Down East Love Affair
EDITOR’S NOTE: We asked Joe Bolger, Eastern U.S. 500cc and 250cc sporting scrambles champion, to talk about his favorite (winning) mount, the Czechoslovakian made Eso 500cc single-cylinder bomb. Bolger is quite adept at expressing his thoughts, and is a contributing Editor to the Eastern rider’s magazine, Cycle Sport.
IT’S NOT EASY to be objective about my experiences with Eso motorcycles. I fell in love with them when reading a technical report in the Czech magazine Motor Review some years ago and I’m still more than a little bit taken with this rare and exotic gem. My baptism with a 250cc Eso in 1961 was anything but conclusive; I got off the line poorly but scooted into first place by the first turn, led for almost a lap but lost it on a side hill — frozen ground, shiny crystals did me in. I was hit by one of the following riders, broke my left arm.
It healed well, and I was on again. It was a fairly decent 250; it handled well and had good power, wasn’t “cammy” and was really at home in the rough type of popular Eastern track. However, it was marred by a chronic valve problem that got to be a joke at the tracks, as I was constantly kneeling before the rocker cover and checking whether the pushrods would still spin freely. They seldom would. “At the altar again,” was Cycle Sport Editor Bob Hicks’ comment as I sadly knelt for another clout between heats. We tried all sorts of things to keep the valve seats from pounding in badly, including special British valves and springs that come in little stapled plastic envelopes.
I never really cured the problem, and my impression of the machine is colored by this, but I’m older now, and read more of Gordon H. Jennings, and realize we should have gotten the cam changed first and then worked on the valve seats. Finally I got the 500 Eso! Alas, they had cured everything; this job did not have a snag of any note. I spent half the winter cutting great Czech marks out of it, got at least ten pounds off the total weight and had the lightest 500 in the East!* Lightest at least in the scrambles game, and I was like a kid wiping off his first lipstick.
The engine I didn’t touch at all, just a quick teardown to gloat over the polished internals and that short-skirted 88mm piston. I felt it was like defiling an Egyptian tomb so I carefully reassembled it before the curse descended. The machine turned out to be the most trouble-free of the 15 or 20 I have owned; it ran almost every week during our long summer season and stopped just once with mechanical failure. The valves gave absolutely no trouble, the originals are still in place and the bike hasmore steam than it ever had. It is a beautiful engine, no matter how you look at it.
During the Canada/New England team races it fried the clutch and I found it out just before going to the line for the last heat. Back to the pits, tore the cover off (four screws, never a drip), tightened the adjusters down as far as possible, and took off. The smell of burned cork was overpowering and I hoped the thing would hold until I got through the event. We had four false starts, finally got away and I went the whole distance without getting near the clutch. I thought the charcoal would fly all over if I squeezed it so I just slammed it up and down, hoping nothing would go “clunk.”
*/ls tested in the Sept. '64 CfV, the Eso weighed 296 lbs.
Never bothered it a bit; the machine ran as well after the race as before and I was in love all over again — though shoving the shifting dogs around without the clutch was like slapping Liz Taylor .. .
I can say, with some semblance of objectivity, that the 500 Eso served me very well. Rumor has it that this machine will not be built any longer as their Speedway model is the only one to be made. Suffice to say it is not, as the British steadfastly maintain, a copy of the J.A.P. engine. It is a modern, short-stroke, high-revving, unit construction, gear primary unit, and comes from the factory with all of the racer’s hand-touches built right in. Although only a small bug, as far as my experiences are concerned, it has a tendency to miss gears. Any hurried shifts, especially in third, can be expected to result in sudden free-wheeling. I have used Steen “C” exclusively with no regrets, NGK #9 plugs worked best, the Lucas magneto worked without a cry, and the Dellorto carburetor weeped profusely, but gulped mightily when needed.
Try one if you have the offer, before the myth gets out of hand, and you’ll class it with the Wooler, Douglas, and that Stevenage stalwart, the Vincent. •
DOWN EAST LOVE AFFAIR
