On Saturday, 3 rd October, Jim Redman MBE, six times World Champion and six times Isle of Man TT winner, will be the guest speaker at an evening held in the Lecture Theatre of the NMMT Collections Centre at Beaulieu. Before much longer, Honda was not fighting against European machines, but against his own compatriots, in a battle to stem the tide of the new high-performance two-strokes from Honda’s skirt-tail rivals, Suzuki and Yamaha. Honda had conquered every category it had entered. But the big prize remained – the 500cc premier class, where the mighty four-cylinder MV Agustas reigned supreme. By the late 1960s the four-stroke versus two-stroke conflict was getting out of control. In 1967 Suzuki engineers designed the RP66 for the following season. The RP66 was a three-cylinder 50cc two-stroke, created to defeat Honda’s rival four-stroke twin. The RP66 made 18 horsepower at 19,000rpm – 380bhp per litre – delivered through a 14-speed gearbox.

But for the forthcoming season Redman was ruled out of racing after a crash in the pouring rain at the Belgian GP. Honda needed a second rider. Fast. So in-stepped Cheshire privateer Stuart Graham, whose late father, Les Graham, was 1949 500cc world champion and a successful TT racer. Graham said: “Honda needed some assistance for poor Mike. They were running in the 50, 125, 250, 350 and 500cc world championships so there was a lot going on so they needed somebody who could at least help out and try and gain a few points. I'd finished second in the 500cc race to Ago on my private Matchless and I was getting some pretty good results in that championship in my first year of GPs. In fact, after the Belgian GP I was officially third in the 500cc world championship on a private Matchless in my first season.”

Biography

I was approached by Honda at the next round in East Germany at the old Sachsenring and it was really out of the blue although Jim had made some flippant suggestion to Mike that I should help him out while he was lying on his hospital bed but I put that down to the fact he was too full of morphine!” Any fan of motorcycle racing will find Jim Redman: Six Times World Champion absorbing; any fan of true stories of grit and determination overcoming impossible odds will find it hard to put down. The bike has not been run since,’ Jim revealed to Octane, ‘and if whoever buys it strips it down they’ll see that the crankshaft and pistons are all new. If it is only used for parade laps it should not need rebuilding for some time but if it’s raced in historic events it will have to be fully maintained.’ His absolute determination to succeed resulted in his recruitment to the ‘mighty’ Honda factory after the 1960 TT. Between 1958 and 1960 the British born Rhodesian competed on the Island mainly on Norton machinery gaining a best 7th placing the Formula One 350cc race in his debut year.

Setting up the cylinder head was an absolutely mammoth job. Valve clearance was only six to eight thou, but the tappets had no screw adjusters. You had to measure them with a micrometer to work out where you were going to put each one, then you’d grind them down on an abrasive stone according to how each valve was opening and closing. The margin for error was very, very small. The diminutive Ulsterman won four grands prix on the RC148 during 1966, after winning the 1965 50cc world title aboard the 13-horsepower RC115, which used bicycle-style stirrup-brakes to reduce brake drag. Bryans, a technical illustrator at shipbuilder Harland and Wolff, got to learn more about the 125 five and 250 six than most Westerners. When Honda quit GPs at the end of 1967 the company loaned him one of each to ride in non-world championship events. And it was up to him to service the bikes. Without question the single most important motorcycle of any kind to appear on the open market in recent years, this Honda RC164 is offered for sale by multiple World Championship winner Jim Redman, to whom it was given by a grateful factory at the end of the 1964 Grand Prix season. Then you did an unusual thing by going to what was then called Rhodesia, what pulled you there because you’re a young man, you’ve had these tragedies in your life, you’ve lived through the war, was it wanting to break completely with the norm? It was a very wonderful experience and it set me on my way as a factory rider in the world championships. And what an amazing start to my professional career! “Apart from Jim riding it in various classic events, the Honda has had very little use since the restoration and was last ridden in 2018 at Pyynikki, Finland, a circuit at which Jim had won the 125cc World Championship race in 1962. The number on the fairing previously was '28' (the vendor's competitor number) but he has since changed this to '1' for Jim. (There is only one fairing.) My idea wasn’t to make a normal five-cylinder,” he says. “Instead I made a six-cylinder 150cc and took off one cylinder. I was also working on the 250 six, so that was very simple. If you look at the 125 five engine you can see that it started out as a six cylinder. I took out one cylinder and put in the gear train. Then we used parts from the 50cc twin, so that design was very smooth.” It was already motorbikes. So if you’re in motorbikes, I always went every year that I was old enough and had my bike. We always went to Silverstone for the Grand Prix, I think they called it TT, or whatever, but we started going to motorbike races that were within the distance of what we could afford. I watched racing. When I got to Rhodesia, John Love was working at the CMED on the motorcycle section, I was on the car section and then later the engine section. I always wanted more of everything, you know, more of stuff. Then I met John Love and he was racing motorbikes, so wow, now I’m working next to the guy. We became friends and I started going round and he was talking about racing driving cars. Redman was also a six-time Isle of Man TT winner, taking double wins in 1963, 1964 and 1965 in the Lightweight& Junior TT Races. [5] He achieved a total of 45 Grand Prix victories. Redman was awarded the MBE for his achievements. When I was a kid I was evacuated up into Shropshire and because I had passed the 11-plus exams, I think I was about eleven or twelve, I had to go to a grammar school. They actually sent us to Shrewsbury instead of Dewsbury, so we were in the wrong place anyway. My young brother and sister (twins) were very young about five. They got to stay in a nice place out in Dewsbury, a village outside Shrewsbury. They were very happy there and stayed there for the rest of the war and they also called their foster parents mother and father, they were there for so long, so they said they had two mothers and two fathers.

This was to prove the bike’s downfall, at least in its first incarnation. Japanese engine technology was supreme, chassis and suspension technology still catching up. When Hailwood first rode the RC181, he famously said “it handles like a camel”. In true Redman fashion, he has prevailed over all losses and challenges. How remarkable was Jim Redman the racer? He says it best himself: Mike Hailwood, yes and they said, “Why?”, I said, “Well, when you’re heading for the finishing line and it’s Agostini or it’s Phil Read, on the last lap I’m thinking, “I’ve got you, I, you know this is over on the last lap. With Mike I never felt that. I thought, “What is the bastard up to?” I never knew. When I got over the line, I knew I beat him, but I said “I’m proud of the fact that I think, in the end I beat Mike more times than he beat me” and so I’m quite proud of that. He then began to race in South Africa, beginning the 1958 season as a Paddy Driver. In April he made his GP debut at Brands Hatch and from then on was a regular amongst the fastest riders and in 1960 he won the 500cc GP of Spain on a Norton. Later Honda hired him. His first victory for the Japanese manufacturer came in the 250cc Belgian Grand Prix in 1961 and the following year he took both the 250cc and 350cc titles. In 1963 he again achieved the double crowns of the 250cc and 350cc classes, with two more 350cc titles in 1964 and 1965. The challenge was different. There were as yet no sprightly two-strokes to overcome, and Honda’s machine was relatively staid compared with the excesses of the smaller classes… a by-now classic in-line four, with DOHC driven by a gear train between cylinders two and three, four valves per cylinder, and (compared with the older MV four) plenty of horsepower.I’m here in the British countryside with Jim Redman, World Champion Motorcyclist six times. Jim, what impressed me most about your life story was how tough a life you had to begin with. You lost both of your parents when you were young after being forcefully separated from them during World War Two. What got you through – many would go into a hole after those kinds of experiences? Then they said: ‘When we open the door, push like crazy.’ As it fired up – it was like somebody dropping a bomb. They were screaming! Nobody had heard it before, and didn’t know what it was. Everybody came, and they were just crawling all over you. One Japanese guy had an oil can, and he was squirting it at them, trying to keep them away.”