Riding the Sheene Machine

What does it feel like to ride a £1 million piece of motorcycle racing history? To ride the very bike that Barry Sheene used to win the 1976 500cc world championship? Stuart Barker had no idea, until he turned up at Cadwell Park and got the surprise of his life.

Pics by Jason Critchell, courtesy of Suzuki GB

 

You’re looking at a very special motorcycle. This factory Suzuki XR14 is the very bike that Barry Sheene won the 1976 500cc Grand Prix world championship on. It was not only Sheene’s first world title, it was also Suzuki’s first in the premier class.

            Sheene kept the bike in pride of place at his home in Australia until his untimely death in 2003. The bike remained in the Sheene family home until 2016 when it was shipped over to Suzuki GB to be fully restored and brought back to running order. It was restored by Nigel Everett, and Sheene’s former mechanic and right-hand man, Martyn Ogborne, and has since been shown at many events around the UK. It’s insured for £1 million, but would likely sell for much more, should it ever come on the market (it won’t).

            I had posters of this bike on my bedroom wall as a kid. I remember trading for them in the school playground. So, when I was invited down to Suzuki GB to write a feature on the restoration of the bike, I felt very honoured just to see it, and was even more blown away when I was allowed to sit on it and have my picture taken. Martyn Ogborne talked me through the restoration and told me some great tales of my racing hero, Barry Sheene. I thought things couldn’t get any better than that.

            In 1984, I used to sneak Michael Scott’s biography of Sheene ‘A Will to Win’ into school and sit and read it at the back of the class when I should have been paying attention to my lessons. When I grew up, I ended up writing my own biography of Sheene. I was even lucky enough to ride on the road with him (the only journalist to ever do so) in 2000, when I worked for another biking publication. On that occasion, we rode Barry’s own MV Agusta F3 and Brutale round the streets of London and, once again, I was pinching myself.

            Hell, I even got to ride Barry’s 1984 XR45– his last race bike – at Sywell Aerodrome in 2022, thanks to the generosity of its owner, Steve Wheatman of Team Classic Suzuki. Again, my life seemed complete. It surely couldn’t get any better than that, right?

            Wrong.

            At the Suzuki Live! Day at Cadwell Park on June 10, Sheene’s 1976 and 1977 world-title-winning XR14s were both on display, and I was excited to finally here them being fired up and running. Like every other race fan, I stood there with my phone and snapped pics and took videos of these gorgeous machines being revved, then I went trackside to watch Stuart Graham (son of the first ever 500cc world champion, Les Graham, and a GP and TT winner in his own right), and current Suzuki racer Danny Webb, parade the bikes for two laps behind a pace car. That made my day, or so I thought.

            Shortly afterwards, I got the surprise of my life. I was attending the event to ride my long-term test bike – a Suzuki GSX-S1000GT – around the circuit, and an absolute hoot I had too. But after my third session, I was approached by Tim Davies of Suzuki GB, who then dropped an absolute bombshell on me. ‘How would you feel about riding Barry Sheene’s 1976 XR14 around Cadwell Park for three laps?’

            What? Was he serious? It had to be a wind-up. I waited for the punchline, but it never came. Tim was serious. Holy crap! ‘Be ready in 40 minutes’ he said.

            So, I had 40 minutes to be nervous, and to take in the enormity of what I was about to do. This was real money-can’t-buy stuff: more men have walked on the moon than have ridden that bike. It was almost too much to take in.

            Ten minutes before I was due to go out, Martyn Ogborne and Ian Wilson (an ex-racer and hugely respected mechanic) started warming the bike up for me. This was getting surreal: Sheene’s mechanic warming Sheene’s bike up? For ME to ride? I expected to wake up. I didn’t. It was real.

            Thankfully, I remembered to ask if the bike still had a race-shift gearbox (up for first gear, down for all the rest) and Ogborne confirmed it had. Oh, and there was one other thing to remember, he told me – Barry had a right-side gearshift. Brilliant. So, I’m going to be riding a £1 million bike that has an upside-down gearbox and a right-side gearchange. Gulp. No pressure (although, at least the right-side gearchange will give the freshly broken second toe on my left foot a break).

            But as soon as I tried to kick it into first gear after Ian Wilson had fired the bike up with a starter trolley, I realised I had a bigger problem, and Martyn Ogborne knew it too. Not only do I have size ten feet (Sheene was a size seven), but my modern motorcycle boots are so bulky, thanks to the toe sliders and external armour, that it was practically impossible to get my foot on the peg and then fit it under the gear lever. The space between the two is absolutely tiny, but that’s necessitated by the dimensions of the bike’s frame. In Sheene’s day, boots had very little protection, so they were much slimmer. ‘You’d be better off riding this bike wearing a pair of trainers’ Ogborne said. Scrutineering was never going to allow that though, so I would somehow have to manage.

            The thing with riding old two-strokes – and this bike is 46 years old, let’s not forget – is to keep them revving. Allow the revs to drop for just a second, and you’ve stalled it, then you’re going to need a starter trolley and assistance. Every short, sharp blip of the throttle releases a sound that would make grown men cry. The angry, razor-sharp rasp of a 500cc two-stroke being warmed up remains one of the finest sounds the motorcycling world has ever known. And the smell? Something else again. I’m shrouded in wafts of blue smoke, sweeter smelling than any perfume could ever hope to be. Together, the two are glorious, and make me feel sorry for future generations that might have nothing better than silent, battery-powered bikes to watch and ride.

I somehow find first gear then Ian Wilson flips the paddock stand and I manage to keep the engine alive as I pull slowly out of the Suzuki camp, then suddenly realise that everyone is looking at me, or rather, the bike. Every camera is fixed on me, adding to the pressure not to drop this precious machine. If I do, it’ll be all over social media in seconds. No-one wants to be the man to drop or crash Barry Sheene’s bike.

            The crowd parts respectfully to let us through and I stand on the pegs to try and lower myself down into a comfortable riding position (a trick I learned on Barry’s cramped XR45). As I do so, I try to move my right foot up and around the gearshift, ready for the change down into second gear. I struggle to fit my clumsy big boot in place and the bike shimmies as I adjust my weight. I realise I must look like a pillock, and want to explain to everyone that I’ve just got the wrong boots on, and the wrong-sized feet! I sit back down on the bike and keep revving it constantly as I make my way down to the assembly area that feeds onto the circuit itself.

            Then, for just a split second, I don’t rev it hard enough and the engine dies. Damn it. This is not going to be easy. Within seconds, Martyn Ogborne is on hand with a starter trolley and asks why it stalled. I tell him it was just me letting the revs drop too low, so he’s satisfied it’s not an issue with the bike and fires me up again.

            I get the nod from the marshal to proceed onto the track. As I pass the paddock café, I’m aware of a whole gallery of spectators with their phones out, eager to get a picture or video of the Sheene machine. I snap down my visor and join the group of classic and novice riders out on track.

            I’ve got three laps. Three laps to live my dream, but here’s the paradox: you can’t truly enjoy moments like these until they’re over. Sounds daft, but there is SO much pressure not to drop the bike, and so many things to remember about riding it (keeping the revs up, remembering to shift gear with my right foot, remembering the gears are upside down compared to road bikes) as well as being sure to avoid the other riders out on track, several of whom come blasting past me straight away.

            The riding position is extremely cramped and it’s hard to even bend my legs back far enough to get the balls of my feet on the footrests. The bike feels rock hard too. There’s nothing built for comfort on 500cc racing two-strokes; they’re designed as weapons, and they’re as sparse as they can possibly be. A temperature gauge and a rev counter, and that’s your lot, as far as instrumentation is concerned.

            The brakes feel surprisingly good, but then the bike IS extremely light, at around 135kg, so there’s not much weight to stop.

            I struggle, again and again, to find gears, thanks to my size ten feet and clumsy boots, but when I do occasionally find myself in the very small powerband, the noise and pull of the XR14 is heavenly and, in the right hands, this bike would still be capable of posting a fast lap time. It’s just not in the right hands today!

            As I approach the jump at Cadwell’s famous Mountain, I keep both wheels firmly planted on the track: there’s no room for heroics when you’ve been entrusted with a piece of racing history like this. The only priority is to bring it back in one piece, and that’s what I intend to do. Drop a bike like this, and there will be no second chance.

            For a few brief moments on each of my three laps, I manage to take a little time to actually enjoy the experience of riding my hero’s bike; the rest of the time my brain is far too busy. But those moments are glorious, and I’ll relive them and relish them until the day I die.

            All too soon, I’m on my third and final lap and my nerves are easing slightly. The sun is shining, I’m sweating profusely (through concentration and adrenalin more than heat), and I’m riding the very bike that propelled Barry Sheene to superstardom. I’ve seen models of it, I’ve owned posters of it, hell, I even have a T-shirt of it, and now I’m actually riding it! The bike that Sheene used to beat off the challenges of Tepi Lansivouri, Pat Hennen, and Marco Lucchinelli to lift the 1976 500cc Grand Prix world championship, 46 years ago. If you had given me a Spitfire to fly, I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been a motorcycle journalist for over 25 years, but this is unquestionably my greatest moment in all those years. It simply can’t get any better.

            As I raise my left arm to indicate to other riders that I’m pulling off the course at the bottom of the Mountain, I manage to get the bike back into first gear and cruise up through the paddock, still blipping the throttle endlessly to prevent the XR14 from stalling. And that’s when I have a moment to genuinely realise what I’m doing. You may have felt cool on your bike before, but does it get any cooler than riding through a paddock on Barry Sheene’s million-pound bike? I can’t see it ever happening!

            The bike’s boiling over when I get it back, and I fear I’ve over-revved it on occasion when I couldn’t find the right gear, but Martyn Ogborne assures me this bike is prone to doing that when it’s been started and stopped repeatedly, as it has been today. Phew. I didn’t break Bazza’s bike. I’ve achieved my goal in handing the bike back in one piece, and I’m happy with that. More than happy – I’m ecstatic. To pull into the Suzuki camp and have Martyn Ogborne and Stuart Graham come straight over to me and quiz me about the experience was like being Sheene himself for the day. Just completely surreal.

            And then, just like the normal punter I am, I ride home on a normal road bike, anonymous once again. Just another bike rider. Did that really happen? If not, it was the best bloody dream I ever had!

Restoring the Sheene Machine

Barry Sheene’s 1976 and 1977 title-winning Suzuki XR14s were shipped over to England from the Sheene family home in Australia in 2016 and restored to running order by Nigel Everett and Martyn Ogborne. Here’s how.

‘The 1976 bike was in the worst state’ Tim Davies of Suzuki GB says. ‘All the seals had gone, and the original oil was still in there, and I didn’t think Nigel and Martyn would ever get it running, but they did. Out of those two bikes, the 1976 bike is the better one. It runs smoother and it sounds a lot more crisp and responsive when you rev it up.

            ‘Barry had left the bikes sitting in his house just as they were, although we do think he had the ’77 bike refurbished in the late 1990s. It still needed a lot of work, but it wasn’t as bad as the ’76 bike.

            Martyn Ogborne and Nigel Everett would normally be tasked to restore a bike within two weeks, but Ogborne says it always ends up taking longer. ‘There’s always complications. For example, the 1976 XR14 has a magnesium crankcase, and when we pulled the engine apart, I went “Oh my god.” I thought it was dead and would never run again, because water had got in and there was a hole about an inch-square in the crankcase. When you take magnesium to be welded people usually say “Forget it” because when you weld magnesium, you’re always so close to it catching fire and, if it does, you have to know how to put it out - water won’t put it out.           

            ‘But we took it to Exactweld and the guy there started tapping on the crankcase with a little hammer, and by doing that he could tell where he could and couldn’t weld. That made the hole even bigger, so I was starting to panic, and I said, “Is that weldable?” and he said “Yes, no problem.” To stop the crankcase twisting when they welded it, they machined up dummy crankshafts and bolted it all together and used special tools to hold everything in place. When you apply that much heat to magnesium it bends so that’s how they got round it. That was probably the worst problem we had. I was sure that they couldn’t build up magnesium like that because I knew it would twist the crank casings but the guys at Exactweld knew precisely what they were doing.

‘The frames were okay because they were steel. We had oil seals on their way out, so we had to do those, and the calipers were a mess too. But Suzuki directly copied Lockheed’s designs anyway, so we just used Lockheed ones.

We had the wheels x-rayed to check for cracks, but the biggest thing was getting the original factory Michelin slick tyres off the 1976 and ’77 bikes. We contacted Michelin and they told us not to even use the bikes for demonstration laps on those tyres because they would be so damaged internally after forty-odd years. We were warned that they would either delaminate or fracture if we tried running the bikes on them. 

            ‘Neither Michelin nor Dunlop make 18-inch racing tyres anymore, so we had to replace them with Avons. I remember we were so worried about breaking the rims because they were made by Campagnolo and they don’t make motorcycle rims any more. Once we had crack-tested them we just cleaned them all up. They didn’t need repainting – there’s a few scratches on them but we left those.’

* A massive thank you to Tim Davies, James Sharpe, Martyn Ogborne, Ian Wilson, and everyone else from Suzuki GB and Team Classic Suzuki for granting me such an honour.