1976 MV Agusta 500 Fire Engine - 6-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article

Description

1976 MV Agusta 500 Fire Engine - 6-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article
Original, vintage magazine article
Page Size: Approx. 8" x 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) each page
Condition: Good
THEY CALLED THEM FIRE ENGINES. It MV Agusta refused to garage their 500 ufactured helicopters and dabbled in mo-
was a fitting nickname for those Italian four-cylinder racer. It had won its first torcycles. But Count Domenico Agusta,
multis which dominated 500cc Grand Prix grand prix race in 1952, and would score head of Meccanica Verghera Agusta and
racing in the 1950s: the war machines from its last in 1966. During that period the 500 patriarch of its racing effort, knew what he
Gilera, Moto Guzzi and MV Agusta howled MV carried three riders—John Surtees, wanted: a 500cc world championship racer,
like fire engines above the heavy, round Gary Hocking and Mike Hailwood—to nine He hired Pietro Remor, who had engineered
monotones of big British singles. Before world championships, winning in 1956, the successful Gilera four-cylinder racers,
they were finished, the Italians managed to 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961,1962, 1963, 1964 to design an updated version for MV. Remor
cut 500 cubic centimeters into fours, sixes and 1965. The 500 fire engine created the fulfilled his commission, but the result had
and. eights, but this grand extravagance MV legend.
few qualifications as a racer and none
ended in 1957. AU the factories retired, fa 1950 MV Agusta had an obscure name whatever as a world-beater.
Except one.
in motorcycling; indeed, the company man- fa broad outlines the engine seemed po-
tent a transverse, air-cooled four-cylinder
500 with gear-driven double-overhead-
camshafts. There the good news stopped.
Two small carburetors fed four 54mm x
54mm cylinders; a highly unorthodox
transmission mated to a rear-wheel drive-
shaft a parallelogram swing arm (sprung
by a torsion bar and damped by a pair of
friction scissors) carried the rear wheel; and
a girder fork provided front-end suspension.
Despite Pietro Remor’s efforts, the in-
novative bike was conspicuous by its failure.
A proud and resourceful man. Count Agusta
could not—and would not—tolerate a loser.
So MV hired Englishman Les Graham, who
had won the 500 world championship in
1949 aboard an AJS, and the struggle to
make the MV a proper racer began.
Not only was Graham a first-class rider,
he was also an excellent development rider.
He could identify a problem, separate it
from different but related difficulties, pro-
pose a solution, predict its result, get the
change made, determine its effect on the
motorcycle, and—finally—distinguish be-
tween progress and wishful thinking.
Graham gave the MV project momentum
as the motorcycle underwent drastic
changes. In his first year (1951) the engine
began wearing four carburetors and a pair
of megaphones; a hydraulically-damped
telescopic front fork appeared; and at the
back the torsion-bar spring and friction
dampers disappeared, replaced by conven-
tional shock absorbers. The parallelogram
rear swing arm and the driveshaft re-...
13653-AL-7605-04 RL- e76ea05