The Rickman B44 Weslake Conversion
A 490cc Conversion for the B44 Victor. The conversions were available perhaps as early as 1968 or 1969 to bring BSA unit singles to full class limits and to produce a pure torque motor for Motocross. By 1971, BSA had made the B50 making the Weslake conversion usefulness questionable. Rickman produced a model with the BSA B44 bottom end and the Weslake barrel and head to go along with their Rickman complete motorcycyles (Zundapp, Montesa, Hodaka powered). Those stopped in about 1974 or so. I think the Weslake conversion kits were available during that period.
After speaking to Adrian Moss at Rickman, i hope to
have many drawings and articles sent to me when he finds them. One thing
he did say was that as the head was based on the Morris/Mini A Series 1000 head
also designed by Harry Weslake, and many of the same traits have been
designed into the weslake head. He even thinks the valves are the same
as the Morris 1000. This would need to be checked, so when the head gets
stripped i will buy some morris valves and check.
These Weslake heads
aren't that much of an engineering revolution and offer little if any
performance increase over the BSA head. The Wessy MX head bares no resemblence
to the Weslake speedway head and is actually a one cylinder variation of
Weslakes 6 cylinder Zepher or 4 cylinder Morris. The performance increase
is more due to the capacity increase from 440 to 490 than any better gas flow.
The heads were made exclusively for the Rickman Brothers for their over the
counter Mk IV Metisse and are often referred to as the Rickman head. Fitting
one to your B44 (if you could find one) makes little difference to performance
but you get serious brownie points in the "my bikes tricker than
yours" stakes!
The barrel, head and
rocker assembly are all made by weslake for rickman to bring the bsa
441 upto a full 500cc capacity for motorcross, this was short lived as bsa
brought out the b50 which as stock was a better engine than the weslake
converted victor engine. Nothing from the crankcase up is bsa apart from the
connecting rod
28/11/10
This picture has been put in as a teaser.
I hope to have a good quality scan or photo from a very kind chap in Texas. Page is from a cataloge from a company called Steens, who was North American distributer of Rickman Metisse, parts and accessories
This 'catalog' was issue 10 from 1969.
If you have a copy of this book, please send me a good scan of the pages
This picture has been put in as a teaser.
I hope to have a good quality scan or photo from a very kind chap in Texas. Page is from a cataloge from a company called Steens, who was North American distributer of Rickman Metisse, parts and accessories
This 'catalog' was issue 10 from 1969.
If you have a copy of this book, please send me a good scan of the pages
Here is a magazine article from Motorcycle Sport Quarterly that compares the Weslake Conversion to the B50. This is in PDF format and requires a reader.
| Weslake & B50 Dyno Comparision |
