Yorkshire’s finest
It may seem as though Villiers powered the off-road UK industry in the Sixties, but once supply dried up makers had to look elsewhere.
With Villiers no longer able to supply engines to a UK industry, makers had to look elsewhere, for Yorkshire-built Dalesman this meant Austria.
It seems inconceivable today to base an entire industry on the engines supplied by one maker, but just such a situation was the way Britain’s lightweight competition market existed from the early post Second World War period until Norton Villiers decided they would keep all their engines for themselves. In a very short time, as stocks of engines were used up, lots of manufacturers were faced with either closing, making their own engines or sourcing elsewhere.
Greeves for instance, had already instigated their own engine for MX but development isn’t an easy or cheap thing to do, so also cast about looking for alternative supply. Villiers hadn’t been the only engine maker involved in the supply of units to the UK’S industry, it had ‘just’ been the major one so other suppliers were out there and in one of those happy chances when an enterprising figure spotted the potential in something, the Austrian manufacturer Steyr Daimler Puch became involved in engine supply. It could have been one of several other makes as German Zundapp and Sachs engines had seen use in the UK and Italian Minarelli engines would also be used, but the happy chance was Pete Edmondson seeing a 125 Puch road bike at the Puch HQ in Nottingham.
This micro bike thing is often referred to as the ‘schoolboy’ scene but it wasn’t, this market came along because the bikes were there and not the other way round. Edmondson’s visit to Puch resulted in the Dalesman being born and pretty soon he was making trials, enduro and MX bikes for sale. Ultra-light, easy to ride and not expensive, for a while they were a winner. Pete made sure his bikes were at major events with decent riders on them and the name grew, but still they were not prolific on the scene.
Fast forward a bit to a field in north Northumberland
where NE Vinduro were holding a post-lockdown Hare and Hounds and Mick Mosley was topping up his Can-am enduro bike. Being a fan of the Canadian machines I stopped to have a word with Mick… the word, or words were “have a look at this…” ‘This’ was a Dalesman 125 MX model and fairly rare, as it came towards the end of Dalesman. “Could we perhaps push it over there and take some photos please Mick?”
What we pushed ‘over there’ is a four-speed model of quite a high spec in its day, at the time it was produced circa 1972 the Dalesman range consisted of five models two trials, two MX and one Enduro, the trials and MX were available with four or six-speed Puch engines, the enduro only six-speed Sachs one.
As I was taking photos Mick told me a bit about how he got this smart little machine: “I’d been washing my other Dalesman and a passer-by stopped to look and reckoned a mate of theirs had a similar bike which was to be sold. I got in touch with the chap and it turns out the bike had been owned by an elderly relative and the family where selling everything off after he’d passed away.”
Mick went along to see what was there, more in the
hope of finding some spares as he’d been told the bike was dismantled.
“When I turned up, the bike was all in bits, just a rolling chassis and a few boxes of bits really, but worth having for me all the same.” There were two boxes of engine bits but not enough bits to make complete engines.
Then a few months later the family contacted him again to say ‘a box of cogs had turned up, did he want them?’ “The family weren’t motorcycle orientated so the gears were just cogs to them but there was a complete four-speed cluster and most of a six-speed one too.” The six-speed was missing vital cogs so remains in bits, the rest, however, went to make the 125 MX model which caught our attention. “Once the gears turned up it was a feasible thing to do,” he says.
In the early days of Dalesman the bikes were built from a lot of parts supplied by Puch, as Pete Edmondson had told me Puch allowed him to search their stocks and would sell him what he wanted. By 1972 the bikes had gained such things as REH forks which did much to remove the spindly look the front end previously had when Puch moped forks were in place. The
original forks were quite good but REH were so much better.
Motorcycle ran a feature by Peter Fraser in which he visited the factory in Yorkshire and was given the tour, as well as three test bikes to ride. Housing the Puch engine in a frame made of CDS steel tube, Dalesman added a swinging arm made from legendary Reynolds 531 tube and Girling rear dampers connected this bit to the frame. A bit of an anomaly arose between the frame on Mick’s bike and the description Fraser said in his feature 50 years ago. The factory told him the frame was single downtube yet the feature photos clearly show a twin downtube frame on at least the MX and enduro models. Maybe the trials bike had the single down tube frame?
Wheels consisted of an REH hub at the front and a Puch one at the rear on the MX and enduro models at least. Mick has no reason to doubt these components fitted to his machine are as they would have been on the bike in its day. Also in the day the rims would have been steel as alloy wasn’t trusted to handle the
battering of off-road at that time.
As Mick assembled his machine it showed evidence of a hard life, maybe the reason it was stripped, anyway the forks were quite worn and in order to make them work there was quite a bit of experimenting with oil grades. Though they now preform reasonably well.
On the swinging arm, which would normally have had Silentbloc bushes, the spindle runs in needle rollers which give a much more positive feel. Silentbloc bushes are ‘fit and forget’ until they wear or the rubber breaks down, then they’re interesting in their action.
“I do have the old alloy mudguards at home,” says Mick, “but as I use the bike there’s a chance of an ‘off’ now and again so these easily available plastic guards look okay and do the job, even if they’re not correct.”
The tank and seat on this bike are not correct either. “It should have a glass fibre unit on but that was long gone, but I had a B50 style tank and found a reasonable looking seat to match the B44 side panels and I don’t think they look too bad,” he tells me and I have to agree with him.
For a bike which is in use, Mick has gone with Renthal bars and popular Italian Domino controls, though again the original steel parts are at home in the workshop for the day when the catalogue restoration takes place. Though the way Mick is going such a day may well be a considerable number of years in the future.
Continuing his ‘user friendly’ build the lad added a 626 Amal Concentric carburettor – available, lots of spares and period too – however, the ignition is the original one. “It’s a Bosch and reliable,” he informs, “only issue was the capacitor which was replaced and it all worked again.” With the original Girling dampers rusted beyond any use at all, Mick located a set of Spanish Betors to do the job and once ready to roll had Michelin MX tyres popped on the rims.
“The exhaust is pretty standard,” he says, “not brilliant for an enduro, I just have to be careful where I go with the bike so I don’t dent the underside of it, I did have to fit an auxiliary silencer to the end… without it… well oh my goodness the noise!”
As we chatted another few details arose, the foot controls are standard apart from the footrests themselves, after some thought Mick adds “did you know the early trials bikes were fitted with Nikasil plated barrels?” I didn’t and asked if the MX version has the same? “It might have,” he concedes, “but this has a cast iron liner.”