Late ‘60s summers
Like so many of us, Barry Gwynnett’s introduction to motorcycling came in the form of taking turns to ride the remains of a moped around a woodland track at the age of 13 with his local mates.
Between us, we’d save up to buy fuel – I think Shellmex was about 3/11d a gallon then – and thrash various scrap mopeds around until they broke. My father, who was into off-road riding in the late ’40s, was supportive and tried to instil some common sense into me regarding biking. I’m still here, so something must have got through. Having worked out that two-strokes needed oil (as well as fuel) the mopeds seemed to last a bit longer, but the life expectancy of the majority was but a few weeks at most. I can’t remember where the apparently endless supply of these machines came from. Eventually, a few of us acquired a 350 Matchless of 1957 vintage – only seven or eight years old – and, of course, we broke that as well, but not before getting to grips with a real bike. I seem to remember that the head bearings left a little to be desired, but not so much that it stopped us blatting around the beechwoods on it.
We learned so much from just keeping these machines going, and most of us had our 16th birthdays planned out years ahead. With my father’s help I got hold of a plunger C11 which we rebuilt over an 18-month period so it was ready for my 16th. On the day I raced home from school, rode the bike down to the MoT station for the last appointment of the day, and then piled up about 90 miles in three hours to do the three miles back home! My mother went mad. The C11 served to get me my licence about three weeks after my birthday, and was soon replaced with a Greeves Sports Twin 250.
Over the summers of ’68 and ’69 I had a holiday job at Sid Moram’s in Slough. They were BSA/Triumph dealers, and also Honda and Lambretta at that time, and I worked in the stores with a couple of other, older guys. As I recall, everyone there was a keen motorcyclist and ‘Sid’s’ had a good reputation locally. Also within the business group was the Windsor Comp Shop, specialising in trials and scrambles and also ‘Johnny
Argrave’s’ who were specialists in grass track stuff and also the local Villiers dealers.
This was the time when opinions were divided over British bikes and the influx of the Japanese machinery was a contentious issue. In the showroom everything was shiny and new, and I couldn’t afford any of it so it wasn’t a big deal to me but some people had very entrenched ideas. One thing that I remember from those times is that one guy used to come into the stores every week and ask if the part that he’d ordered for his Trident had turned up (I think it was a silencer, one of those with the little tail pipes?), and every week the answer was ‘no.’ I worked in the stores for just on three months in the summer of 1968 and it just never came. He didn’t seem particularly upset about it and the stores manager, who was a thoroughly decent and helpful chap, didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it either. Honda spares used to be delivered at the same time each week and there never seemed to be a problem with any of them.
I heard about the job from an old school friend, Ned. Now, this was a man who could have a whole book written about his biking exploits; suffice to say that he went from Tiger Cub to Rocket Gold Star in one step, and then to a BSA M21. He worked in the new accessories department at Sid’s and so knew about all the latest goodies available. To say that Ned’s RGS was temperamental with its GP carb would be an understatement, but when he fitted one of Wal Phillips’ fuel injectors it achieved a whole new level of unpredictability! On any given day, and apparently dependent on atmospheric pressure and depth of fuel in the tank, it would either refuse to start at all, not tick over below 2000 revs or go like a bat out of hell. The last option would only be on the way back from Chelsea Bridge on a Sunday where you could queue up to have Wal himself reset the injector unit. Well, rumour has it that it was Wal himself. It cost 10 shillings a go and the resulting performance was guaranteed, until you got into top gear or had gone two miles.
I’m being a bit uncharitable here because, as long as you didn’t fiddle with the adjustment screws and kept a decent head of fuel in the tank, it did really go like stink. The problem was that it was a bitch to start at the best of times and bump-starting a 650 with 10:1 pistons and clip-ons when you weighed eight stone dripping wet wasn’t easy! On cold mornings, the injector adjustment screws got fiddled with to get it going, and it was all downhill from there.
The demise of the RGS was one evening in Eton High Street when the clutch centre nut came undone and the entire clutch and primary chain departed the engine. With no primary chaincase as such, just an aluminium guard, the various plates, springs, nuts etc. spread themselves over several hundred yards of road. The amount of noise generated by the two virtually straight-through pipes within the close confines of the buildings on either side of the street was enormous and Ned, who had about as much mechanical sympathy as a 2lb hammer, detected only a slowing down of the machine and just wound the throttle even further open. The engine gave up shortly after but such was his speed that he was able to freewheel the half a mile or so to Eton Bridge and then complete the circuit of the railway station to pull up outside the Cellar Cafe, looking very puzzled.
The remains of the RGS were collected next lunchtime with the loan of Sid’s float, which was a 650 BSA Thunderbolt with flat sidecar rigged for bike collection and delivery. As I recall it, the RGS never ran again and Ned bought a ‘brand new’ war surplus BSA M21 from Pride & Clark for £27 19s 11d.
One of the perks of working at Sid’s was the occasional opportunity to pick up or deliver bikes for servicing. We lower mortals weren’t allowed near the police 650 Triumphs that were ferried to and from nearby Langley ‘nick,’ but there was a regular trade in BSA Fleetstars for Windsor Great Park and the odd Bantam for the GPO. The Thunderbolt ‘float’ was reserved for private customers who wouldn’t like any Tom, Dick or Harry riding their machinery – little did they know what was done on ‘test rides’ by the mechanics – and one day, presumably when the bottom of the barrel had been thoroughly scraped, Ned was tasked with picking up a Triumph twin. I volunteered to go with him and this was approved as long as we did it in our lunch hour. What nobody had thought to ask was whether either of these 17-yearolds had ever ridden an outfit before. The answer was ‘no’ but if it didn’t bother the powers that be why would it worry us? What could possibly go wrong?
As it was lunchtime, nobody in authority saw us leave the shop and turn right into Slough High Street. We wanted to turn left but the outfit wanted to turn right so we turned right. I think we were laughing so much it didn’t seem to matter, but every time we tried to turn left the sidecar wheel lifted and we had to straighten up.
We both had a go but couldn’t get the hang of it, but eventually – with me standing up on the sidecar bed – we managed to get to the customer’s house about three miles away. Securely loaded up with the Triumph twin we started back, this time with me driving. Aah! This was now a different matter, the weight in the sidecar made all the difference and turning left worked fine. We then started to experiment and found that, although left-handers still had to be treated with some respect, we could drive the outfit round righthanders with all the power we had. Eventually full power right turns could be made, with some protests from the rear and sidecar tyres. We returned the ‘float’ to the yard, unloaded the Triumph and went back to work.
About half an hour later, both
Ned and I were carpeted in front of the workshop manager for a full hats-on bollocking, as half the spokes in the rear wheel of the Thunderbolt were broken! Neither of us were trusted with the ‘float’ again, but that’s as far as it went.
To fill in for staff holidays you could be temporarily ‘posted’ to one of the other sites, if you had your own transport. I had a 350
BSA at that time, an alloy ZB32 engine in a later B31 swinging arm frame, done up as a green-laner with Rickman bars, alloy guards, 21-inch front wheel – scrambler style. My favourite posting was therefore to the Windsor Comp Shop where the showroom was full of new and used trials and scrambles machines – mostly Greeves – but the Spaniards were starting to make an impact, and there were Husqvarnas, Maicos, Bultacos and some older fourstrokes. I’d just wander around sitting on everything in sight and drinking in the smells. I can’t remember actually doing any work, I suppose I was just there to make up the numbers and make tea. Which suited me just fine!