Stuart Graham rides George Beales replica 250cc 6 cylinder Honda around Cadwell Park for a lap, as shown on the BSB coverage. I was there and he had to keep it revving otherwise it stalled due to a really light flywheel.
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My favorite too! For those who are unfamiliar, Millyard has an expansive collection of amazing creations. Thank goodness he goes the extra lengths to chronical and share his work! This is as good a place as any, to enter his rabbit hole ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ETvldkqeKgg.html
@@pbysome yes but Allen's was never really intended to be a replica, it was intended to be inspired by the RC166 for sure but it was larger cc for a reason. For one it didn't need a starter motor so I suspect the larger cc and inbuilt starter motor was more intended for practicality rather than performance. This bike in this video and Allen's are equally spectacular for different reasons in my opinion
One of the original Honda sixes stayed in Canada at the end of the 1967 season, I was there when it did a demonstration lap of the Gilles Villeneuve circuit in 1981(ish). You could quite literally follow its progress around the track just from the sound. What a glorious noise ! Fast forward twenty-odd years and I had the pleasure of chatting with Michelle Duff (nee Mike Duff) who was a Yamaha factory rider in the sixties. She says she still has a ringing in her ears from chasing Hailwood on the Honda 6.
I was lucky enough to see 2 of these at the 2019 classic TT. Did a start up in the Jurby paddock just as i walked past. OMG the best thing i have ever heard. Daz from Adelaide.
I remember the 250 and 297 Honda 6's in the 60's at the IOM TT ridden by Hailwood. Together with Read and Ivy on the Yamaha 4's and Ago on the MV great times, thanks for the memories.
As a young lad I saw the genuine items of this replica screaming down Bray Hill. The TT circuit is about 5 minute cycle ride from my front door. Back then they were just another interesting race bike,nothing more than that. The noise was very special. I sat on top of the same bus shelter on Bray Hill and watched Ago go by on the MV's many times and Bill Ivy and Read on the 4 cylinder 125 Yams. Back then it all just seemed par for the course,so to speak.
@@howardosborne8647 I have been to IOM 15 times, but not this year. I was there one year when there were many Honda classics being srtarted up by white overall cladded Japenese mechanics. That noise was painfully loud.
Title is wrong. Its a 297cc Honda RC174. Raced in the 1967 350cc class. Maximum revs 17,500. Maximum power 17,000 (66BHP)... Keith Huewen says in the (incessant) commentary that it will rev to 22,000.. what tosh! He is confusing it with 125-5 and 50cc twin.
@@stpbasss3773 Watched Mike Hailwood race the 250 version of this bike in the 1960s. If you want facts look here www.mbike.com/honda/rc166-250/1966 The bike in this video was simply a bored-out version...
I just read two articles published by Kevin Cameron of Cycle World fame about how the pressed-together crankshafts of these sixes were designed and built, just fascinating. Unlike most of the previous Honda multis, there are no full circle flywheels; the crank webs are made in a kind of a flattened ingot shape with a pressed in chunk of dense metal balance opposite of the crankpins. The crankpins are intregal with one half of the parts for each cylinder. Torsional vibration was cancelled considerably which allowed these delicate, high revving units to survive a race. Pictures show that the parts were forgings.
@@leslieaustin151 - except Alan Millyards bike, as amazing as it is, bears verly little resemblance the RC174 internally... its like a tractor by comparison, having been made by grafting two road bike engines together.
peterg2yt Yes, I fully accept that this bike is not a carbon copy of the original race machines. But Allen’s motivation and skill to put together something that ‘resembles’ the race bikes, in appearance and in sound, is to be applauded. I didn’t say it was an exact copy. And I merely directed “whalesong” to another of Allen’s videos where he takes cranks apart and reassembles them. But “tractor”? Having heard it and (on video) seen it go, this is no tractor. Give proper credit, please. Les
Leslie Austin You misunderstand my remark. I do not intend it to detract in any way from Alan Millyards amazing creation, but to compare what he did by grafting two road bike engines together means that you don’t understand what an astonishing creation the GP Honda 6 was, and in particular at the time it was created by Soichiro Iramajiri. I am very familiar with the RC174, I have ridden more than 150 track miles including a lap of the Isle of Man in 2017. The Honda engine bears more of a resemblance to a fine Swiss watch than an internal combustion engine (indeed the cranks on the Beale replicas are made in Geneva by a company involved in F1 and NASCAR engine parts AND watches). The crank has three different diameter big-ends (bigger in the centre and smaller outboard, exactly like the original) and three different diameter main bearings, all needle roller and all stressed to be minimalist enough to take the load required. The crank webs on the Honda look more like domino pieces than parts of an engine. Counterweights are pressed in pieces of tungsten. Zero flywheel effect, and certainly no tick over as the Millyard 6 has (plus electric start). Most notably, the Honda engine is really tiny... it’s about 18” wide total, with massively more power per litre than any road bike to the current time (66 BHP @ 17,000 rpm from 297cc). BY COMPARISON to the Honda, Mr Millyards amazing creation (and indeed the GP MV Agusta 350 six) is really like a tractor.
@@peterg2yt Along these lines, I haven't seen any video or description of how Alan made the crank for his Honda 6 engine. It cannot be built the same as the factory 6s as I understand that particular engine uses high pressure oil insert bearings, not needle-roller ones. Perhaps I missed something already posted about that but it was a significant bit of machining effort.
The concept of this engine Honda built from scatch is awesome the crank is a work of art whatcha Honda strip it down to it's component parts on you tube seen this in action with Mike up
It's the other way around. It's the F1 engines that sound like the Honda 6. But not quite. Having heard both an original Honda 6 and current F1s, the Honda sounds better.
I remember that at the Chimay Classic bike, I heard an engine screaming in the riders' park, it was impossible to stay next to the bike because the noise bored your ears. It took all the ingenuity of the Great "Mike the bike" to tame this "monster". In those years, there were many manufacturers and technical diversity was the key word, the various regulations have brought diversity down, too bad! In MotoGP 2, they have came to have all the same engine, in short, almost production races ...
:-) that was me at Chimay riding replica number 007 for the very first time (the one in the video is number 001 and is owned by Honda)... not an easy bike to ride until you get used to the lack of flywheel... At Chimay it was overheating, clutch dragging and the carburation was way off... finally got it sorted in time for the 2017 parade lap of the IoM. Fantastic!
@@peterg2yt Congratulations on being able to tune and ride such a bike, I envy anyone who saw it battle other manufacturers in the 1960s. Thank you for bringing such a bike back to life.
I read that when Honda developed it they kept it secret and even shipped the bike with only 4 exhaust pipes so as to preserve the design until it's first outing.
kweel iso - one person who worked at JPX did the initial work on engine drawings/CAD work but the bike was built by George Beale... using many specialist parts manufacturers and suppliers.
Just found this. Honda made both 250 & 350 versions. I remember when these were so secret they were just rumors.. A now deceased family friend and one of the first American Honda dealers, John McLaughlin, being a champion racer and personal friend of Sochiro Honda rode them in Japan to evaluate them. He gave me a rundown on them. The voice-over attributing the stalling to a light flywheel effect is wrong. The ultra narrow power band was/is the major factor here.
@@hectorherbert6585 That is a fantastic story and I'd love to have it or ride it but it's not in the same ballpark as Beale's, for one it is not a Honda base, and is water cooled, not air-cooled like the real thing. Also, I have my doubts it could be ridden hard for any length of time.
Honda never made a 350cc version of this bike but did compete in the 350cc class with the rc174 which was just under 300cc. The bike was so advanced for its time it won the 350cc class and championship that year.
As an owner and rider of one of these bikes (number 007) I can say that your late friend was mistaken. Actually the power band is astonishingly wide... nothing like a 2-stroke racer from that era which had a very narrow power band.. The engine pulls cleanly and linearly from about 10,000 to just over 17,000 (which was a surprise to me). On the other hand, the total lack of flywheel means that until you are really 'in synch' with the bike, it is very easy to stall the engine on gear-changes... that is exactly what happens on the video.
@@originaLkomatoast that’s really interesting to hear… there was a very well known case of a 250cc RC166 which was lent to Mike Hailwood who had a bike dealership in Birmingham at that time in partnership with another racer called Rodney Gould. Mike Hailwood was tragically killed in a road accident in a car (along with his daughter) and that bike was sold, illegally to a collector in Holland. It never re-surfaced. I wonder if you know what became of the bike that was in the US?
How many gears has this thing got? He seemed to be down-shifting forever there at one point. What a fantastic machine but I bet it was a bugger to race with little to no fly-wheel effect.
Ever notice how most all racers and ex-races and wanna-be racers 'blip-blip-blip' the throttle? Reason is that these Honda's had NO idle circuit in the carbs. So if you let off the throttle (like what happened to the rider in this video) the engine will die.
If only Honda had done a decent sized production run of the 250 inline 6 (not too likely, I know), Allen Millyard could by now have made a totally bonkers 500cc V12 from a couple of them...
Its a shame the Weslake 500 never got beyond design prototype. 20000 rpm from a single 500 would have been something. That said modern big bore short stroke was Weslake's idea.
Just fund this video which I thought was all about the fantastic sound of the Honda 6, but virtually all we got were the two commentators talking over the sound. What a terrible waste.
Back in the late 70z, while I was attending Honda PRO private school, I achieved the overall highest grade for the Engine Building section, the Instructor gave me a spark plug from this bike, or one of the same. It was smaller than my pinky finger. The cener and ground electrode is located so far inside the shell, it was hard to imagine a plug this cold of a heat range. 🏍🏍
@@stephenscholes4758 Actually George Beale had an agreement with NGK to make a batch of exactly the same plugs as used in the original and Honda put a stop to it (actually they bought the entire batch and wouldn't supply anybody else - they used them as 'corporate gifts!), which was very strange because the first Beale replica was made with assistance from Honda and they bought it from him (personnel changes at Honda with people with different ideas)... it the bike in this video. The original plugs are 8mm thread and the plugs in the Beale replica are 8mm too. The plugs used in the Beale reps were were designed to fit the Honda NR750. The spark plugs are the only parts on the Beale replicas which are not interchangeable with the original Honda six bikes.
Some nice footage, I read the Beale replicas were going for 450,000 so who knows, I hate Stuart Graham because he is so thin I am ten years his junior and decidedly fat lol.
Whilst not wishing to detract from Alan Millward’s fabulous achievement, his engine is made by grafting two road bike engines together and it makes his engine about 50% wider than this one, which is an EXACT replica with fully interchangeable parts to the original.