Out of the barn after 50 years !

[Paul Danik]

Long time POG member Dean Marra recently found this very early CMF Penton in a barn not too far from his home. Well, actually it was Dean's wife who found the Penton in a Facebook ad and urged Dean to acquire it. According to the seller, the Penton was taken apart about 50 years ago and unfortunately the owner at that time passed away in an accident, so the Penton just sat in the barn with the motor out and with a broken crank for half a century.

Dean, who is a custom home builder by trade and who's # 1 hobby is building incredible custom furniture, is looking to bring the Penton back to life as a rider. He looks to totally disassemble the bike, paint the frame and start from the ground up and build the bike into a reliable rider that he can enter in events such a VMD, and an occasional local car show, to help keep the Penton story alive and well. With a frame number of 106-50268, Dean's Penton was built in June of 1971 and is fairly early in the production run of CMF ( chrome moly frame ) Pentons. Dean's existing stable of bikes is fairly varied including a couple of Huskies that he has competed on, an Elsinore 125 and a few others.

Dean's Sachs 5A motor is already in the truck and ready for the trip to Amherst, Ohio and the next POG meeting where it will be handed off to Rick Bennett for a complete rebuild and refurbishment. As we walked around Dean's shop last night his wife pointed out the hat that she wore a few years back at VMD as she helped to serve the food in the POG tent that Dale Buehner had cooked up. The hat was signed by The Man Himself, John Penton, it's only fitting that Dean will now have one of John's creations to go along with that autographed hat !

[slvrbrdfxr]

Yes, those early CMF bikes are very cool. They have some subtle differences from the later builds like the narrow front forks with the Arces triple clamps. I restored CMF number 109 51060 several years ago that was purchased out of New Mexico. The earliest CMF bike I've ever personally seen was a 125 serial number 106 50181 which was at VMD Mid Ohio back in July of 2021. That bike was for sale but was in very poor condition. I made an offer to buy it but could never comes to terms with the seller. Good luck with your restore Dean !
Dave McCullough

[slvrbrdfxr]

Here's a picture of the serial number of the bike I saw at VMD back in 2021.
Dave McC