BSA Bantam Race Preparation Manual

I go along with that Terry and would add that the "Preparation of bike and rider" must not fall over the table- edge in favour of engine tuning...

Bike parts have changed considerably -- I think I probably won a few Intermediate races because the Icarus-1 Bantam brakes were so awfully inefficient (compared with today´s discs ....

Cheers!

John-Boy....

I`m interested in this and like columns simply because in them there is a glimpse of the future. Like, for whom would this manual be meant? It suggests that there is a thought that there is still a lot of room for cheap, fun motorcycle racing. Can I just say a word about tuning and tuners before the idea gets out of hand. Tuning means modifying an engine to produce more power and lots of people looking for the secret of `man`s red fire` dabble and experiment. A tuner is someone who can take any engine and produce what the rider wants, preferably first time out and that means anything from a ghastly `46 James Comet, a decrepit cast iron lump with a request to double the power and make it reliable enough to do a charity run from Lands End to John O`Groats to a huge Yamaha 6cylinder beast required to win the Paris International 6 hour race which it did, to another the SAAB, an unknown lump of cast iron tuned and supplied with pipes and carbs required to win races in a sidecar events, it did it. To hundreds of different engine types and needs to achieve dozens of championships over 30 or so years. All I can write down is in Terry Beckett Chat. It applies to almost any two-stroke. I repeat, there are no secrets. It is an exercise in persistence as many of you know. I say all this not to blow any trumpets but to demonstrate that tuning is a lonely existence, it was something I couldn`t share until now. There aren`t many tuners about so I wouldn`t think you will be overwhelmed with something magical that has deep implications and these days I don`t even have a file so there is no threat. Not only that, I don`t have the time Terry

Interested in your comments, Terry, on FOR WHOM the Race Preparation Manual would be. It must come down
to a wide band of would-be´sss and a narrow band of actualss´s. Looking at how Bantams are locked into Vintage and Historical Racing it´ll probably be the older chap without too many domestic difficulties and having the wherewithal and maybe a few younger blokes -- with no wherewithall -- whose parents sub the youngster who reads the instructions after he has thrown everything together anyway...

You mentioned Michael brown´s Series and it´s the first time I have heard of it. If that be Michael Brown -- last year´s Champ writing -- "...albeit daunting..." then I´d reckon you are right because I`ve seen Michael with his engine in bits -- on here -- more times than I´ve seen him racing.

I doubt if I could do that even if I had the necessary knowledge. I was a, "Gimme a bike ter ride -- just tell what the max revs limt is..."

My story of how I started Bantam Racing (is in the upper box on this here website ) was by an accident of too much (big-mouthed) chat on motorcycles with a Ford Dunton Supervisor, Derek Neil (whose brother Colin worked for Dr Joe Ehrlich). Derek had made a splendid 250 Villiers engined special which was raced by Peter Williams -- although Peter despised two-strokes -- at odd times Peter hadn´t enough on the big day -- to keep him happy.

I´d had only racing experience of Scrambles, Grass Track and Speedway practice (tuning for Grass) and had so many other things like house, two kids and time-consuming job to make time for road-racing´s so-precise details and my introduction to road race prep.... was finding the way to Snetterton´s wretched circuit ....

Joking apart, Derek and Colin had it all in their heads and all I had to do was do was what they said. My thing was pracrice at Brands and racing Intermediate Bantam -- then along came Andy´s 250ABS and I found out what road racing was realyl about. I don´t mean that in a derogatory sense the Bantams `68 to `73 were in the main relatively mild compared with machines twice their capacity ....

Which I think is what a lot of road racers want to do, jus race -- it is probably the race-bike-preparers who build road racers for a hobby who need the manual more -- blokes like Andy Boyle*** who sponsored me on his 250 and who build Racing Bantams.

***Andy never needed a manual -- just a computer and Google....

I await brickbats because most of the successful Bantam racers now are their own preparers...

Cheers!

Interesting as you say John, for whom?

I would have thought the intended readership of a 2015 Bantam race machine preparation manual to be self-evident?
It is surely those potential new engine and machine builders, and indeed existing ones, who may feel they need to uprate their current engine and cycle parts specification to remain or to become competitive and not be diverted up “blind alleys” whilst doing so. It could of course be no more than interested people enjoying an authoritative tome to expand their knowledge of 2T race engine design and practice. I`m equally persuaded of the positive, overall promotional effect of, “a good read” aimed at a wider readership than the specifics of Bantam racing!
Collating best practice advice and having it available for all Bantam enthusiasts in one source has to be a positive, innovative and imaginative move forward! Information that has hitherto remained secretive can be revealed and be of benefit to all whilst being explained in a user friendly manner.

The current manual has instruction that is 45 years old, all very fine in its day, we none of us knew much better, but so much contained therein is now obsolescent, misleading, and in part, counter-productive for today. Following so much of that stuff will actually cost performance compared to the evidential development achieved during the 21st century. 45 years ago a 125cc GP engine was just pushing 30hp, today that is almost 60 crank hp at 16 bar BMEP, and from just one cylinder! The current technology to achieve improvements could be available for Bantams and can be accessible in a radically modernized new manual.

It is also worth being reminded that Bantam engines are also subject to exactly the same laws of engineering, physics and chemistry that every other engine produced. They may be as diverse as a lawn mower or an F1 race car! Bantams are not an isolated, sub- specie that operate under a different premise.

What has radically changed is that almost every engine of today is re-engineered; long gone are the days when a Black and Decker and a few riffler files can do the job. That process demands thinking design work. Having the best available information makes that task far easier and the results immeasurably better. Once the engine is up and running then precise tuning can optimize the variables to the benefit of final performance!

Trevor

Thank you Trevor for putting me right with the first brickbat (old fashioned word but I could not find another )  -- I was actually miming Terry but it was also my own thought and it was not self evident to me that there´d be the demand you mentioned.

I must apologise for sounding a pessimistic note -- it was not intended -- I wrote in hopefully constructive-critical mode..

Do you know anything about,  "Michael Brown´s series on machine preparation?" ***-- where/when was it published?

My apparent pesssimism (which was not,  I was looking at facts)  came from looking  at how many Bantam racers are on the grid now using the 125 engine  who´ve managed so successfully without  such a manual and how many have been recruited in the last 5-10 years -- and wonder....? You say the increase of power from 30 to 60hp for a 125 and that gives a "Would.Be" the motivation to further develope the Bantam 125 but surley the formula would have to change quite a bit to get the HP you quote?  Thanks to riders like Michael Brown and his Dad very good progress has been made with the 175 -- but, after all, it is 4 gears and 190cc(?) ...

I have no objection (what good would it do for me to have... ) to a modern, updated manual:  all you  have said  about the old-fashioned crudity is true. I mean Icarus-1 was contact-breaker ignition which meant we couldn´t expect to be high-revving but Derek Neil tuned the Icarus-1  engine -- as Terry suggested a tuner might -- to suit the rider -- ME of HEAVY body weight -- with a wide power-band which gave me enormous fun in Intermediate races(which I knew it could only be) for my inept capability as a road racer anyway --  

  -- the piece of information contained in that latter  statement does not change no matter how much time rushes by ---

  Where F is the tractive Force at the rear wheel, W is the total weight of bike & ridder and g everybody knows is the constant (on earth) "g"  that make physical pain  when you fall off does not change:--

       F/W x g = acceleration which is the prime requirement to be competitive does not change no matter how much time goes by.... In simple terms the ratio F/W (as a fraction) of g decides how competitive one will be ...

Whilst ! was `racing´ Bantam the horde of 125 Bantams was probably of the order of an eigth (1/8th) to a quarte(1/4) of g -- 4.o25ft/sec/sec to 8.05ft/sec/sec...
Twice as much is not exaggeration, the really good Bantams were twice as effective as the newcomers.---
The wide diversity of Star Racer to Also-Ran did not matter in those days because we had Novice and Intermediate Class races as well as the Championships: which must surely be overcome -- somehow -- if the idea is to attract more Bantam Racers out of those who want to race the 125. They´d go for the Japanese 125s in any case unless the class became attractive in other ways. .


       To be competitive a Bantam racer needs to know he not only needs to be fit to race but if he desires to be truly comptitive if he over 10.5 stone,  by a stone or more,  he  needs a bit more power than his fellow competitors.  

If the manual is meant to be a device publishing the wonders of belonging to a group of people devoted to the ever increasing development of an exceptional race machine which began life as a messenger-boy´s,  Five horse power,  Post Office Hack -- then GOOD LUCK to whomever produces it...

Trevor, if you want me to shut up on the subject of the Manual  I shall certainly do so....


Go well and keep well,

Cheers!

John-Boy.

"** Terry mentioned this series and I must have missed it if was Michael Brown, last year´s Champ.JayBee.

not sure that a manual will help to get a lot more folks on the grid on its own,

it occurred to me the other day that there are other classes of two stroke bikes racing in a similar cc and age etc, having entered into the the crmc race and looked through the grid they have about 4 classes mixed in and make grids up to 30-40 bikes ,
we have the ducati's,
i think its highly unlikely that a four stroke rider on a faster bike will want to ride a slower two stroke, however , if bantams were mixed with other two strokes and done well against them, then its got to be plausible that if it happened on a regular basis then you might get some switch from expensive jap two strokes to the bikes that are beating them , even more so if the bsa is cheaper to buy, and easy to tune thanks to a good following of knowledgeable people and an updated manual would be one of the first things that would be read i guess, but how do you get more two strokes in, indeed there arent many to pick from if the race organisers have an english bias, i understand why they have it, but cant help thinking its not in favour of progress, after all if we have the grid with ducatis that can clear off, whats the difference to any other bike that has hp advantage?, better to be all 2 strokes maybe!,as long as the others are mixed so we can get the full laps and not have race time robbed from you because the other class has already taken the flag, a bit like cadwell last year when some fool in charge mixed in the bears bikes,

I have mentioned it before Danso and it might be considered a  retro step on here where development of teh RACING Bantam is Holy Grail: a second, Newcomers Class with a lower-cost formula   --

OK OK!

I shall shut up ---

Just one thing -- how many Bantams were on the grid at Anglsey?

i dont think cost is the issue really, the grids are full of bikes, cadwell had i think in excess of 300 bikes, we pay the same no matter what we're on, if our two strokes look out classed by bigger engined four strokes then it cant help, if we never show that we can beat the other two strokes of similar cc etc then we wont get those riders switching when they see a cheapo (£1500-2000)bantam going past a £4000+ jap bike .....................just in idea of course

Reminds of Brands Practice, Dan -- getting better every time -- and then passing Dommies etc--etc in the bends
making the riders hopping mad... I was only the cycle-parts Gofer in a 3-man team -- my job including testing oif new pipes and new set ups... which led into our having no replies to our ad for a jockey so I lost weight and took on the job....

I think the enthusiasm is still there as it was in the days of BRC being over 600 members strong and perhaps its time for a mass productions of Bantams to the Scutt, Powell, Brown, Nick, Dansofeld or other Stars Spec´n...
such that the "WOULD_BE" be can still `do his thing´ -- both spec´n wise and rider wise -- at a low-cost with a handy DIY book alongside....

OK OK so I´ll shut up (as promised) -- I still dunno how many Bantams were on the grid at Anglesy ....?

Cheers!

JayBee....

http://www.theresults.co.uk/motorsport-bhr.html here is a link John to results, you can find them by looking on the main site and seeing the button called links, look for hs sports timing and click that then on to sports results and then British historic racing. .... Hey presto all the info you need , lap times placings etc

Yeah thanks! -- just done it and see there were 9 Bantams in the second race with two brand-new(to me) names -- so 22% increase can´t be bad.

Joking apart -- we*** need a millionair to sponsor Bantam Racer bikes building --

Croft this weekend ain´t it? why aren´t you there?


*** I have a cheek, saying "we" -- I´ve been out of things for 35 years or more ... but I must add that although it is all so different now BRC was a real part of my life.

Cheers!

Me too. I loved it, albeit with little technical or riding ability when I started in 1960. My membership number was 112 so there were a few wannabes about. I would like to see a formula Bantam class using the most available bike available ? 175. Why can`t we settle for what that has to offer? To talk of 60 bhp is really pie in the sky. It promises the unobtainable. That is the kind of progress that a factory can make with unlimited resources and the implication that if you can afford it, you`re in. No, that`s not the idea. It is that by dint of your own efforts and with what skills you can muster, you managed to outspeed/outride the others to what you regard as a victory and a little tin shield to say you did it. I still have my 2nd and 3rd place trophys. That is called `living`. How many times to I have to add: KISS. Terry.

Not gone to Croft John as I just don't have the spare money, my bike is there, Michael was gonna test it in the trophy race but sadly it still has gearbox troubles and today a big vibration coming from some plce, the clipon has. Broken now too I learnt today, so now I really have my work cut ouit to be in a ready ostion for brands in 2 weeks , poxy bikes ! Very frustrating so far this year and can see why its easy to give up

Hello Dan, I know how you feel I've been there many times but I think your like me, you know It's there it just needs sorting so keep going.

JS2 is progressing should have the barrel back this week, got the new shocks, repaired the seat ect ready for the next outing. Are we down hearted NO, see you at Brands.

Les2012.

down hearted.................. ready to stuff it in a cannon and fire it at something big and heavy!

All together now -- let´s cheer up Dan with some of our lousy days -- like:

In those `68 to `73 days money was not the impediment -- it was time and being needed at almost any time by the company which meant entering for an event and then having to miss it...

I didn´t think I´d be free to do Lydden and had Icarus-1 Bantam and Andy´s 250 ABS ready just in case. Managed to get away from oop north by late Friday, rang Mary Styles and she said she could fit me in... Was late to bed -- late getting up and practice was nearly over when I got to Lydden. Bantam would not start. 250 ABS would not start. Was lying -- totally exhausted --  across the trailer when Chris Newport came and told me I could ride his 6-cylinder Benneli(???) in the second 250 race ...

Uh oh! I´ve told this story on here before  -- ain´t I ? ....

.... but I completed the race -- not quite last -- although the first gear change was made with the brake pedal [and revs at 14,000 (Chris said 11000 limit...)]  some cornering was rather hectic by virtue of  braking with the gear-pedal...    

Chris -- those were the days ey?   Thank you for the loan ....

Icarus-2, home-tuned was a disaster because with port-tuning by Wobböleyman (Colin Aldridge) it revved to 11000 which  stretched its Standard BSA pistons so that the pistons invariably clouted the head in a  six-lap race and invariably broke up or seized before race end. Icarus-2  was quicker than Icarus-1 but its reliability was a massive zero.

Ah! but those good old days -- I´ll not get into those `cos we are supposed to be cheering up Dan by telling our bad ones....
.

Cheers!

John-Boy.

My worst racing weekend was in 1965, when I attempted to race at Oulton Park on Saturday, and then a National race at Snetterton on Sunday. That's about 210 miles between circuits. Nobody with me; just me, my Triumph Herald, and DMW 250 on a trailer. I was going well at Oulton when the nylon drive to the contact breaker failed. The 250 final was late in the programme, so I knew I would get to Snetterton quite late. About two miles from the circuit I fell asleep at the wheel, but awoke with a jolt when the car burst its front tyre on the kerb. I had to unload all my gear from the back, to get at the spare wheel and the jack. Finally rolled into the paddock at Snetterton in the wee small hours, pitched my tent and slumped into the sleeping bag. About three hours sleep; fixed the bike's ignition; through scrutineering; out for practice; did enough laps to qualify, then the piston broke up. Just managed to fit a new piston in time for the heat; qualified for the final. By now, I was utterly knackered, famished, and feeling very wobbly.

The bike held together in the final, but I was feeling so groggy it was all I could do to finish the race. I wasn't dead last, but at least six places down on where I should have been.

Then pack everything back into the car, hitch up the trailer, and drive 180 miles back home on Sunday night. Probably called in sick on Monday. I wouldn't have been much good to them at work, anyway!

I don't know how that is meant to make Dan feel any better, but here's hoping!

Oh! how many times I risked the boot by calling in on Monday -- SICK!

In my grassing days (the Fifties) my Engield Bullet engine blew itself to bits because increasing compression-ratio and feeding it tetra-ethyl lead was not good for its digestion so -- not to waste the weekend I went chair passenger to Joe Wheeler on his 650 Norton outfit -- story here somewhere else -- we were leading and flipped upside down: Joe broke his pelvis and I had the clutch lever stab me in the ´stomach....
Managed to drive home -- somehow manged to kid my parents I was OK and drove into work at Walthamstow Tech where I had been warned about time off for MC accidents was a no no. I sat in the Hycraulics Lab bemoaning my fate: I was badly bruised and the hole in my stomach had a stitch in it so I couldn´t go see the College nurse. Then the sneaky idea hit me: it was holiday time and the nurse would not have a stand-in at lunch time so I went to the Engineering Department Chief´s secretary, at lunch time and told her I´d been installing a new pipe up high on the wall and had fallen across the lab desk. She wanted to call an ambulance, I insisted on driving to my GP -- alone -- and she was so distressed I almost felt sorry for lying like a rotten hound. Anyway my GP gave me a certificate for a week and after two days I was following up an advert for a 500 Short-4 Speedway JAP engine and working on the Bullet ....

The following week Old Coop -- head of deapartment -- had me in his office asking discreet questions which I realised after a few minutes was whether I was intending suing the Waltamstow Council for a wrongful working
situation which had me know then that I could have dropped the Lab Lecturer deep in it so I told the truth by saying it was "ALL MY OWN FAULT".....

Owe the pain ....
The lying still hurts as well...

Go well and stay well,

JayBee.

Yeah! know how it feels Matey. But I met you in the paddock at Mallory and admired the machine your attitude and your kindness to me, read your numerous correspondence and I know you are too far down the line to throw it over the wall. Keep aiming for that day when it all goes well and you can see where you are; not dreaming, aiming, just the way you are. Terry

Sometimes it is like banging your head against a wall ...

... so wonderrful when the wall goes away...

In 5 and half seasons of road racing I had more fun times than wall times and what makes it all worthwhile NOW is being able to come on here knowing the Bantam Racers are still going strong.

5 and a half seasons of road-racing was not enough but it is like so many things in life I actually did it and serving 2 & a 1/2 years as Chairman has me knowing I was a part of BRC... albeit a tiny part....

---we were lucky to have dedicated people on the committee: I´ll just mention one because she hasn´t given up even yet. Mary Styles (and Peter) are again running their Show at Lydden -- so I heard...

... I wish I could get over to Blighty....


All the best,

JayBee ...

Hello Dan, how do you feel now that you have some influential members of this forum who understand your predicament, they like me have all been there, do what we all did and get on with it.

Les 2012.

well I've stripped and engine out and my spare in last night, need to finish up this evening then a quick try on a private road

ill be having a look at number one engine but a quick look last night I could find nothing broken or damaged, very odd

o another matter les................. I have your nuts in my hand , so get your suspenders ready i'll send them off in a bag!

Sounds entertaining - Can I watch?!

Dan your being very naughty, but don't tell every one, my nuts that you made I know will fit my suspenders. If your a good boy I'll show them when we next meet at Brands.
By the way, this a sudomin.

Les2012.


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