The 50cc Motorcycle with a top speed of 118 mph in the 1960s

If there's one thing everyone knows about

50cc

motorcycle

s and anyone who's ever ridden one is that they're not fast, the reason is simple: you have a single piston

50cc

, say from something like the Honda Z50 or maybe a little bit of a two stroke, and that piston is about the size of a pill bottle and we expect that little bottle of pills to support our weight and the weight of the

motorcycle

isn't exactly the formula for

speed

and power or is it that the 50cc honda rc-116 was no ordinary bike, especially not because of its and to understand how exactly this little motorcycle could reach

speed

s of over 100 miles per hour from such a small platform so long ago, we need to go back.

Furthermore, in the late 1950s, Honda was eager to succeed on the main stage in racing, so they assigned two young engineers, Tadashi Kumei and Kimio Shimura, to design a racing motorcycle engine for Honda. . The goal was a higher revving platform than anything in competition at the time and the result of that work was the first RC-141 in 1959. twin-cylinder engine producing up to 18 horsepower at 14,000 rpm, better than anything that Honda has made up to that point, but it still lacks compared to the European competition. The next machine also built in 1959 was the 250cc four-cylinder RC-160 and this really was a notable platform now that the small displacement four-cylinder platform is a topic for another video spawning multiple multi-cylinder racing bikes up to six cylinders and then, on the production side, motorcycles like the CB750 and CB354 four-cylinder platforms.

The first small displacement, high revving engine was an important basis for the bike we are seeing today because it was a bike that basically followed its smaller model but with more pistons and more revs, which was the blueprint for success, at least at least. Honda's eyes, to win races. The first attempt on the Isle of Man was not what they expected. These bikes could not compete with European and Italian competitors. They think that companies like Envy Augusta, for example, and Ducati and Benelli, and also their drivers, were not prepared for this level. The speed and aggression on the track before Grand Prix Motorcycle Racing in the

1960s

were very different to what they are today, there was the main 500cc category which was comparable to what we know now as perhaps MotoGP and Then there were multiple smaller categories ranging from 125 250 350 and even the sidecar class in 1961 Honda won its first grand prix race in Barcelona for the 125 cc class, it certainly didn't hurt that all the major Italian companies had pulled out of this race, but hey, honda was getting better with each iteration of their twin and four, this was further demonstrated on the four cylinder platform when honda was determined to win the championship and that's what they did that year with mike halewood.

Now this really was the beginning of Honda's dominance in making high-revving four-stroke engines instead of Compared to the powerful two-stroke platforms of virtually every other manufacturer, these were incredibly complex but powerful machines, but in 1962 Honda decided build a new machine for a new class, which is exactly a 50cc class. Now, hearing this, one might wonder why anyone would want to watch. a 50cc motorcycle race, isn't it more fun to see the faster, bigger, crazier machines, but in reality it's usually the opposite? It seems that the smaller motorcycles are actually more fun to watch in the current Grand Prix categories.

Nowadays there are motogp moto 2 and moto 3 and also. e fashion with moto 3 technically being the smallest at 250cc and I can confirm this as a fan who watches all these races. Moto 3 is probably the most entertaining now, that's partly because the riders are younger and often a little crazier, but with these smaller bikes. It seems to really level the playing field in terms of the actual bikes, so there rarely ends up being one or two riders far ahead. Last year's moto 3 championship was incredibly close. At each race, there were often like 10 or 15 bikes right next to it.

The corners off the straight are crazy, the smaller classes are crazy and it's no different with this 50cc class; It's less about who has the fastest bike that can take off on the straights or coming out of corners, it's more about the rider's ability to make things happen and take big risks to end up with a lot of overtaking. I mean, moto 3 usually has, I don't know, three times the amount of overtaking as moto gp and as a fan I find it more fun to watch even though you're not hitting, you know, 250 miles per hour on the straights.

Honda's first 50cc motorcycle for the 1962 season was the RC-111. Now this was essentially the rc-145 twin, but it was basically cut in half and then shortened to fit the 50cc class. The engine used double overhead camshafts, four valves and produced a solid 9.5 horsepower. I mean if you compare this to a new Honda Grom it's very similar in terms of power and the Grom is a 125cc single seater so it's pretty impressive considering it's like 60 years ago and only 50cc For some reason, the key for this class was to have as many gears in the transmission as possible, so first this bike had a 6-speed transmission, but the Honda 50 couldn't handle the two 50cc 8-speeds. -suzuki hit, so on the isle of man that year honda had managed to get the little bike to have a nine speed gearbox, but they were still struggling to take the two hits despite coming second and third on the island of man on the small rc- 111 now Honda only managed to win one race this first season, the small four-stroke could not compete with the two-stroke only in terms of power, so Honda took its model for more cylinders and higher revolutions and they applied it to the little 50. and it took until 1964 for Honda to bring their new twin 50cc platform to the race tracks in Europe with the RC-113 and RC-114.

Now the initial version produced 10 horsepower at 17,500 rpm using gear-driven double overhead camshafts, although not the final version. from Honda's little 50cc racing bike, this bike still managed to reach the elusive 200 horsepower per liter, which is truly incredible for this era, this bike had a top speed of 84 miles per hour, but it had a significantly better power curve and on its debut, it simply screamed with the Suzuki 50 two-stroke. Honda came close to winning the 50cc title in '64 but lost it in Finland due to engine failure. The final iterations of this platform were found in 65 with the rc-115 and finally. the rc-116 under the leadership of honda engineer soichiro irmajira, that's the main guy that led the development of the cbx and I also did a whole video on that if you're interested, but yeah, he was really an iconic figure in history of honda under the leadership of irmajira. the small 50 cc twin grew in power.

He was able to increase the power to 12.8 at a whopping 21,000 rpm using Honda's general strategy for more powerful, higher revving engines by basically making the pistons shorter which in 65 the little 50cc twin won the championship. Easily topping both races and only failing to win a single race of the season with expert rider Ralph Bryan, now the final version of this platform was the iconic RC-116, a 50cc twin racing bike with even more stroke. short and larger bore that produces a whopping 14 horsepower at 21,500 rpm, although some report that it actually produced more horsepower and could rev more up to 16 horsepower at 22,500 rpm and if that figure is correct, it looks like it's actually 16 horsepower from 50cc, that would be the highest braking power per liter of any naturally aspirated four stroke ever achieved, not even Formula One cars can come close to this kind of ratio power-capacity, even using all kinds of crazy fuels.

This is without a doubt one of the craziest motorcycles in history. The 66th championship for this small class again went to Honda, minus one, before the final race, but the location was changed, giving Suzuki the home field advantage right at the end, so Honda boycotted that final event, basically giving away the championship. This was the last season for Honda. in the smaller class now, the 50cc class would continue until 1983. Interestingly, season 72 for the 50cc class was possibly the closest championship in motorsport history; It is estimated that the total season was won by a total of 21 and a half seconds.

Throughout all the races, that's how close the first and second place competitors were, they literally fought side by side in every race. This final version of Honda's little 50cc racing twin was much more than just a small motorcycle with big power and lots of revs. I mean, you can't understate how powerful this machine was for being so small. It really is an incredible achievement by Honda. This is one of the most amazing racing motorcycles Honda has ever produced. One writer actually calls it a tempest in a teacup. The manic and crazy little machine Honda used some interesting tactics to reduce the weight of the bike, one of which used essentially disposable brakes dating back to the first version of the little twin Honda and decided to go with caliper rim brakes powered by cable or, more simply, bicycle brakes, I mean.

This was basically 1920s motorcycle technology on a racing bike, but because this motorcycle was so small and so light and used such thin tires, they were able to make it work for at least one race, which made them basically able to eliminate all the heavy brake components found in conventional motorcycle brake setups and although they burned these systems out pretty quickly it was a cheap and easy setup, they would simply replace the entire system, this also gave the bike better airflow in that region, it's really interesting when you look at it. This motorcycle doesn't actually look like a motorcycle, it looks like one of those bikes that someone just put a fairing on and decided to pretend they were pedaling around a motorcycle.

The multi-cylinder engine is so small that you have no idea it's even hiding under that fairing. Honda's approach to motorcycle manufacturing is really interesting in the

1960s

, it's similar in some ways to Ducati's approach today, an approach on building the most technologically advanced motorcycles in the world and letting all that technology trickle down. to their production bikes one doesn't have to look any further than the current gp field to see this with ducati it seems like 30 of the bikes out there are ducati, especially now that suzuki is leaving moto gp and that's what ducati likes to do , they like to take what they are producing at the highest level in racing and slowly add it to their motorcycles.

Now most of that focus is on the world's largest capacity sportbikes and when Ducati carries that over to its sportbike, naked and even adventure bike platforms, it's primarily for larger bikes, in Honda's case, although they were making the most advanced motorcycles and engines for even the smallest motorcycles and I'm sure you never ended up seeing a 50cc twin going over 20km on a production Honda, but it's the lessons learned in racing that he would take to his big bikes Both small and large, the 50cc racing platform was essentially a proving ground for Honda just to see how far they could stretch high-revving multi-cylinder concept bikes like the iconic CB450 CB750 CB 354 and the CBX all of these bikes.

They come directly from the technology that was built in the 60's for their racing bikes. I think a lot of manufacturers today care a lot about profitability and really want to see a direct correlation between their R&D and sales, so for example, manufacturers will now build a new platform. Take Triumph's smaller triple platform for the trident and now Aprilia's Tiger or 660 platform showing up on all sorts of new bikes. Yamaha's mt07 platform. I mean, I understand why manufacturers do this, but it's a very different approach than Honda was doing in the '60s. I don't think Honda knew that decades later they would use the lessons learned from the technology built to make production-specific bikes.

I mean, if you look at Honda's six-cylinder race bike, I think it's literally the rc 166 from the '60s. In the '60s, that bike was the precursor to the great Honda CBX of the late '70s, so we're talking more than a decade later, they basically took a specific type ofmotorcycle and they made a very similar but very different bike that wouldn't be possible without it. That first bike, but I don't think it was planned, I guess that's what I'm trying to say. No other experiment really shows this more than the small high revving 50cc rc 115 and 116.

There is no obvious reason in the 60s to produce anything. So, in addition to wanting to win and build the craziest best motorcycles in the world, Honda would not be the company it is today without the 1960s, many point to the 70s with the gray production motorcycles of the 70s, as you already know, the cb750. They are bikes that somehow toppled entire industries and turned Honda into the motorcycle and, ultimately, the giant of automobiles, lawnmowers, weed killers, and motocultivators. All of that goes back to the work done in the 60s, building innovative, powerful, reliable and airtight engines. which are practically indestructible.

Honda's first car was also a crazy little high-revving machine and without that first car we wouldn't have all of Honda's cars going forward. What I see in Honda of this era that I simply don't see in many. Today's motorcycle manufacturers are willing to really try things, even if the payoff is unclear. Many companies, not all, but it seems like many of today's motorcycle companies are overrun with bean counters and it's clear when you walk into a dealership. it's like all the soul is gone, you know, it's like modern cars, a lot of modern motorcycles feel like cars, they don't feel like they were born from, you know, the mind of a great designer or engineer feels like They were just made. on a computer and when a company takes a bike off an eight or ten year old platform and just reuses it, I don't know, it's hard to get excited about things like that now, personally, I don't care if my car is boring, but don't make me into a boring motorcycle, the point of motorcycling is that it is fun, make me born as a motorcycle. out of passion, one that could even take 10 years just to design, you know, the envy augusta f4 750 that envies a goose to basically relaunch his company with it, it took Massimo Tamborini like seven years just to design the motorcycle, just to create the outline of what it is.

Bikes were supposed to be motorcycles and they're already inherently meaningless modes of transportation, they really don't make sense, so stop trying to make them make sense. It's interesting, the dealership here in Beaverton has an incredible collection of classic British, Japanese, Italian motorcycles, it's really amazing and everything. of the classics at the dealership sit around the new bikes that are for sale and I can't help it every time I walk into that dealership, even if I don't want to look at the old bikes, I get distracted from the new bikes to all these great bikes old ones, I mean, they are literally sitting on top of the new bikes.

I don't know if they're trying to say something there, but it feels like they are, maybe they're just saying not to touch them. but it's hard not to see the difference, I'm sure there are modern motorcycles that really are beautiful and amazing. All motorcycles are inherently fun and cool in and of themselves just because they have two wheels, like there are no really bad motorcycles, but man, those. The old ones just have a lot more soul and character, maybe it's just me and yeah, it's a shame there's never been a 50cc dual production bike that hits 20,000rpm.

I guess we'll all have to make do with pocket bikes for now.