I’ve been comparing photographs...

Dear CR I have been studying the photograph on page 74 of Classic Racer No. 196, of Barry Sheene standing with a Suzuki captioned as “the ex-factory Suzuki 125”. It is undoubtedly a photograph of a young Barry Sheene but doesn’t look like a 125. For a start, the photograph shows two carburettors on the left hand side of the bike, but I believe that the Suzuki 125 of that time was a disc valve parallel twin. Is Sheene standing with the 250cc ‘square four’? I have compared the photograph with some in Vic Willoughby’s book, ‘The Racing Motorcycle’ (pages 136-139), but what confuses me further is comparison of the brakes on the bike in the Classic Racer photograph and those as shown in Vic book. Both the 125 ‘twin’ and the 250 ‘four’ show large twin (four?) leading shoe front brakes. As far as the brakes go, the nearest (in size) to that depicted with Sheene is that on the 50cc bike (which it obviously isn’t). If my memory serves me right, was Sheene’s bike not the one that Stuart Graham rode after Suzuki pulled out of racing? I’ve had another look through some of my books and have come up with another possibility. In Jeff Clew’s book on Suzuki (page 130) he writes of Stuart Graham having “rode well” in the 1967 125 world championship but goes on to say that “Suzuki unveiled an entirely new 125cc four towards the end of the season, which used a 90-degree V layout, the two lower cylinders being mounted horizontally. Disc inlet valves, water cooling and greed crankshafts formed part of the basic specification”. I think that this fits the bill although I still don’t get the brakes – or lack of them! I have been examining it as closely as I could and on comparison with other photographs and books available to me I still think that it is the 125 V4 that apparently only raced once, at Frisco (the last round of the 125 world championship of 1967. In all the photos I have looked at, the 125 has large drum brakes, but those as shown on the Sheene photo look much smaller than those on the 125, they look similar to those on the Suzuki 50cc racer of that year. Close examination of the Sheene photo may suggest a disc brake caliper just in front of the fork leg, but I can’t be sure. The two lugs on the fork leg would suggest the possibility of a caliper and is that a hydraulic mechanism just to the rear of the left side footrest? There doesn’t appear to be any brake drum in the rear wheel but no sign apparent of any caliper or attachment points. An enigma as another possibility is that the wheels are slave wheels put in place simply to permit easy movement of the machine? Keep up the good work with the Classic Racer magazine. Jack Mcgahan Email

Thanks for this letter Jack, good detective work so far! One of the pure joys of CR is that every single point you raise will be debated and answered to the nth degree by our huge database of racing brains. I fear that my caption was indeed incorrect – apologies for that. Tony