Penton Identification

[Daniel P. McEntee]

I made a run to Atlanta over the Memorial Day weekend to work some more in my brother's basement and bring home some stuff. He had bought a collection of Penton stuff from an old guy near him and there was some confusion as to what they are. The old guy said that the one almost complete bike was a 250 with a 400 top end and was once "Carl Crank's bike." I made a post about this last year and I think we figured out then that the bike probably had some of Carl Crank's modifications done to the engine by the local Penton dealer at the time. The bikes are rough but rebuildable I think. Just gonna take some time to sort through all the loose stuff and see exactly what is there. The one bike that has the engine in the frame has a frame number of 41179744 and an engine number of 4-5403997. The other frame has a 540775302 number on it and the loose engine I assume came out of that frame has 4-5501123 on it. Can anybody tell me what I have here?
  Thanks a lot,
   Dan McEntee

[3putt]

Hi Dan,   If you go to the HOME page and click on Production Years heading it will lead you to the information I believe you are hoping to find.  
Best, Nelson McCullough

[454MRW]

Dan,
The first example is a Nov 74 frame date, (411), commonly referred to as a 74 1/2 or early 75 with a 74 dated 250 engine. The 2nd example looks to be a little later 1975 frame and late 74 built 400 engine. If I correctly interpreted your frame #'s , both frames should appear almost identical. Mike

Michael R. Winter
I enjoy rebuilding and appreciating Pentons!
1974 250 HS Pentons-1980 KTM 175-400'S
1975 Can Am 175 TNT & 77 250 Black Widow
1979 Husqvarna OR390
1976-78 RM & 77-79 PE Suzuki's
1974 CR250M 07 CR125R 79 CR250R

[Daniel P. McEntee]

Thanks for the replies, guys. Numbers sometimes make me dizzy! I finally got the stuff unloaded out of my van yesterday and should have took some photos and will do that today. My brother got this stuff from an old guy that lived near him and he initially had the stuff priced out of this world thinking he really had something special, and if it was all in really good shape, maybe he did. It's gonna take some work to build a bike from what we have. When we got back into the sport/hobby several years ago, I thought it would be neat to try and accumulate one example of each Penton model. My younger brother Jim already had a steel tank Berkshire that he got when we were teenagers. I bought a '72 125 Six Days in 2000 and followed up with a '72 Jackpiner a few years later and my older brother Tom found a '74 Jackpiner on the local Craig's List a year or two later. Jim found this guy and bought a 125 Six Days project bike from him and kept working on him for the rest of the collection. The 250 and 400 models kept alluding us until last summer when Jeff DeBell found a '77 400 MC-5 that I was lucky enough to acquire, and about the same time, Jim was able to get the rest of the collection that I'm referring to here. I hope to build at least a 250 out of the parts, and if I can find whatever parts may be missing, build up another 400. Jim passed away suddenly and unexpectedly this past January, and I'm on a mission to the built as quickly as possible. He had torn down his Berkshire to do some work on it and I'll have to work on that where I can. I'm going to sell off some of my collection to create room and funds for the project and will be offering a XR-200, '75 Yamaha TY-175, '76 Husky 360WR and a '79 Husky 390WR on the St. Louis area Craig's List if you know of anyone looking for such bikes. We are working on selling off the collection of project bikes Jim had in his basement garage also as soon as the estate clears probate court and the 125 Six Days will be available in the Atlanta area before too long. Thanks again for the ID help as this gives me a good place to start.
   Dan McEntee