SPECIAL
Becker Montesa
The legendary Becker Montesa, built by Helmfried Riecker and Paul Erhardt, certainly pushed the boundaries of the twin-shock motorcycle trials machine. It is perhaps the most spectacular Montesa ever made, and on a par with the unusual Montesa creations of the world-famous Spanish motorcycle constructor Antonio Cobas. Integrated into the large, round top-tube of the central tube frame is the fuel tank. The air filter box is located in the upright, square rear frame. The footrest mountings run through the swingarm, and it already had a mono-shock rear suspension before it existed in motorcycle trials.
The Becker Montesa not only has some spectacular design features and an exceptional appearance to offer, but it also provides a riding experience that can only be classed as ‘Rolls Royce’. Indeed, in comparison to the trial machines of its generation in the early ‘80s, it was, shall we say, very different.
MODERN MACHINE
Designed and built at the beginning of the ‘80s, during a very transitional period for machine development, it rides much more modern than you would expect. This is mainly due to the rear suspension and the meticulous and conscientious approach to detail and tuning. The 173.7cc Montesa air-cooled, single-cylinder, two-stroke engine performs amazingly well; which was extensively revised for use in the Becker Montesa. With stronger engines available, it was obviously not chosen for the power output instead for its perfect characteristics. Offering a silky-smooth throttle response, it provides direct power without pulling your arms out of joint but is always controllable, and intended for one purpose only – to provide the rider with the best possible way of finding rear-wheel grip. To understand why someone would go to so much trouble to build a trials motorcycle like the Becker Montesa, it takes some background information to find out.
HELMFRIED RIECKER
The instigator of the Becker Montesa project, Helmfried Riecker, lived and breathed a racing atmosphere from his earliest childhood days, as he grew up in the Stuttgart wildlife park and thus directly next to the Solitude race track in Germany. The former race track, named after Solitude Castle, was the venue for several Formula 1 races until it was closed in 1966. However, the track, which is still legendary today, is a challenging circuit with 26 left and 19 right turns and a 2.3-kilometre high-speed straight for the motorcycle races that took place on it. Would you believe that in 1954 an unbelievable 435,000 spectators are said to have lined the 11.4-kilometre-long circuit? Seventysix special trains were commissioned by the Deutsche Bundesbahn railway company to bring the masses of visitors to the race circuit in the west of Stuttgart!
Helmfried inhaled such a large portion of his enormous enthusiasm for motorcycling in Germany, to the point that his own motorcycling career was already clearly defined at that time. His enthusiasm for motorcycling continues today, at an age when many people already consider themselves lucky if they can still stand on their own two feet!
FEET-UP
Helmfried still regularly stands on the footrests’ feet-up’ and guides his Becker Montesa through the terrain with an air of confidence. On the one hand, compared to the standards of the time when it was built, it simply rides incredibly well. On the other hand, it is certainly very motivating to ride a homemade trial machine through sections of such high quality.
Homemade machines have accompanied Helmfried since the beginning of his career. He started modifying motorcycles at a time when there were hardly any suitable materials to buy, and what was available was not good enough quality for him. So from the very beginning, Helmfried was always very interested in improving existing technology, adapting it to his own ideas and modifying it for himself.
Early on he competed on a Puch moped, and his first successes in reliability rides were not long in coming. Then he started riding motocross because it was very popular at that time. After winning the German 125cc Moto Cross Championship in 1960, Helmfried discovered the sport of motorcycle trials was more to his liking. He modified a 100cc Adler motocross machine with the addition of Triumph Cornet front forks and wheels, and put the hacksaw to the beautiful Adler frame and modified the exhaust to extend it far back in a long, narrow tube past the seat. It is a memory that brings a hearty laugh from him today, which Helmfried explains with the words: “It wasn’t like the trials world of today with travel so easy. In Germany, we had some outstanding riders such as Gustav Franke, Gunter Sengfelder and Siegfried Gienger who were the best at that time. I was fourth or fifth in the same class as them two or three times”.
MODIFIED MONTESA COTA
Motorcycle trials in Europe was in its infancy in the ‘60s before it became the sport we know today. It developed rapidly as very much an offroad sport that could be enjoyed by all. As the sport developed so did machine technology.
Already a competent rider, Helmfried moved his thoughts and ideas to the machine side and heavily modified a 250cc Montesa Cota. It was slimmed down in the workshop of the German Montesa importer Otto Walz, in Herrenberg. With Otto’s help, the modified frame was fabricated, and the steering angle changed. Helmfried didn’t think he could do it himself, so Otto helped with welding and engineering skills.
Thanks to the magnesium engine casings the machine weighed a sensationally low 75 kilograms, which was incredible at that time. Helmfried had moved the machine’s centre of gravity further back in favour of easy handling which, contrary to expectations, did not necessarily turn out to be an advantage in view of the lightweight engine. He also did not get along well with the performance of the 250cc engine. At that time it became evident that engine power was only a small part of the big picture in motorcycle trials and did not lead to success on its own. Also, as motorcycle trials developed, it became apparent where you once went over obstacles, tighter turns were now becoming more the norm to test both the rider’s and machine’s abilities.
CANTILEVER MONTESA
It was the rear suspension’s action that quickly turned out to be a limiting factor, so a new technical solution for the rear suspension was thoroughly researched. Helmfried was attracted by the Yamaha cantilever technology that had surfaced with success in Road Racing, Motocross and Trials. He built a 125cc Montesa Cota and applied this single-shock absorber, rear suspension cantilever technology as early as 1976. He didn’t approach the project halfheartedly but double-heartedly, so to speak! His Cantilever-Montesa accommodated the shock absorber almost invisibly in the oversized upper frame tube. Not only did it hide the rear shock absorber, but it also formed the fuel tank. The idea came to him because of the large volume of the frame tube, which could save space and weight.
Helmfried built most of the Cantilever-Montesa himself but had to find a qualified welder to perform that task. The German ‘TUV’ authorities required proof of the welder’s welding qualification for the approval so that you could apply to get proper road documents to register the machine for public road use. As with many dealings with government authorities, Helmfried remembers that you could write your own book on the hassle attached with the application!
The large-volume chrome-molybdenum tube for the frame was purchased from a certain Fritz W. Egli from Switzerland for 60 francs. Fritz Egli was also a fabricator and creator of his own machines. He arranged for the family vacation that year in the area where Egli lived so he could collect the materials. The fragile cantilever swinging-arm was fabricated from bicycle frame tubing with a wall thickness of just one millimetre. To make the swinging-arm narrower, the round tube was pressed into an oval. Helmfried copied the chain tubes from the outstanding Austrian rider and designer Walter Luft. Montesa would later introduce this design to their Cota trials models.
The standard front forks from the Montesa Cota 172 left a lot to be desired, so there were more or less directly exchanged for a Bultaco Sherpa set. Helmfried picked it up from the Bultaco dealer Pfaff near Aschaffenburg who had removed it from a completely new motorcycle because it was not available as a spare part at that time. Helmfried won the German B-licence class in the 125cc category on the Cantilever-Montesa. Today it stands in the foyer of SRS (Sportler ruft Sportler) company and is, of course, the inspiration for the later Becker Montesa.
LIGHTWEIGHT
After the experience with the Cantilever-Montesa Helmfried succumbed to the need for more power and purchased a Montesa Cota 348. Although the majority of the trials’ Experts’ had expressed their enthusiasm about the larger-capacity Cota, it was not his cup of tea at all. So he quickly sold it when he was able to buy Hans Buchner’s Cota 172 with a 157.5cc engine. It was much lighter and handier than the Cota 348, and so he was able to handle it much better.
It was the second time he realised that large displacement was just not his thing. In 1980, Fantic came onto the trials market, and the new Italian machines quickly became an attraction to the buying public. Helmfried rode a 200 model Fantic in 1980–81, and with it, the story of the Becker Montesa begins to take shape.
Enter Paul Erhardt, a fellow trials rider. Like Helmfried, Paul had been a die-hard Montesa fan until he wondered whether the Montesa Cota 200 could not be made so competitive that it would be able to compete with the new Fantic or maybe even be a little better.
Based on the Cantilever Montesa, the Becker Montesa was created in 1981–1982 with the idea of taking the concept of the 125cc Cantilever Montesa to a new level through further improvements in suspension and engine tuning. The goal was to build the engine with the exhaust of the Cota 348 and to improve its performance by reworking the cylinder ports and a lot of fine-tuning. It would be a lot of work starting with an exhaust manifold from a Japanese car. The chassis required much more time because they wanted to replace the cantilever suspension at the rear wheel with a real mono-shock as this had already proved to be a better solution in motocross.
Helmfried: “Since the company Koni Federbeine was not far away from us, I just went there and told them what I had planned. In the end, I was able to get two shortened Formula 1 shocks from Koni, which was a real sensation. At the front, we kept the proven Bultaco forks so that we had about 160mm of suspension travel on both wheels”.
During the construction, care was taken to keep the machine light and slim so that the engine could be placed forward in the frame. With the centre of gravity further forward, the vertical steps that were becoming more and more common at that time, could be ridden better.
Compared to today, the footrests are very close together. As more and more steps and larger rocks were added to the sections, narrow machines were still an advantage.
By the way, the Becker Montesa was originally blue. It only turned green during the later restoration at the turn of the millennium.
BECKER MONTESA
And why is it called a Becker Montesa at all, when Paul Erhardt and Helmfried Riecker built it? It’s quite simple: The name was chosen because the machine came to life during their time at work in the company Hepco & Becker. At the time, Paul Erhardt was already managing director of the company known for high-quality motorcycle cases at that time, with the brand name in the logo; and still is, as his son has become involved in the company. Manfred Woll completed the TUV paperwork for the Becker Montesa in Landau. This way, the path was made clear for Helmfried to participate in competitions.
The goal of putting a Montesa-based trials machine that was competitive on level terms with the new Italian Fantic was undoubtedly achieved because Helmfried was able to win with the Becker Montesa against larger enginecapacity and newer motorcycles.
In 1982, he was runner-up in the Senior German championship and, in 1983, he became North German champion in the Senior competition. However, one should note the effort to transform the production Montesa Cota 200 to the Becker Montesa was, of course, enormous. In comparison, a standard Fantic 200 Trial could be used competitively straight from the delivery box.
ALL CHANGE
In 1983, it was all change in the trials world when Yamaha launched its TY 250 mono-shock with progressive lever rear suspension. Paul Ehrhardt was one of the first to ride the new Yamaha. Helmfried met Paul while practising to sample the single-shock machine. It was an experience he still remembers well: “During the test ride I very quickly came to realise that the era of homemade machines was coming to an end. It was pretty awful for me to acknowledge that”.
A little later, Helmfried also bought one of the fabulous new Yamahas; “It was never really for me, even though the function was already fantastic, but for me, it remained more a marriage of convenience”.
When the Classic Trials movement came to life in Germany, it gave Helmfried a new breath of life. In 1986, he started to build up a classic trials machine based around a Triumph Cornet engine, with which he competed in the first D-Cup race in Gressenich in 1987.
The Becker Montesa was parked up until its restoration in 2000 when it also acquired its crazy green colour scheme. After its restoration, for exhibition purposes at SRS, it took its place next to the Cantilever Montesa in the foyer of SRS. It was during this period of the machine’s resting place that Helmfried got the urge to ride it again and to have fun in motorcycle trials. Since then, he has regularly ridden the Becker Montesa on his premises in Breitscheid; built exactly for this purpose. It was, and remains, a real piece of motorcycle trials history.