Suburban VISIONARY
Bob Geeson’s REG 250cc twin racer, hand-built as a part-time project in his shed, humbled factory-backed teams and even led Honda’s top brass up the garden path...
Germany’s NSU Rennmax is widely credited with being the first twin-cylinder 250GP racer. But two years before the NSU’S 1952 debut, a comparable British-built parallel twin was ridden to 12th place in the Isle of Man’s Lightweight TT by Bob Geeson, its designer and constructor.
He literally hand-made the entire bike (engine included) in his home workshop during spare time from his demanding job as Senior Design Engineer for the Metal Box Company.
At a time when the low, light, long-legged Moto Guzzi singles set the class standard, the REG 250 displayed genuine mould-breaking thinking which led wealthier teams like NSU and MV Agusta to follow it down a technical path that the REG’S results had proven to be correct. That it was created in his spare time by an inspired amateur working at home, makes the success it attained in its decade of racing all the greater an achievement.
Bob Geeson’s road racing career began in 1936 at Brooklands and Donington with 250/350cc Excelsiors, before his Isle of Man debut in the 1938 Manx GP, where he retired with a dropped valve when lying fourth. The engineering boffin was seconded to urgent war work in WWII – but despite surviving the Blitz, he was injured when a pedestrian stepped out in front of his bike in 1941. A damaged hip and pronounced limp remained with him – indeed, when Geeson started to race again post-war, he was officially certified as disabled. He resumed racing in the 1948 Manx GP, where he again retired, this time on the very first REG special, with a radial-valve 250cc Rudge engine in Geeson’s own frame.
Geeson settled on building a twin after considering a four, on the grounds that there’d be half as many parts to make. “In retrospect, I later realised that was a bad mistake,” he said. “But the very idea of building any engine at all was rather daunting, and I wanted to get out on the track reasonably soon, not be cooped up all year making components.”
He built the first REG in the winter of 1949-50, a dohc twin which duly appeared in the 1950 Isle of Man TT. Its reliability despite its appetite for high revs combined to give Geeson and the REG 12th place in its very first race. The REG’S dry sump engine featured a one-piece 360° (two-up) crankshaft which Geeson machined from a solid billet of HCN5 aluminium originally weighing 80lb (35kg); 200 hours of spare-time machining later, the finished crank was just 8lb (3.6kg)! Vertically-split magnesium crankcases supported the crank in lipped roller bearings, with a plain centre main bearing onto which oil was fed directly to lubricate each crankpin. Machined-up forged aluminium conrods with split big-ends used Vandervell shell bearings, with an eight-inch (203mm) diameter outside flywheel on the left, enabling a narrow, strong crankcase design.
On the right, a train of four spur gears were spun directly off the crank, to first drive the inlet camshaft, then (via another two spur gears) the exhaust cam. En route, they also operated the BTH magneto, mounted beneath the twin one-inch (25.4mm) Amal GP carbs at the base of the siamesed cylinders, firing the two centrally-mounted plugs. The later world title-winning NSU Rennmax and MV Agusta twins were very similar in design to the earlier REG, which also allowed the compression ratio to be varied by permitting up to 40 thou variance in the cylinder-head deck height, without affecting the mesh of the camdrive pinions.
The one-piece aluminium cylinder block with pressed-in steel liners originally gave a 53.5 x 55mm layout, but Geeson later altered this to 54 x 54.5mm in pursuit of higher revs. Such ‘square’ dimensions, later universal on 250GP twostrokes, were very advanced for 70 years ago, another indication of Geeson’s forward thinking. Bob machined the one-piece cylinder head himself from a solid block of
magnesium, fins and all, then inserted a bronze combustion chamber skull. His own lightweight cam followers ensured trouble-free operation of the two-valves-per-cylinder top end throughout the REG’S life, despite engine speeds of over 10,000rpm. Coil valve springs were fitted (a further advanced feature, when even the Manx Norton had bulkier, dirtier, exposed hairpin springs), two per valve. Complete with carbs and magneto, the engine weighed 63lb (29kg), with a four-speed Albion gearbox and chain primary drive. After moving to South Croydon to be closer to work (so he’d have more time in the workshop) Geeson could now start short circuit racing with the REG, finishing second to Maurice Cann’s Guzzi at Boreham in September, 1951. Meanwhile, a successful foray to the Ulster GP saw Geeson and the REG finish seventh – one place off a world championship point, as the only multi in the race. The REG was now competitive, and fourth in the Hutchinson 100 at Silverstone confirmed it. The REG and its creator had now become a leading force in the British 250 scene, and in 1953 the bike’s promise finally bore fruit. With a larger-capacity, more shapely fuel tank, Geeson finished 10th in the Lightweight TT at a creditable average speed of 71.74mph, gaining his longawaited bronze TT Replica, then took the REG to its firstever race victory at Crystal Palace.
Also racing that day was a rising 19-year-old named John Surtees, who’d obviously noted the bike, and during the meeting asked Bob if there was a chance of him racing it.
“John wanted to ride the REG in the British championship race at Blandford in August,” recalled Bob. “It didn’t take me long to decide this was the ideal opportunity to start cutting down on riding myself. I had my TT Replica, but my hip was so painful they had to lift me off the bike even after a 50-miler at Silverstone. I couldn’t take much more. “By then I enjoyed working on the bike at least as much as riding it, and the chance to see how it would perform in the hands of a hard young runner like John was too good to miss. So I said yes.”
Surtees finished third in that Blandford race behind two Moto Guzzis, so agreed from then on to race the REG whenever possible, scoring his debut victory on the twin at Brands Hatch, and breaking the lap record. Meanwhile, in the Ulster GP, Geeson himself had led the works NSU Rennmax of World champion-elect Werner Haas for one
‘THE REG AND ITS CREATOR HAD BECOME A LEADING FORCE IN THE BRITISH 250 SCENE’
glorious lap, before giving best to the faired German machine.
In 1954, Surtees – on Geeson’s bike – was the undisputed British 250cc class champion, winning 15 races out of 17 starts at circuits all over Britain, setting new lap records at seven of them. To keep up with maintenance, Geeson, now 38, forfeited riding it himself in the TT, but in the Ulster GP in August he achieved another personal landmark when he scored his and the REG’S first world championship point, with sixth place behind the phalanx of NSUS.
If British recognition of the REG’S worth had been slow in coming, its performance had been watched with interest from abroad. At the end of 1954, well-heeled Australian rider Jack Walters arrived unannounced on Geeson’s Croydon doorstep, and declared he’d come to buy his bike! Several hours of relentless persuasion later, he left with it in his van, later to be shipped Down Under where it enjoyed considerable success in the hands of Walters and other, younger riders he sponsored, like Max Brumhead, who won the 1959 Australian TT on the REG.
“There were several improvements I wanted to try out, which could only be done if I stopped racing this bike and built a new one,” said Bob. “John had earned a works Norton ride, so I wasn’t letting him down by stopping.” For the next two years Geeson focused on an evo-reg 250. While closely following the previous motor’s format, the revamped parallel-twin engine’s cylinder block and head
‘JOHN SURTEES, ON GEESON’S BIKE, WON 15 OUT OF HIS 17 BRITISH 250 RACES IN 1954’
were cast up in RR54B light alloy, for which Geeson himself made all the patterns – a three-month job. The engine was more deeply finned than before, with offset 10mm plugs to permit larger valves – a 30mm inlet and 28.25mm exhaust, each with two coil springs. The hollow crankshaft was again a one-piece nitrided unit, but now with no centre main bearing. The four-speed Albion gearbox and dry clutch were retained, but a five-speed version came later. This revised engine was mounted in a completely new chassis, designed by Geeson but made for him by Ernie Earles in Birmingham. Maybe because of this, an Earles fork was fitted at first, but this wasn’t a success, and by 1957 Geeson had reverted to a conventional Norton Roadholder telescopic fork, with a nine-inch (230mm) AJS 7R front brake, and Matchless ‘candlestick’ rear shocks, while the wheelbase was a compact 53in (1346mm).
The new frame was a semi-duplex design, with a single top tube brazed to the steering head, and a full twin-loop lower cradle running to the rear Girling shocks’ upper mounts. It was a strong, workmanlike design which, forks aside, worked almost perfectly from the outset. Total weight was 240lb (109kg) complete with an alloy dustbin fairing which permitted a top speed of 125.30mph on the MIRA banking.
Geeson was determined to construct two bikes, so while he began work on the second one, Jim Baughn rode the first MKII REG at the last Brands meeting of 1956, winning first time out. The new REG was in business.
GP star John Hartle agreed to ride it in as many GPS as possible in 1957, finishing second first time out at Oulton Park to that year’s future 250GP champion, Cecil Sandford on the works Mondial single, making the fastest lap after John Surtees had crashed the new MV twin trying to keep up!
In the REG’S first race abroad, Hartle stunned onlookers by grabbing pole position for the 250cc German GP at Hockenheim on the home-made British twin, though only finished eighth after a torrential downpour brought about a misfire. Hartle non-started the TT after crashing his 350 Norton, then had a massive accident at Assen while holding seventh place on the very last lap of the Dutch TT, destroying the engine after the REG flipped over and landed upside-down with the throttle jammed wide open.
The damage was too great for Geeson to repair until midway through 1959. “I realised that we simply didn’t have the facilities to do GPS,” said Bob. “However good your bike, you can’t take on the factories successfully as a one-man band, without any spares back-up other than what you can find time to make yourself. Still, it showed the bike was on a par with the best the opposition could produce.” For 1958, an up-and-coming young rider named Derek Minter rode the remaining REG exclusively, never once being beaten on it on home ground at Brands, nor finishing out of the top three elsewhere.
Over the next five seasons, the pair of REG twins consistently figured in the top three places of British 250cc races. Geeson’s meticulously-kept statistics record that, in a total of 153 starts during the REG twins’ 11-year race career up to 1961, the bikes scored 32 victories (21% of all races started), finished in the top three places no less than 40% of the time, and failed to finish in 25% of races for any reason, including just seven crashes (remarkably, Geeson himself never crashed once on any bike, in a 65-race career). The lap record was broken in 8.5% of the starts. Basically, it was either win, place or bust.
Minter moved on to other things, but Fred Hardy scored the REG’S best finish on the Island, coming home seventh in the 1962 TT. But not only was the new wave of two-strokes threatening to take over supremacy in the 250GP class, it was also by now becoming impossible for Bob Geeson to bear the pain from his hip he felt while working on the bikes, and after the REG’S 1963 TT swansong ended in another retirement for
Chris Vincent with ignition problems, he called it a day.
The sole remaining complete REG followed its predecessor to Australia, while Bob himself retained the disassembled remains of the other bike, which he’d planned to rebuild for display. But, instead, everything ended up in a bike museum run by his two cousins, who displayed the complete engine beside the bare chassis, and ended up owning it all after Bob passed away. Then, Sammy Miller became involved.
“I’d seen Bob riding the REG himself at the Ulster GP, even before I started racing myself,” says Sammy. “I was amazed at what he’d achieved entirely with his own hands. I liked the story about how Honda came with their 125cc bikes to the TT for the first time in 1959, when the REG was going very well, ridden by Derek Minter. The Honda was also a twin-cam parallel twin, so of course they took hundreds of photos of the REG and asked Bob Geeson to tell them about it, which he was happy to do.
“They asked if they could visit the REG factory, and while Bob tried to dissuade them, that just made them all the more keen. So, apparently, a big Honda entourage turned up at the front door of the Geeson home in south London, and trooped out behind Bob down through the garden, to the wooden shed at the bottom, which was the ‘REG factory’. I’d like to have seen their faces!” Honda courteously repaid the favour, though, when Geeson-san was an honoured guest at Honda HQ in January 1963.
After failing to land either of the Aussie bikes, in 2004 Sammy made a deal with the Geeson family to acquire the disassembled REG, and together with helper Bob Stanley and engine-builder John Ring, embarked on a four-year restoration which ended in October 2008, when the completed bike burst into song for the first time in 45 years.
“Bob’s grandson donated all his grandad’s notebooks, race records, technical files and especially engine drawings to us, when he heard what we were going to do,” says John Ring. “This made a huge difference in rebuilding what is a surprisingly complex and avant garde engine for its time.”
Miller adds: “It’s a brilliant engine, way ahead of its time, made by a guy with a genuine flair for engineering. We’ve got other bikes in the museum which were designed and built by big factory race departments with lots of engineers, which weren’t nearly as innovative or effective as this one – and especially not as far-sighted. Bob Geeson was a true genius, in every sense of the word, and the fact he did all this entirely himself in his spare time while holding down a demanding nine-to-five job is literally amazing.”
To see the restored REG on display and in action once again thanks to the expertise of Sammy Miller and his men, would have given Bob Geeson untold pleasure and satisfaction.
To see the restored REG, visit the Sammy Miller museum in New Milton, Hampshire. It’s open to visitors daily from 10am. Call 01425 620777 or visit sammymiller.co.uk for more details. Changing government guidelines regarding social gatherings during the Covid-19 pandemic may affect museum opening times. Please check before travel.