Oulton Park and Kyalami.

[Chaswin]

I recently came across these photos of bike racing on the promenade at New Brighton that I took in the 1960's. Although they are outside the scope of this thread, I thought they were worth sharing. No ideas who the riders were of course!

[GregT]

There's a mixture of periods there. Yes, 60's with the pudding basin helmets - but well into the late 70's with full face helmets too.
The Scott in the bottom pic looks very like a well known British rider and machine who was very successful in vintage racing.

[Chaswin]

Definitely all photos were taken prior to July 1970. The guy with the Scott must have had an early full-face helmet. Interestingly this Scott has a red cylinder which does not denote a high-performance version as might be expected. The red colour actually denoted a standard road going spec. I think green was used to denote high performance versions.

[GregT]

The red cylinder block on that Scott means nothing. It will be ported to modern specs as most were even then and are now. I suspect if you wanted to re- enamel one using the correct materials, red is readily available from marque specialists.
And yes, you could use any high temp paint - but the genuine finish is a vitreous enamel.

I see Bell introduced the full face helmet in 1968. I never saw one here in NZ until mid 70's. Visiting Americans like Ron Grant still used open face helmets in '72.