete for the demanding 98 point Marque Excellence award. This requires advance submission of 7 digital photos for scrutiny by our experts, and not all the entries are taking the Excellence award.
Architect asked :
"Regardless of how a machine is judged, I have been surprised to see so many "100 Point" bikes recently. As someone with a very critical eye for my area of expertise, I find it hard to understand that nothing was wrong with a XX year old machine. Not trying to stir the pot or anything, but being realistic there is always something you can find, perhaps minor but it is there. 100 Points to me would be a bike from the Archives that left the assembly line and went into climate control storage and comes out only to be wiped down and shown. Everything else will have inaccuracies, minor or not.
I applaud all that attempt and succeed at restorations, just have an issue buying into 100 Points, my opinion. Perfection is a goal, but not achievable."
Well, I've seen at least two 100 point bikes after 60 Meets. I led the team on that unrestored Harley XLCH at Oley a while back. The dealer had bought ten of this notoriously slow selling model, then kept the last one in its crate until he retired and it was 35 years old. When I saw it, it had 3 miles on the odometer where it had been started up, with all the factory stickers still on it and absolutely no faults to be found. The second one was Pete Reeves' restored 1942 ELC, judged by Bruce Palmer and Bruce Linsday. Pete is a meticulous restorer of this low volume but well-documented model and, from memory, made 99.75 and then got the quarter point back on appeal.
Our rules say that any potential 100 point bike has to be signed-off by the Chief Judge or Event Chief Judge before awards are given. Technically a 100 point bike has had no faults found in 20 minutes of judging by a qualified team, so there could still be small items they missed. The '100 point' Australian bike on the Nov/Dec 2020 magazine cover had faults found later by our armchair critics, and any posting of very high points scores will always be a hostage to fortune, as we have seen recently.
Today we see a lot of unrestored motorcycles from the 1980s at our Meets, and I can understand some of them getting close to 100 points. These bikes were made in sufficient volume that some of them will have hardly been ridden, then dry stored until 35 years old. Lack of judging knowledge across all makes will also be an issue, as we take on minor or low volume makes for judging when we have no Marque Specialists. The new 21 day lead time is allowing us to research unusual makes, and we also declined to judge one Sunshine Meet entry for lack of qualified judges.
For the record, we have no '100 point medallion' or any plans to introduce one, so you 'only' need to make 95 points twice to get into Winners Circle, from where you can compete for the demanding 98 point Marque Excellence award. This requires advance submission of 7 digital photos for scrutiny by our experts, and not all the entries are taking the Excellence award.
I agree, Paul. It's fun for some members and glad the club provides it for them, but not my cup of tea either.
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