The Scene
THE SCENE
IVAN J. WAGAR
I ATTENDED THIS YEAR’S annual Motorcycle, Scooter and Allied Trades Association (MS&ATA) and American Motorcycle Association meeting held in Chicago. On the agenda was a report from a committee selected last year, on its recommendations for a new organization to replace the AMA Competition Committee. Providing the proposal materializes, the new group is to be called the AMA Motorcycle Congress, and will deal with all matters relating to competition, including the technical committee, and sportsman, professional and road racing rules. In order to ensure equal trade representation, the Congress will be comprised of two representatives of each brand in the MS&ATA. Membership is to be on a voluntary basis, since some distributors may not choose to be part of the Congress.
The AMA general membership will select two members from each of six U.S. regions, and, with an eye to giving professional riders more voice than before, class C license holders will elect two eastern and two western riders from the top ten in points. Two additional members would come from the AMA executive membership, with Congress chairmanship going to the AMA head — in this case, William T. Berry. There are still several problems to be worked out, but a progress report will be submitted at an AMA meeting in Daytona.
THE new 210-pound 350 CZ is almost ready to go, and it is hoped that these super light machines will be sold to the general public. A shaft and bevel gear arrangement, similar to the first Honda fours, is used to drive the overhead camshaft. The engine is extremely oversquare with an 80mm bore and a 69mm stroke, and tests show it to be reliable at 9,600 rpm for an output of 45 bhp. Compression ratio is 11:1, using a special light piston. A six-speed gearbox is gear driven through an oil bath clutch.
HUGH Anderson is putting the same maximum effort into scrambling that made him a road race champion, and in the recent Twelesdon motocross he finished 10th among thirty-six of England’s best. Hugh’s present mount is a 250 CZ, but while he is in Japan watching Stuart Graham try out for Suzuki, he will endeavor to get one of the Suzuki 250 singles to take back to Europe.
Japan’s Kazuo Kubo took one to Europe last year and was not competitive. Hugh feels, however, that the two-pipe rotary valve engine will get the job done and the English distributor for Suzuki is pushing from that end.
The object below the helmet peak is the latest craze in motocross racing; a hinged, clear plastic shield that the rider can flip up out of the line of vision when it becomes covered with mud.
Hugh will scramble full-time for two years. If, at the end of that time he has not made it, he will return to New Zealand and take up farming.
CERTAINLY one of the most famous people ever connected with road racing was an Irishman named Joe Craig. An accomplished rider, he became race boss of Nortons in the 1930s, and somehow each year he was able to gain another horsepower or two here and there. There is no doubt he was directly responsible for Norton’s enviable record of race wins. For thirty years the single-cylinder engines were almost unbeatable. Sometimes, the continental multis would challenge the Norton supremacy, and on rare occasions, actually win. But the “Wizard,” as Craig was often called, would come up with a new idea, or a brilliant rider like Geoff Duke and stave off the challenge a little longer.
Just before World War II, the sages told Joe the whole thing was all over, that the single had had its day, and he had better sharpen his pencils and add some cylinders. It was logical that people should feel pessimistic: Meier had won Norton’s own race, the Isle of Man TT, in June, 1939, and at the Ulster Grand Prix, almost days before the outbreak of war, Serafini rode a water-cooled Güera to a blistering victory.
The war caused everything to come to a halt for six years, and when racing resumed, Joe and his “obsolete” single started winning races again with new vigor. I first met Joe in 1952, we became friends, and talked mostly about the way Les Graham was flying around the Island on an MVfour during practice. To most of us, Les looked like a sure thing, but Joe just grinned. As it turned out, Norton did win the race; the steering head loosened on Graham's MV and Reg Armstrong crossed the line first, although his primary chain flew off a hundred feet before the flag!
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Those in the know always said that Joe’s grin was because he had a secret weapon that he would unveil if things became really sticky, but by the mid-1950s, the foreign multis were winning everything. Then Joe was killed in a car accident and Norton stopped racing. There were all sorts of rumors about the wonderful engines in the experimental department that were gathering dust, especially the Wizard’s weapon, but the doors were closed to everyone. When the famous Bracebridge Street factory closed down and moved to Associated Motorcycles in London, some of the experimental engines were given to select people. Reg Dearden, long connected with Nortons and England’s greatest rider entrant of all time, laid claim to some unusual equipment, which may someday come to light. One of the experimental engines is now being assembled for the 1967 season by Ray Petty, Derek Miniers tuner. Whether this (or one of Reg’s engines) was Craig’s ultimate weapon, we will never know for sure.
It is a single of 350cc displacement with an ultra short stroke and is considerably over square at 78mm x 73mm, compared to the standard 350 Norton dimensions of 76mm x 76.7mm. The engine has an external flywheel similar to the short stroke Moto Guzzis of the 1950 era, the reason being that there is very little space left inside the crankcases on a single with this sort of bore/stroke ratio.
When the engine was designed, Nortons used the old course bevel gears on the camshaft drive. Petty has now converted to the latest bevel arrangement and added a Bosch energy transfer ignition system in place of the magneto. Much higher octane gas is available now, and Ray has succeeded in getting a special forged piston that permits a 12.5:1 compression ratio. A squish area has been milled in the combustion chamber to promote turbulence. This, of course, has been standard practice on Manx engines for several years. The original inlet port was 1-7/32 inches, but Ray increased it to the maximum 1-1/4 inches.
