Eric Cheney
| Eric Cheney | |
|---|---|
Cheney in January 1967 with a then-new model, using his own special lightweight frame and Greeves Challenger 250 engine weighing under 200 lb (91 kg)
|
|
| Born | January 5, 1924 |
| Died | December 30, 2001 (aged 77) |
| Residence | England, U.K. |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Motocross Motorcycle designer and manufacturer |
| Children |
Wendy Cousins Simon Cheney Robert Cheney |
Wendy Cousins Simon Cheney
Eric Cheney (5 January 1924 – 30 December 2001) was an English motorcycle racer, designer and independent constructor. He was known as one of the best motorcycle frame designers of his era, concentrating mainly in the off-road competition aftermarket.
Cheney attended the Lancasterian School in Winchester before joining the Royal Navy at the age of 18, where he served on wartime Arctic convoys and in motor torpedo boats and gained experience of engineering and working on high performance engines. Cheney also worked on the development of remote controlled submarines for the Royal Navy.
After World War II, Cheney joined the motorcycle dealers Archers of Aldershot as a mechanic. Cheney began racing and became one Britain's best riders, along with his travelling companion Les Archer, who went on to become . He had ten successful years on the Continental circuit but a prolonged illness due to an infection contracted while racing in Algeria ended his riding career. He moved into bike preparation and designs for motorcycle chassis and suspension systems.
Cheney had no formal training as a motorcycle designer yet was able to create original and high-performance motorcycle chassis designs working in a simple workshop that was essentially a domestic garage. His approach has been described as "like a medieval engineer" as in an age of computer aided design and significant resources for research and development teams, he worked entirely by intuition. Eric relied on his long personal experience of international off road competition riding and would prepare his initial designs for a new motorcycle frame in chalk on the wall of his workshop. Experimenting with different lines until he was satisfied, Eric would then form the steel tubing using his chalk drawings as a guide. Only when he had built a working prototype motorcycle would he start work on a final jig for mass production. He was once quoted as saying "I know when it's right and it screams at me when it's wrong."
...
Wikipedia