Photos appear at the bottom of this page.
I had a lot of Ducati singles before I switched to my first little Honda twin. I enjoyed riding the Ducks (and was sponsored by Fred Mork on a very nice 350 for a season), but I grew to loathe some of the design "features" that often kept my bikes from running for any appreciable length of time. My friend Henry Deaton had been roadracing a sloper CB175 (all future references to 175s are about the CB160-style sloper, not the late 1969 (1970 model year) vertical cylinder 175) with AFM, and I found myself intrigued by the styling and construction. Horizontally split crankcases, real electrics, and no bevel gears - you could even get parts from your friendly local dealer! It didn't hurt that I already had a 750 Laverda twin, which looked a lot like a Super Hawk, heavy on the steroids/pasta.
After discussing the potential of the engine with Craig Hanson who worked on a number of my bikes I bought a 175 rolling chassis with engine from Henry (this was about 1986). As the 175 was not terribly effective against full 250s, we decided that we would shoot for building two identical engines that would be competitive in the vintage 250GP class. Henry had Craig modify a 160 chassis for his pumped up motor, and I built a frame to house mine.
When I got my engine assembled and into Henry's modified frame I rushed down to the AMA/AHRMA national at Laguna Seca. I was pleased with the performance of the very roughly tuned engine.
My engine received a long evening of tuning on Craig's dyno after the Laguna Seca race. I can not stress too heavily how important dyno tuning is to a race project. When it was first run on the dyno my engine put out the grand amount of 12 bhp at the rear wheel. An evening of dyno tuning which included changes only to jetting, timing, and velocity stack length bumped the horsepower up to just over 20 bhp @ 12,000 rpm. Power was still increasing, but we didn't run any higher on the dyno, although I later used an occasional redline of 13,000 on the track. I might have been able to get half of that increase on my own, but since many of the changes resulted in increases of one-half to one horsepower I would have never realized the full amount. Dyno time is the cheapest horsepower you will ever buy! My Honda was competitive with most 250 singles. In fact, the next year at Laguna Seca (the first AMA/AHRMA national using the extended track) I spent the whole race dicing with (and beating) a 250 Bultaco, which should be one of the faster 250s around.
At an AFM race at Sears Point they were doing noise checks. The CR216 was measured at 133dB. When I ran it on Craig's dyno that was done one evening, and his neighbors in the industrial park were not bothered by the noise from the 1000cc Kawasaki and Suzukis he often had on the dyno. After a couple of pulls with the little Honda there were people looking in wondering what all the racket was. LOUD.
On the way to the pregrid at a Sears Point race the rear tire picked up a piece of gravel and managed to toss it through the small gap between the top of the splash guard and the underside of the seat and down a carburetor. That broke a chunk out of the intake valve and snapped the cam chain. I never got the bike back together after that.
I've written up a little tuning manual for the 160/175 bikes (about 20 typewritten pages), documenting the things we found out while developing my bike and Henry's. It covers both engines and chassis. This is available from me for $20 including postage. I've sent out about 60- copies so far, and haven't had anyone calling up telling me that they didn't think it was worth the price. Drop me a line if you are interested in a copy.
The CR216 and most of the spares went to my friend Stephen Gillen who, as of December 2008, has the bike back up on wheels and hopes to race it in the 2009 season.
If you've got a trick 160/175 I'd like to hear about it or get a picture to add to the web site (but it has to be TRICK!).
Here are some photos I've recently scanned of the Honda CR216. I also made fresh copies of some of the photos that have been up on the website for years..
When I first met my friend (and now the owner of my CR216) Stephen Gillen he was riding a vertical-cylinder CB175 (henceforth referred to as a V175) on the streets of the SF Bay Area. After we'd known each other for a bit and talked about the small Honda twins he decided he wanted to "cafe" his bike. He got a replica Cotton Telstar fuel tank from a shop in Australia, but when it got here it soon became clear that it wasn't going to fit on the V175 frame unless either the tank or the frame was hacked about. I agreed to take a look at the issue and we decided that the frame should be modified.
This was not a hard decision to make because the V175 frame is not a particularly elegant design. It does the job as a commuter bike, but it was definitely built down to a "save money wherever possible" standard.
Here are a series of photos that I took during the process. This modification process, as is not uncommon, ended up being one of those "we should have just built a new frame from the start and been done with it" scenarios. Oh well . . . . .
Here's what happens when you put cheap pattern valves in your high RPM race engine. This is one of the modified KZ550 pistons and the head of the valve. Modified OEM Honda valves worked fine.
Stephen Gillen is the current owner of the 216 and is hoping to return it to the track at the 2009 AHRMA national at Willow Springs. He's a 160/175 racer and has been making some aluminum bodywork. Here's his latest for a V175:
For more information contact us by using
http://www.eurospares.com/cr216.htm
