Staggering 2,000 hours replicating a model BSA Victor
By TMX Archives on 4th Feb 13
In a glittering career which spanned four decades, Jeff Smith was one of the greatest multi-disciplined all-rounders ever to ride a motorcycle.
There were few national trials or major national and international motocross events not won by the talented Lancastrian.
On his works BSA Victors he was crowned world 500cc motocross champion in 1964 and repeated the feat the following year – the last time a British bike would win a world motocross title.
The sight and sound of Smith and his BSA single certainly left an impact on West Countryman Tony Haines.
And when Tony started racing in Pre-65 motocross in the mid-1980s, a replica of the factory BSA was the obvious choice to ride.
For the next 20 years the combination of Haines and the booming four-stroke was a formidable one and he was twice runner-up in the 500cc South West classic championships.
Tony has now retired from competition but he still has the Victor in his collection and during the last four winters the former precision engineer has spent a staggering 2,000 hours replicating it in the form of a 1/7th scale model.
It is a fantastic reproduction on which every part works as on the original bike.
Tony takes up the story on how he came to build the ‘mini Victor'.
"Having sold my business I had time to concentrate on my other love of model making, and the idea of the B44 came to me when my wife Tina and I were at the National Motorcycle Museum.
In addition to the beautifully restored bikes there were some very good models on display.
But after a lifetime working as a precision engineer I've developed a very critical eye and I commented to Tina that several of them were spoilt by poor detail finish; to which she replied: ‘If you can do better then you'd better do one of your own'.
I decided to take her up on her challenge and on returning home my first decision was which bike to choose and what scale to build it.
The choice of machine was an easy one as Jeff Smith was one of my great heroes and my B44 Victor was an exact copy of the one he'd won his second world title on back in 1965.
I wanted to make it a slightly odd-ball scale which meant it would be as small as possible yet big enough to show all of the detail required in a fully-working model.
After stripping down and measuring the Victor's front forks I decided that 1/7th scale would be the perfect size.” Four winters and 2,000 working hours later the model B44 was finished and while it's impossible to cover much of this in detail Tony gave an overview of the way the project proceeded.
"After measuring everything up, the first thing I constructed was the frame."
This was made from high-quality steel tube and all of the joints are silver soldered to replicate the brazing on the original B44.
The frame was fairly straightforward but making the engine was very time consuming as I first had to strip my spare Victor motor before I could replicate it in miniature.”
Every component for the engine – which goes together in the same way as the BSA manual instructs – was made out of aluminium on Tony's model making lathe and milling machine. But making the moulds for the tyres was a great challenge, which necessitated a lot of precision filing under a magnifying glass.
"I wanted to replicate the mould flash you would find on a newly made tyre, so the only way to do that was to make it in two halves and then glue them together.
This resulted in countless hours of measuring, drilling the holes in the mould and then filing them out square to replicate the knobblies on the original tyre – all done with a set of needle files to a tolerance of plus or minus 0.005 of an inch.”
The wheel spokes were laced and the moulded rubber tyres were then shrink fitted onto the rim and held in place with the security bolts.
With the fully working front and rear suspension in place it was now starting to look like a motorcycle.
However, there was still a lot of detail work required and things like the front brake and clutch levers had to be shaped and sculpted by hand.
"My goal was to make sure that both of the brakes, clutch lever and throttle all operated, so there was a lot of head scratching before I came across the perfect thing to use as control cables; some plastic wire with a wire insert used on gift tags.
The only modification needed was to slide out the tight fitting inner wire and replace it with some 0.008 fuse wire for a perfect control cable.”
The last point of detail was to replicate the original advertising and sponsorship stickers and despite nearly falling off his chair when he saw the minute dimensions needed, ‘The sticker Man' in Saltash did a superb job.”
The finished model is a fantastic achievement and as it sits alongside its full-size sibling in Tony's workshop it is a fitting reminder of that golden era when Jeff Smith and his booming BSA ruled the motocross world.
Features
- Fully-working front forks (adjustable in yokes)
- Fully-working rear shocks with four-position load adjustment and can be stripped to alter spring rate
- Front and rear brakes fully working and adjustable
- Rear wheel chain adjusters
- Folding footpegs
- Folding kickstart with spring return quadrant
- Clutch crankcase lever and push rod spring-loaded
- Fuel tank with Monza filler cap, fully-vented
- Quick-action twistgrip
- On-off fuel tap
- Twin air-filter system with QD side panels
- Seat and side panels removable to access filter box
- Fuel tank removable with centre bolt fixing
- Fully-adjustable handlebars and levers
- Frame: high-quality steel tube (oil in frame) all joints silver-soldered to replicate high-quality brazing
- Rubber oil feed pipes to oil pump, return to top tube and feed to rocker box
- Sump filter removable for cleaning
- Engine dismantles/ assembles as per workshop manual
- Rocker box, cylinder head and barrel all dismantle as per manual
- Wheel spokes laced and tensioned for true and to position rear wheel offset
- Moulded rubber tyres fitted on to aluminium rim with security bolts and air valve
- Exhaust – stainless 316 fine tubing formed and polished
Little and large
The frame of the full size bike was built by Eric Cheney for the late Roy Davis and is a close copy of the works machine raced by Jeff Smith but with an inch-longer swinging arm and a bigger radius on the bottom loop of the frame behind the gearbox.
Otherwise the dimensions are exactly as the factory specification.
The B44 model carries race number 12 – Tony's allocated expert number in the South West Centre, while in Classic Racing the (full size) Victor was campaigned under number 212.
