Not only am I entertained, I've added another bike to my wish list (... and I very nearly bought one in the early 1990s). I also have a dreadful desire for pizza too. Another great episode Phil!
Thank you! Every video I produce makes me want to own the bike I’m talking about - heck, last week I even ended up wanting a Gold Wing! Then I have to give myself a good talking to and utter the magic word that breaks the spell: ‘Trident’. Those Benelli Seis do look the mutt’s nuts, but think of all the pizzas you could have instead! 🏍️👍😊 🍕
An incredible video Phil, i just love the 1970's style of the 750 Benelli Sei it even has 6 megaphone silencers i mean whats not to like?, the 900 left me cold mind. Keep it up my man.
@@3Philsmy other dream Italian bike is the 1978 Ducati SD 900 Darmarh a street bike version of the bevel drive twins, it’s a real shame Ducati never made a new version of this in recent years.
@gordonyoung3668 Ah, well, despite knowing diddly-squat about Ducatis, I’m going to tackle the 900 in my video next week. I do have some contemporary literature to help me, including a review of the Mike Hailwood replica which I’ve got in front of me right now, so I’m hoping I can do them justice. Wish me luck!
I remember when the 750 was new. I always wanted one but all I could afford at the time was the Benelli 250 2c and that was a very interesting bike. I may be wrong but I think it was one of the few 2 stroke bike in the 70s that you still had to pour (20w40) oil, well that's at least what the guy told me after he deciphered the Italian only manual for me but in the end I put Castrol R2 in it, in the fuel tank then petrol then shook the bike from side to side to make sure it was mixed. As for the "Italian electrics" they were a marvel in themselves. A six volt system that used Volkswagen head and tail light globes, which would blow every time you hit a false neutral and the bike revved over a certain rpm, and a motor that took Suzuki 125 pistons and rings. It was still great fun around the corners and as my first bike it still holds a special place in my heart.
Ah, our first bikes! I had a similar first bike experience, and it was Italian too. A Lambretta GP200. You had to pour the 2-stroke oil in the petrol tank and make sure it was at a 20:1 ratio. My parents also had a tiny boat with a 1.5hp 2-stroke Seagull outboard engine at the time and that took 10:1, so it was all very confusing. Us Lambretta lads often converted our scooters from 6v to 12v which made the electrics more reliable. As for the Veglia speedo, I once clocked 90mph going downhill with the wind behind me. On a Lambretta it really did feel like 90! But it was probably more like the high 60s. Happy (?) days!
'Pour (20w40) oil'', in your tank for your 2 stroke ?...hum . Nothing special about putting it in the gas tank but at least 2 stroke oil please! I came to this with my first bike a RD350 because the oil injection pump had to stop working at highway speed (you have to be quick on the clutch) I had the fright of my life and I never replaced this %$"%?* pump, trusting my manual mix more. I was used to that ritual , my previous ride was a Mobylette V40.
Really enjoyed this, thankyou - I was lucky enough to ride a sei when they were still new but I could never afford one back then so i bought a Honda 750/4 instead - I finally managed to get a 750 Sei around 8 years ago - it was an older restoration but had a few issues, mainly electrical.... The 750 sei is comparable in performance to the Honda 750/4, has the aerodynamics of a barn door but beats the Honda in the handling department. Being a glutton for punishment I also managed to find a series 2 900 sei a few years ago ( it also has electrical issues 😅 ) - a very different beast to the 750 - swoopy bodywork, 6-2 exhaust, wider motor (due to the generator being re-sited on the end of the crank), linked brakes, dry clutch and a double row chain set up - more grunt and (I think) better handling than the 750 though. Fortunately I didn't pay silly money for either of them and the spares situation is reasonable (70's brembo brakes, bosch electricals and many guzzi parts fit too) but prices now are pretty eye-watering - many of these bikes have ended up in collections, sadly not being ridden enough.They are what I'd call 'nearly there' bikes. For all their faults, I love 'em 😊 cheers 👍
It’s always great to hear from folk who actually own these bikes, so a big thank you for your insights there. I’d love to own either the 750 or the 900, but to own both - wow! Sadly I’ve spent far too much on my Trident to be able to afford another classic, not to mention the time and commitment required to keep these beautiful old machines up to snuff, and then finding the time to ride ‘em! Speaking of which, the sun has come out here in the south of England. I’d forgotten what that bright, yellow object in the sky looked like, so I’m off to take the Trident out for a wobble. Happy riding! 😊🏍️
@@3Phils Thanks for your kind words Phil, hope your ride is not too wobbly ! The T160's are great bikes when well sorted, as yours looks to be now ( I had one 30 odd years ago, it only had 1800 miles from new, smoked like the red arrows and leaked oil like the Torrey Canyon 😁 )
As being a driver starting from the 80’s The real problem for Benelli was the bad reputation for build quality & reliability and the cheap moped imago.
You could balance a 100mm cigarette on its filter end on the gas tank or alternator cover when the bike is on the centerstand. Cold start and the cigarette will not fall over. That's how smooth they are. They are also painfully slow. It couldn't even come close to keeping up with a Yamaha XS650 twin.
Interesting to hear they’re ‘painfully slow’. It’s prompted me to look up the 0-60mph, and there seems to be a consensus on 5.8 secs, which is pretty pedestrian even by 1970s standards. You’d be doing it in style, though! 😊🏍️
@3Phils a friend of mine had a 77 back in the early 80's. My Yamaha 650 would run low 13s at Carlsbad Raceway and his Benelli wouldn't even get in the 13s. But you never saw those so it gathered way more attention than my Yamaha. When I was on my BSA 441 then I got a lot more attention lol.
@robertwhite2032 Those 441s are real head turners. 😊 That said, I personally have never got on with singles. Norman White let me have a go on his Manx Norton once - thrilling but a bit too scary for me, given I was riding such a piece of history. And my Royal Enfield threw me off in the first mile! Well, I say ‘threw me off’, it was more down to rider error tbh. 🤣
@3Phils it is almost always our fault lol!! My 441 was not stock. It was a bit of a hot rod. Kenny Harmon cam, 32mm Amal, ported head, race pipe. Honda Elsinore forks, 19" wheels with Dunlop K70s. It was a street tracker. It would easily outrun Yamaha 500 and Honda 500 singles. Never had a chance to ride a Manx, but I think I would ride like you did if I ever get the chance!! I did ride an Ariel square 4 and I babied it every second!! Is your RE a new one or old?
@robertwhite2032 Wow! Quite the street racer then! Sadly my RE was one of the new ones, the Continental 535 GT. Unfortunately I was seduced by the photos, but in real life the bike was poorly finished with a pig of a gearbox that didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Despite being ultra cautious on the new, Indian tyres, I managed to slide it out from underneath me going round a corner at 20mph, in town, in the dry, within the first mile. On the plus side, an old lady was the only witness to my embarrassment. But after that I really couldn’t wait to get rid of it and hop back on a Japanese inline four, which, it has to be said, is where I feel most at home, having grown up on them. I mean, I also feel solid on British twins and triples, and of course my Indian FTR, but the RE experience has rather left me with an irrational fear of singles! 😳
My mate had a very smart 900 Sei recently, clutch was very heavy and it was a bit strange looking (nowhere near as nice looking as the earlier 750) still it went ok and he didn't pay a lot for it
Interesting. I thought the 900 looked great in the pics and video, I would definitely have swiped right. But I then you can’t beat seeing something in real life, from all angles. Something definitely seems to have gone amiss with the styling on the 900s in the 1990s. Still, if your mate got a bargain on one of these quite rare machines, I ain’t gonna knock it! 😊
A mate had a 900 and I had pillioned into Brighton but he said do want to drive back? We’d had a couple of spliffs so I said thanks but I’ll just take it easy. Got out onto the A27 and we were wafting along effortlessly at over 70. A little more right hand and my conservative intentions disappeared as 120 came up without even trying! Bloody hell this is a bit quicker than my 650 triumph.
You’re not wrong! As a teenager, when I saw the Sei in the bike mags, I went to silly lengths to temporarily fit my Honda 400/4 with three silencers on one side. I wish I could find that photo.
That’s a very good point, one which also crossed my mind as I was putting the video together. I can only surmise (because I couldn’t find any information on it) that Honda didn’t really care enough to spend a vast amount of money taking Benelli to court. It might have been a very costly and fraught case, because Benelli didn’t produce an exact replica, weren’t passing it off as a Honda, and weren’t selling it in vast numbers. Don’t forget, the Japanese had ‘copied’ a lot of European engine tech in the 50s so this could have been regarded as the usual tit-for-tat. It was a bit more wild west in those days, there wasn’t the vast intellectual property legal industry we see today. Honda was almost certainly aware of what Benelli had done but thought it was more trouble than it was worth. For example, we’ve seen a lot of ‘reverse engineered’ products come out of the PRC in the past couple of decades, would it be worth western manufacturers’ time and money to legally pursue their IP rights? In China? Probably not. But as I said, all this is guesswork!
@@3Phils Benelli was never going to be a threat to Honda but the 500 and 750 did have a few improvements over the Honda design, and you cannot really copyright an engine that uses established design features. As you say, the case would have been long, expensive (and would probably have lost Honda its market share in Italy). The company I worked for in the early 1980s only succeeded in a case against a company in Nigeria copying our product because first they copied the packaging, and second they rather stupidly cast all of their pistons with the same serial number - the one of ours we could prove they had bought. One thing about the Sei is now narrow it is - the end cylinder overhangs a lot to promote ground clearance. And the alternator doesn't stick out on the crank end. It's 5 inches, 125mm *narrower* than a Honda 750 4.
Apologies if I blathered on too long, but all the clips used in the video are linked in the description if you want to explore the sound of the Sei further. 😊
Apologies for blathering on. If you want to hear more of the bike, all the clips I used are linked in the description. You can get a right earful off of those!
I bought one new in the 70s. Foolishly sold it. Bought a very rough one and restored it a few years ago. Great fun. I did update electrics. The points and fusebox gave me issues on the first one the day I bough tit new.
That was a masterpiece Phil!!!!
Keep em coming 🙂
Wow! Thank you so much for the Super Thanks! That ‘s very kind and generous of you. I’m welling up, as they say over here in the UK. 👍😊🥹
@@3Phils It's not much, but it will get ya a pint. 🍺
Celebrate the hard work it took to put together that video.
Cheers from Neal in Oklahoma 🙂
Thanks again, and I’ll shout you a beer back next time I’m in Oklahoma! Or if you’re ever in the UK, I’m buying the first round. 🍺🍻
Back in the day my wife had a silver Quttro 500 and I had a red Sei 750 with 6 into 2 Marving headers. An opera on wheels! Ahh, the good 'ol days!
You two must have made a sweet sound going down the road! 👍🏍️
I once owned a Benelli Six Cylinder, dedicating six hours of work for every hour spent riding it.
I wasn't aware they built a 900. I've always admired the little Benelli 6.
Another brilliant, entertaining and funny vid.
Thank you! Both the 750 and 900 are very attractive machines imho. They’d certainly be in my collection if I was Jay Leno!
I remember back in the day in NZ a few adventurous bikies rode Benelli Tornados instead of Bonnie's. There's still a few about in NZ.
They’re great looking bikes. I suppose you’d have to wonder about reliability, though. If anyone out there has owned or does own one, let me know.
Not only am I entertained, I've added another bike to my wish list (... and I very nearly bought one in the early 1990s). I also have a dreadful desire for pizza too. Another great episode Phil!
Thank you! Every video I produce makes me want to own the bike I’m talking about - heck, last week I even ended up wanting a Gold Wing! Then I have to give myself a good talking to and utter the magic word that breaks the spell: ‘Trident’. Those Benelli Seis do look the mutt’s nuts, but think of all the pizzas you could have instead! 🏍️👍😊 🍕
An incredible video Phil, i just love the 1970's style of the 750 Benelli Sei it even has 6 megaphone silencers i mean whats not to like?, the 900 left me cold mind. Keep it up my man.
Thank you! Every bike I make a video about I end up wanting to own - if only I was Jay Flippin’ Leno!
@@3Philsmy other dream Italian bike is the 1978 Ducati SD 900 Darmarh a street bike version of the bevel drive twins, it’s a real shame Ducati never made a new version of this in recent years.
@gordonyoung3668 Ah, well, despite knowing diddly-squat about Ducatis, I’m going to tackle the 900 in my video next week. I do have some contemporary literature to help me, including a review of the Mike Hailwood replica which I’ve got in front of me right now, so I’m hoping I can do them justice. Wish me luck!
Brilliant m/c
Oh yes, the Benelli Sei - a Honda CB500 four copy with 2 cylinders added on!
I remember when the 750 was new. I always wanted one but all I could afford at the time was the Benelli 250 2c and that was a very interesting bike. I may be wrong but I think it was one of the few 2 stroke bike in the 70s that you still had to pour (20w40) oil, well that's at least what the guy told me after he deciphered the Italian only manual for me but in the end I put Castrol R2 in it, in the fuel tank then petrol then shook the bike from side to side to make sure it was mixed. As for the "Italian electrics" they were a marvel in themselves. A six volt system that used Volkswagen head and tail light globes, which would blow every time you hit a false neutral and the bike revved over a certain rpm, and a motor that took Suzuki 125 pistons and rings. It was still great fun around the corners and as my first bike it still holds a special place in my heart.
Ah, our first bikes! I had a similar first bike experience, and it was Italian too. A Lambretta GP200. You had to pour the 2-stroke oil in the petrol tank and make sure it was at a 20:1 ratio. My parents also had a tiny boat with a 1.5hp 2-stroke Seagull outboard engine at the time and that took 10:1, so it was all very confusing. Us Lambretta lads often converted our scooters from 6v to 12v which made the electrics more reliable. As for the Veglia speedo, I once clocked 90mph going downhill with the wind behind me. On a Lambretta it really did feel like 90! But it was probably more like the high 60s. Happy (?) days!
Another great video Phil of all the sixes produced the Benelli does it for me, such style and just a little Italian character.
Me too! The Benelli makes the CBX and Z1300 look like brick sh1thouses. Belissimo!
@@davidrochow9382 My first bike as well. Handed like a dream.
'Pour (20w40) oil'', in your tank for your 2 stroke ?...hum . Nothing special about putting it in the gas tank but at least 2 stroke oil please! I came to this with my first bike a RD350 because the oil injection pump had to stop working at highway speed (you have to be quick on the clutch) I had the fright of my life and I never replaced this %$"%?* pump, trusting my manual mix more. I was used to that ritual , my previous ride was a Mobylette V40.
Yay! Great bike. Good on you. Beautiful.
👍🏍️
Really enjoyed this, thankyou - I was lucky enough to ride a sei when they were still new but I could never afford one back then so i bought a Honda 750/4 instead - I finally managed to get a 750 Sei around 8 years ago - it was an older restoration but had a few issues, mainly electrical....
The 750 sei is comparable in performance to the Honda 750/4, has the aerodynamics of a barn door but beats the Honda in the handling department. Being a glutton for punishment I also managed to find a series 2 900 sei a few years ago ( it also has electrical issues 😅 ) - a very different beast to the 750 - swoopy bodywork, 6-2 exhaust, wider motor (due to the generator being re-sited on the end of the crank), linked brakes, dry clutch and a double row chain set up - more grunt and (I think) better handling than the 750 though. Fortunately I didn't pay silly money for either of them and the spares situation is reasonable (70's brembo brakes, bosch electricals and many guzzi parts fit too) but prices now are pretty eye-watering - many of these bikes have ended up in collections, sadly not being ridden enough.They are what I'd call 'nearly there' bikes. For all their faults, I love 'em 😊 cheers 👍
It’s always great to hear from folk who actually own these bikes, so a big thank you for your insights there. I’d love to own either the 750 or the 900, but to own both - wow! Sadly I’ve spent far too much on my Trident to be able to afford another classic, not to mention the time and commitment required to keep these beautiful old machines up to snuff, and then finding the time to ride ‘em! Speaking of which, the sun has come out here in the south of England. I’d forgotten what that bright, yellow object in the sky looked like, so I’m off to take the Trident out for a wobble. Happy riding! 😊🏍️
@@3Phils Thanks for your kind words Phil, hope your ride is not too wobbly ! The T160's are great bikes when well sorted, as yours looks to be now ( I had one 30 odd years ago, it only had 1800 miles from new, smoked like the red arrows and leaked oil like the Torrey Canyon 😁 )
Mark Williams in Bike said the Sei was the fastest bike he had ever ridden cross country. It handled in a way the Japanese didn.t.
I guess it must have handled superbly then! I was always a fan of Mark Williams’ articles. 😊
As being a driver starting from the 80’s The real problem for Benelli was the bad reputation for build quality & reliability and the cheap moped imago.
You could balance a 100mm cigarette on its filter end on the gas tank or alternator cover when the bike is on the centerstand. Cold start and the cigarette will not fall over. That's how smooth they are. They are also painfully slow. It couldn't even come close to keeping up with a Yamaha XS650 twin.
Interesting to hear they’re ‘painfully slow’. It’s prompted me to look up the 0-60mph, and there seems to be a consensus on 5.8 secs, which is pretty pedestrian even by 1970s standards. You’d be doing it in style, though! 😊🏍️
@3Phils a friend of mine had a 77 back in the early 80's. My Yamaha 650 would run low 13s at Carlsbad Raceway and his Benelli wouldn't even get in the 13s. But you never saw those so it gathered way more attention than my Yamaha. When I was on my BSA 441 then I got a lot more attention lol.
@robertwhite2032 Those 441s are real head turners. 😊 That said, I personally have never got on with singles. Norman White let me have a go on his Manx Norton once - thrilling but a bit too scary for me, given I was riding such a piece of history. And my Royal Enfield threw me off in the first mile! Well, I say ‘threw me off’, it was more down to rider error tbh. 🤣
@3Phils it is almost always our fault lol!! My 441 was not stock. It was a bit of a hot rod. Kenny Harmon cam, 32mm Amal, ported head, race pipe. Honda Elsinore forks, 19" wheels with Dunlop K70s. It was a street tracker. It would easily outrun Yamaha 500 and Honda 500 singles.
Never had a chance to ride a Manx, but I think I would ride like you did if I ever get the chance!! I did ride an Ariel square 4 and I babied it every second!!
Is your RE a new one or old?
@robertwhite2032 Wow! Quite the street racer then! Sadly my RE was one of the new ones, the Continental 535 GT. Unfortunately I was seduced by the photos, but in real life the bike was poorly finished with a pig of a gearbox that didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Despite being ultra cautious on the new, Indian tyres, I managed to slide it out from underneath me going round a corner at 20mph, in town, in the dry, within the first mile. On the plus side, an old lady was the only witness to my embarrassment. But after that I really couldn’t wait to get rid of it and hop back on a Japanese inline four, which, it has to be said, is where I feel most at home, having grown up on them. I mean, I also feel solid on British twins and triples, and of course my Indian FTR, but the RE experience has rather left me with an irrational fear of singles! 😳
My mate had a very smart 900 Sei recently, clutch was very heavy and it was a bit strange looking (nowhere near as nice looking as the earlier 750) still it went ok and he didn't pay a lot for it
Interesting. I thought the 900 looked great in the pics and video, I would definitely have swiped right. But I then you can’t beat seeing something in real life, from all angles. Something definitely seems to have gone amiss with the styling on the 900s in the 1990s. Still, if your mate got a bargain on one of these quite rare machines, I ain’t gonna knock it! 😊
A mate had a 900 and I had pillioned into Brighton but he said do want to drive back? We’d had a couple of spliffs so I said thanks but I’ll just take it easy. Got out onto the A27 and we were wafting along effortlessly at over 70. A little more right hand and my conservative intentions disappeared as 120 came up without even trying! Bloody hell this is a bit quicker than my 650 triumph.
And that was two up! Although, Veglia speedos? Would still have been over the ton!
@@3Phils vaguelia
@highdownmartin 🤣
The original 750 Sei's look better than anything from behind with 3 exhausts on both sides of the bike.
You’re not wrong! As a teenager, when I saw the Sei in the bike mags, I went to silly lengths to temporarily fit my Honda 400/4 with three silencers on one side. I wish I could find that photo.
I still don't understand why, or how, Honda didn't, or couldn't take them to the cleaners for copyright..
That’s a very good point, one which also crossed my mind as I was putting the video together. I can only surmise (because I couldn’t find any information on it) that Honda didn’t really care enough to spend a vast amount of money taking Benelli to court. It might have been a very costly and fraught case, because Benelli didn’t produce an exact replica, weren’t passing it off as a Honda, and weren’t selling it in vast numbers. Don’t forget, the Japanese had ‘copied’ a lot of European engine tech in the 50s so this could have been regarded as the usual tit-for-tat. It was a bit more wild west in those days, there wasn’t the vast intellectual property legal industry we see today. Honda was almost certainly aware of what Benelli had done but thought it was more trouble than it was worth. For example, we’ve seen a lot of ‘reverse engineered’ products come out of the PRC in the past couple of decades, would it be worth western manufacturers’ time and money to legally pursue their IP rights? In China? Probably not. But as I said, all this is guesswork!
@@3Phils Benelli was never going to be a threat to Honda but the 500 and 750 did have a few improvements over the Honda design, and you cannot really copyright an engine that uses established design features. As you say, the case would have been long, expensive (and would probably have lost Honda its market share in Italy).
The company I worked for in the early 1980s only succeeded in a case against a company in Nigeria copying our product because first they copied the packaging, and second they rather stupidly cast all of their pistons with the same serial number - the one of ours we could prove they had bought.
One thing about the Sei is now narrow it is - the end cylinder overhangs a lot to promote ground clearance. And the alternator doesn't stick out on the crank end. It's 5 inches, 125mm *narrower* than a Honda 750 4.
It had six appeal.
I came here to hear the sound of this rital six ...
Niente
Apologies if I blathered on too long, but all the clips used in the video are linked in the description if you want to explore the sound of the Sei further. 😊
too much sound of you, not enuf sound of the bike.
Apologies for blathering on. If you want to hear more of the bike, all the clips I used are linked in the description. You can get a right earful off of those!
I bought one new in the 70s. Foolishly sold it. Bought a very rough one and restored it a few years ago. Great fun. I did update electrics. The points and fusebox gave me issues on the first one the day I bough tit new.