POMEROYS RACE WINNING BULTACO

[huskibul]

    Looks like a Woody Grave's built bike ?

[JC]

The last 3 pics in GMC's post #74 (bike #12) are from Dec 74 DB mag which is Pomerpoy's TransAMA 360 of late 74. It clearly shows the Bing I was referring to & the caption notes his preference (by then) for Bing over Amal which I mentioned above.

Dave's noting the square bodied Amal, as far as I can tell, is referring to Auscobuls post #7 (p1) which was his 76 bike & clearly shows a square-bodied Mk2 Amal, but that's completely irrelevant to the 73GP bike. I don't think the sq bodied Amals even existed in April 73.

I'll try & post a pic of his 74 250GP bike (later) which clearly shows he was using the round Amal. Thats no guarantee he used the round Amal on his 73GP bike, but it does seem unlikely he would have used a Mikuni.


Geoff, can you confirm that #42U bike above is a CMS frame? It looks a lot like one, tho its diff around the footpeg/s'arm-pivot area - & it looks uncannily like the championed frame bike I've seen.

[oldmxracer]

I know the owner of the 42u bike and it is a CMS frame.

[VMX247]

A nice clear photo shot 

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Bike-Card-1973-Bultaco-250-Pursang-Pomeroy-Motocross-MX-/380176650607?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item58844b516f

[GMC]

I know the owner of the 42u bike

This be him




The trouble with a lot of the early frame builders is that they didn’t “brand” them so it can sometimes be hard to work out what builder built a frame.
Some will name a frame to a certain builder because they are not aware of how many frame builders there were so some frames can be labeled wrongly because they are assumed to belong to a well known builder.

John, are you sure the frame you looked at is a Champion?
Most Champion frames were of the dirt track variety, I’m not sure they built that many MX frames.

If you look at manufacturing techniques and gussets you can start to see the differences.

The CMS add…




One of my CMS replicas which is a direct copy of Drakies frame….




The 42U frame….

[JC]

Thanks Oldmxracer. Do you know anything of the history of CMS Products?

The hard part to this though is that there are so many pictures of Jim from different events, and we need to look at the 73 GP pictures only.
Also the CMS frame I have put up probably isn’t a good one to compare with as if he did use a CMS frame it would have been an earlier version.

Very true on both counts Geoff. The 73GP bike frame is visually identical to a pursang frame of the era, but that doesn't mean CMS couldn't have made it, if they were in business in early 73.

The trouble with a lot of the early frame builders is that they didn’t “brand” them so it can sometimes be hard to work out what builder built a frame.
Some will name a frame to a certain builder because they are not aware of how many frame builders there were so some frames can be labeled wrongly because they are assumed to belong to a well known builder.

John, are you sure the frame you looked at is a Champion?

Yes, I've wondered if the pic I'm referring to is rightly captioned. It was listed for sale as "CHAMPION BULTACO: MX frame made in 74".

The same bike pictured elswhere (in LaVoz de SMOG) looks so much like the CMS framed bike you posted that you'd have to conclude either that its wrongly captioned or that CMS & Champion used the same builder or had some kind of link.

If I could get my scanner up & running after Cyclone Yasi, I'd have a go at posting a few pics - hopefully in the next day or so.

But I'm inclining to think that CMS did build the earlier Pomery frames. The give-away is in the boxed-in swingarm pivot area. If you look carefully in all those pics you posted of #42U you can see it.  Not all Pomeroys frames had that (the 74 TranAMA 360 in Dec DB didn't), but its the same as in a pic I have from Hugh's Bultaco, said to be one of Pomeroys (pre-long-travel) frames, which is otherwise visually similar to std pursang frames of the era.

I can just make it out in the pic of the so-called "Champion Bultaco" too.

[sudman]

Could this be the correct rear fender? Anything old school plastic comes up I buy it, had this one for a few years now

[GMC]

John, from what your saying I would just about lay money that the frame your looking at is a CMS and not a Champion.
It’s a common theme, someones not sure what they’ve got and “old mate” declares its Brand X because he heard about them once, and not many have heard of CMS (which must have pissed them off if Jim did win a GP with their frame and 38 years later people still aren’t sure)
You just have to look at e-bay to see how many things are branded with the wrong model or year, PE’s advertised as RM’s, 77’s advertised as 74 etc.
I once had an argument with a guy that tried to tell me that Honda made Hodaka’s because he once saw them in the classifieds in the Honda section. He had never heard of Hodaka before so he concluded that they were made by Honda and I’m not sure I was able to convince him otherwise

Fabricators tend to have individual styles, it comes from their experiences and tooling that is handy.
My pipes for instance, my downpipes have had the same muffler style for over a decade now, and except for a few specials the mounting brackets have been the same laser cut shape for over a decade as well. Welding will also be similar and you may notice that mine look different to other cone pipes.
Those double plate sections for the swingarm pivot I reckon are typical of CMS.
Are their any other frames that you know to be a Champion that have similar gussets?

[firko]

Champion frames are pretty distinctive and unless Shwerma produced a different, one off design for the Bultaco, I'm willing to bet my goolies on the Spanish GP bike being a CMS. Even though Champion are more noted for their flat track frames, their motocross design is very similar bar slight differences in the swingarm, footpeg mounts and steering head angle. Greg Bastek was recently trying to flog a Champion MX360 motocrosser on the Swapmeet and it was very different to the CMS in overall concept and layout(while acknowledging the twin/single downtube difference). see photo below.

I again come back to believing the 'Tools and Chattel' item shown above. It'd take a lot of gall to make a claim like that in an internationally distributed magazine unless it were true. One would assume that CMS would be pulled up pretty quickly by those involved in the Pomeroy effort if the claims were incorrect.

Whatever the truth is, this is a pretty good example of the knowledge on this forum being put to good use, uncovering an important yet almost forgotten piece of motocross history.

     

[oldmxracer]

Thanks Oldmxracer. Do you know anything of the history of CMS Products?

Yep that's him. He runs around the country hauling a 2 stroke powered Margarita machine with some guy called Diamond Don. 

Sorry, I don't know much about CMS.

[JC]

Could this be the correct rear fender?

Sudman, that could well be very close to the real deal. 

Those double plate sections for the swingarm pivot I reckon are typical of CMS.
Are their any other frames that you know to be a Champion that have similar gussets?

Geoff, as you would know, the double plate sections are typical of CZ frames of the era. Its just one small step from there to box them in.  I don't know of any chapion frames that used it tho.

Champion frames are pretty distinctive and unless Shwerma produced a different, one off design for the Bultaco, I'm willing to bet my goolies on the Spanish GP bike being a CMS. Even though Champion are more noted for their flat track frames, their motocross design is very similar bar slight differences in the swingarm, footpeg mounts and steering head angle. Greg Bastek was recently trying to flog a Champion MX360 motocrosser on the Swapmeet and it was very different to the CMS in overall concept and layout(while acknowledging the twin/single downtube difference).

Yes Mark, agreed - champion frames are generally quite distinctive. I've long believed the yamaha-engined frames are very Maico-like.  But the 71 Schwerma Bul frames are distinctively Bul-like. It takes a fairly keen eye to spot the diffs from Pursang/Bandito frames of the era.

I personally can't put much weight on a claim that CMS built Pomeroy's 73 frame. I've seen too much folly claimed over the years in US mags, esp where it concerns US products/expertise etc. I went thro a heap of 73-74 mags yesterday & I found several similar snippets/ads on CMS Products, but only that 1 mentioned any claim that they built Pomeroy's frame. And even the wording of that is not clear who actually made the claim.

My take is that if it were true, CMS would have been splashing it everywhere, in every frame ad. Also, since the magazine pooh-paah-ed the claim, you'd think if it were true CMS would have followed it up & got an apology. What I'm chasing is conclusive evidence, or at least verified from more than 1 reputable source.

With some more evidence I found last night, I'm now inclining to think we will never know who made the 73GP bike frame. I'm not even yet fully convinced that it was US made, or that CMS existed in early 73, tho I do think it was most likely a cro-mo frame.

Hopefully I'll be able to post a few pics later today to show what I'm talking about.

(Just as an aside, I found CMS apparently made 2 CZ frames, one for pre-73 Zeds, & one for post 74 Zeds.)

[vmx42]

Ron Pomeroy is still around… he would probably know more than most?

[Peter Villacaro]

It was a comment in an add from Dirt Rider ( I think 74?)
It seemed like news to them at the time.

Pomeroy used a stock Pursang with his rear shocks, that CMS ad is bullshit.

[Stan S]

Pomeroy used a stock Pursang with his rear shocks, that CMS ad is bullshit.

Hi Peter, can you shed some light on what you know or have heard about Jim's 73 GP Winning bike.

Regards Stan.

[huskibul]

   I have a fairly close pic of the #26 spanish GP bike and it distinctly has  the shockmount/bottom of rear loop with the dogleg 'aka" the production bike?one thing we do know is that bimbo in that period changed his bikes as often as his  grundy's ! i will try to post it later when the young bloke gets home