Ultimate Ariel
Engineering, building or simple project managing, Billy Bishop puts an immaculate Ariel HT5 onto the Pre-65 scene but, in doing so, questions how many are likely to follow?
One man's drive to make the ultimate Ariel trials bike ... this is his story, no names have been changed to protect anyone ...
0f the things I remember from my early years in youth trials was big British bikes towering over me as I sat in queues awaiting my tum to tackle sections - their riders looking down at me as my dad took last minute opportunities to suggest where the front end of my little TY80 should steer. More than one rider, easing a throttle and reducing the deafening four-stroke noise to a twelve-year-old's ears, said: "you'll be okay sunshine, just do as your dad tells you." I never paid enough attention to such advice but I did pay attention to the handlebars on those big bikes. They had more levers than mine and I could never understand why? What did these extra levers do? Why did my bike not have them?
The fascination with these machines had started but it would be another 32 years before I would tackle a section on such machines.
Sporting a flat cap adorned with many a Britishbike pin-badge, an enthusiastic Talmagspectator pointed his cane at my Ariel "What year is it?" More 2019 than 1957 was my reply. There followed the almost standard questions of "go alright does it?", "how long did it take you to build?" and "how much did it cost?" Just before the observer flagged me into the section I shouted my replies of "yes it does, sir; five years and let's put it this way, I could buy a brand-new titanium Vertigo and still have a bag of cash in my pocket!"
On this, the bike's third outing, I would have to settle for third in the over 300cc class, as with several clean rides, the winner would be decided on the special speed test. I had no idea how fast this bike would go, let alone own any respectable personal motocross background!
Without doubt, at events like the Scottish, the big bikes are the ones the crowds line sections to see. Always there is a cheer for any rider clean on the famous Pipeline section, but when a big bike comes through the cheer has something special about it. This alone spurred
me on to forsake the little Tiger Cub I'd spent a decade riding, and join those bigger bikes in the pre unit class. My route to a big bike began in the summer of 2012
Pretty much every Arielused in Pre-65these days is based more on the ideals and principlesshown by Sammymilleras he developed GOVL32. Don't forget as he was developing this machine he was stilla factory employee with other duties within the company.add in he was riding every weekend up and down the country - no easy task in the days when the motorway system was not as extensive as it is now - and the Arielneeded regular servicingas well as developing, which puts another perspective on his achievements. In Cobissue 8 we lookedat Govl32inour'handbuiltfora Master'series. when motorcycling mourned the loss of Italian Giulio Mauri, a respected photojournalist and Fimofficial. His superb photography archive was highly regarded, as was his collection of memorabilia and machinery which included domestic and world championship winning bikes and an Htsariel which would, by the end of 2013 make its way to a workshop in Northamptonshire.
It had always been my intention to ride a big machine I had built rather than one which proved I could hand over a large sum of money. Mauri's bike was built to classic 1980s ideals, long stroke engine, in an early John Bartram 'Miller' style frame, with then current weight-saving opportunities everywhere it still weighed 130.5kg/2881b.while there were a lot of things on it I needed, on the flip side the thinking has moved on a lot since its original build nearly 40 years ago. The machine I had come to own was not the machine I was going to ride Pipeline on.
Apurist would argue against the modernisation of a bike, even within keeping but I would argue while many competitive Pre-65 machines of today are far from original, so are the sections. Several fellow riders advised me to simply keep and ride the machine as it was, "you're opening a can of worms if you choose to rebuild it" was a common phrase. With a new generation of riders coming through the last decade alone the severity of sections has changed. If had kept the machine as it was, I'd have never ridden it and I wanted a bike I could throw at anything, come what may!
My Scottish riding partner and close neighbour, Richard Allen, acquired two of the last Ariel frames Paul Jackson would make, one of which now became the foundation of this project. Four years then passed before I had finally saved enough to make a realistic start on the project though during this time I had the bike registered with the help of the Ariel club of Great Britain. If I wanted to compete in the Nbbcseries,
the Manx and the Pre-65 Scottish in Kinlochleven it would need to be road registered, a process which took a considerable time with official inspections and paperwork.
To be anywhere near competitive I knew the bike had to have a short stroke conversion, making the engine a lot more responsive and more suited to modem day Pre-65 'expert' sections. Long before I had even owned one I had photographed many Ariels and questioned the knowledge of those who owned and built them.
One Lancashire man I had met over a pint in Kinlochleven's Highland Getaway was Carl Winstanley who had given me his details to contact when the time came to it. Carl's work on engines, particularly trials Ariels, is reputable and is to be found behind many of today's championship winning machines. Carl would help with the conversion but I would need to source a Yamaha XT 350 piston and a 350 Ariel crank assembly in perfect condition, neither of which are available off the shelfl The project came to a standstill, for at least another year until I located what I needed.
Although the Ariel was the lightest of the big bikes the story of how Sammy Miller ingeniously cut the weight even further off his HTS GOV132 after the factory dropped the range is well and truly embedded into the history of the sport. By May of 2018 I was ready to Millerise the Milan bike and the deconstruction of the original began.
Carl began engine reconstruction by breaking everything down, stripping off the original primary chain casing and dismantling the clutch assemblywhich would be replaced with a belt driven diaphragm version supplied by Peter Kirby.the new clutch would fit into one of John Bartram's CNC machined casings made of a 5000 series aluminium alloy with magnesium, the highest strength nontreatable aluminium and simply finished off to absolute perfection. The casing was designed to fit one of John's frames and to make it work with the 1:Thecompleted engine rebuildforthe new machine.
2: Lancastriancarl Winstanleywiththe rebuiltengine January 2019.
3: Theoriginalbike as it was under the ownershipof Giulio Mauri.
The buildtaking shape inapril2019 after Pauljacksonhad builtthe runninggear.
5: Tonyholtmodels the extended James tank designed for the new build.
Byaugustof 2019 the bikestarted to take shape
7: A new Morgooil pump was fitted to the new bike.
Gearboxadjustment builtintothe new machine.
Jackson frame Carl had to do some clever engineering and build the mounts to suit not only the clutch but the engine and the frame. The gearing, an original road bike cluster, was replaced with an extra wide ratio set purchased from Mick Ash. "I've only three sets left and one has been sold, if you want them you will have to be fast" said Mick.
New valves and guides went in the head and bearings, bushes and seals were switched for new throughout. To ensure good oil circulation a new Morgo pump replaced the original Ariel one. As with Miller's bike the engine oil is carried in the frame and feeds for the rocker shafts were redrilled and switched to the primary side and fitted with clear tubing so the oil being fed in could be seen to circulate.
Gearbox adjustment was reconfigured to allow fine adjustment as opposed to the vicious adjustment
often seen with a snail-cam system.
Locknuts on bolts built into the gearbox casting are loosened to push on the main centre bolt to aid adjustment either way. With more torque through the chain drive than the engine, setting the belt clutch up at the right tension is paramount and from new they tend to drag back tight, pulling back and taking the play out of everything. With this gearbox adjustment design, slackening the bolts off and pushing the gearbox forward a fraction works to an optimum setting.
In the meantime, I had driven over to Mick Dickenson in Derbyshire who had my alloy barrel cast and ready so Carl could finish the short stroke conversion, engineer the crank to the new Yamaha piston and fit the barrel. Over a brew in his kitchen Mick told me my barrel is perhaps one of the last he would make as other things in life where more of a priority now he was in his eighties.
I could have shaved more weight off the engine casings as some do but I soon discovered there was trade-off between having an ultra-light bike and one I could attack any section with, without fear of it breaking! I opted for the latter.
With the engine ready and built into the frame it remained in Lancashire but now at the residence of Max Heys who fitted a set of his own engineered yokes, which at 1½ degree gave a 45mm offset making the final steering to my preference just perfect. Max also engineered the CNC alloy hubs and drilled a 50t Talon rear sprocket to fit and at the same time reduced the weight further.
The forks comprised of Norton Road Holder sliders with Bultaco 35mm stanchions, the tops of which had been machined to the taper of the old yokes. In the meantime Richard Allen had dropped off a 1985
Aprilia TX so I could scavenge the Akront rims from it.
With the forks in, the yokes, rims and hubs ready, the bike then spent some time in West Yorkshire with Paul Jackson to have the wheels built up with the correct offset and continued with a few welding alterations to my specification. Now in his seventies Jacko told me of how his frame building days are over!
Tony Holt over in Colchester was working on the fuel tank, a slimmer, extended teardrop Jamesstyle tank fitted with an aircraft fuel cap. This was my preference over the larger, classic Ariel-shaped version, if only for the psychology of having a smaller bike between my legs like the tiny Cub I was used to. Paul Jackson then made further alterations and had his arm seriously twisted to build an exhaust pipe while Gary Fleckney was constructing a set of Rockshocks to suit my 10½ stone weight.
Throughout this build I would have been lost had it not been for the lathe work of Mick Clarkson, a retired engineer and Pre-65 rider. Mick spent a considerable amount of time making lots of things and helping to build the bike into something which started to resemble how it was going to look. I personally designed the seat to flow with the curves of the bike and avoiding a gap displaying only a section of frame between it and the tank. A friend at Elite Coach Trimming Ltd, who restores vintage Aston Martin interiors for wealthy Arabs, covered it for me.
Anyone building a bike knows putting it together is only half the job and getting it running properly is the other half. One man who doesn't get anything wrong in this area is Julian Wigg, brother to the late world champion speedway rider Simon and father of ►
trials champion Alex. Throughout the construction, the bike and I spent many an evening in Julian's workshop, sometimes to the point where my brain simply couldn't soak anymore knowledge from what the man threw at me. Carburation is one of Julian's fortes and thanks to him the 22mm Premier Amal, working on 120 main and 106 needle jets with a Triumph Trident Concentric Mk.2 throttle spring, carburates perfectly. Julian spent a lot of time fine tuning it and setting up the Lucas Competition Wader magneto whilst teaching me everything from design of titanium bolts to starting the machine correctly and a whole bag of tips and tricks he'd accumulated through decades of bike building.
During a series of dry run testing at Hawks Nest, to iron out any problems and to figure out what needed rewelding, altering or moving, I played with the advanced and retard trying to find grip with different settings. Julian explained with modern tyre technology there is little, if any, need for the ignition advance and retard of the Fifties. The question arose to weight saving with a modern electronic mag without the hassle of an additional lever? "Don't replace it with an electronic version" Julian said, adding how the original magneto will produce a much better spark, another weight saving trade off.
Once I was satisfied with the bike it was stripped down for Paul Davis at Cambridge Trials Centre to weld on a Yamaha sidestand and arrange powder coating of the frame. The fuel tank went off to Paintsupremacy in Lincolnshire for the artwork, originally to be claret red, but the guys there talked me into Ducati red. Rather than the easy option to lacquer over a sticker I'd chosen these guys for their skill to replicate an original badge with actual paint, so it would give the appearance of a vintage Ariel badge even with the finishing touches of embedded screws.
The final weight of the bike came in at 2231b/101kg, however, when all the bolts are replaced with Titanium there will be further weight loss. Not the lightest trick Ariel but I could challenge the combined rider and bike overall weight maybe a lot less than most, if not all?
A common theme running through this entire build was my luck, not only with timing to have the
"IFI had kept the machine as it was, I'dhave never ridden it and I wanted a bike I could throw at anything, come what may!"
parts made, but also the help of those who were ready to retire from the game. Those five or six years were a combination of both raising finance and waiting on engineers who, with respect, were never in any particular rush it seemed. I was introducing a new bike to the scene rather than buying one, which maybe was looked upon as a good thing, thus swinging those engineers to help me. Unless a new generation of enthusiastic engineers appear on the scene soon just how many new or rebuilt big bikes are we going to see in the future?
Who rode or built the bike before Giulio Mauri's ownership remains a mystery. With the finished bike in perfect condition it was displayed at Telford Classic Dirt Bike show.
As Sammy Miller himself ran his hands across the bike, a smile came across his face: "Wish I'd had this back in the day." Standing next to me, Cdbeditor Tim Britton said: "Well there's your seal of approval Billy, now let's see you clean Pipeline on it!" cdb