Hitchcocks Forum

Hi, Does anyone have a genuine redditch short circuit racer? I would be interested if any survive. The reason I ask was that I recently bought a frame on ebay and the seller showed me his 350 'Bobber' which had a racing magneto and a TT carb and reversed controls. Which got me thinking! Vince

350 Redditch parts still seem to be about, I'm sure Bullet Whisper could put-together a race-tuned engine for you to build a decent replica, if no-one has an original to part with. Our hosts still list TT carbs, and I have seen competition magnetos come up on ebay.



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Hi, no I wasnt asking to buy just how common they are, if the bobber was a racer someone butchered a possibly rare machine.Vince

I would hope someone just had the interesting bits off one, in which case they're replaceable, but unfortunately genuine classics DO still get ruined for the cult of the bobber.



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Hi. Yes I have the remains of a factory Short Circuit Racer. Mine is 1954 and was imported into Christchurch. I have the original sales receipt. They were made to order and only 13 were ever manufactured. Interestingly 2 were sold to Bogota. The original owner of mine bought his one after experiencing success racing his home tuned 350 Bullet, and thinking that the factory racer would be better. He was disappointed with it and went back to racing his old machine and sold the SCR. It does have some very interesting cams fitted to it that I have never seen before, and produced some interesting results when I used them in my own Bullet racer special. Regards.

Hi, only 13 made does that include the 500? They were in the catalogue for 2 years. According to the tuning book the Quick lift cams are the same as fitted to the scramblers. Oh! and it was a GP carb not a TT as I previously stated. If early factory tests got 105mph out of a 350 I wonder what the 500 could do? My ex works 250 racer would crack a ton without much difficulty. Vince.

The very first version of our 350 racer [2005] could top 100 mph, but it was slow compared with the machines it raced with, usually finishing last, if it finished at all! Last year, it won the BHR pre '63 350 Championship and set a new lap record on Anglesey for such machines.

Hi, at one meeting I finished third from last in the 250 race but when we compared lap times I would have finished fifth in the 500 class???? Vince

Vince what 250 works machine was it you had that would top 100mph? I thought the only 'works' 250's were the GP5's - and the works version were very quick indeed, even the over-the-counter versions were the quickest of all UK 250 race bikes at the time.

Hi, I brought the 250 from Jack Gray in 1979. I was told that it was an early try at a clubman racer what became the GP5 project. It has a crusader engine with close ratio box and leading link forks and non standard twin leading front brake. With it came a set of engine plates to take a Starmaker engine which was the next step along. It would rev to about 9000rpm in the lower gears and about 8500 in top which calculated at 101mph. Fun to ride but still not quick enough for what they wanted. Also bear in mind the works entered 250s in production races like thruxton 500. There was also a rotary valve engine tested in a crusader frame.Vince
Ps Lots of exotic british race machines have been discovered in South America so a SCR ending up in Bogota is not to surprising.