Cycle News

VOL. 52 ISSUE 22 JUNE 2, 2015 P119 five-speed gearbox, with fourth gear snatched about 300 feet before the braking marker. I am warned before I go on track by Kevin to keep the revs below 10,000 rpm, purely for engine conservation, which after five hours of running neces- sitates a full rebuild, and the best I managed to see on the tacho was about 8900 rpm in fourth gear down the short back straight before I run out of room. But between 4000 rpm and that final 8900 indicated rpm on the dash, the V-twin Britten is an absolute weapon. This is pure heroin for motorcycle junkies. The power comes in so fast. The almost total lack of flywheel weight sees the tacho climb at a horrendous pace, but the chassis just keeps everything in order and on line, the perfect Ying to the engine's Yang. I have no doubt that, even now, with a talented rider on board, this machine would still be a serious force to be reckoned with in top- level Superbike racing. The engine, in all honesty, wasn't even trying—this thing was built for racetracks like Daytona and Assen, and somewhere like Broadford, with its short straights and constant radius corners is not going to stress it to anywhere near its full poten- tial. I leave myself enough space at the braking marker that I know I won't drop it on entry, but even though the Broadford track is not going to show me the outer reaches of the engine's capabili- ties, it gives the machine ample time to highlight its marvelous chassis package. Barreling into turn one and a sub-chassis attached to the front cylinder head cantilevered the top end of the spring forward from the exhaust header, thus placing it into cooler incoming air. The shock and spring unit was inverted and placed in front of the lower half of the forward facing cylinder and was activated by a bell-crank. The bell-crank's activation came from a push/pull rod that was attached to the swingarm. All this was done on the same plane, meaning Britten and his team had come up with a novel way of reducing the risk of the shock overheating and still managing to come up with a totally unique solu- tion to the rear suspension problem. John used a wet-lay method to create the carbon-fiber parts, weav- ing carbon fibers impregnated with uncured resin between aluminum rods that established the bones of the woven, pre-stressed structure. This was then filled with foam and faced off with carbon/Kevlar sheet and cured in John's self-made autoclave oven to create the final part. The sub-chassis weighs an amazing 9.4lbs, the swing- arm 6.6lbs, an incredible achieve- ment for its time. John had the ability to vary rake, trail and wishbone settings, allowing him an almost infinite range of han- dling possibilities. Special attention was paid to get- ting the Britten as aerodynamic as possible, and again, John went his own way and ditched the full fairing in favor of directing the air in and around the machine. John famously said of the design, "I have an engine that is no wider than the rear wheel, so there's no need for the bottom of the bike to be any wider, either." He removed the two side-mounted radiators and utilized a single, horizon- tal unit mounted underneath the seat— amazingly the system kept the Britten cooler than before—with high-pressure cold air coming in via the two inlets on the front of the shark-nose fairing, and low-pressure warm air exiting near the rider's legs. The lack of a lower fairing also afforded John Britten the plea- sure of letting his gorgeous engine be shown off in all its glory, not hidden behind a bulbous fairing. As with anything that could be made of it, the front nose fairing, fuel tank, seat and small singular pink side fairings are all made with the carbon/ Kevlar method, further lowering overall weight. The tank structure itself was quite large with deep indents for the rider's legs, but it did enable tall riders like Stroud the chance to fully tuck in. However some riders would later complain the Britten's ergonom- ics made it somewhat difficult to ride, with a long stretch to the bars and a rather short space from the seat to the footpegs. The Britten ran on its own carbon- fiber wheels, created by John and the team. A laborious process like the rest of the Britten V-1000, the wheels were another of John Brit- ten's masterpieces that was again ahead of the contemporary motorcy- cle manufacturers of the day. Britten did have the option of running Marvic wheels that belonged to the Kenny Roberts Marlboro 500cc Grand Prix team through friend and colleague Mike Sinclair, but he decided to go his own way, in typical Britten fash- ion. The offshoot problem with this was the team would often be left with a chronic shortage of wheels at race meetings.

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