Member Inducted 2011
Pete Davies
History
Pete Davies: Manufacturer of Puma Motor Cycle/Drag Race
Components
Pete was born in 1944 in Crick, Northamptonshire, where he still
lives. By his own admission he was not very clever at school
until a new Head Teacher encouraged him to do art and handicrafts.
This was when he discovered that working with his hands rather than
his brain, and the understanding of scale and proportion, are as
important in art as it is in designing cranks or chassis.
Pete did a five-year apprenticeship at a big steam turbine
works and then some years at Lodge Plugs. Working for four years in
a sub-contract shop taught him a lot of shortcuts and, as it had a
fabrication shop, he picked up some ideas on welding and general
metalworking. Whilst there he started racing grass track
sidecar, first as a passenger then as the driver: it seemed safer
to have the controls. Pete manufactured a lot of parts including
timing covers, clutches, barrels and super strong crank cases for
his own bike, which was a blown Triumph, and he did the same for
many other competitors. After being made redundant in 1972 he
thought he had enough work to set up on his own, but not having the
run of machinery he had been using, he had to buy a new Lathe -
which he still uses to this day - to machine cranks and crank
cases.
As most grass track outfits were built around cut down BSA
or Norton frames and the chair tubing was 10swg they came out
heavy, so Pete took the best ideas from lots of outfits including
road racing to design a complete chassis with leading link forks,
side car suspension and a glass fibre seat moulding. He made
the hubs, calipers and fuel tank resulting in the whole package
being really competitive and winning most of the championships in
the seventies.
In 1974 Pete met the late Ray Feltell at a bike show in
Walsall. Pete had a Vincent outfit on show which had a pair
of strong Triumph cases, and as Ray was a drag racer strong cases
were the answer to his prayers. He introduced Pete to the
current racers including John Clift, Jeff Byne and Bob Webster, all
of whom went on to use his parts although John Clift managed to
destroy those as well - but it was all good development!! It was
John Clift who got Pete into billet bottom ends when he got him to
make patterns, and then cast cases to suit the XS1100 motor. He
never finished the bike and sold it to Jay Upton who raced it in
Australia for many years, finally selling it to the Parker Brothers
who only finished using it in 2008. Of cause he made the patterns
for the XS when everyone else wanted Kawasaki, so he had to make
another set, selling the first three bottom ends to Henk Vink,
Frank Brachtvogel and Phil Baimbridge.
As if Pete had not made enough patterns, Brian Johnson
came along wanting a bottom end for a FJ1200 so it was into
woodworking mode again. It was when Brian took his bike to
the States and showed how reliable and fast it was that Tony Lang
bought two Suzuki bottom ends to build into his new fuel bike.
Chris Hand along with Larry McBride saw the potential along and
luckily those riders and dedicated teamwork put Puma into the
winner's circle numerous times. Larry's team are particularly
meticulous, insisting on precision settings and assembly, which
shows in the hundreds of five-second passes they have achieved.
Larry McBride holds the world record at 5.746, and Korry Hogan
holds world speed record of 250.97 mph both with Puma crankcase
assemblies. Puma crankcase assemblies also hold eight out of the
top ten fastest ETs and eight of the fastest terminal speeds in the
world. If that's not enough, they have held and do hold multiple
AMA, ANDRA, ACU, FIM and UEM championships and records.