Aermacchi Sprint CRs

Harley Davidson Sprint
h-d hd harley davidson motorcycle flat dirt track racing

Most of the following information and photos were posted
on the Flat Track Forum by Steve Matz - vft

Close up view of the Long Rod Version Engine which had the undersquare Bore/Stroke, used a
Wet Multi-Plate Clutch on the Primary Side and had a 27mm Delorto Carb w/rubber mounted
remote Float Bowl. The later CR Engines had a 30mm Carb and the Final Imported engines
from 69-70 had 35mm Delorto Carb.

Aermacchi made 2 Configuration Motors for the CR/CRTT Sprint. The early engine (1961-65)
was undersquare 66mm x 72mm and referred to as the Long Rod Motor. In late 65 they
started mfg the Shortrod engine which was oversquare bore/stroke 72mm x 60mm, had a
Dry Clutch, Bendix Scintilla Magneto and was available with a 4 or 5 speed gearbox.
The Shortrod Engine could turn over 10,500 rpm and was a Superior Engine for long tracks and
Road Racing; however a long rod motor might work better on an indoor short course.
Debateable, Either way they had to be detuned to run on an 1/8 mile or indoor as they had
extremely radical camshafts in the OEM CR motors....Very impressive motor in their day

This was the American Built DT Frame that the CR used. The Bike was never avaliable
as a Complete Bike, You had to buy it in a Kit Form. When the Dealer ordered it
you got a Frame, Front Forks, Alloy Racing wheels, but no Tires. Fuel Tank, solo seat
and rear Fender. Depending on what part of the Year you ordered it in you might
have to wait for your Engine to be Shipped from Italy from the Aermacchi Factory...
In all the years that I have seen Race Results from these Bikes in DT Races, I have never seen
the word Aermacchi ever used in the Brand name of the Winners, always HD...
Something Harley is pretty good at, Taking Credit for something they never Built
but put their Label on (i.e. aka Rotax). I looked at the AMA Racing Archieves and all the
Races in the late 70'S & 80'S that were won by ROTAXS have HD in the MFG Column. Real Class Huh!!!

Here is a Factory Spec Sheet for a 1966 CRTT. Weight is shown at 215lbs. Now remember the
CRTT is essentially the RRer Model which has Rear Suspension(shocks)Brakes, etc.
Since the CR used the Spool Type KR Racing Wheels & Lighter Hardtail Frame You could get
the weight down too or under the 200 lbs mark if you were resourceful...

Mike Connell's 1966CR that was here this summer for our AHRMA National.
This is pretty close to what a Factory Kit Bike was like that had the Shortrod Engine

The 42y Bike is also Very Close to what an OEM Kit bike looked like around that time

Rod Lake's #25 Cal Rayborn Replica CR utilizing a Sonicweld/Trackmaster Chromemoly Frame.
The Bike has the Longrod engine which is easily distingished by the right side case that doesn't
have the large hump of the Bendix Scintilla Magneto and vent cover of the Dry Clutch.

An old 87 Mark Brelsford CR. This bike had a Jim Belland Built Frame but still used the Aermacchi shortrod Engine.

Gene Romero rode a Sprint as a Novice.

This is a pretty well known Pic at Santa Fe in 1961 where Resweber, Markel & Leonard were all on CR DTers

#16 Dick Hammer in the Winner Circle at Daytona..Dick
won the 1963 Daytona 100 on a CRTT Sprint.....

San Diego rider Jim McMurren at Del Mar - 2002 vft

Carb conversion on McMurren Sprint vft

Tom Horton on a Montesa and Jim McMurren on a 400cc Sprint
at Victorville SCFTA short track - April 2003 vft

Darrell Doval's CR at Sturgis..................Darrell was one of the first
racers to experiment w/ larger Carbs on the CR Engine. He installed
an 1-3/8" Amal GP Carb that I believe came off a Matchless and used
it quite Successfully.......Darrell must have known something in those
early days as the Last CR Engines had 35mm(1-3/8") Delorto Carbs on
them...

Sturgis 1968

AHRMA racer Dave Cheneys CRS vft

This is a barely used 1970 Harley Davidson 350 c.c. Sprint ERS. This is one of 102 ERS models built in 1970.
They were built for racing for four years from 1968-72 for a total production of 572 units.

This bike was recently sold on Ebay for $5700 vft

Mag innards of ERS

Readers Rides

I have and ERS that is all original, even including the tires. Hardly ever used.
Was traded in for a new sportster several years ago. Been in my garage/shop since.
Bill Thomas

This ad was run on the VFT for sale page - July 2005

FOR SALE – AERMACCHI HARLEY-DAVIDSON ERS

The Aermacchi Harley-Davidson ERS flat-tracker was produced from 1968 to 1972,
with a total of 572 bikes built. Annual production was as follows:
1968 - 120, 1969 - 250, 1970 - 102, 1971 - 50, 1972 – 50.

Based on the chassis number, this bike is one of the original 1968 models.
It is all original and has never been modified or restored.
It has an Ala d'Oro 350cc engine with Bendix magneto and a four-speed close ratio box.

1969 ERS

Saw your web site and thought I would send a couple of photos of my '69 ERS.
It's all original with no restoration with the exception of the recovered seat.
I raced it once in a vintage flat track event in Ventura, Ca. some years ago.
Tried to follow Jim McMurren around, but that didn't work to well!

Regards,

Randy Reed

RR250

If the Grand Prix road-racing record books came with footnotes, you’d see a reference to this Italian-built motorcycle next to the only GP titles ever credited to Harley-Davidson.

Yes, you read that right. Back in the 1970s, Harley-Davidson actually was a force in international road racing, winning the 250cc class three years in a row and topping the 350cc class once.

How did a company known for big, slow-revving, four-stroke V-twins rack up such an impressive streak in a form of competition dominated by small, hard-running two-strokes?

In a word, Aermacchi.

When small, technically sophisticated machines from Japan began flowing into the United States in the 1960s, Harley responded by buying a 50 percent stake in the Italian motorcycle firm Aermacchi, spun off just a few years earlier from airplane-maker Aeronatica Macchia. Aermacchi’s trademark 250cc four-stroke singles, with one horizontal cylinder sticking straight forward, formed the basis of the Harley Sprint line of 250s and 350s.

Aermacchi officials, who in the Italian tradition believed that race performance was integral to success, continued to contest the Grands Prix using two-strokes under their own company name. Then, in 1973, the same machines were rebadged as Harley-Davidsons. A year later, factory rider Walter Villa began a string of three 250cc championships. In that final championship year, 1976, Villa also topped the 350cc class on a bored-out version of the same bike.

Early air-cooled versions made about 50 horsepower at 10,000 rpm. Later water-cooled bikes like this one pumped out 58 horsepower at 12,000 rpm.

It’s hard to say that all this grand-prix success had any positive impact on the parent company, which was staggering through its years of ownership by the AMF conglomerate. Still, the GP race program continued through 1978. A few years later, the Aermacchi plant in northern Italy was sold to the new Cagiva brand, which continues to build motorcycles there today.

As a race machine, the RR250 was built in extremely limited numbers, which makes any surviving examples, like this 1975 model, owned by Benjy Steele of Huntington, West Virginia, pretty hard to find. But this particular RR250, now on display in the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum at AMA headquarters in Pickerington, Ohio, is even rarer: It’s never been started since it left the factory.

Linto 500 Twin

Classic Bike Magazine

August 1997 "Siamese Twin" Patrick Godet's restoration of a 1969 Linto

Lino Tonti, a veteran of Aermacchi, Bianchi and Gilera, designed a race bike called the "Linto" just before he was
hired at Moto Guzzi. The engine in the Linto was essentially two Aermacchi top ends grafted onto a single crankcase.

A Linto racing motorcycle placed second in the final World 500 GP standings in 1969
1) Giacomo Agostini (MV Agusta) 2) Gyulay Marzowszky (Linto) 3) Freddy Nash (Norton)

Dick Linton raced a Linto at the Classic Senior Isle of Man TT in the mid Eighties
and raced Aermacchis in the Junior class during the Seventies.
He is now a supplier of Aermacchi parts in England.

A book on Aermacchi has been published by Mick Walker

Text below was copied from motocorse.com site and translated by google.
The related photos are no longer available - vft

Motion of age

The History of the Linto

(09 January 2002)

of Steve Ellis (you see didascalia to deep page)

The idea to construct a bicylindrical motion of 500cc based on the Aermacchi motor - a succeeding monociclindrico of 250cc of large - is frullata for a sure period in the head of the Italian planners, and also Aermacchi had thought about being able some to construct a plan was to the end financed from the president of the Varies Motorcycle Club, a Citroen retailer of Umberto name Prewharves that had been a pilot of same motion he.

For the plan it was called Tonti Linen, former Ducati planner, and the name given to the motion (motorcycle) - Linto - nacque from its name. A motor was a bicylindrical horizontal with cranks to 360° that used two modified Aermacchi cylinders, therefore like the heads, the pistons, the valves and others members. The base was constructed former novo, and the motor was equipped of change to six marce. The produced maximum power was approximately 65HP to 12.000 turns/tiny, and the componentistica mounted on the chassis in steel tubes was of prim'ordine: Ceriani staple and brakes Fontana to drum.

It was sure the beautifulst motion never produced, with the motion destined to the private ones painted in splendid a red fire, while those destined officials were blue.

The first developments

The first motion in phase of development was capacity in contest in the 1968 from Alberto Pagani, Champion of great coming from level from the Aermacchi that lived in the beautifulst city of Varese. Alberto finished to according to place in the GP of the East Germany and to the quarter the place in the GP of Italy run to Monza, where the Linto could take advantage of its high maximum speed at best. Alberto that year gained also the Piestany International in Czechoslovakia.

Next to the end of the 1968 Prewharves small series of the motion constructed on ordinazione at the price of 2.300 dollars, highest thought to put in production one for the age. They came initially ordered eight motion from part of private teams, and two to superread Linto official came constructed for Alberto Pagani and the Australian ace Jack Findlay.

1969

The motion that competed in 1969 but showed one great mechanical embrittlement. One of the greater ones was the breach of the primary transmission, and in spite of the several modifications and the various materials it employs the problem to you was not resolved because had to a planning error. An other indeed serious problem was constituted from the vibrations, that they succeeded to quite damage the papers motor and the weldings of the chassis, and that year the planner Tonti Linen passed to the Guzzi Motion, leaving Prewharves and its staff to try to resolve the problems of the motion.

The motion in any case was fastest, but equally difficult to guide: usual Linto pilot always ended on the podio, but the others difficultly arrived to the end of the contest… The motion official suffered from these problems analogous to those destined ones to tries to you, in spite of that Alberto (Pagani, ndt) gained in Italy giving to the Linto its only Victoria in a Grand Prix, while Jack Findlay conquered a third party place in the GP of the Germany the West.

That year Gyula Marsovszky the Championship of the World, and Steve concluded Ellis finished with a diamond second place to the sixth place. “Hard” the New Zealander Keith Turner won to the Mans and the Mettet Internationals, where its motion cronometrata to 160mph (nearly 290 km/h!) on the rectilinear Mulsane, 20mph faster of the Norton and Matchless.

To half of 1970 the plan to Varese was closed, and the teams and try to you will sell the motion. In the 500 the Japanese to two times had arrived, and the four times were left behind, beautifulst beasts that rest in Hush… R.I.P.

The end

Euro links come and go.

http://www.motocorse.com/news/epoca/1150_La_storia_della_Linto.php

http://www.cybermotorcycle.com/euro/brands/linto.htm

http://ymedc.introweb.nl/en/archive/scooter/scooter.shtml#

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_Grand_Prix_motorcycle_racing_season

Thank you Steve

Did Anyone ever see a Linto engine in a Flat Tracker?

If you have any interesting CR Sprint photos or tech info, send-um! vft

dennis@vft.org

Aermacchi web sites

Ron Lancasters site
http://www.aermacchisprint.com