John Britten - anyone on KB know or met him?

[1billyboy]

Back last century I was at Bay Park doing some flag marshaling. Got talking to a person who was sweeping stones from under a shade tent in the pit area. It was only when the bikes came in from a practice run that I found out that it was John Britton. Can't remember what we talked about but there was always a lot of lose stone in the pit area when we did rider training there.

[pete-blen]

2 little facts I have only found out in the last few years...

1...
I use to race a Kawasaki S3 400 & Yamaha RD400 in what was the 410cc prodution class
in the late 70s.... at a few club days at Ruapuna this guy use to turn up
on a Ducati... Mate who also raced at the time told me that guy
was John Britton... " before He was John Briton" spoke to him quite often...
can't ever remember him raceing at a meeting.. just use to turn up
at club/practice days a few times....

2...
The Britton motor always looked familar.... could never place it...
Since found out that Bob Denson had a big hand in it...
Denco Engineering in ChCh.. Bob use to build speedway motors
late 80s/early 90s.. The top end of the Britton has a uncanny resembalance
to his 500cc solo motors... Bob also built a 1000cc Vee twin
that was in a speedway sidecar unit... They had to de-bug the
motor somewhere..??


Bob Denson was a very smart guy... He raced speedway midgets and built
his own motors... a in line 4 air cooled... then a water cooled Vee 4..?

[Brian d marge]

I used to work for "motivation" with Garry boot ? And used to walk down the road past the artist quarters to the dairy on the corner right past jb and never knew
I used to help the triumph shop , chch motor cycles in odd jobs , wonder if Lyndsay remembers towing the commer van back from sockburn ,,I forgot the hand brake ......
Must have bumped into jb but I didn't know him from Adam and it was all low key so he didn't stand out
Stephen

[Big Dave]

Somewhere in NZ is my friend Kenny. Living the Hippy life as he's done since he worked for Britten, J.
Some of you will know him.
(Cross him and you'll answer to me - and I use sarcasm.)

From what Ken tells me his main duty was to roll the joints and clean the workshop.

Legend.

[Grumph]

I worked for John at the stables for a short time. Quite funny as I would be alone there during the day but in the morning the place (and my lathe) would be covered in swarf as there were about 20 guys coming in every night...
Eventually fell out with Kirsty....as a lot did. The NZ Cat Fancy has me to thank for there not being a Britten cat....

I have AFAIK two unique distinctons....I got paid for everything I did for him.....and later scrutineering the GP meeting I became the only scrutineer to fail a Britten. The steering damper was the steering stops. When John was out of sight, Mike B snuck over to thank me...they'd been telling him for weeks it was wrong...

Genius - debatable....Charismatic to the point of mesmerising quite sensible people to follow his dreams, OH yes !

[Monkfish]

JB and Burt Munroe, (amongst other ppl) make me proud to be a kiwi.

[Eddieb]

He used to turn up at trackdays at Bay Park with a bike or 2 for testing when I was there and you could get up close to it and see it being run through it's paces.