Little ITALY

Earlier this year we were asked for more articles about tiddlers. I own several and riding them is great fun. Mine tend to be Italian tiddlers. Through the 1950s, 60s and even into the early 1970s the Italian tiddlers were so much more advanced than other European marques – the Japanese took over most of the tiddler market from the late 60s. Some of the racing bikes from the Italian manufacturers were very quick and seemed quite exotic compared to the offerings from the UK, with a proliferation of overhead cams and quite novel designs. They took the lower capacity class racing by storm in the early 1950s with excellent results (you’ll find more detail on this at Real-Classic.co.uk).

A lot of the Italians’ race technology was incorporated into the roadgoing machines, resulting in light weight and surprisingly good performance for such small engines. Most Italian manufacturers had 50cc bikes in their portfolio in various formats: the step-thru moped, the Tourismo Veloce and the Sports. The latter were minimotorcycles with all the engineering and Italian style of the bigger bikes and quite a few racing mods. Effectively they were streetlegal racers.

It’s surprising how many small bikes, from 50 to 125cc, used overhead cam engines. Even the Moto Guzzi and MV 175s in the early 1950s were offered with ohc motors. This proved to be more fashion than function, because for home mechanics the ohv engines were easier to work on. Doing a decoke on an ohc motor was pretty difficult compared to its ohv counterpart, as the valve timing had to be reset using timing discs and dial test indicators to enable accurate setting. Hence many models which started