Barber EngineeringFrom the beginning of the 1970s Denny Barber, a well respected grass track rider, produced speedway and grass track frames and made replicas of Rotrax Frames from his workshops at Besthorpe, Attleborough, Norfolk. He had and has several sponsored riders, Berwick rider Denny Morter, Andy Smith, Belle Vue & other teams, and Berwick rider Graham Jones. One of the Barber frames notable features was a needle roller headstock. |
Ron Beckett, a Hoddesdon based frame builder who, it is believed, built frames for other manufactures including, during the 1970s, Weslake. |
Speedway rider (1931 to 1949) Maurice Stobbart ran a speedway school in Workington, a track in Workington was where he raced in 1937) he taught boys at a local boys club in 1970s to cast components and build frames, calling the frames Bessemer after a local steel works. It has been suggested to me by Geoffrey Kerr- Bessemer frames. He, Geoffrey, remembers that two sons of Maurice rode for Workington |
George Bewley, well known for his Bewley 2 speed gearbox, also developed in 1961 a speedway springer incorporating a swinging arm with Girling shocks. He also made a frame that had a large diameter top tube and sprung forks a little later. George was, at this time, a member of the Cradley Heath team as was the ex World Speedway Riders’ Associations secretary Vic White. |
Bob Humphreys special, Bob an Australian rider who spent many years in the UK riding for Kings Lynn Stars, Reading Racers and Milton Keynes Knights and was never idle preferring to finding something to do to occupy himself, at Milton Keynes his sponsor, Alan Hodkinson, remembers a time when he was sure that to move the centre of gravity on a speedway bike would be an improvement. He constructed a frame with a completely alloy rear end, with engine plates extended upwards allowing the central carburettor as in the Hagon LTR, the engine and fuel tank were moved back near to the rear of the bike than would be thought normal. Bob rode it and pronounced it not as good as he had hoped and turned his mind to something else. |
Pioneer speedway rider Frank Pearce built a JAP Bitza for fellow rider Noel Johnson at the end of 1928, said to be a modified AJS. It was extremely unreliable on the track but no doubt because of this it was of considerable interest to the speedway press. Noel persevered with it and in the end got it going smoothly and his riding was greatly improved. |
Three gents from Victoria Australia made their way to Brisbane in 1946 to set up a workshop and try out a number of frames and ideas. They were Bond, the man with ideas, Hynes who was an ace with a welding torch and Menzies who had a name for creating very fast motors. They did not set out to make branded equipment preferring to produce the goods to suit the rider, riders such as Keith Cox, Archie Neil and others riding in the Brisbane area. The trio split for a while to do their own thing, Bond replica cars and heavily modified JAP, Hynes continued to make frames this time under his own name and Menzies devoted himself to riding the equipment becoming an Australian Champion. (Note, the order of the three names seems to have been interchangeable but here we have used the alphabetical) |
Rare speedway frame built by Alf Bottoms of Wembley in 1946. Alf moved into the development of racing cars and was sadly killed during practice for the Luxemburg Grand Prix in 1951 |
The brothers Brine, Cyril, Ted, Percy and Ron all having an interest in speedway - |
World Champion Barry Briggs acquired the sole UK rights to the ESO/Jawa Machine from Alec Jackson and set up business in Southampton marketing a complete machine and a range of products under the Briggo label. Ahead of the field, not a new experience for Barry, he introduced the Briggo laydown in 1974 followed by a 4V developed for the Briggo badge by George Wenn in the USA. Barry Briggs understood what the riders wanted, perhaps sometimes before they did, he was skilled in having the right product at the right time and the ability to market them in a professional & knowledgeable manner. |
As opposed to other BSA machines that were used for dirt- |
In 1927 the West Australian Sig Schlam took the dirt racing scene by storm on the BSA Sloper, a stripped down road machine amended to produce a shorter wheelbase and tuned by Walter Pidgeon. At High Beech Jack Parker showed what the BSA could do and the following year the BSA factory in Birmingham gave the machine a face lift, a special frame, shorter wheelbase and a higher compression engine with twin ports, the oil pump was operated by hand and sat on the top of the dual tank however its higher price meant, despite being endorsed by Jack Parker and Bert Perrigo, riders opted for the lower priced BSA and the Sloper S2- |
BSA was brought back in 1972 when Nigel Boocock, George Hunter, Roger Hill and John Harrhy tried out the Rob North framed BSA B50 Moto cross engine. With its 45 bhp running on methanol and with a transistorised ignition it was extensively tested at the Coventry track and approved by all those testing but even with the backing of BSA and Charles Ochiltree the machine did not prove to be what the riders wanted and project was dropped. |