Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

i CYCLE NEWS TEST. ,.. - Ol . ::; > ~ w Z W ..J U >- U Is The Penton 125 Enduro Made By Ron Schneiders Photos by Ron Schneiders and Ben Egbert Testing the Penton Enduro 125 motorcycle is. a little like testing a Spitfire airplane six months after the Battle of Britain. The Penton has won Gold Medals in the Six Day Trials and the Berkshire Trials and has won class and overall honors in many. many championship end~ros. Obviously the bike is capable of winning and doing it rather consistently. Our report then is not of the "is it a good bike or a poor one?" sort but rather "is this a bike that you will like and be comfortable with?" For those who don't know, the Pen ton i actually an assemblage of a number of proprietary parts brought to order under the hand of Ohio's John Penton. The engine is a modified Sachs, the forks are Ceriani, the wheels are made in Spain, the frame in Austria. Even the U.S. gets into the picture with a Filtron air cleaner element. A neophyte might be tempted to think that with all these top flight components, no one could build a bad bike. There are many examples around to prove him wrong, but the Penton isn't one of them. Looking at the basic specifications, one could not tell the difference between the Penton and any single-purpose, high quality 125 motocross machine. Tire sizes are 3.00 X 21 and 3.50 by 18. The wheels are steel-rimmed and very heavily spoked_ The hub is small in diameter and full width. Suspension is by Ceriani both in front and in the rear. The carburetor is slightly larger than standard (for the Sachs) 28mm Bing centerfloat. The ignition is standard - best there is Bosch. At the Penton works in Lorain, Ohio the motorcycles are disassembled and the engines are modified to produce awesome power. The modification consists of some porting and raising the compression ratio. There is 'a rumor to the effect that the transmission of the Sachs is modified, but Ted Penton denies this. They do however make sure the transmission is assembled and adjusted correctly, which is all that's necessary. One of the statements that I heard repeated a number of times is, "A Penton is great for those Eastern enduros, but it doesn't handle in the desert." To check this out I took the Penton to the Ponderosa race course. The Ponderosa has the granddaddies of all the big whoop-de-doos in the Mojave. Moreover it has some steep uphill sand washes and some treacherous rocky slopes. All the worst stuff you would fmd in a desert event packed into a five-mile-square area. I took a couple of laps around the course, climbed the mountain that is in the center of coune, blasted up the sandwashes and over the rocks. At the end of my tour I was convinced of two things. If I owned' a Penton, whoop-de-doos would not be the type of terrain I would search out; The Penton isn't a desert sled. But on the other hand, should I encounter whoop-de-doos in a desert race or enduro, I wouldn't be really bothered either. The Penton doesn't have that sink in; at Saddleback they skate over the hard, sandy surface. I spent a pleasant hour racing over the trails trying my hand a t some observed trials sections. I found that I could get through the trials sections, but not with dignity; the engine was a bit too peaky for that sort of precision. Hill climbing was actually the toughest test for me and the Penton. I am used to a machine that has moderate power over a very broad range. The Penton's range is narrower and the power in that range comes on absolutely fierce. Really steep hills cquld not be negotiated in the "Iuggin" section of the power band: The thing has to be "on the pipe," but I found it difficult to hold on when the Penton engine was screaming. For anyone with the guts to ride it, I think that little bike will go up The Penton is 100% business. Note the small headlight. Irs rubber mounted. The VOO speedometer is tucked in behind the number plate. The seat is long and nicely shaped. but a bit on the hard side. The visible part of the air cleaner is completely sealed. Air intake is under the seat. . most any hill that a 500 single could get up. But if it's rutty or rocky, be prepared to sweat a bit. The Penton is a bike that you ride up on the pegs most of the time anyway, but particularly when you're going up steep hills. The idea is to perch yourself right over the front wheel and watch the ground go by at a dizzy rate. One possible solution to the hill climbing problem for less talented riders would be substitution of a trials type tire the standard knobby. The trials tire would allow more tire spin which in tum would allow ~he rider to keep the revs up and the speed down. It would be an injustice not to test the Penton on the type of terrain for which it was primarily designed, the wet kind of steering stability !h!~ ~9!!!C:~ from exaggerated rake and trail; it. _ quick and it requires a f!!,~ t,;'nct on bars to ~.~:p ;, going in a straight line Over whoop-de-doos, but there was no tendency in the bike's handling to go "lock to lock" or the toss the rider "over the high side". These tendencies, often associated with quick steering bikes, are mercifully absent in the Penton. Apart from the whoop-de-doos, the Penton seemed everything you could want in an enduro or cross-country racing bike. Bouncing over rocks, ditches, wailing down sandwashes and fireroads the bike performed flawlessly. Next I took it to SaddIeback Park. SaddIeback has hard trails, physically hard, packed clay trails. It's an entirely Flying on Penton airways. altitude, 6 feet, landing smooth. Excellent Ceriani suspension soaks up different sort of riding from the Jolts. Ponderosa. On the Ponderosa your tires u;-;; • muddy woods. For this part of the test I rode the Penton in a Northern California enduro. On this run the trails were muddy, the uphills were muddy and the downhills were muddy. The Penton was completely at home. I could slide' through turns where other riders had both feet down for stability. I could ride fast on trails that were much too slippery to walk. Hills, with a little muddy grease to break the traction, were no problem. In five hours and over 100 miles of tough, analytical riding I was unable to find the slightest thing to criticize in the Penton's handling. It was a joy to ride. The Penton encourages you to stretch your limits. Go into the tum at what you think is the limit and halfway through you realize that the Penton isn't even working yet. Same goes for downhill. Unless you're ased to one of the really good motocross bikes you can't imagine how fast the Penton will negotiate a hairy, rutted, downhill trail. What I'm saying. of course, is what the records already say: The Penton is a racing bike and if you ride it like a racing bike you'll get over almost anything very quickly. The other side of the coin is that the Penton is not much of a go-for-a·Sunday-aftcmoon-trailride-and-Iook-at-the-scenery bike. During all the time I had the Penton, starting was never more than an easy one or two kicks. Even when I dropped the bike and it lay on its side for a minute or two, it showed no sign of wanting to load up. This is one of the first requirements for an enduro bike and the Penton is strictly first rate. Any bike that claims to be an enduro bike must be waterproof. The Penton is. We crossed streams continuously thai varied from a few inches deep to deep and the bike never missed a beat. The air cleaner unit is mounted in a sealed box to which the air is snorkled through apertures in the frame, up under the seat. The Bosch ignition, as it comes on the Sach's engine is completely waterproof so that is no problem either. No bike you can buy is as thoroughly waterproof to start with as the Penton. The Penton comes with lights (of a sort) and a muffler. It seems to me that this is one area where Penton miscalculated slightly. The only reason for having lights on an enduro bike is so that it can be licensed for use on the street when it is necessary to get from section to section. The Penton, however, carries an Off-Road-Use·Only sticker so it would be very hard to license it, at least in California. The muffler, while an admirable idea, falls a bit shon. It should incorporate a government approved spark arrester. This however is not quite as serious a gas-l?-nk

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