Honda returns in style
In order to appreciate Honda’s return to GP racing in the early 1980s you have to look back to the 1960s and gain some empathy.
Honda had always been a four stroke company and had eschewed two stroke engine at the earliest available opportunity, even if their very first bikes were powered by stinkwheel engines! Soichiro Honda perceived the two stroke as a dirty, smelly device and had struck out as a champion for the poppet valved four stroke as soon as the firm was commercially able to do so. Therefore, the firm’s winning ways in the 1960s had been with multi cylinder engines culminating with the sublime 250/6, although the 125/5 was arguably the most technically accomplished of the period engines. When the company stopped racing in 1968, having already proved itself beyond doubt, it was already facing serious competition from the likes of Suzuki and Yamaha.
A subsequent change of heart saw a turn to the GP tracks with the infamous NR500. This engine was designed to get around the FIM limits of just four cylinders in a 500 GP bike whilst still ‘keeping the faith’ with the four stoke mantra laid down by Mr. Honda himself. The concept was as brave as it was flawed – essentially build an eight cylinder bike then link each pair of pistons, making them oval rather than round. With eight connecting rods, two per piston and 32 valves (!) the motor neatly dodged around the four pot limit, whilst supposedly being more powerful than the strokers. Dogged by technical issues and hopelessly out-performed, Honda gave up after just two years to brood and sulk, but what came out of the racing R&D department certainly more than made up for the immeasurable pain of the troubleprone NR500s.
It must have been hard to change to two stroke GP bikes, but the firm had already made the move for dirt bikes so it wasn’t as if The Big Aitch was going into this blind. Arch rivals Suzuki and Yamaha had taken the most obvious and logical route years before by running 500cc four cylinder motors, and with good justification. It had long been accepted that a two stroke’s potency was at its maximum when each combustion chamber was limited to 125cc, any bigger and power was squandered. However, Honda had been assiduously watching GP racing at all levels and had spotted a growing trend where 250 lap times were often surprisingly close to those of the more powerful 500s. They perceived that big, bulky bikes were harder to ride fast and, the seed sown, Honda once again did its own thing.
Co-opting Shinichi Miyakoshi from the moto-x side of the racing stable, the R&D teams used dirt bike thinking allied to the novel thinking employed by the post-war DKW racing team. Honda had to adopt the reed valve inlet system championed initially by Yamaha. Some 25-35bhp down on their rivals at around 110bhp, what the resultant NS500 lacked in grunt it made up for in ease of riding, handling and, crucially, its ability to maintain higher cornering speeds. With a young Freddie Spencer on board the bike even managed to win two GPs in its debut season in 1982.
In the hands of Freddie again for 1983 there were three wins plus numerous podiums and the occasional fourth place saw the
young rider win the championship by two points from established GP winner Kenny Roberts on the Yamaha YZR500. In an ideal world Honda would have developed the lightweight triple further, but behind the scenes there were concerns. Pushed hard the motor was prone to serious vibrations, which threatened the crank’s reliability and any extra revs in the hunt for more power were likely to compromise race results.
Major lessons had been learnt and
Honda now had a grip on racing two strokes at the highest levels – 1984 was going to be a very intriguing year for all concerned.
Based in the south-west of the UK, close to Bristol, Louigi Moto is the UK’s number one independent Ducati specialist. Specialising in race bike preparation, suspension set up, fault finding and servicing, its workshop’s capable of taking your race bike to championship winning levels – or even just keeping your pride and joy on the road year in, year out.
Who’s in charge?
The man behind Louigi Moto is Richard Llewellin (pictured right). Known as ‘Louigi’ to his friends because of his love of Italian bikes, Richard’s been spannering since he was a young lad. After training as a master mechanic in Keynsham, Richard first made a
MCM: HOW DID YOU GET INTO BIKES?
RL: Growing up as a lad I had a fascination for motorcycles and aeroplanes. It’s something in my make-up. And so, I was the most excited kid in the street when I got my first bike, a FS1E, in the spring of 1976 when I was 16. Man, that summer was the best. I had freedom, a proper job and it was hot. Life was good. By the time I turned 17, I wanted more speed, so I went out and bought a Suzuki TS185 and discovered the local green lanes (which were still in abundance back then). I then progressed to more serious competition machinery and started to compete in local off-road events, working my way up to Enduro racing. It was much to the dismay of my father, who had no interest in motorcycles (despite owning a James Captain in the late 50s), and complained that it was a waste of time and money. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t like football like him. I still have no interest in football, and he still has no interest in motorcycles.
MCM: HOW DID YOU START SPANNERING?
RL: As long as I can remember I’ve always had a passion for making things, and when my father took me to his friend’s scrap yard, I was in heaven. Even at a young age I was a regular visitor, and I soon learned how to take things apart, and I quickly realised that some of the parts I removed would also fit other vehicles. While still at school I also started making radio-controlled models, bought with my paper-round money. Those models were the first building blocks for later life, as I spent many years building my own cars and bikes. While most of my friends were starting families, I was making stuff in the garage.
I find mechanics quite easy. I feel like I’ve been alive before and have been taught stuff, because although I’m not that intelligent, it just comes naturally to me. It’s like someone is telling me how to do something. I suppose what it’s really down to is that if you are interested in something you will excel, and if you’re not, you won’t.
After school, I was fortunate to join the biggest local employer in town, carrying out a formal apprenticeship with Cadbury PLC as a heavy goods and motor vehicle mechanic. I spent 10 years fixing anything that had wheels and an engine around the factory (from 29-tonne articulated trucks through to the managing director’s Jaguar and a Lister engined tug used for pulling waste). There were lots of mechanics on site – some were good, some not so good. I learned from the good ones, and ended up doing all the tricky stuff that wasn’t mainstream. During that time I was also racing motorcycles as a hobby, and building hotrods, too. I had a little sideline building engines and maintaining friends’ motorcycles and cars, generally having an allround good time. Growing up in the 60s and 70s was quite awesome, particularly compared with the current times.
My life changed in 1986 when Cadbury made me redundant. My father also worked at the factory as a manager, and was pensioned off with early retirement. With a recession looming, I decided to start my own business. Just as I was looking for premises, my father bought this big Georgian B&B with his redundancy money and the whole family moved in and started a hotel. At the rear of the premises was a large workshop where I could start my little business. During the next few years of hard work the workshop ended up becoming my ‘toy shop’. Over the next few years my toyshop became the envy of the local town. I had many bikes and cars, and I raced everything I owned.
MCM: HOW DID LOUIG GI MOTO START?
RL: Fast forward to the 90s – and I was properly into watching the superbike racing on TV. And so I went out and bought a new 748SP (one of just a handful imported into the UK). Me and some pals worked out a 40-mile circuit through the Mendip Hills, starting and ending at my workshop. We called it the Mendip TT. Before long, it started to get a bit silly on the road, so I decided to do a couple of trackdays on the 748, and before long I entered a race with NG Roadracing. I was instantly competitive and the bike quickly evolved from a modified road bike to a full-blown race machine.
Soon I was preparing other Ducati racing machines for lads on the grid. My little cottage industry took off, and I quickly progressed to fixing road bikes from the local Ducati Owners Club (which I was running at the time). The hotel was sold in 2002, so I decided to rent a small industrial unit close to our little Mendip TT course, and start all over again.
MCM: WHAT IS IT ABOUT DUCATIS?
RL: What I like about the Ducati is the engineering. I like the fact that at the time I got into them, all my friends thought I was mad and very few people knew anything about the fuel injected 4-valve engines. I just took one apart and thought “this is fairly basic”, and set about doing a few things to make it a bit better. In my world everything can be made a bit better. Even the best. Admittedly, I’m not so passionate about the newer models. I think they are a bit Japanese like. I’ve had my moment in time with the Ducati and I’ve decided I only like the belt drive models full stop.
MCM: WHO WORKS FOR YOU?
RL: At one time there were five of us working at Louigi, but I’ve since slimmed it down to just myself and ‘Big’ Chris Perrott in the workshop, with Bob Chapman coming in a couple of days a week to look after the sales stuff.
Chris and I have had exactly the same formal background training, except Chris also worked at a Ducati main dealer. Chris brought valuable skills with him and between the pair of us very little gets overlooked. In my book, Chris is the best Ducati mechanic in the Northern Hemisphere, and he does 80% of all the retail work in the workshop. Every single job is discussed by the pair of us, whether it be a menial service or a full engine blueprint.
We also have Chris Steedman, who runs the dyno in the same building. One of the pioneers of fuel injection mapping, his dyno service goes hand in hand with our custom engine builds, because we can adjust the fuel mapping and ignition through the original factory ECU without the need for an additional adjustment module or device.
MCM: WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO RECENTLY?
RL: We’ve been developing the little TT1 750 Ducati – after many seasons racing in the UK-based Desmodue series. It all started with a phone call from Ian Sinclair, and then a test ride by Alex Sinclair. We developed the machine, which Alex has led to several Classic TT outings and silver replicas, a championship win in the CRMC Post Classic 750, a 1300 class win, and many lap records including the outright at Chimay.
Since then we have developed a 500 version of the same machine, which went on to win the Post Classic 500 Aircooled Championship in 2018. Following on from the 750 and 500 models, we’ve also built an 1100 with rising rate rear suspension, which Richard Molnar is campaigning under the Molnar Precision flag.g Although the machine is still under development, it’s had a promising start to its career with Richard Molnar spannering the bike at the Preston workshop, and carrying out the development at the circuit.
MCM: WHAT SERVICES DO YOU OFFER?
RL: We offer lots of services. We can do cylinder head work and gas flowing, Pistal piston and Carillo conrod supplies, superfinishing, crank grinding and resizing, cylinder bore resizing and plating, crank balancing, valves and valve guides, camshaft and rocker arm repair, cylinder head skimming, Malossi carb kits, oversize main bearing modification to worn crankcases. We manufacture our own vernier adjustable cam pulleys, rearset footrest and the 45mm serpent primary exhaust for the TT1. We also have a new RTD developed ignition system for the later ‘straightcut’ family of engines that does away with the Kokusan system and is fully adjustable. TAB alloy fuel tanks are usually in stock; T45 cantilever and rising rate frames are made locally to order. Suspension-wise, we use the Italian-made Matris rear shock to our own spec, and the Louigi Moto developed Marzzocchi M1R fork internals. We’re suppliers of Marvic and Dymag wheels, and suppliers of Avon racing tyres, too.
In fact, we only supply parts that we use on our own racing machines, or parts that have been developed by ourselves on the track. And our results speak for themselves, don’t they…?
We manufacture parts that are no longer available and make our own special parts that we don’t really advertise because there aren’t many shops building Ducati engines, so we just keep them for ourselves; they are part of our special recipe. There is a good market in the secondhand spares though, so we’re constantly looking for parts and trading in older Ducati spares. In fact, we still buy whole bikes and strip them down for spares.
MCM: HOW IS THE MARKET CHANGING?
RL: There is a massive interest in the TT1 and TT2 at the moment, and we’ve slipped into that niche quite nicely. The bevel scene is also buoyant, but I send them off to other specialists. There is room for everyone, after all. The bodgers get caught out and fizzle away, and the good and willing survive.
Louigi Moto has had to be flexible and change with the times, but saying that we get loads of 916 and 748 models through our door. That’s really the backbone of the business. Chris and I have been working on this type of machine since it was first built, and we’re still working on them to this day.
MCM: WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE?
RL: As we get older we naturally slow down (no comments on my lap times, please), and I do have a five-year plan to slow the business down a bit. We are going to move to a smaller premises and concentrate on building the classic racing machines and engines. All belt drive models will be catered for and we’ll have a good range of associated spares. The Pantah engine model will be our signature dish with a new vertical head casting being produced very soon. We will also be able to offer a complete engine service, and associated parts and advice for the DIY enthusiast.