Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127740
Paton 500 Bicilindrica Racer Test (Left) The lone gauge Is a Smiths mechanical tach. (Below) An Impressive list of riders hava used Giuseppe Pattonl's handcrafted machines, Including Mike Hallwood, Virginia Ferrari and Marco Pape. This one was raced by Fred Stav_. made it a real handful over the bumps and jumps of the Island, but we finished in replica time without a moment's trouble, apart from the muffed start. After putting a hole in the crankcases when a connecting rod broke during qualifying for the 1989 Dutch GP, I was fortunate enough to be given the very last set of original crankcases by Pattoni to enable me to rebuild the engine. This coincided with my greater involvement with modern race bikes in the Superbike and BOTT classes with the Bimota Tesi, and now the 50S Ducati Supermono. For this reason, it took time to rebuild the Paton, but this summer the work was finished and the bike is a runner again. Whether it will be raced in the near future depends as much on Pattoni as anything else; he's talking about having a new batch of crankcases made, which would allow use of the bike in some security - in case the worst should happen again. For now its use is limited to riding in parades and demonstrations when there is time. Riding the Paton is a curious mixture of old and new. Pattoni had great foresight: He built a 180-degree parallel twin without balance shafts tha t revs very fast and freely, with minimal flywheel effect. Revs must be kept amazingly high for a two-valve-percylinder engine of the mid-60s - never less than 8000 rpm if you want strong power, and always over 10,000 rpm in the gears - and there's a real dose of extra power at the very top end, thanks to the camshaft design. Peak revs are 10,400 rpm, so there is not a very wide margin of safety, and as I found out the hard way, you will bend a valve if you overrev it. This means you have to use the gearbox a lot to keep the revs up, making fast, clutchless changes like a modem two-stroke. The gear cluster is also side-loading extractable, to allow the changing of internal ratios if I had any! - a very advanced feature for 1%6. There's quite a bit of vibration through the footpegs, but of the highfrequency kind that isn't nearly as upsetting as a British 36Q-degree parallel twin with the wrong balance factor. You have to use the clutch a lot to coax it out of slow turns, and this is really a bike for fast, sweeping tracks, which is why it won so convincingly at Assen. The fact that the Paton's handling is not ideal is underlined by the comment of Richard Cutts, who finished second to me in that Dutch GP on his Seeley GSO. "After you passed me for the lead, I thought about trying to get back in front," he said on the rostrum. "But your bike was weaving about so much, I couldn't decide which side to try to pass you on!" Er - yes, it is a bit of a handful. The short wheelbase is the main problem - the la ter 1968 Billie Nelson Paton had a 100mm-Ionger spread - but the chassis isn't as strong as it might be, and with modem racing tires you can feel it flex under acceleration. It brakes very well indeed with that big 250mm four-leading shoe Fontana drum - at 140 kg. (308 Ibs.) dry, the Paton is even slightly lighter than a Manx Norton with a fairing - and the Ceriani forks were certainly the best available back in the mid-60s. The short wheelbase makes it very hard to con trol a slide, making the Paton a bit of a handful to ride in the wet. This was the cause of the most painful yet most humorous accident I've had with a bike that has otherwise been a good friend. Heading for the checkered flag in the 1987 French GP at Le Mans running third place in a torrential downpour, I took a wide line in the last turn before the finish line to avoid a pool of water gathering on the inside - only to find Swiss rider Claude Matthey's Aermacchi 408 there; he'd just passed me for the final place on the rostrum! Vainly trying to retake him before the line, I got too enthusiastic with my throttle hand, and the Paton swapped ends as suddenly as an ice skater executing a pirouette. Flat on my back, sliding along the road, I felt the bike catching me up and pushing me over the line on its side - hard. Result: fourth place, according to the FlM Jury, because I was officially still in contact with my motorcycle when I crossed the line, and the rules say nothing about the wheels having to have the rubber side down. The Paton is tha t kind of bike: even the crashes have to be different! (N Paton 500 Bicilindrica SpecIlicaIIons EngIne .Alr-axJled DOHC lllO-degree parallel-lwin four-stroke DImenIlonI .....•.....73.5 x57.5mm cap.eIly 488cc l>IJtIU .58 bhp at 10,400 rpm CIItIurIlIon IgnIlJon CompressIon ratio GeIrbox .2 x35mm 0eIl'0ril 12v belte!y/coil 11.0:1 6-speed extractable CIuII:h MuItipIate dry SuIpII.... . StIleIlIb.Ilar duplex CI8dIe Front: 35 mm C8IiBni 11111 qli: forks ReBr. StIleIIIDlIar sllilglml will tIin Giling shocks a..· .28 degrees 128Omm Front: 250mm four IeadIng-shoe Fontana dnm · ReBr. 210 mm tIin ~ Fontanadnm rill Front: 3.25 x 18 DII1lop KR124 on WM2 BomlIli wiIHpoked rim · .............•......ReBr. 3.50 x 181:llJlq) KR124 on WM2 BomlIli wlre spoked lin Dry WIIgIlI 140 kg. (308Ibs.) Tap IIpIIlI .225 kP1 (140 mph) V_ of e:e-truc:IIon 1966 0wMr .Alan eathcat:t, W8rwIck, EngIIIld HIId WheelbIII 8rIIIlII