In the past, the development of motorcycle engines progressed at a rate that markedly exceeded that of frames and suspension systems, resulting in a demand for trick, high-performance, aftermarket chassis and suspenders. Whether it was an inability to compensate for a powertrain’s oomph, an unnecessarily hefty weight, the stock frame offerings of the ‘60s gave backyard hobbyists, factory race departments, and small boutique outfits ample motivation and reason to churn out their own chassis designs.
Off-road competition was particularly popular in the UK around this same time, so it makes sense that so many noteworthy boutique frame operations popped up in the land across the pond. One of the best known companies producing special racing frames in the UK during this era was Cheney Racing – formally known as “Eric Cheney Designs” and “Inter-Moto”. While Cheney was one of several parties producing purpose-built race frames in the UK, his story and the methods he used to create his products make the tale of Cheney Racing a rather fascinating one.
Born in January of 1924, Cheney reportedly attended the Lancastrian School in Winchester, England prior to joining the Royal Navy at the age of 18 around the dawn of the second World War. Cheney’s time in the military at first saw him taking part in arctic convoy expeditions which for obvious reasons were extremely unpleasant. At some point Cheney was given the chance to be reassigned as an engineer, working on Rolls Royce power plants and other massive engines powering torpedo boats.
After the war, Cheney found work as a mechanic at a number of important Triumph dealerships around the same time he started dabbling in racing – starting his competition career aboard an ex-war department Triumph thumper. Eventually Cheney would upgrade to a half-liter Ariel. Towards the end of the 1940s, Cheney began modifying bikes for racing, experimenting with some pretty cutting-edge components (for the time) like telescopic forks and twin-shock rear ends. It wasn’t long before Cheney found success with his bespoke machinery, eventually earning a spot as an Ariel works rider. Cheney then spent the remainder of the 1950s traveling around Europe and competing in high-level races with a good deal of success.
Sadly, Cheney would contract a life-threatening blood infection while traveling in Algiers in ’61, putting a premature end to what had turned into a very promising career. Cheney wasn’t done winning though. Sidelined from competing, and with a tremendous wealth of engineering knowhow as well as prior experience modifying bikes, it probably ins’t very hard to predict Cheney’s next move. So Cheney started playing around with the concept of customizing an AJS 500, but unsatisfied with the results, Cheney moved on to working on a BSA Gold Star – a model that was absolutely dominating the competition at that point.
Cheney received technical training during his time in the Navy, although his method for building motorcycles was uniquely organic. His MO was comprised of drawing frame designs in a 1:1 scale in chalk on the wall of his relatively tiny garage space – not unlike how modern customs guru, Max Hazan produces his one-off frames. Cheney had a solid grasp on metallurgy, engineering, and frame geometry, but it was his stellar intuition that made his work stand out. Cheney relied on his gut instincts to an unusual degree. The legendary chassis whiz was famously quoted, saying; “I know when it’s right and it screams at me when it’s wrong.”
After spending some time exploring his options, Cheney decided to build a racer from the ground up around the BSA mill. Cheney wrapped the Beezer engine in a lightweight, one-off frame paired with Ceriani forks equipped with a shaved-down Matchless hub. Cheney finished off the machine by adorning it in a snazzy livery; jet black chassis and hubs, polished alloy side panels and fenders, capped off with a blue anodized alloy fuel-cell. The bespoke BSA-powered mount (which supposedly weighed in at approximately 50 lbs less than the standard Beezer) made its race debut with legendary brit rider Jerry Scott at the helm. Scott managed to give the works BSA’s such a run for their money, that he was actually offered a position on the British OEM’s works team, a move Cheney was none too thrilled about.
After Scott jumped ship for BSA, Cheney recruited another particularly fast racer to ride his machines, this time Keith Hickman. Hickman would pilot a bike that was powered by a 420cc engine from BSA’s race department that Cheney somehow got his hands on. Hickman proved to be a competitive rider, though a championship title nonetheless eluded Hickman (and therefore Cheney). Cheney’s career would take a surprising turn when he received a special assignment from the head of Suzuki Great Britain. See, the rise of off-road competition in the UK prompted Suzuki to invest in the MX sector, leading to the development of a solid, quarter-liter twin-port engine. Though the Suzuki 250 was by all accounts a very competitive engine, its frame left a lot to be desired.
So in the Summer of ’68, Cheney would design and build a new chassis to wrap around the Suzuki thumper. Instead of simply dropping its engine into Cheney’s chassis and then going racing, Suzuki decided to take the Brit’s work and ship it back to Japan so it could be studied by Suzuki’s people. Suzuki would then use Cheney’s design to heavily influence its own factory works racer which went on to keep up with the CZ and BSA frontrunners of the day, but, once again, a game changer was on the horizon.
In 1972 the British motorcycle industry got flipped on its head with the announcement that The Birmingham Small Arms Company would be closing its doors. BSA’s closure had enormous ripple effects across the industry, freeing up some cutting edge parts and equipment, and leaving a handful of top riders in need of a new bike/team. One of these riders was John Banks, who inked a deal to pilot a Cheney machine for the upcoming ’73 season. That year, Banks would ride the Cheney-built bike to victory at the ’73 British Championship – a victory that marked the last time a British person would achieve this feat aboard a British motorcycle.
The next year, Cheney would again see his promising rider jump ship for another camp – this time leaving for another little boutique operation known as Clews Competition Machines. Cheney solved this dilemma by offering the newly opened position to Bengt Aberg, after he was reportedly unhappy with his arrangement at Husqvarna. Right out of the gate Aberg demonstrated the potential of Cheney’s bike, beating out the likes of works machines from Suzuki, CCM, and Husqvarna. Just when things were looking up for Cheney, Aberg dropped a bombshell on him; informing him just prior to the third round of the season that he too would be jumping ship, in his case for Bultaco.
As the story goes, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Cheney was fed up with dealing with the politics and team drama of racing. After all, Cheney just wanted to build cool (and fast) bikes. Just after Cheney’s success with John Banks, a local motorcycle dealer and race team manager, Ken Heanes, approached Cheney and convinced him to partner up on a limited production run of John Banks Replica (or JBR) machines – an effort that ended up falling apart and only producing a fraction of the units Cheney and Heanes initially aimed for. Despite the pair’s earlier business venture not being particularly successful (to put in nicely), Heanes – who at that point was managing the British International Six Days Trial team – would again approach Cheney with another offer that Cheney would take.
This time it would be producing the frames used to house Triumph twins for the British ISDT Team. The structures Cheney produced for the British twins consisted of trick oil-housing frames built from thin-walled, high-grade steel that were finished in nickel-plating. These bikes would earn Cheney an ISDT Manufacturer’s Award. By this time Cheney had branched out into producing road racing frames too, and in 1973 Phil Read nabbed a 250cc road racing world championship aboard one of Cheney’s custom-framed, Yamaha-powered bikes.
The 1970s were an era of extraordinary advancement in motorcycling, and a myriad of major developments were coming out of the big OEMs. Despite the increasingly complex, computer-driven techniques being pioneered, Cheney carried on utilizing his relatively primitive methods for researching and developing race hardware. Yamaha had cooked up a fairly game-changing cantilever system in which a single damper positioned on its side directly beneath the gas tank with one end anchored to the steering head and the other bolted to the swing arm via a steel loop positioned near the middle of the bike, markedly further forward than the rear-wheel spindle.
Around the same time, Maico had debuted machines boasting shock mounts that were positioned further forward than on traditional setups, allowing for longer suspension travel. Cheney took these two concepts and ran with them, further exploiting the benefits of these technologies while finding a less exorbitant way to employ these systems. Cheney opted to use a pair of conventional shocks positioned horizontally, side-by-side under the fuel cell, in place of Yamaha’s setup’s single damper system which was wildly more expensive to source. Cheney’s layout meant that the vast majority of existing dampers could simply be swapped in.
After countless hours of ironing out the kinks of his new suspenders, Cheney moved on to building a handful of cutting edge mounts that utilized the new suspension. A number of factors would lead Cheney to opt to power these bikes with Honda’s XL250 and 350 mills. The Japanese four-stroke motors were dropped into Cheney’s handmade, bronze-welded, Reynolds 531 tubing frames. The 250 machines weighed in at just 212lbs – a figure Cheney says could have been even lighter, though shaving off more weight would have compromised the machine’s expected four-to-five-season lifespan. These bikes would eventually become the “KSI Thumper” (born out of a partnership between Cheney, Allen Greenwood of California’s “Knobby Shop International”, Miles Web, and Ralph Rustell – the latter two previously worked for Cheney), but that’s another story for another day.
Cheney sadly passed away in late 2001, but spent the remainder of his life developing and building competition machines – a passion and skill set he passed down to his son Simon who now rebuilds Cheney bikes. A big part of what makes Cheney’s story so impressive is that he was able to accomplish his legendary work without any formal training, in what was reportedly a shop comparable to the size of a standard two-car garage. While the modern motorcycle world uses ever-increasingly complex production techniques, the tale of Eric Cheney is still a reminder that it doesn’t always take a full team in a state-of-the-art facility to produce ground-breaking motorcycles.
This particular Cheney example is a little weird as it’s been modified, but it’s still a pretty nifty scoot. Starting out as a 1973 Cheney Triumph, this example was completely torn down to the frame before undergoing a thorough restoration by Ziggy at Classic Motorcycles (you can see more photos of the build here). The Triumph’s cylinder heads and side covers were polished, and many parts were nickel plated or powdercoated, including the brake plates and shocks. A handful of parts were replaced by new units such as the gaskets, tires, mirrors, Ceriani forks, etc, while the rims, fenders, side covers, and tank were custom painted and pinstriped. Several one-off parts were fabricated for the project such as a custom kickstand, as well as the exhaust mounts and shields.
This project was commissioned by Barry Weiss of Storage Wars fame who is the current owner. You can find this custom 1973 Cheney Triumph for sale here on Craigslist in Los Angeles, California with a price of $44,000.