A History of 50cc Classic Racing Motorcycles

It started with a Moped as daily transport and then on to 50cc Racing.

Name: John Pitt

Birth Place: Oxford
Birth Date: 08-1943
Date of Death : Not Yet
Place of Death : Not Yet
Nationality: English
Gender: Male

1964

2020

Hi Jeep, Just a quick note about me and 50cc racing etc,

My first 50cc mode of transport was an NSU Quickly moped, a very available bike at the time and , as my Father would not let me have a motorcycle. Whether it's a bicycle or any other form of transport, you always want to go faster, the maximum speed of the moped was between 33 and 34mph and I had to do something about it. I managed to tune and improved the motor and eventually get 50mph from it.

I used this moped for transport to and from my place of work where I was in an Apprenticeship with Duple Coachworks. It was there that I met Harris Mann who worked in the Drawing Office. (He ended up chief designer for Austin-Morris and also did work for Suzuki, Honda, Norton, & BMW).

Spending time with Harris was to appreciate what professionalism and talent he had, but also what an agreeable and pleasant personality he was. He was so very friendly and easy to get along with. A conversation over lunch though might often be disrupted by him grabbing a beer mat or menu card to draw up some styling detail to explain why things were as they ended up on a particular model.

For the fans and enthusiasts, the delight of meeting Harris was always special, and he always took time to answer in detail even the most naïve of questions and explain the reasoning behind designs or share an anecdote from those troubled times at British Leyland.

Thinking of people I met, I was introduced to Howard German, who also worked for the company, someone that I would meet again later in my racing career

Harris, knowing that I rode a 50cc bike, asked me to be co-rider on an Itom in the 1963 50cc Enduro at Snetterton. He also introduced me to Beryl Swain and her husband Eddie.

This got me started so I bought a 50cc Maserati in race trim, to which I applied my knowledge gained on the NSU and tuned it, but it was not quick enough against the competition!

So I removed the engine and fitted a Honda 50cc OHV engine, (see picture) which was a great improvement and allowed me to win at places like Church Lawford.

I entered the 1964 Snetterton 50cc Enduro on the now newly modified Masahonda with a friend G. Rice as my co-pilot. We here given number 7.

50cc Maserati in race trim

The 50cc Masahonda

A Honda C50cc Engine

Bill Ivy arrived soon after us and to know Bill as some of us did were not surprised when he off loaded his Honda with two megaphones sticking out from under the canvas cover. Gossip soon spread through the paddock that Bill had somehow procured a works Honda 50cc twin. When the cover finally did come off the bike, the second megga was revealed to be a bluff, it was just tied in place with some string (a typical Bill prank)! The bike was actually a Honda CR110 50cc single cylinder machine. When he took it onto the track he was lapping at only 3 seconds under the official lap record for the racing 50 class.

What happened to the Pitt team, well unfortunately my co-rider over revved my bike and she dropped a valve so we did not finish the race.

John commented that: "with regard to the other 50cc racing: "I raced through most of 1964 and some of the Brands Hatch meetings are detailed below. Harris Mann and I were good friends and we tried to race at the same meetings where possible".

Brands Hatch 50cc Meeting 19th April 1964.

This was one of the few races where I had someone with me that had a camera and so this montage is a brief look at the race.

John in the paddock on the Masa-Itom	John Pitt-129 Brands Hatch-Masa-Honda	John Pitt-129 Brands Hatch-Masa-Honda	Harris Mann -124 Brands Hatch-Itom	John Pitt-129 Brands Hatch-Masa-Honda
John Pitt-129 Brands Hatch-Masa-Honda	137 K Parkin Itom and John Pitt-129 Brands Hatch-Masa-Honda	Harris Man-Itom-124, B. White-Garelli-123, John Pitt-129-Masa-Itom, G. Cherry-199-Itom	The Masa-Itom	The Masa-Itom

I left racing in the 60s for family life and I found less time for the social side of 'Bikes' but still kept the love for them. This lasted for a number of years and during that time I was able to build my 'Man Cave'

Later, as the family became more independent, the desire to get back into biking came to the fore. I then got back to it but mainly through parading. This was in the 2000s on an the ex Bill Ivy Honda CB92, ' The Chisholm’s Honda' which included the TT Lap of Honour for 2003 and 2004 plus most of the southern circuits as well as Spa and Dijon etc in Europe. I also rode my CR79 four cylinder. The story of the Chris-Honda is below.

The following four pages are a overview of the Benly CB92, by the owner Ted Watkins. This was taken from the Web and I do not know the magazine it was in. I hope I do not break any copyright laws.

The Chris-Honda CB92: (Mick Walker kindly gave permission for this to be used on this page. It is from his book 'Bill Ivy : the Will to Win')

As Kent's first Honda dealership, Chisholm's of Maidstone, where Bill Ivy worked at the time, received an early delivery of the CB92 sports model in 1961 via the Japanese company's British importers, Hondis Ltd. And so, the saga of the Chis Honda CB92 racer began.

Don and Bill Chisholm employed among mechanics at the time, Bill plus his long time friend Roy Francis. The Chisholms decided to put one of the new CB92s on the road and once run in fitted it with one of Honda's race kits for the model plus a home-made thinner copper head gasket to enable the compression ratio to be raised. Bill Ivy knocked up a rather crude home-brewed seat, fitted 'Ace' handlebars and changed the brake and gear pedals to opposite sides (to match British taste at the time) - and set off to the local Brands Hatch circuit to test their handiwork.

It soon became apparent that however good the rest of the machine was the suspension, in the shape of the leading-link front fork and Japanese-made rear shock absorbers, were simply not up to the job. Looking around for an improvement, the Chisholm brothers had in stock a blown-up MV Agusta 175 (now it can be revealed that none other than Bill Ivy had been responsible for its mechanical demise).

So, the MV's telescopic front forks, together with the rear shocks, were removed from the Italian machine and utilised on the race-kitted CB92. It was also necessary to cast a special top fork crown to enable the MV forks to fit the Honda, and this was carried out by the brothers themselves. A clamp half way down the nearside fork took care of the Honda's front brake torque arm.

Thus equipped, the handling was, as Roy Francis described it: 'transformed'. This enabled Bill Ivy to achieve a number of top 10 places at Brands Hatch, even at national level, during 1961 and 1962 - plus, as described in the main text, a notable 'get off' when running at the front of the field with the EMC works duo of Rex Avery and Derek Minter in October 1962 (witnessed at first hand by the author, who was spectating at the exact spot that day!).

But with Bill moving to ride for Frank Sheene (Barry's father) for the 1963 season, Don and Bill Chisholm then promoted Roy Francis to the Chis Honda CB92 ride, in place of Roy's existing standard-forked CB92 racer. Roy well remembers 19 April 1964. This was the day when challenging for the lead at Cadwell Park's 'Boys' Day' on the second lap he fell off at the infamous Barn Corner with its adverse camber (which is still there today)

When Bill Ivy returned to the Chis Honda setup upon the arrival of a brand new CR93 production racer at the beginning of 1964, Roy Francis's routine was, in his own words: 'to warm up my own machine (the Chis CB92) early, park it in the assembly area and then get Bill's ready, as he [Bill] was riding in several classes. I had his trust to make sure the Chis Honda CR93 was ready for action.' Roy ends by saying: 'Happy days, little did we realise what the future held for this 'Maidstone group of enthusiasts.'

Bill Ivy went on to become 125cc World Champion, Don and Bill Chisholm in 1975 sold their business to Roy Francis and Paul Smart, Roy and Paul sold out to the Motorcycle City Group in 1998 and returned to motorcycling as a hobby, tending their respective race machines of yesteryear.

As for the Chis Honda CB92, it was sold to Governor's Bridge Motorcycles and is currently owned by John Pitt of St Leonards, Ringwood, Hampshire. Picture: John Pitt on the Chris-HondaCB92.

John Pitt More than just a motorcycle (John Denton)

Anyone who has ever bought a classic machine will tell you that you’re buying more than just a collection of parts, you’re buying a slice of history. TT Section member John Dalton recalls a purchase that turned out to be not only a slice of history, but a key to a very select world as well.

John Dalton begins: "In June 2000 my friend John Pitt saw a motorcycle for sale at Gov'nors Bridge Motorcycles. To the untrained eye it was just a Honda Benly 125cc, albeit one that had been much modified to racing trim. However, the MV forks, right hand gear change and one-off seat unit all looked very familiar to John, as this was the very bike that he had raced against in the ‘60’s, when it had been ridden by Bill Ivy". (Pic 1)

John had first encountered Bill at Snetterton for the 250-mile Endurance race when John was co-riding with Harris Mann (designer of the Triumph TR7). (second paragraph of page).In John's own words: "Bill had arrived with a mystery 50cc bike, despite being fully covered, there were twin meggas sticking out and gossip soon spread through the paddock that Bill had somehow procured a works Honda 50cc twin. When the cover finally did come off the bike, the second megga was revealed to be a bluff, it was just tied in place with some string (a typical Bill prank)! The bike was actually a CR 110 50cc single cylinder machine".

Back to the CB92: John negotiated a swap for a Motobi racer and the Benly was his. Although the Benly had been neglected for a long time since it was sponsored by the Chisholm brothers, John’s plan was to undertake a sympathetic restoration of the bike, making it safe to ride again, rather than lose all the patina and battle scars that made the bike what it was.

Overall, the restoration threw up few horrors, John’s work being concentrated on getting the wheels rebuilt and giving the engine thorough going over. Surprisingly for a discarded racing machine, the engine was found to be in fine fettle and the original tuning work was still very much in evidence - this had clearly been designed to be a quick engine. Pic. 2

The restored bike’s first outing with John at the helm was at Mallory Park for the Festival of 1,000 Bikes. Placed on the front row of the grid between Tommy Rob and Phil Read, John was keen to point out this was all due to the bike, not him! John’s wife, Ann, had asked him why had he gone back to racing/ parading after all these years and John said you simply could not put a price on the opportunities that the little Benly had provided him with.

He has since been invited to Spa for several events – on one occasion being allocated, at no cost, a Formula 1 pit to himself, all because of the bike and who had once raced it. In 2003 John was invited to ride the Benly at the TT Lap of Honour, here members setting off down Bray Hill at full throttle as an experience that is never likely to be bettered (Pic 3). He was in some illustrious company too, David Hailwood was riding his father’s 1978 TT winning Ducati and Malcom Wheeler was aboard the ex-Roger Nicholls Ducati (Pic 4).

Despite setting off before them, they had caught up with him over the Mountain but then David and Malcom slowed down at the Creg to wave to the fans. Seizing the moment, John replicated Bill Ivy’s endeavour Pic: 4 ours from the ‘60’s and passed them both at full throttle.

Back in the pits, David, Malcom and John had a good laugh about the little Benly flying past the Ducatis, and David later gave John a signed photo of him aboard the Ducati.

Proof, if it were needed, that some motorcycles really can open doors to events/ situations you would never get to on your own. John still has the Benly and we meet up now and again at the Classic Bike show (Pic 5) and here in the Isle of Man when he can get over – and via the magic of the inter-web when he can’t!

Picture:2003, John Pitt ridding in the TTRA Classic Parade on the Bill Ivy Chis-Honda CB72

Riders of 50cc Racing Motorcycles