Get Back, Jackpiner
GET BACK, JACKPINER
Remembering the Penton 175
THIRTY YEARS AGO, JOHN Penton discovered a motorcycle factory in the Austrian mountains. Called KTM, the tiny company mostly manufactured bicycles and scooters, until Penton talked the bosses into producing a lightweight, Sachs-powered 125cc two-stroke. With R&D assistance from his brother and three sons, and by sourcing quality suspension components and more durable ignitions, Penton helped improve the off-road racer to the point that it soon ruled its class in enduros, scrambles and ISDT qualifiers.
In 1972, KTM produced its first in-house engine, a 175, and the resultant motorcycle was sold stateside as the Penton Jackpiner. Owing in part to the
Pentons’ influence, this first “true” KTM was, as period advertisements proclaimed,
“Built for Champions.”
Twenty-five years later, Cycle World couldn’t help but wonder how an original Penton Jackpiner would compare to the new KTM 200 E/XC LE. To find out, we set about locating an original example. We found one at-where else?-KTM’s West Coast office in San Diego. KTM Media Technical Adviser Tom Moen had painstakingly restored the ’73 ’Piner into a modem-day vintage racer. Unfortunately, upon finishing the bike he found that it didn’t really fit into a class where it was competitive.
So, after six years of col-
lecting dust, the 175 was given a long-awaited workout. I drew the short straw to ride the bike, and incredibly found it to be a first-kick starter-credit the Motoplat electronic ignition and the tickleable Bing carb (which can flood the cases with fuel if you’re not careful). Time had erased from my memory the jackhammering racket of resonating cooling fins, loose piston tolerances and transmission slop, but it’s
back now-and it will be a while before I forget the sound again.
Unlike some other early’70s European dirtbikes, the KTM’s controls are located where they should be, with the brake pedal on the right and the shift lever on the left-though there is a shift spline on the right side of the cases, just in case. Despite an excessively long throw, the shift lever finds its way into gear okay, and the clutch works like a clutch should. The engine is slow-revving, low on torque-even compared to today’s 125s-and all 15 horses are concentrated in a narrow band near the top of the rev
range; thank your lucky shifting foot that there are six speeds to choose from. As for brakes, all we can say is, what brakes?!
With a claimed (read: exaggerated) 4 inches of travel from its fork and twin Ceriani shocks, the Penton bounces around quite a bit-bumps must have gotten bigger since the early ’70s. The thin, sharp footpegs are capable of doing serious damage to one’s arches, and square-edged holes should be avoided at all costs, the payback being a painful for-
ward slam onto the handlebar.
But the Penton is not entirely without merit. Its 30.3-inch seat height is some 6 inches lower than most modem motocrossers, its saddle is quite plush (easily more comforting than the new Jackpiner’s), and its seating position and control layout are timeless. At 234 pounds dry, the Jackpiner is on the heavy side, but it feels much lighter. As for looks, we’d hazard a guess that even crotchety old Peter Egan (“Are dirtbikes ugly or is it just me?” Leanings, August, 1996) would approve of the Jackpiner’s blue-and-black paint and clean lines.
Want one? Sorry, you’re about 25 years too late.
Though we’re sure someone, somewhere, will succeed in acquiring a matched set of new and old Jackpiner bookends, we’d rather see the older example put to use to show the advances KTM has made with the new one.
Actually, we’d rather just ride the new one and leave the old one to the history books. Jimmy Lewis
