Cycles news issue 44

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RACER TEST

What a lovely little motorcycle. The Chevallier Honda is a stunning racer, 35 years after it was created.

1984 CHEVALLIER HONDA RS500

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BY ALAN CATHCART PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEL EDGE

AGAINST ALL

ODDS Taking on the best with your own design is something simply not possible now. It’s lucky men like Alain Chevallier that did

T

o defeat the Japanese factory teams by winning GPs with bikes you built yourself in a workshop attached to your house, fueled by your wife’s home cooking and cups of coffee freshly brewed in the kitchen next door, is a quixotic achievement that’d be impossible today.

But in the early 1980s, that’s exactly what French engineer Alain Chevallier succeeded in doing, and his death from cancer in October 2016 at 68 years old saw us lose one of the great chassis designers of modern-day GP history.

When as influential a figure as HRC boss Youichi Oguma lent factory engines to Alain Chevallier’s small team, it was a mark of respect for what his bikes had achieved against all the odds, on a limited budget. While the

RACER TEST

1984 CHEVALLIER HONDA RS500

Japanese were following Antonio Cobas in building aluminum chassis, Chevallier maintained his allegiance to tubular steel frames—but using cold-drawn steel, which, being 20% stronger than hot-rolled, offers an increased stiffness-to-weight ratio, plus improved rider feedback. Ducati would follow in his tire tracks later that decade en route to successive World Superbike titles with its tubeframed racers, and eventually, of course, to the 2007 MotoGP World title.

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a still air box on his GP bikes. He was a pioneer in developing fully adjustable suspension, too, making his own forks and shocks, as well as in telemetry.

The Chevallier workshop was a hotbed of innovation.

Alain Chevallier’s younger brother Olivier had become a top bike racer, winning the 1976 350cc Yugoslavian GP with a bike prepared by Alain as chief mechanic for the Pernod-funded team. By 1980 he’d started making his own Yamaha TZ250/350powered bikes for Olivier to race—but that April he was tragically killed at Paul Ricard. The distraught Alain was set to turn his back on racing before his ALAIN CHEVALLIER-A LATER STARTER friend Eric Saul persuaded him otherwise. Just six But Alain Chevallier didn’t stop there. As part of weeks after Olivier’s passing, Saul put a Chevalhis drive to save weight to compensate for the less lier Yamaha on the rostrum for the first time in the powerful customer engines in his bikes, he was the 350cc French GP at Ricard, repeating that thirdfirst to fit carbon disc brakes to a 500GP motorplace finish at Silverstone later that year to finish cycle and the first to feature ram-air induction and sixth in the final points table.

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(Left) Didier de Radigues hard at work in 1986.

He scored eight top 10 finishes in the 12 500cc GP races. (Right) Olivier Rietsch, better known as ‘Gull,’ with his pride and joy.

Lavado and Christian Sarron. “We had an excellent season with lots of pole positions and fewer Despite his brother’s death, Alain Chevallier concrashes, but we just didn’t quite have enough to tinued to build and race motorcycles. In 1982, win the title,” Alain once told me. “But for 1984, Belgium’s Didier de Radiguès rode a Chevallier we started a new adventure.”

Yamaha to victory in the 350cc Yugoslavian GP, to Indeed so—for with the demise of the 350cc wind up second in the World Championship. Teamclass, and already accustomed to racing in two mate Eric Saul won the Austrian GP and finished grueling GP races in a single day, alongside his the championship in fourth. For 1983, now with 250GP ride in 1983 Didier de Radiguès had beELF sponsorship, Didier was joined in the 250GP gun a 500GP career with a stock Honda RS500, Chevallier team by Jean-François Baldé, and the one of 32 customer replicas of the NS500 triple dream result of the first race at Kyalami saw victory Freddie Spencer had turned into a 1982 GP winon his Chevallier debut for the Frenchman, with de ner. But the Honda’s flawed handling was a disapRadiguès second. But Baldé broke his leg at Aspointment, so for 1984, Didier convinced Alain sen, and despite pleasing his local Johnson cigaChevallier to move up to the 500cc class with an rette sponsors with victory in the Belgian GP at Spa, all-new bike using the Honda RS500 V3 engine, Didier could only finish third in the World Chamwith sponsorship from ELF and Johnson, and a pionship, behind Yamaha factory riders Carlos backup bike for Christian Le Liard.

1983 MARKS THE TURNING POINT

RACER TEST

1984 CHEVALLIER HONDA RS500

INTO THE BIG LEAGUES IN ’85 The tube-frame Chevallier Honda RS500 was tested at a wintry Paul Ricard by Didier, who declared it to be “right first time!” He then proved that by leading the first four laps of the bike’s very first race a month later in the opening South African GP, before finishing fourth with teammate Le Liard eighth. With three other top-10 finishes, the Belgian finished ninth in the World Championship, a satisfying result for him and Chevallier. But strangely, though, not for ELF, as they supported Serge Rosset’s team in 1985 instead. Politics!

The three-cylinder Honda RS500 is one of the most exquisite racing engines ever created.

with his factory NS500 triple. While expressing satisfaction with the French bike, he never raced it in the end, though Oguma-san let teammate Takazumi Katayama race a Bakkerframed such bike—after which Honda replicated the Dutch chassis design for their 1985 Mark 2 version! It might have been a Chevalier ripoff, instead.

THE BAKKER REMIX Redesigning Pernod’s own 250GP bike gave the four full-time Chevallier employees something to do in 1985, while the de Radiguès 500 was lent to French privateer Thierry Espié, who scored points on it twice before returning it to Alain. Meantime, the other ex-Le Liard bike was twice tested by Randy Mamola, anxious to redress the handling issues he was experiencing

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BACK TO THE FUTURE

(Below) Chevallier inspects his creation in 1986.

Check out the double caliper front brake setup!

For 1986 the de Radiguès/Chevallier/ Honda RS500 lineup was re-formed with Rollstar sponsorship, resulting in an even more successful season with eight top-10 finishes in the 12 races, en route to seventh place in the World Championship and top Honda triple, two spots ahead of Ron Haslam on the Rosset-run ELF 3!

The highlight of the year was a magnificent second place for Didier on the Chevallier Honda triple in the pouring rain at Silverstone, just nine seconds behind winner Wayne Gardner’s NSR500 V4 Honda.

For 1987 de Radiguès was hired by Cagiva with Chevallier as chassis consultant, scoring the best finish yet for the Italian factory with fourth place in Brazil.

But tensions within the team saw Alain stop GP racing altogether, despite the offer of Honda NSR500 engines from Oguma-san, which he had to decline, with no team to run the consequent V4 Chevallier Honda.

RACER TEST

1984 CHEVALLIER HONDA RS500

ENTER RACHEL NICOTTE Just three Chevallier Honda RS500 triples were built—the first 1984 de Radiguès/Johnson bike, the Le Liard/ ELF one copied from it, and the third Rollstar one made new in 1986, with altered chassis geometry and the potential to adjust this via eccentrics.

The original 1984 Johnson bike was used as a backup that season, but in 1988 Chevallier sold this to French privateer Rachel Nicotte, who won the French 500cc National title with it that year, taking victory in most rounds.

Nicotte also managed to fit in seven 500GP starts between the rounds, finishing in five of these, and in Jerez, he scored three World Championship points with a 13th place. In 1989 he contested the European Championship, finishing second in the series, with just three GPs squeezed in between these rounds. For 1990 money was short, so Nicotte only started three 500GPs, twice finishing in the points.

Not much to see here other than a rev counter and water temp gauge (right). Old racing motorcycles are beautifully simplistic in certain areas.

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After that, he switched to more affordable 600 Supersport racing, in which he twice became French champion, as well as winning the 1992 Le Mans 24 Hours on a privateer Yamaha, and again on a factory Honda RC45 in 1995. But tragically, his racing days perforce over at the level he was accustomed to competing at, Rachel Nicotte committed suicide in 2005.

WORN OUT, OR WORN IN?

(Below) Any discerning MotoGP lover will instantly recognize the twin pipes as those from a Honda RS500.

The coordinator of Nicotte’s small Chevallier Honda GP team had been his neighbor in Plaisir—the town Rachel lived in outside Paris—Oliver ‘Gull’ Rietsch. Gull owns the ex-de Radiguès, ex-Espié, ex-Nicotte bike today, still painted in the Ville de Plaisir colors in which Nicotte ran it in 1989-90, sponsored by his hometown, whose Mayor must have been a bike fan! “I gave up my job in property maintenance to go racing with Rachel in 1988,” recalls Gull “I did everything that didn’t involve working on the bike or riding it—so that meant driving the truck, keeping us fed, sourcing fuel, parts, supplies and tires, and especially repairing bodywork—Rachel used to crash a lot. I mean, a lot. We ran it literally on a shoestring because we had no money for parts. We made friends with one of the Honda mechanics, and he’d tell us ‘At exactly 9 p.m. this evening, I’m going to throw our worn out parts in that bin over there,’ so we made sure to be waiting around the corner then. Their idea of worn-out was simply nicely run in for us!”

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1984 CHEVALLIER HONDA RS500

Laurentz to rebuild the engine, while French classic race guru Yves After Nicotte stopped racing the Kerlo www.kerloclassic.com underChevallier, he entrusted it to Gull took a frame-up restoration. It was for safekeeping, until Gull eventucompleted just a fortnight before ally bought the bike from him. “It had been part of my youth—I’d lived the fabulous 2019 Sunday Ride Classic at Paul Ricard in May of this three whole years of my life centered around that bike, so it wasn’t year. There, I found myself runningin the newly rebuilt motor with the going anywhere else.” Nicotte’s likes of Freddie Spencer, Kevin tragic passing in 2004 inspired Schwantz, Giacomo Agostini (and Gull to have the bike rebuilt to run again in the increasingly numerous his son Giacomino!), and Christian Sarron zapping past me as I bedhistorical events like the Bikers ded in those new pistons. Well, that Classic at Spa. It was at the 2014 was my excuse, anyway…. edition of this that we found ourThe Johnson Chevallier feaselves sharing a pit and, well – you tures Alain’s distinctive cold-drawn can guess the rest. However, my promised test ride on the bike had tubular steel twin-loop frame, with massive strengthening around the to wait five years more while Gull steering head, despite which it only managed to source some new weighs just over 11 pounds, minus pistons for the V3 Honda engine.

Finally, in 2018, a batch was made, the fabricated chrome-moly tubular allowing Gull’s mate Emmanuel steel swingarm with fully adjustable

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A NEW LEASE OF LIFE

(Below left) Belgian legend Didier de Radigues is reunited with his 1980’s GP steed. (Right) Light and nimble, the Chevallier Honda would have worked brilliantly at tight tracks like Laguna Seca or Yugoslavia.

WP monoshock and variablerate link. The fully adjustable 40mm Chevallier upsidedown fork—complete with one set of internals stamped “Chevy” (go figure!) and the other “CAG 500!”—is set at a steeper 23° rake than the stock Honda’s 24.5°, whereas at 55.9 inches, the wheelbase is much

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longer than the RS500’s 54.1 inches—presumably for added stability. However, instead of the single carbon front disc, which de Radiguès raced with in 1984, there’s a pair of 310mm AP-Lockheed steel discs fitted today, with four-piston calipers. That’s because the impecunious Thierry Espié installed these when he borrowed the bike for the 1985 season—he couldn’t afford to replace the carbon discs regularly when they wore out, so they’ve been there ever since! This means that the bike today weighs 255.7 dry, rather than the 244.7 pounds it scaled

in 1984, but with a 52/48% forward weight bias even with the forward-facing array of carbs, which resolved the stock RS500’s problems of insufficient weight on the front wheel.

TESTING THE CHEVALLIER HONDA RS500 However, you’re immediately aware of how “reet petite” the Chevallier is when you ride it—as against the dozen-odd NS/RS500 Honda triples, I’ve been fortunate to ride down the years, this is a 350 compared to a 500. In fact, Rachel Nicotte was

RACER TEST much shorter than me, so I found the close-coupled riding position much too cramped to feel comfortable on the Chevallier—I couldn’t move around on the bike very easily, and it was impossible to tuck my head behind the screen. That was a pity, as Didier de Radiguès and I are the same height, and it would have been nice to try it as he rode it.

But what this meant was that I got a great sense of the bike’s flickability, the way I could swap direction on it so relatively easily in Paul Ricard’s copious chicanes, without hanging off. But the Chevallier was super stable in fast sweepers, like the fourthgear Signes right-hander at the end of the Mistral Straight, where that longer wheelbase inevitably came into play, compensating for the tight steering geometry. It wasn’t remotely nervous-steering or twitchy, just felt planted with heaps of security.

But it also braked well, with its light weight surely a factor as I found in a fascinating “battle” on the Sunday main event at Ricard with someone else whose name I never did discover on a standard Honda RS500—you know who you are, so please write in!

Thanks to the Chevallier’s light weight I could gain many yards on him braking into the chicanes thanks to the ultra-effective AP-Lockheed brake package, or the tight right-hander after Signes, but then he’d get on the gas harder than me exiting the bend and pull those yards back, where I was constrained by the

1984 CHEVALLIER HONDA RS500 11,000 rpm ceiling I’d been asked to observe while those new Tech 3 pistons bedded in. Tantalizingly, that was just when the Honda engine wanted to really take off, after coming on strongly from 9500 rpm upwards quite fiercely, without the absent ATAC power-valves fitted to the works Honda triples and later customer bikes, which helped smooth out power delivery on those so well.

But for my last four laps on the bike, I revved it out to 11,800 rpm in the gears, and it made a massive difference to the Honda’s acceleration, as well as making it much easier to ride. That’s because it was now snicking nicely all through the gears on the one-up race-pattern left-foot gearshift to leave me still in the powerband as I hit each higher ratio, instead of having to work the light-action clutch to coax it back on the pipe. Yet the greater torque this also accessed didn’t upset the sense of balance from the Chevallier frame, and the easy way it steered. What a sweet little motorcycle, well, not so little, with 125 bhp delivered at 11,500 rpm, call it a bike that punched above its weight.

The only pity is that Alain Chevallier is no longer with us, so he can’t admire the wonderful job that Gull & Co. has achieved in restoring the Chevallier Honda 500 mothership.

Kudos, Gull, and thank you! CN

P86 SPECIFICATIONS

CHEVALLIER HONDA RS500 YEAR OF CONSTRUCTION: ................... 1984 OWNERS: .....Olivier Rietsch, Saint Laurent du Maroni, French Guyana ENGINE: ..............Water-cooled, reed-valve single-crankshaft 90o V3 2-stroke BORE X STROKE: ...................62.6 x 54mm CAPACITY: ...........................................499cc OUTPUT: ..................125 bhp @ 11,500 rpm CARBURATION: ................3 x 34mm Keihin IGNITION: .................... Kokusan-Denko CDI GEARBOX: .................... 6-speed extractable cassette-type CLUTCH:........Multiplate dry (7 friction/7 steel) CHASSIS:............ Cold-drawn chrome-moly tubular steel twin-loop frame FRONT SUSPENSION: .............Fully adjustable 40mm Chevallier inverted telescopic fork REAR SUSPENSION: ................... Fabricated chrome-moly tubular steel swingarm with fully adjustable WP monoshock and variable-rate link FRONT BRAKES: .......Dual 310mm steel discs with four-piston AP-Lockheed calipers REAR BRAKE: ..............Single 220mm steel disc with two-piston Brembo caliper FRONT-WHEEL/TIRE: .......... 3.50 in. Marvic cast magnesium wheel / 120/70-17 Pirelli Diablo REAR-WHEEL/TIRE: .............. 5.00 in. Marvic cast magnesium wheel/ 180/55-17 Pirelli Diablo Superbike HEAD ANGLE: ...........................................23° WHEELBASE: .....................................55.9 in.

WEIGHT: ...........................................244 lbs.

WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION:..........52 front /48 rear percent