Vintage motorbike

I built quite a few trials specials when I was riding back then.

This one was an ex army BSA B40 engine in a Royal Enfield frame I called it a "Sabre" which was a play on the letters of BSA & RE

I think one of my favourites was this Royal Enfield Bullet. It started life looking like this when I bought it.

A few weeks burning the candle at both ends produced this.

Phil

Some very nice bikes here, a bit modern for me tho'. Can anyone remember the chap , lived near York, who built a vertical twin OHC Norton ? That was a big beast. Our home built grass bikes were never pretty, all entered as JCS Special, jubilee clip special. That gives some idea of the standard.

While I was at Donnington Base Workshops I met a Bill Doran who co-owned a garage in Wellington. His partner was his mechanic and Bill rode in the Isle of man TT races but gave it up when he got married. I got lots of help and advice from both of them when doing my NH 350. A motorcycle was essential for a young soldier as you could not afford the train fares and the bike allowed you to travel at any time. I often went over Holme Moss in all weathers to get to Sunderland where my parents were stationed. That ride over the hills dodging sheep and high winds was an experience.

Clive

Gordon, your JCS name for your grass track specials reminds me of a reasonable successful grass track special in 1965, when I was a sub-editor on Motor Cycle News. The owner called it Shy Tot. Think about it......

Now now Nick, behave!

Now maybe possible, then absolutely not

I would have gone for one of the new fours, but couldn't afford it what with circuit racing.

Geoff - Will never forget the feeling of 'freedom' riding gave me.

Ah happy days indeed, from a distance of 40 odd years I can't for the life of me see what the crash bars were meant to do, but I do remember that all the lads with bars used to think it was a good idea to scrape them as you went round a corner, now that was dicing with danger looking back on it.

Tony

GRRRRR!

Geoff - Life's too short to practice

A beautifully restored example! A lot of time and effort has gone into this machine.

For good balance on a twin, it should be a 90 degree twin, as, if statically balanced, the secondaries are balanced out by the other cylinder. Which was one of the reasons that the Brough Superior lived up to its name.

Narrow angle twins are very difficult to balance, nor are the Induction and Exhaust pulses equally spaced, which makes tuning to optimise performance more difficult.

Howard

Hi Gordon , the mans name was Ernie Jackson and he lived of Nunnery Lane York, he built a 1000cc OHC twin in the late 1940's by grafting two singles together and it was before Norton's ever made one . I was in my early teens and used to visit his workshop and hover around to see his motorcycles , it had a left hand twist hand grip which operated the steering damper, he also converted a 500 cc single OHC from shaft operation to chain drive. I hope someone can find them and put up some photographs.

Ken.

Someone who does amazing motorcycle engine projects, and in a home workshop is allen millyard. Below is a link to a page about his build of a 5 litre v-twin. He has previously made a 2 litre v-8 splicing together two kawasaki z-1's.

http://thekneeslider.com/allen-millyard-builds-a-5-liter-v-twin/

> Did have a good Robot 'dice' with an American muscle car, side by side all the way into top gear, before I had to turn off.

> So a European designed 1200 cc car would have totally cained you then.!

I managed to 'fishtail' a Marina once!

Neil

Anyone with an idea of building a trials bike from scratch should have a look at Charlie Prescott's web site www.bsaotter.com

With snow on the road presumably.

I had a coupe one in blue in the early 80's

Nick

I never fishtailed the Marina but did it quite a lot in the E Type, I once did a U turn when I intended to turn right. Both these cars had torsion bar suspension but that is where all similarity ended. The Jaguar was SO beautiful, what a pity it didn't handle as well as the Marina.

Hi, Ken. Yes that's the man, Ernie, Maybe I even met you there!. He worked on Riley cars also. I remember he was not amused at the M/C press coverage, all saying he had made new castings for crankcase when " all " he'd done was make a spacer. Also had BMW front forks liberated from Germany and carried home. Mike I remember that name. I once had a Tiger Cub trials bike, my only try at it, it was so bad I threw it into a quarry, but it survived.

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I had a lovely Bultaco 350 Sherpa, but only really used it for trail-riding [and, being road-legal, commuting to work!].

I did enrol on a one-day "masterclass", but bottled-out when we started riding to the practice area ... The tutor was a young man from the Lampkin family [before Dougie's time, but it's in the genes].

MichaelG.

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Edit: corrected the closing line.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 10/10/2014 11:29:01

Hi

Went to the Staffordshire showground for the Motorcycle Mechanics offering on Saturday. Took some photos of the Vintage stuff.

There's a few more pictures in the alblum, did't want to overload the post. The BSA triple is a V6!

Enjoy.

Michael

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That is very nice indeed

MichaelG.

Couple of shots of that V6 from the timing side.

Which was a much more interesting side. Crankcase was welded up for about 4 set's a cut and shunt standard cases.

Cheers, John

MichaelG.