Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i The Classic MotorCycle

Tyrell appreciated I would like to extend my compliments to Adam Rear on the Tyrell Smith article in the November 2019 issue of TCM. As a fellow Dubliner greatly interested in the subject of Tyrell, I felt it was well researched and well written. You can’t fit everything in of course, but like so many other top notch racers of the period, Tyrell was also a trials man in the winter. He entered the ISDT on a Manxman and won a gold medal in Wales in 1938. I thought readers might like to see this postcard that Tyrell sent to Mrs Woods, Stanley’s mother, in 1928. In the Senior that year, Tyrell finished fourth and Stanley finished fifth. Gerry Clarke, Moycullen, Co. Galway, Ireland. League of nations Following on from…

Because it seems that over the last 25 years it has become more and more impossible to ride motorcycles off-road through our green and pleasant land in the UK, when I found myself living in rural Italy with my Italian girlfriend Sara 20-plus years ago, I was determined to get onto two wheels and along as many green lanes and up as many hilltops as possible. So, that meant something reliable, with enough clout and flexibility to deal with off-road conditions, light and manageable at the same time, and easy to pick up if dropped. Then, Sara also decided that she wanted a bike to ride too, and it had to be something that could also be used to run errands around the local village if needed. Pretty quickly, I…

“High performance single with magnificent roadholding, steering and brakes,” was the way The Motor Cycle described the Vincent Comet when they tested it in 1950 and, riding a similar machine (a 1949 Series C) through the sun-dappled lanes of West Wiltshire seven decades on, I can vouch for the fact that it this rings true. With the healthy note of the silencer singing out behind me, and safe in the knowledge that, if required, the superb brakes were more than a match for bringing the 413lb machine to a rapid halt, it was a joy to be riding what some – myself included – consider to be the best 500cc single ever produced by a British motorcycle company. The bike carrying the registration number of GAY 81 has been in…

01 Engine The engine is a conventional piston-ported two-stroke. The counterweight crankshaft is pressed together with a roller big end bearing and gives a 39mm stroke. There are two oil-mist lubricated main bearings, contained in aluminium castings. The four-port aluminium barrel has a chrome-plated bore, home to a two-ring 40mm piston, for a swept volume of 49cc. The engine is capped with an aluminium cylinder head with a decompressor valve. A 12mm bore carburettor, with cast-in float chamber, fed the two-stroke fuel/oil pre-mix. This was a self-contained instrument on later models, earlier ones had the choke in the frame. With a modest 1.6bhp output, the engines were very reliable, but as ride-to-work hacks there was a limit to the amount of neglect they could withstand. Check for signs of ham-fisted…

Marque books, motorcycle encyclopaedias and features inform the BSA board, unsure of the long term future of motorcycling, waited until the 1910 Olympia Show to unveil its first production motorcycle. Some continue to imply BSA took a long, hard look at the best single cylinder motorcycle on the UK market, the Triumph, before designing their own. All true as far as it goes, but not the full story. BSA had been one of the pioneers of the cycle trade when in 1888 the War Office decided to re-equip the British Army with Lee-Metford rifles designed by William Ellis Metford and in service 1888-1926. Suddenly, the Small Heath factory had to quadruple arms production to 1200 rifles a week, forcing them to abandon their growing trade in cycle and components manufacture,…

Forever to be associated with the Triumph marque, Percy Tait, born October 9, 1929, died on November 17, 2019, a month and a bit after his 90th birthday. Known for many things Triumph-related, the association with Slippery Sam, a second place finish to Agostini in the 1969 500cc Belgian GP and his reputed 1,000,000 miles as a factory tester – he was never an official Triumph works racer, but considered to be a tester who raced. To that end, the only bonus he ever received from Triumph was a pen and pencil set for winning the Coupe d’Endurance; team-mate Malcolm Uphill had his bike gifted to him. Talking to Jim Reynolds about the incident for an issue of Classic Racer in the spring of 1988, Percy remembered: “And when I…

What better way can there be to spend a sunny September Sunday than meandering along country byways, amongst the vineyards and through the medieval villages of the Loire Valley? Simple. Doing it on a period motorcycle in the company of people who share your passion – which is exactly what the vintage motorcycle section of the Thouars based TUAR Automobile Club have been doing each autumn for the past 34 years. On a dewy morning, 50 motorcycles, with a combined age of 2668 years, left the market place in Thouars, heading north toward the Loire. They passed through the streets of Montreuil-Bellay, in the shadow of its 1000-year-old castle, before heading for Saumur, where the breakfast stop was taken at the Musée du Moteur – which displays, in a former…

For those who want more than a day in the company of like-minded riders, similar motorcycles and the perfect way to experience south-west France, the biennial Tour Poitou-Charentes for vintage motorcycles provides the answer. This year, its 71 entries spanned a period of 35 years – from 1930 to 1965 – and all but one were of European manufacture. The tour covered over 600km in four days and with a wealth of travelling mechanical experience and equipment, allowing eight en route breakdowns to be repaired, not a single entrant failed to complete the distance. Early on the first morning motorcycles gathered steadily in the shade of the 12th century royal abbey at Celles-sur-Belle. Soon the lengthy convoy rolled though the abbey gates and headed south-west. After a stop at Rochefort…

On New Year’s Day 1920, The Motor Cycle carried an editorial feature confirming the proposed Paris-Nice Trial would go ahead. Assembly would begin on February 10, 1920, with the scheduled start on February 13. The route was in four segments: Paris to Dijon of 193 miles, Dijon to Lyons 124 miles, Lyons to Marseilles 193 miles and Marseilles to Nice 140 miles, a total of 650 miles (1040km). An average speed of 18.75mph (30kph) was set for all classes of motorcycles and outfits with a tolerance of 10 minutes at open and hidden checkpoints for over 250cc solos and 350cc sidecars and 15 minutes for machines under these limits. The Motor Cycle’s editor supplied the entry forms to British riders, while MG (Gaston) Sweerts, Motocyclisme, 1 Citè Paradis (Xe), Paris,…

JANUARY 5 Bike Day. Ace Cafe, Ace Corner, N Circular Rd, Stonebridge, London, NW10 7UD. london.acecafe.com. Rich Moore’s Chilly Willy Charity Ride. Start: All Seasons Cafe, Billing Garden Village, Northampton, NN3 9EX. Ride leaves at noon. Email chillywillynbc@gmail.com. JANUARY 7 South Cumbria VMCC Club Night. Ulverston Sports Club, Priory Road, Ulverston, Cumbria, LA12 9HN. JANUARY 11/12 The Carole Nash Classic Bike Guide Winter Classic. The Showground, Drove Lane, Winthorpe, Newark, Notts, NG24 2NY. www.newarkclassicbikeshow.com. Tel 01507 529529. JANUARY 12 Bike Day. Ace Cafe, Ace Corner, N Circular Rd, Stonebridge, London, NW10 7UD. london.acecafe.com. Maldon British Motorcycle Owners’ Club Bike Jumble. Royal British Legion Hall, Newland Street, Witham, CM8 2AZ. Email rogerbeadle@btinternet.com. Kidlington Autojumble. Exeter Halls, Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1AB. www.woodclass.com. Tel 020 8252 6831. JANUARY 18 Kempton Park Motorcycle Autojumble.…

Bristol is nearly here! The 2020 Carole Nash Bristol Classic MotorCycle Show celebrates the 40th birthday of the event. To mark the milestone, organisers are turning back the clock and throwing a 1970s/80s-themed birthday bash and, of course, everyone is invited. Dressing up is encouraged and there will be a cash prize for the best-dressed visitor on both days. Visitors are encouraged to dig out their best 1970s and 80s clobber… flares, tank tops, platform shoes, shell suits, New Romantic frilly shirts – the lot. You will also be able to marvel at the finest examples of private collection motorcycles. Owners spend thousands of painstaking hours ensuring their exhibits are in the best possible condition, ready for display and inspection by the crowds and judges. As expected at the Bristol…

Two vintage racers from Cornwall have achieved their ambitious targets of breaking American Land Speed Records against the epic backdrop of the Bonneville Salt Flats in Western Utah, USA. Phil Betty and Miki Sprosen, both vintage and classic clubman racers for over 20 years, together form Team Wildcard. They are sponsored by Monty’s Classic Motorcycles, who, like the racers, is based in the Tamar Valley in East Cornwall. Both riders have been track racing with British Historic Racing since the 1990s and four years ago they made the mutual decision to branch out to land speed racing. Taking up the opportunities afforded by Straightliners at Pendine Sands and Elvington, they quickly achieved UK records and set their sights on the racing ‘mecca’ of Bonneville for the Speed Trials AMA Grand…

Len Page’s WD M20 was supplied to the Royal Navy in mid-June 1944, a time of intense activity for the Senior Service in supporting the Normandy landings. The sidevalve 500cc single is in remarkably original condition, with the many brass fittings dictated by wartime steel shortages, the correct handlebar levers, and the canvas handlebar grips, as rubber had become in short supply soon after the Japanese entered the war in December 1941. The light fittings and switch are correct for the year, though a dipswitch is now fitted, since the wartime headlamp black-out mask has been set aside – Len explained how originally the main bulb behind it had been wired to operate on one filament only, and if that failed, the wiring would be changed to bring the other…

Works trials rider Jack White (always known to friends as Jackie) was a star of the competition motorcycle scene in the 1920s and 1930s, a stalwart of the International Six Days Trial (ISDT) and the Scottish Six Days Trial (SSDT) riding a works Ariel. After the Second World War, he met Gwen Wickham, 24 years his junior, and taught her to ride a motorcycle – she subsequently competed as one of only a small number of female competitors in the Scottish Six Days Trial in the 1950s, initially on a works-supported Francis-Barnett. They married in 1958, Gwen giving up her competition career to raise their two daughters, though the couple’s names remained involved in the motorcycle scene through to Gwen’s passing in 2018. Against all odds Jackie White was born…

In this life there are those who can maintain a sense of order in their working practices – such an aim is admirable and I’m always in awe of such people. On the other side are the totally disorganised restorers. Most of us will fall somewhere in between the two extremes. So we have lots of boxes with all sorts of things in. This project is a bit of a mix of all sorts of things – mostly Triumph, with the odd bit of BSA chucked in – in other words pretty much what I had on the shelves. There are imperial fasteners alongside more readily available metric ones and to complicate matters even more, instead of the steel plates to mount the engine in the frame, I’ve used thicker,…

Some of us have built, owned or bought hand-built motorcycles, often specials crafted from existing machines to make the ideal mount of our dreams. And the name proudly emblazoned on its tank gives us a clue as to the origin of the constituent major components, or at least the engine and frame. Favourites include Triton (Triumph engine, Norton Featherbed frame), TriBSA (Triumph engine, BSA frame), Grumph (Greeves frame, Triumph engine) and Norvin (Norton frame, Vincent engine), among others. Then we’ll have all espied many others, (Velton, NorSuzuki, Japton…), plus classic/ modern engines installed in bespoke frames, such as Metisse, Seeley and Harris. The examples are endless and an internet search or trawl through adverts and specialist catalogues will uncover much of what you need to build your dream motorcycle. And…

Before we begin properly, a few notes… This short JAP engine series began with the firm’s two-stroke units last month, because that’s the easy bit! Also, this column has stuck to its one page format, to give an insight rather than in-depth examination of the subject. Even extending JAP engines to a series will allow no more than a glance at the huge product range of this London maker. Engine capacities quoted in this series are those published by JAP themselves. These don’t always tally precisely with calculations using bore and stroke dimensions, however, it isn’t our role to rewrite history, so we won’t. John Alfred Prestwich (1874-1952) founded JAP of Tottenham, North London in 1895, initially working in the cinematographic and photographs fields. He wasn’t only an intuitive designer,…