Whats this worth? Rickman

Guessing that's a 4 speed engine. A friend and I were fighting over who would buy one of those back in 1992 at the Steamboat Springs Vintage National. Being that it shifted on the right, I caved pretty quick and he ended up with the odd little thing. Beautiful bikes with those gorgeous welds and nickel plated frames, but it was a turd in most all departments. Polished hubs are works of art but I think they are a 40 spoke setup. I ended up painting it for him and he raced it for several years. Odd enough to be exactly what "Uncle Phil" needed. Cost back in 1992.....$500.00 for a nice looking and almost race ready example. He was asking $800.00 but the swapmeet and races were on their last day and he didn't want to haul it back across the country. I have no idea what one of those would sell for today. Ask over on Marks Motorcycle Swapmeet and see what response you get.

Had to basically give away a very clean Rickman Zundapp 125. Motor was tired, but bike was pretty nice with all body work intact. Even threw in some misc NOS bits with it. The Montesa or DT-1 Rickman would probably have a bit more value to them, though.

Wow, the 77 looks mint under the dust.

Rickman's are an acquired taste. I have a fleet of them and enjoy riding them. Mostly larger 4 stroke Brit stuff. Do have a 125 Zundapp and 250 Montesa as well. I have raced the 125. Felt pretty crisp and good. Then a Honda CR125 went past me like I was tied to a tree. Course, the Zundapp was pulling an extra 50lbs of solid waist!.

I watched a 125 earlier this week go for $2500 last I saw. The Montesa' seem to be lowered value. Parts are available. The glass is pricey, but nothing one can't mend with a bit of skill and refreshments.

Ironically, I have a 441 BSA in a Rickman frame and weighed. It tipped the scales at a portly 225 lbs. Ready to ride. It has a modern ignition and starts easy and I can almost single gear most tracks. Do not confuse that with I am beating anybody mind ya!. They are fun to ride and handle real well.

I have adapted to the RH shift so bad that a recent Trail ride on an XR 400 required an adaption for a bit. Since it shifted on the "wrong" side! Dang near work that brake pedal out trying to shift it for a bit.

I think the 250 is a good bike if you use the 1974 VR engine. My older brother went to Triumph of Houston to buy a Montesa VR in 1974 and dropped on the Rickman because it was beautiful and $100 cheaper. I loved that bike, though I never got to race it.

In retrospect, it seems like they dropped the 250 engine into their big four-stroke chassis without changing much, because the weight bias was rearward and the frame seemed way overbuilt & a little heavy. The benefits were that it didn't flex at all and it took advantage of how fast the VR engine was relative to everything else that year. You had to ride it the ways it dictated.

One way to corner it was to sit forward against the tank--that gap between the tank & seat was functional, as your nads would hang in there unpressured. Kick the back end out going into the corner with the throttle or back brake and the front would stick & steer well under power. Bob Hannah did a throwback ride on a Rickman twin and remarked that it steered better going sideways than straight, and I knew just what he meant. On the exit, when I rolled on and turned the bars to snap the bike upright, I would slide back to that hump you see at the back of the seat, and the bike would hook up as well as the back tire allowed--even with an external rotor Motoplat, the VR had overall flywheel weight that was low, and I think it had to run a Metzeler for anything close to hardpack. My brother put a Trelleborg on the back on a woods racer's advice and the slithering could get epic when things dried out.

The other way to corner it was to sit forward and lean it way over with the power off or neutral throttle. It wouldn't carve like a Maico, but both ends would stick really well, just arc around smoothly or square off DeCoster-style. I remember the Dirt Bike test of the 1971 250 remarked this characteristic. My brother's bike had really good brakes--the rear was the best I ever used, a really solid pedal & great power and controllability--so between that and how quick the VR engine was, it would get through a corner quickly this way too.

The bike seemed geared to the moon even with that big back sprocket, and VRs had great overrev, like nearly to 10K, so second and third gear were surprisingly long and I don't know if we ever got into fifth on a track. Clutch pull was too stiff to slip it, or running a gear high in corners ahead of the trend might have been interesting. The rear suspension was weird because it used shorter shocks (12.5") and the swingarm is really short, only sixteen inches and change. My brother dropped the frame off with a guy who was moving up shocks, and the guy wound up moving only the bottom mount forward due to the frame being brazed instead of welded. Between that and the short swingarm and shocks, my brother only got about 5.25" of travel out of his Poppy-bodied Konis and had problems throwing the chain to boot. When I resuscitated that bike in the late Eighties, I mounted a skateboard wheel as a fixed tensioner and it was fine (after I straightened out the bent rear sprocket).

Never did get it jetted right off the bottom; I guess the spray bar/vaporizer in the Bing was wrong for around here, and it was never smooth coming off idle, which made the tire thing more critical because the engine did definitely come on the pipe with some hit in the lower midrange. I still think the VR was one of the great piston-port engines; having one of the few 1973 VRs that Montesa snuck over here must have been like cheating that year. It was an embarrassing engine to have in 1974 because if you didn't get the holeshot, everyone knew whose fault it was. The Rickman version seems like the perfect vintage racer for Mike Alessi, because it was a naturally wide bike to ride with the rear end hung out so much.

My brother barely raced his and admitted he was kind of afraid of how quick it was, had trouble committing like he needed to for holeshots and then tended to hang the back end out too far due to the Trelleborg + jetting issue, or the chain would come off, plus he didn't ride enough to keep his hands calloused and tended to DNS the third motos. He put Petty Hex Grips on it to try to help his hands and must have gotten them on there just right, because they were perfect on that bike and I never heard of anyone else having any luck with those.

Can you tell how much I miss that bike? He got an RM250A when they came out and let the Rickman collect dust. I revived it in the late Eighties and worked out some of the issues, but too soon for vintage racing in TX, then didn't have time/money/health to go racing when vintage first got going. The Rickman was stolen out of another brother's yard in Austin sometime in the early oughts and we haven't seen any trace of it. But I remember it as a good example of a bike like an early Husky or Bultaco, where if you rode it the way the bike dictated it'd go as fast as you could. I would try lower bars than the stockers you see in the OP, but the stock bars were probably great for standing up most of the time like Marty Tripes did (he actually had a Winter Series ride on a Rickman VR before he got on the Husky in 1974, poor results IIRC). I would guess the chassis reflected what the Rickman brothers worked out to go fast on those big four-strokes, and the big ones are probably a lot more neutral handlers, but the VR sure was fun once I figured out what it wanted. I think Hasletjoe knows what I mean.

Not to contradict Newmann's assessment of the four-speed one, which was probably a good bike for 1970 but not for 1974. I don't think they imported hardly any Rickman VRs; I remember seeing somebody doing well in 250 novice at Whitney on the only other one we ever saw, and there were no magazine tests that I know of.