NEO-CLASSIC CAFÉ TWINS
We ride John Mossey’s amazing Rickman Triumph and Maney Norton street racers
The clue is in the name. Café racers – it’s that second word that defines what they’re all about. The café bit is just the location for the action. The term may have been coined back in the ’50s, but what it stands for still has relevance today. A café racer should be all about going fast. As fast as you can. Of course, a touch of style is always welcome – and the best café racers are great looking as well as quick. These two machines – crafted in rural Hertfordshire by John Mossey – tick both boxes. Great looking? See for yourself. Fast? You bet.
In some ways, these two bikes are chalk and cheese. One is a Rickman Trident – a fast and furious fusion of multi-cylinder race-tuned engine in a slim and stiff chassis designed for road racing. Its big-bore three-cylinder engine thrives on revs and it’s not at its best until it comes on the cam. The other is a big, bruiser of a street bike. Again, the 1007cc Maney Morton engine is a bored racing motor, but it’s been detuned to soften its mighty punch for the road. And the frame is based on the Norton Featherbed trellis that set the standard for road bike handling for many years in its day. But look beyond the basics and the two machines have a lot in common. Modern brakes and suspension are the obvious common features of both bikes. But less immediately apparent – until you look closely at least – is the uncompromising level of craftsmanship that has gone into every aspect of their build. Built to order – and to a specific (though, John admits, constantly changing) design brief for one of his long-time customers, Australian businessman Frank Holder, they’re typical of the attention to detail that goes into every machine that rolls out of the Mossey workshop. Just what goes into creating one man’s vision of the perfect café racer? The Maney Norton is Frank Holder’s ideal Norton twin. He wanted a bike that looked like the classic café racer, with a Featherbed frame and a big Brit parallel-twin engine. But he wanted a bike that was fast, too. Seriously fast. Squeezing a full race 1007cc Maney Norton engine into a wideline Featherbed would do the trick. But, like all the best ideas, making it happen wasn’t that straightforward.
“As you’d expect,” smiles John, “there’s no way a Commando based engine would fit in a standard Featherbed frame. We got the guys who build the Featherbed replica frames for our Norvins – Burgess Frames in Wales – to build a one-off frame around the engine. They’ve done a great job. The frame looks like a Featherbed, but they’ve had to widen the rear subframe and the swingarm to allow us to fit a 150-section rear tyre as the customer wanted. The swingarm is a Seeley-type
‘THE MANEY NORTON IS A CLASSIC CAFÉ RACER– FEATHERBED FRAME AND A BIG BRIT PARALLEL-TWIN ENGINE’
unit rather than Norton style – again because Frank Holder likes the Seeley chain adjuster set-up.”
If the frame isn’t quite what it seems, neither is the engine. It might look like a Norton Commando at first, but it’s a far cry from anything that Norton produced back in the day. “It’s a brand new engine,” says John simply. Steve Maney manufactures all the parts to build a race-winning engine based on the Commando. I just had to build it – and soften it a bit for road use.”
That’s a simplification of the work that went into creating a brutally effective engine. For a start, John had to work out how to fit an Alton electric starter to the back of the primary drive case. Then there was the small matter of machining up a new output shaft for the TT Industries racing five-speed gearbox to compensate for the engine being moved 15mm across in the frame to get the chain run right. And, because the customer wanted a bike that ticks over, starts on the button and promises reliability, John had to knock back the fearsome 11.5:1 compression ratio to a (slightly) more civilised 9:1, so he not only had to manufacture a plate to fit under the barrels, but also get new, longer, push rods made to suit.
“It’s still a bit of a beast,” John laughs. “The heads are gas flowed, it runs bigger valves with altered valve angles and the crank is much stronger than a stock Norton assembly. I’ve had to soften the cam timing and knock back the ignition advance a touch, too.” The monster engine breathes through a pair of 38mm