The man who built a world-beating Racebike in his Garage

i think many motorcycle mechanics and engineers and designers and even riders have had this thought before it's almost an invasive thought it's so silly but the question that pops into their mind is what if i built my own motorcycle i'm not talking about taking a motorcycle and customizing it to your liking or even fabricating a few pieces though that does take quite a bit of skill and precision no i'm not even talking about what alan miller does in his sheer genius engineering things like a dodge viper engine into a motorcycle or cutting up a kawasaki z1 engine and turning it into an inline six no this is even a step beyond that i'm talking about building a motorcycle from the ground up frame engine basically everything well one person did that and he didn't just build a motorcycle he built a race bike that would go on to win international races and set land speed records that still to this day are held here's the story of how one new zealander named john britton against virtually all odds but one of the greatest motorcycles of all time john britton grew up around motorcycles and just around mechanical stuff and he was one of those kids who really took to machinery at a really young age at the age of six john built a fully working pedal go-kart made primarily of apple boxes and at the age of seven john's dad gave him an engine kit and john took a few months to build it but he ended up building this really detailed intricate engine now this is really where it all started for him as it often does with young kids many of you probably grew up tearing into lawn mowers or just anything with an engine and that may have started your love for mechanical things at 11 john saved up enough money to make his go-kart well go with a gas-powered engine his older sister recalls his obsession with projects like this he wanted to push everything he built to the absolute limit it wasn't just machines he did other crazy things like john dug a labyrinth of tunnels from his house to his neighbor's property john and his sisters would build lemonade stands and they even built a little fare that people would pay to attend jon learned a lot not only from his father but also from his grandfather who built his own house something that jon would end up doing himself now aside from giving his entire biography which you can read about in this awesome book called dare to dream the john britton story just know this john britton growing up was fearless and tenacious that's the sense i get that he was this way his entire life now in terms of motorcycles john actually started restoring his first motorcycle at the age of 13 namely an old indian scout and he would go on to fix and restore multiple vintage cars and at 26 he took on a 1946 triumph tiger 100 that he found lying around and he would race the spike in vintage racing for quite a while and even when riding vintage motorcycles and vintage cars jon would find himself pushing these vehicles to the absolute limit and often crashing them and breaking bones but his first sort of bespoke motorcycle design was known as the arrow d0 and the arrow d1 the arrow d0 was built on a bevel drive ducati engine and trellis frame whereas the arrow d1 utilized a kevlar carbon fiber composite now this matters for later on in the bikes that he would build it also had a monocoque frame with a semi-stressed engine the swing arm was fabricated aluminum and was mounted directly to the gearbox assembly and john actually crashed this second bike at that point he was actually gonna walk away from the project altogether but he ended up shortly after just making a few adjustments so that the crash that happened to him wouldn't happen to anybody else now these arrow bikes these first bikes had some racing successes namely in local races and speed runs and the whole goal of these platforms was aerodynamics and really experimenting with advanced methods for sort of streamlining the motorcycle now the next step was to build an engine well at least that was the next step for john might not be the next step if you were in his situation or if i was but for him that's what he felt he had to do and as we often know from motorcycle manufacturing in history among major companies taking on the risk of building your own engine it's another level of complication you're really sort of reinventing the wheel and the notion that you can do it better than the big companies that have been developing for decades and decades and even upwards of a hundred years well it's a bit ambitious philip vincent's journey to building his own single and then v twin is actually very similar to john's and the pursuit of speed is really at the heart of everything for this kind of person many of you brought up john in my video on philip vincent and i do actually think that this is a really good comparison these two now this pursuit the pursuit of a custom hand-built engine built for racing would really consume jon pretty much for the rest of his life this is the beginning of the motorcycle that would be known as the britain this first basically fully hand-built race bike would own jon's iconic signature that would remain on his bikes going forward it actually all started for john the signature when john's friend bob denson of denko engineering these were the guys who had built a motor for his previous arrow d1 anyways bob found one of john's signatures and he basically touched it up a bit made it look a little bit nicer and then blew it up and that signature would end up being featured on the britain 1000. now this first bike would feature a first fully carbon fiber body now i should say at this point that there are loads of different characters in his story and i can't feature all of them it wasn't as though jon just like drew up his own engine and motorcycle design and just started pouring molds john had many volunteers and paid sort of co-conspirators with him people who labored and labored long hours on this project it really was a passion project not just for john but for a lot of people and we could say that the real genius of john britton's work was more than just his engineering prowess though that was obviously incredible he was really able to motivate and excite people about the project they really believed in him and as we'll see it was for good reason now this first bike that was really a complete hand-built bike was a liquid-cooled sort of custom v-twin engine it was made almost entirely from scratch now the first britain v-1000 was completed just months before daytona in march of 1989. think about this this guy was making a liquid-cooled race bike with a v-twin platform for racing and i'm not the first to say this but harley should have brought this guy on and just like funded him to create the ultimate american racing machine you know that's kind of beside the point but this bike it should have been a harley you know i feel like the britain was a lot better than the buell just saying anyways if you're curious how a bike like this could be raced at daytona there's a clause that allows for individually built bikes in the pro twins category which would later be called the battle of the twins and that was how jon was able to do this now when daytona rolled around the bike really wasn't ready it actually needed a muffler somehow the muffler was missed in all this and just before the race john's mechanic alan bought a tin of canned beans he poured the beans out i'm assuming he ate them but you never know then he poked holes in the bottom of the can and they attached it and voila they had a muffler and out of pity they were allowed to race so the bike had problems that were worked out after qualifying but there was no place to test the bike in the morning before the race so they took it out to a remote beach road and his mechanic allen recalls john firing up this hand-built loud v-twin race machine and just tearing it around corners and just he just remembers it as this crazy moment so the race started that morning and gary goodfellow took off on board ahead of everyone only to have the bike die at the first corner the race was over but this weird green homemade machine had sort of started a legend people were curious so going back to the drawing board john brought on more capable team members along the way and daytona of 1990 rolled around and john actually showed up with two britons now the bikes roared around the race track people were in awe at these machines and they managed fifth and eighth place and the britain was winning races in america and canada breaking lap records at this time jon brought the bike back though to new zealand and he turned the thing basically into a two-wheeled new zealand flag with his iconic signature on it now this was the first time in 50 years of racing at daytona that anyone had really experienced any sort of success with a hand-built motorcycle we think of it as being long gone now it's been long gone for a long time but jon wasn't satisfied he knew having seen the bike finish just behind the factory ducati in second at the battle of the twins he knew he could make the bike better but a lot needed to be done at this point and mainly the bike needed to be made more aerodynamic he knew that making the same kind of bike as the factory teams just wasn't gonna work they had to do something completely different and at this point the bike wasn't different enough to really stand out and really beat those factory bikes john came back a bit depressed about it all because he sort of i can remember him coming back and saying that there's no way that we can beat you know our works ducati by building the same sort of bike as them because you're always going to be second fiddle you're never going to have the equipment and the sport and the backup so you've got to do something quite radical his team continued to grow and interestingly enough john's passion for vintage motorcycles and understanding how the history of race motorcycles really worked that would lead him to build the next iteration and one of the more interesting aspects of this new design was the cutaway bodywork they removed all of the bodywork from the fairing basically like the bodywork that was below the fairing and the reason was simple they tested the incomplete bike the one without the full fairing versus the one with the full fairing and the one without it was faster cycle world describes this bike that they started to build as a torpedo atop a knife blade so the narrow engine and tires creates the knife underneath the rider enclosed in the flowing body which is the torpedo then you have the spaghetti-like exhaust and that was actually purposeful this wasn't just some like avant-garde design it was all tucked away to create more airflow plus there were four valve ports where the exhaust came out so they all had to be lengthened individually to reach the same end point specifically while not having them like jut out of the bike itself to create a more aerodynamic so they're all like wrapped and weaved around behind the engine to make it so that the bike stayed aerodynamic it's pretty genius the radiator was moved to behind the engine which meant that they could put the rear shock where the radiator would normally be this was incredibly innovative and that just really scratches the surface like john's machines did suspension in a completely different way he wasn't working within a system of you know just using upside down forks like all the other manufacturers were even the extensive use of carbon fiber at this point this really wasn't a thing you got to think this is like the late 80s early 90s at that time race bikes weren't really using carbon fiber and he really saw this as the future to be able to build light durable material for creating fast light motorcycles the only problem was little was known about working with this material of carbon fiber and because of this their work in building all these pieces was actually quite toxic and actually affected some of the people's health now they were building a piece of art at this point without even knowing it i've talked about this in my videos on iconic and beautiful motorcycles throughout history sometimes function can lead to form so this bike may not look pretty in a conventional sense but the more you understand what they're doing and why it sort of becomes beautiful one writer called this a sculpture capable of 300 kilometers per hour or the fastest work of art i'm ever gonna see it would ultimately be featured in the art of the motorcycle exhibit for the guggenheim museum it was a beautiful monster if you will but could it race what have we got i think three weeks to the day that this bike has to leave for daytona we still haven't even tried the new engine lead alone built the bike well the first attempt with this new bike this completely redesigned bike really wasn't pretty they took the bike out on the track and at a relatively low speed the front end of the bike completely shattered causing the rider to crash now this was just eight weeks before daytona john was absolutely devastated that he put this rider on his machine and watched him just crash and break his collarbone all because the bike just couldn't handle it for some reason so they jumped back in i mean he was thinking about quitting but they jumped back in fixed the front end they never had problems like that again after that now this was the year 1992 and the night before the race the crew was up all night working on the engine after the bike had overheated during qualifying and had actually caused there to be a crack in the cylinder sleeve not a ducati it's a brick it's a written motor correct i mean he machined the block he designed everything it's my understanding the next morning the bike found itself starting off the line in 12th place but the incredible power and lightweight meant that it would absolutely tear through the field right from the get-go soon it was leading the pack but the race was called due to rain they restarted the britain was you know restarting in the front but the bike died from a loose wire causing the battery to be flat the bike was also incredibly and now infamously wheelie prone this bike caught the attention of the press even though they didn't win everybody wanted to know more about this pink and blue thing flying around the track now that was just the first round of the battle of the twins round two was at laguna seca just three months later and the britain would take second there in spite of qualifying at the back of the pack and the final stop for the battle of the twins was at asin in europe where the britain finally won but just by 0.2 seconds so it had proven itself internationally with a second and first place at laguna and asin but the bike would go on to win multiple races locally in new zealand and australia i say locally that's still national you know it's still incredible but just not what we often think of for racing here in the states or in europe but the bike again would continue in the next few years to be raced all over the world and win lots of races and the platform would set multiple records including the world flying mile set in 93 alongside the world standing start quarter mile top speed world standing start kilometer and the world flying mile record was 302.708 kph in 1993 which i believe it still holds which is pretty amazing in 94 the britain won the daytona race finally clocking 304 kph which was 16 kph faster than the works kawasaki now that same year jon decided to finally take the bike to the isle of man and three bikes were brought raced by nick jeffries robert holden and mark farmer and farmer tragically crashed his britain and was killed at glen helen the bike wasn't at fault they did an investigation into this but this was really devastating for john 19 years of racing the isle of man i mean it's not the first time it has happened to me that you know i've lost a close friend um i've never lost a teammate before it was particularly tough in this instance with the britain team and rebecca capaldi realistically here in force the first time i think it it was very very difficult for them but the bike was incredibly successful in twins racing in the following years taking first in almost every single race of the bears or bears world championship and just weeks before john's death he learned that his bike had actually won the bears world championship which was a huge deal now just a month after his 45th birthday john died from inoperable skin cancer on september 5th 1995 again at the age the incredibly young age of 45. it's amazing to think about what this guy accomplished in such a short time the britain bike is certainly his greatest achievement but this guy did a lot more than that you know for one example he built his own house he built this unbelievable house that was originally horse stables and he turned it to this like incredible thing that's still like being used by people there are currently 10 production britons in the world these are some of the most valuable motorcycles in the entire world some of which are available to see if you're in the states britain number seven is on display at the barber vintage motorcycle museum in birmingham alabama but the britain had its detractors in its day the idea that anyone but an established factory could just build a race bike like that was just completely unheard of even 30 years ago now i asked this question in my video on philip vincent and the vincent motorcycle company could someone like philip vincent or john britton make a motorcycle like this today could they do what was done then now could someone bring on a small team of dedicated brilliant people and build a world-beating motorcycle in their garage see the same principles that were at play then still apply today the same things that john britton knew they're still there today every major manufacturer on some level is still working within a system many of them are stuck and they can't get out of it you know many of john's innovations like the rear mounted radiator for example these are standard things in many race bikes today but few have taken a chance for example on his front suspension setup and i think this is because brands they have a certain look and feel that they have to follow or a certain platform that they have to follow ducati and harley for example they can only make v or l shaped engines suzuki isn't gonna make anything but an inline four for racing there's just some things these companies can't do look at the ducati 999 for example and how much it pissed everyone off that ducati would make a motorcycle that just didn't look like a ducati i mean it didn't have a single-sided swing arm so it must be horrible right this is the advantage that startups today have and this is what john britton saw he knew that the companies just couldn't do certain things and he could do those things so he may not have the team and the millions and millions of dollars behind him but he knew he could try stuff that was different and he could start clean and he could take bigger risks and more importantly he could look forward and really innovate and not be worried about what everybody thought and because of this the britain today still doesn't look old it still looks new like it could easily pass for a modern sport bike i mean even now you've got bikes like the speed triple rr and other bikes that yeah they look like certain old bikes but they also look a lot like the britain with their cutaway fairing and really that's what makes a legendary motorcycle think the bruf superior ss 100 or the vincent's black shadow or black lightning the current 300 horsepower kawasaki ninja h2r or the ducati superleggera these are motorcycles that are decades ahead of their time so if you do plan on building your own motorcycle from scratch aside from all the difficult engineering challenges and design challenges that you're gonna face above everything else make sure you sign your name on it and make sure it's the color of your country's flag anyways hope you guys enjoyed this sort of little piece of interesting history recent history really uh compared to a lot of the things i cover and i just found this story really inspiring if you want to learn more again i mentioned this book dare to dream all about john britton and there's also a documentary as well where you guys can learn more details about his life and all the other crazy things he built like chairs and lamps and glass stuff like he was a real renaissance man i think that was the best description i read at one point was that he was a renaissance man and yeah hope you guys enjoyed thanks for watching ride safe [Music] you

Channel: bart

Views: 1,590,742

Keywords: bart, motorcycle, motorcycles, vintage, retro, classic, top, best, worst, moto, bike, motorbike, John Britten, britten, britten motorcycle, motorcycle history, The man who built a world-beating racebike in his garage, britten v1000, britten v1100, handbuilt motorcycle, custom motorcycle, vincent, greatest motorcycle, greatest motorcycles, v twin, daytona, motorcycle racing, history, greatest, fastest, best motorcycles, greatest motorcycles of all time, rare, expensive, museum, ducati, moto gp, motogp

Id: w3VQB7dTFoM

Length: 19min 16sec (1156 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 12 2022