[Ducati] John banks...an olde name from the past!

[John Whiting]

Peter:  I had an Ossa Stiletto in college.  I bought it from a guy named Spyke Naylor. It had that old, twin needle carb on it, and at least once, one of the the needles slipped on the clip, came out of the jet and held the slide open coming off a jump (can you say kill button).....I wore that bike like a hat more than once, and finally bastardized it with a Mikuni and machined my own tapered intake/xover.  I always left the bodywork loose so it didn't break up when I crashed it.  I wish I still had it.  Afternoons at the heavy equipment school west of TAMU campus were brilliant, lotsa earthen berms and a 1/2 mile oval around the outside where cons (fresh from incarceration at Huntsville pen) learned the skills of using dozers and graders.  I flunked a lot of classes at A&M playing out there, especially spring semesters.

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From: ducati-bounces at ducati.net on behalf of Peter Bonner
Sent: Mon 10/1/2007 11:11 PM
To: Ducati Owners Group
Subject: Re: [Ducati] John banks...an olde name from the past!



Hey Hopper,

at the risk of boring non limey lovers, the Rickman frames will hopefully
have Ducati single motors in them some day, both are dirt frames, but back
then, that meant 6 inch travel forks, like my old 64 scrambler was. Since I
have a bunch of old singles stuff, anything is possible. For a really cool
collection, I was visiting my high school friend Fred, and he has Cheney
BSAs like they were overly popular. Incredible private collection actually,
including the G50 Matchless that Dick Mann (who used to help us with our
bikes at Karl's motors in the 60s) won the Grand National with.

I did mention that my BSA MX was the John Banks replica, who would have been
champion in 1962 except for throwing a chain which caused a DNF and
relegated him to second in the world championship series. It does have the
"narrow" tank and is in practically perfect condition. A couple years later,
Jeff Smith won the last dirt championship world series on a 4 stroke, and
then the stinkwheels took over.  I remember being  very impressed with my
first ride on a Bultaco 200, and then when the Ossa came out, WOW. The
stiletto and even the pioneer were absolutely awesome......at the time.
Funny to think back then, we used to do hill climbs all the time at a place
called Albany hill, in the Berkeley East bay area. I doubt there is anywhere
now you could go riding off road there now. I rode back from Laguna this
year with Kevin, and was amazed at how they ruined the Redwoods road
motorcycle area.

However my Griumph has Earles front forks, more popularly known on some
early BMW bikes. However the always enterprising Rickman firm wound up using
shock bushings from heavy machinery to craft a torsion bushing that provided
the "spring" for the front forks, and only an hydraulic damper was used
coming from the axle up the fixed fork tubes. The front down tube was a cast
magnesium part, quite unusual for the time. The original motor was one of
the first home developed motors, instead of the usual Villiers, and was the
Greeves Starmaker engine.  Naturally the conversion required an oil tank, as
Triumph was a remote reservoir bike, so I was fortunate enough to have the
use of my friend Fred Mork's sheet metal shop (his dad's at the time) and
Fred did the welding on my custom alum. oil tank. To provide a bit more
stability, I machined up some steel plates to weld onto the end of the stock
swingarm and increase the wheelbase, which helped a great deal.

These days, more pressing things happen that spending untold amounts of time
on building bikes, so I leave that at present to eager young bucks ($?) like
Alex Ortner who has both incredible skill and dedication.  But hopefully
when I retire at some point, I will get back to original roots.

Rant....  When I went to High School in Berkeley in the early 60s, we had a
great machine shop where I learned the beginnings of my trade. Today it is
all about sending that kind of work to China etc and settling for shoddy
work. Thank goodness for the bloody Aussies, especially Phil Hitchcock, for
making replica parts for our old Ducati bevel drives. People don't realize
what a lost art doing stuff in this country is.

Ok, just hadda get that out,

ciao,

Peter