You need…
You probably don’t realize it, but a big four-stroke single is what you need in your life right now and the AMC version is pretty damned handsome.
… a big Matchless. Once the mainstay of the trials world, the big single was relegated to a supporting role when lighter bikes gained reliability.
Surely everyone must know the story of how the upstart lightweight bikes came along in the Sixties and knocked the big bangers off their seemingly unassailable perches? Yes? No? Well, it wasn’t quite like that as the smaller bikes had been there and thereabouts for a few years, and in the end it was the foreigners who did it for all the British machines and relegated them to the sheds and outhouses before the pre-65 movement took hold. Nor indeed were the riders of the bigger bikes blind to the need to carve an ounce or two off their machines, and Gordon Jackson’s legendary 187 BLF SSDT winning 350 AJS was reckoned to be, at 225lb, lighter than a C15 BSA. When someone builds a bike to use in pre-65 trials, it is rarely a catalogue correct model. In actual fact, to ride a catalogue correct bike in modern pre-65 trials would be an achievement in itself. Rather it is the works machines which are looked at, which is all well and good, but even in the day not everyone could handle works machines.
There is a famous tale of one trials superstar trying Gordon Jackson’s super trick short stroke bike and declaring it ‘unrideable’, yet Jackson won on it. Hand-built for the Kentish lad’s style, AMC realised few riders had Jackson’s skill and instead carried on with the long stroke model.
In AMC’S defence, even other members of the works team preferred the older, long stroke bike, and when 187 BLF went to Gordon Blakeway as his works bike, AMC had settled on using the older barrel overbored to take the short stroke piston to make a 410cc machine – most of the AMC trials bikes were 350cc.
The one in our feature is a 410, owned and built by Peter Lockwood and pictured at a test day with Mick Andrews. It displays many of the classic works tweaks which AMC sanctioned for Jackson, such as central alloy oil tank mounted between the rear engine plates, alloy brake plates, lighter sub-frame and high-level exhaust, along with alloy wheel rims. Peter’s bike wears a conical air filter where AMC used a rubber sheet to cover the
carb mouth as they felt a filter could become clogged and spoil the carburation. Peter has also mounted his footrests much further back than would have been the norm in the Sixties and in order to have maximum kickstarter movement a modern cranked one has been fitted. If you’ve never ridden a well sorted big single, then make friends with someone who has one, beg a ride on one or somehow contrive to sling your leg over the saddle of a traditional machine. Then, back the throttle off, let it plonk and I’d be surprised if you didn’t agree you need one in your life.