Hackett restores ex-Alan Barnett Seeley G50
Well-known Ducati Coventry shop owner and respected race engineer John Hackett has completed the restoration of the ex-Alan Barnett Seeley Matchless G50 and displayed the finished machine at the Mallory Park Bike Bonanza on July 6-7.
John’s bike is the very machine that Alan Barnett raced to second place behind MV Agusta’s Giacomo Agostini in the 1970 German Grand on the tortuous Nurburgring. Barnett also finished sixth in France and fourth in East Germany that year which gave him sixth place in the final championship standings.
John said: “Alan’s second place at the Nurburgring was sensational as he gave Ago a good run until the wet track began to dry out towards the end of the race. He crashed it at the TT and damaged the lower frame tubes and swing-arm but Colin Seeley repaired it and Alan then went to France and got sixth.
“Alan’s sponsor at the time was Brian Coleshill who owned the bike and when Alan finished, Brian sponsored Gordon Farmer who got some good results on it. Brian was apparently paranoid about his bikes being stolen and used to strip them down to store them.
“When he quit racing, he sold the Seeley – in bits – to Farmer who attempted to rebuild it some 30 years ago but quickly shelved the project and it sat on the bench in boxes for years until I bought it.
“I got the bike verified with Eva Seeley (Colin Seeley’s widow) and discovered this was one of the first Seeley G50 frames, built in 1967, used on the Seeley stand at the Earls Court show that year, and made before Colin had brought in staff to help him. Colin himself welded the frame, one of only a handful he did himself – and he did those repairs after Alan’s TT crash.
“That makes the bike even more special to me because I worked with Colin when he was running the GSE Racing. He brought me in to help build the Ducati engines because they’d had some reliability issues at that time, brought on purely by not having the experience of the Italian V-twins that I had.”
With the Seeley G50 restored John was hoping to get a chance to savour the delights of this machine in the future but with no time to complete any real shakedown of the bike after the restoration, wisely put the track debut aside for another time and instead had the machine on display at Mallory. He said: “Of all the different types of bikes I raced, I never had the opportunity to ride a big British four-stroke single in my racing career. Knowing Colin, I always wanted to ride one of his Seeley G50s so I’m looking forward to the experience.”
Words by Mallory Park. Images by John Hackett and superbike.co.uk