BILL IVY’S JAWA 350
Fast and technically advanced, Bill Ivy’s Jawa 350 V4 suffered from Eastern Bloc build quality. We review its history and ride it
A ride on his final race bike – and why it had unfulfilled potential
Bill Ivy caught and passed Agostini on the MV triple at Assen twice in 1969 on this bike, each time pulling into a comfortable lead before the Jawa had an attack of the splutters which allowed Ago to reel him in and pass. This race summed up the V4 – a brilliant bike, dragged down by reliability issues.
You could easily argue that only Bill Ivy’s tragic death in 1969 prevented Jawa winning the 350cc world title that year – his replacement Grassetti wasn’t in the same league in terms of riding talent, yet by the time he got aboard the 350, the Czech engineers had sorted out the reliability well enough for him to finish second to Ago in the final points table, albeit with half as many points.
The story of this extraordinary bike started in the early ’60s when Jawa designer Zdenek Tichy became one of the first Europeans to recognise the future direction of road racing development and designed a series of two-stroke GP racers. In 1966 he began working on the water-cooled Jawa Type 673 350cc V4, which made its debut in the 1967 Dutch TT at Assen in the hands of Gustav Havel. However, it seized three times in practice, and again in the race. A key issue was Jawa’s inability to obtain the latest specification bearings as well as steels available to teams in western Europe and Japan. This problem came to haunt the Jawa team.
The V4 was packed with novel ideas, though. It featured four separate crankshafts, with each pair coupled via splines to a large central straight-cut gear pinion connected to an intermediate shaft. A unique feature was that any one of the crankshafts could be removed for service with the engine still in the frame. Measuring 48 x 47.6mm, the V4 motor was liquid cooled from the start, originally via thermo-siphon, then from 1968 onwards with a separate water pump. Stinger
expansion chamber exhausts of the kind invented by MZ just 120 miles away on the other side of the East German/czech border were fitted, helping to deliver 68bhp at 13,200rpm transmitted via a seven-speed gearbox and a massive dry clutch. In another avantgarde step, the side-loading cassette-type gear cluster could be extracted to change ratios without opening the engine. Havel brought the bike home in an encouraging fourth place in Jawa’s home Czech GP at Brno. After that, the V4 didn’t race again in ’67, as Tichy and his R&D team put it through an intense R&D programme to try to make it reliable. But 1968 initially saw repeated DNFS caused by seizure, though by mid-season things began to come together. Czech rider Franta Stastny finished on the rostrum at Brno, following this up with fourth in the Ulster, and then sixth at Monza on the V4. By 1969 the V4 was clocked at 160mph down the main runway of Prague Airport, so it was certainly fast, and after much development hopefully reliable enough to be a contender with new star rider Bill Ivy aboard.
His debut on the V4 came at Cesenatico on Italy’s Adriatic coast but the bike misfired throughout the race before seizing on lap 10. However, one month later on May 4, the GP season began at Jarama in Spain with the 350cc race run in a downpour. Agostini splashed to an untroubled victory on the MV triple, but Ivy completed the early laps with the Jawa running on three cylinders, before it finally cleared and he tore through the field to third place. But then the Czech V4 motor seized again. One week later the German GP at Hockenheim was run in hot sunshine on a fast track far better suited to the potent V4 two-stroke, and saw Agostini again win convincingly – but Ivy was second just five seconds behind, with team-mate Stastny third. At Assen on June 28, the MV rider led off the line, but Ivy shot past him
to lead the race for the next two laps, before a cylinder on the Jawa started to splutter, leaving Ago to regain the lead on lap four, and pull away. But then the Czech V4 cleared its throat and ran properly again, allowing Ivy to overtake his Italian rival again on lap 12, pulling away to a seemingly certain victory. Cruelly, the Jawa engine began misfiring, allowing Agostini to re-pass him and go on to victory. The Brit limped home in second and it was now clear that Ivy and Jawa had the measure of the all-conquering Italian duo, especially on faster tracks.
Sadly, the next 350cc GP was the fateful round at the Sachsenring at which Ivy died during practice.
Jawa continued racing the V4, and Italian rider Silvio Grassetti wound up second in the world championship on it after winning the season-ending Yugoslavian GP at Opatija, following up one week later with victory in a non-championship international at Salzburg. Those were the V4’s only race victories, and at the end of 1970 Jawa ended its road-racing activities to focus instead on winning a succession of world speedway titles.
Only three complete Type 673 V4 rotary-valve twostroke road racers were built by the Jawa factory, and after the Prague-based Czech firm withdrew from road racing, one of these was acquired by its designer, Zdenek Tichy, which was later bought by French former GP ace Jean-françois Baldé.
“My first GP race was in 1973, so I never competed against the Jawa V4,” says Baldé, “but I was well aware of what it represented – a fantastically avantgarde design produced against the odds by a passionate group of people working for a state-owned company behind the Iron Curtain, where many things we took for granted in the West were unavailable. That’s why whenever I raced in the Eastern Bloc, I always gave away any spare tyres,
‘IT WAS A FANTASTICALLY AVANTGARDE DESIGN PRODUCED AGAINST THE ODDS BY A PASSIONATE GROUP OF PEOPLE’
cans of oil or spark plugs to the local riders who had very limited access to such things. I was repaid for that as I was coming to the end of my career, when one of the riders I’d been helping introduced me to the man who owned the ex-bill Ivy V4 Jawa, which he wanted to sell.
“It had to be the Ivy bike – he was the only one to use a single-leading-shoe rear brake. For whatever reason, he didn’t care for the twin-leading-shoe drum the other riders used, so Jawa made him a special rear brake, and that was on the bike, which although complete didn’t run. It had only been rather basically restored, not very well, by the friend of the designer who now owned it.”
Baldé began a ten-year restoration project that became all-consuming in his quest for originality. “I like the technology of the V4; I wanted to make it live again, but in the context of the era. I had to concentrate on 100% originality – down to the correct handlebar grips, which I was given by the owner of a 125 Jawa, or the Dunlop triangular tyres for which I invented a special anti-ageing solution to softens them up without detracting from grip.
“I even found the correct 15,000rpm Smiths tachometer which they made especially for Jawa – the bike had a more common 12,000rpm one fitted when I bought it, but I found the correct one at the cousin of Milan Vasic, the man who built the chassis for Jawa. I went to him to ask him to make me a new frame, because the original was too badly damaged to use on the track, even for demo rides. That’s why this one has no chassis number – but it is a 100% identical design, made by the same man who made the original one.” Once he began work on V4 engine number P350/349, Jean-françois had a surprise in store. “I found that the pistons were larger than the 48mm bore of the 350cc V4 engine – just sufficient to make it eligible for the 500cc
class,” he says. “Then I discovered that Bill Ivy had been entered for the 500GP class at Sachsenring on the jumbo V4 Jawa, and in fact he practiced on it the day before he died. So then I realised that I had in my possession the very first twin-crankshaft 500cc V4 two-stroke ever made – 15 years before Yamaha ‘invented’ it!”
After constantly assembling and disassembling the Jawa, finally riding it for the first time was a special moment. “The first time I started it up in 2002 it was like making love for the first time – ooh la-la!” says Jean-françois who spent five years demonstrating it at all kinds of events. But then came the moment to bid farewell. “I’m not a collector,” he says firmly, “so having restored the Jawa to full trackworthy condition just the way it was, and demonstrated its validity on track, it was time to say goodbye and move on to something else.” Bernard Richards, the owner of BRM, a French luxury watch manufacturer, bought the bike to decorate his office, but in 2013 it was acquired by the indefatigable Sammy Miller for his museum. After a shakedown test at the local WWII airfield, I was privileged to be asked by Sammy to ride the ex-ivy V4 Jawa up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
‘THERE’S ZERO POWER BELOW 8000rpm. YOU OFTEN HAVE TO TO ABUSE THE CLUTCH TO KEEP THE V4 TURNING UP HIGH’
RIDING THE EX-BILL IVY JAWA V4
The V4 motor’s one-up right-foot gearchange is pretty heavy and therefore quite slow by two-stroke standards – it’s a little stiff, but quite positive, and while it isn’t nearly as light-action as a Japanese gearbox, I never missed a gear on any of the four days I rode the Jawa. However, the action of the massive dry clutch is really nice – quite light but very precise, making it easy to coax the engine into the powerband when exiting a slow turn like the left-hander past Goodwood House.
That’s critical, since there’s zero power from the rotary-valve motor below 8000rpm, meaning you must often be prepared to abuse the clutch to keep the V4 engine turning up high. You can’t think of shifting up a gear anywhere under 12,500rpm.
You can haul the Jawa down from high speed thanks to the big 240mm four-leading-shoe front drum brake. It works well without grabbing, especially when cold – not an easy task, as I know from years of experience with comparable Fontana brakes. But the rear single leading-shoe drum was pretty pathetic – heaven knows why Ivy insisted on that.
The Jawa motor is purposeful, and I got used to winding the engine up to 10,000rpm to get it off the line, then slipping the clutch before holding a gear to 12,800rpm to ensure it was still in the powerband in the next gear. The power delivery was pretty controllable, more so than on many other rotary-valve two-strokes of the same era I’ve ridden. The handling felt confident, too – the skinny Dunlop tyres had warmed up, and their narrow section helped speed up the Jawa’s steering without making it nervous – just sharp.
Peak revs on the Jawa back in the day were 13,500, with maximum power of 68bhp delivered at 13,200rpm, after which it soon stopped pulling, so no point revving it harder and risking mechanical misbehaviour.
Modern oils and Baldé’s ignition mods have made the Jawa a pussycat of a stroker, and it was on its best behaviour when I rode it. As such, it was a portent of the future, and of a dramatic shift in technical supremacy.