Trials Torque: Bantam Unveiled
By John Dickinson on 6th Sep 17
LAST week we ran a teaser pic asking what the rigid Bantam pic is all about. So this week well tell you!
Drayton Bantam bossman Jim Pickering ran a charity raffle earlier in the year - with several charities hopefully to benefit if ticket sales went well - with one of the Drayton frame kits as the sole prize.
Tickets were £10 apiece, many were sold at the Classic Dirt Bike Show at Telford in February.
And we are pleased to say that all did indeed go very well indeed and that the chosen Charities benefitted to the tune of a total of £2,750.
The money was split three ways by Jim, £1,000 went to Worcester Air Ambulance, £1,000 to a charity called GUTSY which is all about cancer aftercare and the Chemo ward at Kidderminster hospital benefited to the tune of £750.
Which brings us to the bike.
The winner of the raffle was Cumbrian Tony Swidenbank and he is a bit of a Drayton fan, already having built two swinging arm Drayton Bantams (one to Scottish Two Day spec, one for every other Pre-65 trial) and a chrome framed Cub engined model for Sunday best.
So when he won the raffle Tony decided something different was in order and he asked Jim if he could have one of his rigid frame kits.
No problem to Mr Pickering who duly turned up with the goods and the handover was actually completed at the Scottish Pre-65 Two Day prizegiving at the Kinlochleven community centre back in May.
Back home after the Scottish Tony wasted no time and got cracking sourcing all the bits and pieces required for the build-up - and just three months later the rigid Drayton was finished!
He's a dab hand at building Bantam trials engines and the four-speed unit has been treated to the popular 185cc overbore and Tony's own recipe for compression ratio after lots of trial and error with his other bikes.
There's also some time-honoured tweaks to the gearbox while the clutch is standard Bantam - although that may eventually change.
An old-school left hand engine casing isn't quite what it seems as it houses an electronic ignition set-up - but it looks the part.
For the front-end Tony went for a brand new set of REH forks saying: "If I'm only having suspension at one end then I want the best!"
The very period looking underslung exhaust and flat fishtail silencer came with the frame kit and it is surpringly well tucked out of the way, especially the front pipe.
It also sounds amazing, very quiet yet not at all restricted. In truth it actually sounds better than most overhead systems but as we all know two-strokes are all about the exhaust and it isn't an exact science.
So at the end of the day it is a win-win situation. Tony has built himself a lovely little rigid Bantam - that he will pick and choose when to ride (he actually fancies trying the Scottish Two day on the rigid) and Jim has raised a more than useful amount of cash for charity.
Great job all round.
