1974 Rickman Metisse CR
The Rickman story, for those unfamiliar with it, is one of determined brothers who thought they could do better with what British – and Japanese – motorcycle manufacturers were offering riders. That determination is echoed in Ron Davis, the owner of the bike featured here, as he also defies accepted bike logic and does his own thing – with impressive results.
When JUST BIKES spotted this motorcycle, a 1974 Rickman Metisse CR, for sale at the recent All British Rally, we weren’t alone in taking a long and detailed second look at this beautiful machine. But in a recent conversation with Ron, we found that beauty isn’t just skin deep.
Brothers’ Tale
Don and Derek Rickman started out as racers, specifically in scrambles competition, but, dissatisfied with the scramblers produced by the main British manufacturers in the late 1950s, they mixed and matched the best elements of different brands, then developed frames superior to the factory items. The result, named ‘Metisse’ (French for mongrel or crossbreed), soon found a market and led to small-volume manufacture, followed by complete bikes that combined their frame with engines and cycle parts from (usually) Triumph, BSA or Matchless. Rickman’s well-made, nickel-plated frames generated enough business to expand the concept into road bikes, specifically café racers, and competition machines.
As the British motorcycle industry began to die off, Rickman frames were paired up with European and Japanese engines, but this wasn’t enough to keep the business going. Manufacture of complete bikes ceased in the late 1970s, and by 1980, Don and Derek had sold off most of the business.
Salt and Coffee
Being a longtime aficionado of British bikes, Ron Davis was all too aware of the Rickman machines, both in off-road and road forms. Like most, he admires the look of these bikes, but being a trained and qualified technician, he has a deeper appreciation of their mechanical and engineering finesse. Well-known in classic British bike circles, Ron’s also a regular competitor at the DLRA Speed Week at Lake Gairdner, where he’s run seemingly humble bikes to times that embarrass blokes with much larger machinery, wallets and egos.
What’s he’s learned on our version of the salt flats has been applied to his road bikes, with many of the almost one dozen bikes in his stable being wolves in sheep’s clothing. That said, a couple are wolves in wolves clothing. The Rickman café racer fits into this category – it looks fast just standing still. But since he’s finished restoring this machine, Ron’s been able to confirm that it goes very, very fast, too!
Admired from Afar, Restored from Aclose!
While he only purchased this Rickman a couple of years ago, Ron has been familiar with the bike for much, much longer. The original owner was a mate of Ron’s who bought the bike new in 1974, then made some modifications, including a Quaife 5-speed gearbox, lightened flywheels, an automotive Weber carby, oversized valves and cams of his own design, to name a few. “The engine was extensively modified – it’s a very hotshot engine,” Ron explained. An external oil pressure gauge and a few appearance accessories were also added, but fortunately, the signature nickel-plated Rickman frame was unmolested. “He built it to use and it was well used!” Ron laughed. “It was very well-known around the northern suburbs of Melbourne.” When the bike became hard to tune, that first owner abandoned it in his shed for close to 25 years, before agreeing to sell it to Ron, who had expressed a desire to buy it should the circumstance arise. “I wanted to save its life,” Ron explained, but buying it proved to be the easy bit.
Runner, not Roller
Those decades of neglect hadn’t done the Metisse any favours, and was in a condition that Ron described as completely deteriorated. “My wife nearly had heart failure when she saw me drag this ‘carcass’ out of the shed!” Ron laughed. The brakes had completely seized, requiring the calipers to be taken off just to move the bike, but fortunately, the Triumph engine and gearbox was solid. That oil-in-frame chassis was in surprisingly good condition, too, as were the Ceriani forks, Koni rear shocks and wheels. The same couldn’t be said for the fibreglass and smaller parts like the indicators and gauges, though. It sat for a year, untouched, before Ron got stuck into it in early 2016: “I totally stripped it down – every last nut, bolt and screw.” Pulling the engine down revealed why the bike had been so damned difficult to tune. “It had broken inlet valve outer springs, so was only running on the inners,” Ron explained. Those who’ve had a bit to do with these Triumph twins will know that, with those springs broken, no state of tune will make it rev. “[The valves] just floated at 3000rpm, because it only had the inner valves working. It turned a GT Falcon into an Austin A40!”
With new springs and the valves re-cut and re-seated, the only other thing the 650 twin needed was a new set of piston rings - nothing else. The frame needed nothing other than a thorough clean, while the suspension required new seals, but nothing more. The brakes, however, weren’t so easy. These automotive-spec Lockheed calipers made the Rickman Metisse CR one of the very first roadgoing bikes to feature disc brakes at both ends, and for their day, were the best you could get. But bleeding the brakes means you have to completely remove the back wheel to access the rear caliper’s bleed nipple – doesn’t that sound like fun?! With no manuals for a Metisse, repair or refurb work often involves endless amounts of trial and error and Ron’s experience was no exception.
Fragile Glass
The fibreglass was perhaps the most problematic part of the whole restoration. Ron noted that Rickman’s fibreglass skills weren’t on a par with their framebuilding prowess, so Rickman ‘glass of the 1970s has something of a bad reputation. “The fibreglass was in very, very poor condition,” Ron explained. “It had a lot of holes in it from stuff I didn’t like and took hours and hours of work to get it back in the best shape possible without going to a complete replacement - my aim was to keep it original.” On these early Metisse CRs, the ‘glass work included the fairing, ducktail, side panels and the fuel tank. The folly of the latter soon became apparent, with later CRs using a fibreglass cover over a metal tank.
This bike has the full fibreglass tank, though, which needed extensive repair and relining. Ron used Daubert-Cromwell chemical sealant, an aviation-grade product from the USA, and used a full 2 litres of the stuff to ensure the tank stays leak-free. Replacing the chunky factory taps with more compact leak-free units, Ron then sweated over careful tap and die work into the fibreglass to reseat the tap into the tank.
The original CR side covers were just thin fibreglass sheets: great for reducing weight, but not built to last. Most cracked around the fastening points from vibration and were already gone from this bike when Ron bought it, so he made up replacements from alloy sheeting. The front fairing needed extensive repair, too, which included filling in holes that had been made to mount mirrors and other bits and bobs. The seat is the original from Rickman and is in surprisingly good condition, while the ducktail, thanks to some gentle massaging of the rear fastening tab, now follows the line of the tank. Normally, the CR ducktail had a kink in it and looked like it was lifting up.
Ron’s Special
Improvements Ron made to the bike during the resto include a crankcase breather tube positioned to apply a fine mist to the chain - a clever touch. A cush rubber has also been fitted to the frame to prevent chain slap digging into the frame crossmember. That overlong chain (more on that later) had also chewed into the chainguard, so Ron fabricated a metal plate that sits behind the factory guard - an addition he’s not entirely happy with, but it does the job. Under the skin, the bonded clutch plates are Ron’s own addition, with cork facings araldited on: they not only last, but make for smooth gear changes, too. Ron also runs modern automatic transmission fluid for the same reason. Of the other external personalisations that Ron made, most are at the front end.
From the Rickman works, the front indicators on the Metisse CR were positioned in the lower corners of the fairing – “They look like they’d melted,” Ron noted of their diagonal angle – so using holes already in the fairing to fasten the headlight, he moved the indicators there. Assisting with this is a pancake shell for the Hella headlight, which allows more (but not much more!) access behind the fairing compared to a domed shell. The windscreen, sourced from the UK, would have been clear back in the day, but Ron thinks the smoked finish doesn’t look out of place. Also at the front end, the brake caliper has been repositioned to the rear of the disc. This means that when you hit the anchors, the caliper is pushed up against the fork leg, rather than trying to pull away - a simple, but clever change. Repositioning the ignition switch from the side to the fairing gives the bike something of a proper ‘dash’, with Ron adding a separate headlight switch, indicator lights and oil warning light here, too.
At the back is this build’s quirkiest touch in the form of a ‘cat’s head’ tail light lens. Ron likes it, but the new owner (see breakout) can easily swap it for something more original.
Finally, Ron thought he’d complement that beautiful Rickman frame with nickel-plated fasteners. Teaching himself nickel plating, he made virtually all the major nuts and bolts as shiny, bright – and long-lasting - as the frame.
The Missing Twelve
Rickman history, especially when it comes to confirming things like build numbers and correlating production data, can be murky, as Ron experienced for himself.
Research suggested the frame in this Metisse CR was one of twelve that are listed, but not fully documented, in Rickman history. It’s believed these twelve were the first dozen ‘Series 2’ CR frames (even though no such designation existed) built as development units for Japanese four-cylinder engines, which explains why they’re longer than earlier frames (note the brackets needed to bridge the ‘gap’ between the back of the Triumph engine and the frame), as well as the need for a significantly longer chain. However, the front frame tabs on this example can only take a Triumph 650 twin, not a Jap four, so the theory is that the first twelve were used with Triumph engines to ensure this frame design worked before the mounting tabs were changed on the frames that followed. Ron went as far as speaking to Derek Rickman personally to try and sort it out, but Derek admitted that the company’s record-keeping in the ’70s wasn’t as good as it could have been, so he wasn’t able to shed any further light. Only one other of these ‘missing twelve’ frames is known, which is also located here in Australia.
Enjoying the Ride
Ron, who’s known as the “Nutty Professor” in classic biking circles, admits he can be a bit manic when it comes to doing jobs like this: “Each day, I’d come out to the shed, look at a piece and say ‘you’re mine!’ then spend hours making it as good as I can.” Each task was compartmentalised, but Ron spent as long as it took to make sure it’s either period correct or better than original, whatever the task requires. Twelve months of solid work on the project was completed with period-correct indicators and tyres, plus completely reconditioned Smiths gauges. The result is a bike that’s arguably better than any Metisse CR that left the factory. It’s also one of the most enjoyable bikes that Ron’s experienced in his many, many years of riding. “It’s the best-handling motorcycle I’ve ever ridden – and I’ve ridden some stuff! It will go where you want it to go - and change direction on the apex, too. I’ve never been on a motorcycle that can do that.”
It’s got bags of power, thanks to the aforementioned changes, but that 650 twin isn’t a grenade because of it. “It’s still a very robust engine. At 4,500rpm and 80mph [130kph], it’s only going for a walk,” Ron laughs. “It’s got plenty more in it.” The brakes work well for the period, but are progressive, Ron says, so they do their best work at high speeds.
“This thing [the Rickman] is absolutely the best. If Triumph built these back in the day, they’d have sold millions of them!” As much as he loves the Metisse, Ron concedes that, at 65, a bike like this is perhaps a little bit too much fun for him and too easy to take up to – and beyond – the limit. With a much more docile Triumph T100R Daytona named ‘Doris’ (we mentioned he was nutty, remember?) being built for future rides, Ron’s reluctantly letting the Rickman go. True enthusiasts won’t need any convincing of the merits of a Rickman Metisse CR, but for those less educated in the marque, what Ron’s done to this particular example makes it one of the best and most usable examples going around. Ron adds that none of the changes he’s made to this bike are permanent; Rickman purists can return it to its C1974 original state should they wish, but with this example in such a sweet state, why would you?
Words & Photos: Mike Ryan
