✪ Readers' Tales
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Find out more at www.thekeycollection.co.uk workshop to get a left-handed screwdriver, a bucket of sparks or (and this was the favourite for new lads) – a long weight. After 10 minutes of standing idly at the stores hatch the poor chap was bollocked by the workshop manager for wasting time. Such was the calibre of some of the lads that they fell for that one twice!
We also kept the lubricants in the stores and the oil company reps would call in regularly to try and convince the buyers to stock Shell or Duckhams or Castrol.
One of the senior storemen came up to the stores with the Castrol rep who was asking if we knew anyone they could use in an ad campaign. They needed a handful of suitably disreputable looking individuals and a couple of bikes for a photoshoot for Castrol GTX. Did we know anybody? Of course we did!
Tough look
The shoot took place in a village hall near Windsor and the resulting ad was used in the Motor Cycle, Motor Cycle Mechanics and I think in MCN. Using the strapline 'The tough customers are asking for it', it was a black and white picture with a vaguely ‘Hells Angels’ type slant.
In the picture (opposite page, top left) I’m sitting far left on the back of the A10 Rocket with my work colleague who owned the BSA leaning across the tank. For the life of me I can’t remember who the two in the middle are but the lad sitting down is ‘Chris’ and the one at the back leaning on the ape-hangers of his
G11 Matchless was ‘John Velo.’ Why he wasn’t ‘John Matchie’ I don’t know, but I always knew him as ‘John Velo.’
By 1969 my bike was a RE 700 ‘Connie’ which was a very quick machine. Following my off-road tendencies I had fitted Rickman scrambler bars on the Connie and so it wouldn’t stay with the café racer style twins on a long straight but it would out-accelerate almost anything. Once you had over 1500 revs in first, second or third it would lift the front wheel without effort with a decent handful, as my girlfriend of the time – and now wife of over 50 years – will testify as she relaxed her grip one night and got dumped off the back at the traffic lights on the North Circular at Ealing Common. I was nearly at Hanger Lane (about 2 miles) before I realised she’d gone!
At some point that summer I was making my way home on a Saturday night on what was then part of the M4 at Maidenhead. I was doing a fair lick. I’m not going to say how fast because I’m not sure if there’s a statute of limitations on speeding.
Suddenly the engine revs peaked and the bike slowed slightly. I grabbed the clutch to start with, instinctive I suppose, but it turned out to be a broken primary chain. I managed to coast to the end of the motorway at the old Maidenhead Thicket roundabout and about 100 yards further before coming to a halt. Seeing what I could make out in the light from a lamp-post there was a neat rectangular hole in the rear half of the
primary chaincase, and poking a finger inside showed that the chain had gone. I wasn’t in the mood to go back on the hard shoulder of the motorway for what was the best part of a mile to get the chain, which was probably wrecked anyway, so I pushed the bike home. It was about five miles to Marlow where the family home was at the time. Getting a new chain wasn’t a problem, in fact I think I had a spare, but the rear half of the chaincase was a different matter, especially on a Sunday.
After a few phone calls on the Sunday morning (four pennies in the slot and press button ‘A’ in those days), I found a chap in Bracknell who had a Shooting Star combination for sale. A four-hour pedal bike trip and about £15 (I seem to remember) later I had the 1956 BSA with a sidecar comprising a couple of planks, with a 6in high upstand all round and a wheel. Pedal bike on the planks with a couple of bungee cords and off we go. Apart from a couple of goes on a mate’s Thunderbird outfit and the eventful trip on Sid Moram’s float I had no ‘chair time’ at all. By the time I got home I’d sort of got the hang of it and off I went on the Monday morning to work.
Weight it out
After a couple of days I was really getting the hang of it. Chris Vincent look out! However, left handers were a bit too exciting at times and I figured that I needed a bit of weight in the ‘chair.’ It so happened that my parents had inherited an old garden roller when they moved to Marlow, the sort that you make out of filling a five gallon oil barrel with concrete and then cutting the metal away. It had a length of baler twine through a hole down the middle as a sort of pull-along device. My dad was happy to be rid of it, so onto the planks it went, tied down with the baler twine.
A popular haunt that summer was at a sort of club place in Maidenhead, and the quickest way from Marlow was up over Cookham Hill, which had a couple of quite sharp hairpin bends. For the first left-hander I really threw the outfit at the bend and round it went – no trouble. Well, there was some trouble, as the roller had come loose and broken off the outboard bit of wood sticking up out of the planks. As the roller had subsequently fetched firmly up against the inboard upstand and was pointing at right angles to the road I didn’t bother to re-secure it.
On the next bend off went the roller again, this time destroying the front upstand and trapping my left foot against the bike. As I straightened up the roller un-trapped my foot and found a resting place against the only remaining upstand, at the back.
All went well till Cookham High Street when, for some reason, I had to stop and the roller made its way forward, stopping pretty much level with the front wheel spindle. Now, 14-year-old 500 BSA twins, which cost £15, couldn’t generally be expected to produce a great rate of acceleration but in this case it was sufficient to induce the roller to move rearwards, remove the last remaining bit of upstand and depart the outfit.
Having somewhat embarrassingly retrieved the roller from the gutter outside the King's Head, I tied it back down with baler twine through one of the many holes that had also appeared in the planks. I can’t remember much about the rest of the evening, or indeed the trip home, but in the morning the roller was conspicuous by its absence. I kept an eye out for it all the way to Maidenhead on the way to work but it was nowhere to be seen.
A few days later I acquired a second-hand Enfield rear primary chaincase from The Graveyard in Twickenham, re-launched the Connie and sold the Shooting Star to one of the mechanics at work for the same £15 that I’d paid for it. After taking possession of it, he then took great delight in telling me that it was one of the years that the BSA 500 twin was made with separate inlet ports in the head and so could be fitted with twin carbs. I think he was making a grass track outfit.
Chopper look
The Connie gradually morphed from pseudo off-roader to ‘early British chopper’ with increasingly high ape-hangers and rear sets. The Enfield frame had sidecar attachment brackets on both sides, something to do with exports I guess, but they were perfect for the rear sets, the gear and rear brake levers were cut shorter and bent at the ends to suit.
I tried altering the position of the neutral selector lever so it could be reached from the rear set, but wherever I put it either resulted in it fouling something or being knocked into neutral at the most inconvenient moments.
The rear footrests had to be relocated to the bottom rear shocker mounts. On the Enfield these mounts were studs so you couldn’t just put the proprietary Wassell (or whatever they were) footrests on and I seem to recall some Honda ones fitting the bill. Of course, having the footrests on the swinging arm meant all rear suspension movements were transmitted to the pillion passenger’s legs. The girlfriend’s knees did some work, I can tell you!
The latest Enfield Interceptor had twin exhaust pipes and I ordered a pair of these. As I recall they took ages to arrive and I fitted them, together with a pair of the latest fashion ‘Megaton’ silencers. These days we have a Trade Descriptions Act, not so in the late 1960s. 'Silencers' was not a fair description of these devices, but the bike sounded glorious, much to the annoyance of the residents of Slough, Maidenhead and the rest of the area I should imagine. The ‘Megatons’ were held on at the back by the same swinging arm stud that held the shocker – and the relocated passenger footrest – there wasn’t really enough thread left for a good nutfull and one night at the Polish War Memorial on the A40 the whole lot came off... but that’s another story.
Iam, like it or not, definitely one of the latter of thos two types! But actually, I don’t think it really matters, because we all ride the same sort of bikes and nod politely to each other when we pass on the road – not better or worse, just different. My story, like many of those who regard themselves as people with bikes rather than fully-fledged bikers, is full of fits and starts and some long gaps.
I passed my two-wheel test long ago, in the days when the examiner told you to drive round the block until he jumped out from behind a tree so you could do an emergency stop. If you didn’t run him over or fall off, you got your licence! At that point, I was riding a Lambretta, bought on the proceeds of my paper round: it wasn’t that I had anything against bikes, just that scooters seemed cheaper and more easily available.
My scooter soon gave way to a friend’s 250cc Honda, when he was suspended after being caught (for the third time) driving without L-plates and wanted someone to look after the bike for him while he was off the road. Later on, not liking getting wet, I progressed first to a Reliant and then a BMW Isetta bubble car – comfort rather than street cred!
This path inevitably led to me acquiring various four-wheel bangers and passing my test in one of them, before embarking on various stressful careers where a car was essential.
The need for an absorbing and totally unconnected hobby eventually led to me building a kit car and, having got the bug, I built three in the end – a totally impractical replica Cobra and two Ford-based convertibles that I was able to use for work. Some time later, after years of spending my Sundays in a lock-up with no heat or power, I concluded that the car companies could probably do a better job than me, bought a Golf and started looking around for a different sort of project to keep me going.
Just at that point, someone asked me if I knew anyone who might take a rusty old bike off his hands. He’d intended to restore it, but it had been stuck in his back yard for about 10 years and it clearly wasn’t going to happen. Without enquiring further, I said I’d take it and paid him £70 for what turned out to be a very rusty BSA Bantam.
Next project
Months of occasional work and a fair bit of help resulted in an MoT – which was great – but the bike sounded like an asthmatic lawnmower, so I sold it on and looked around for something bigger.
'Unfinished Project' said the advert, and he was dead right there! This time, £250 bought me most of a BSA C15: “All the bits you need are in the boxes, mate,” said the seller, who’d got bored and gone on to something else. Well, you know what happens when someone says that, but I was more trusting back then!
Luckily I could get replacements locally for all the bits that turned out to be wrong or missing and after six months I had a presentable bike that looked okay if you didn’t get too close. The trouble was, it vibrated like a jelly if I went over 40mph and so did I… it had to go.
My taste for old-fashioned biking thoroughly awoken, I decided to look out for something nice and classic and with the work all done by somebody else – don’t laugh. The next thing to turn up was a 1963 Triumph Tiger, which looked so beautiful, I just fell in love with it. It had been restored by an enthusiast who’d gone on to restore several other bikes and now needed a bit more space.
It wasn’t that he told me any fibs, more that he’d done the Tiger first and used it to hone his skills. So it looked wonderful – shiny black and chrome – but wasn’t terribly reliable. I got lots of admiring glances, but always had a nagging feeling that something was going to fall off or go bang when I was in the middle of nowhere. I stuck with it for a few years but couldn’t get it right, so sold it on to someone who sounded like he’d have it sorted in no time.
This event was followed by a bit of an international diversion: how do you get a good value reliable bike that you can just ride, not continually worry about? Obvious answer, when you think about it – go German! My next bike was a BMW boxer, an R65LS, complete with impressive panniers.
At last – a bike that started easily and felt solid and reliable! I enjoyed that relaxed feeling and went further afield, even venturing on to the M1 at one point. It was all good... but. The 'but' was the weight, which was quite considerable, especially after the Tiger. As I clicked up birthdays, I started to think I was going to end up with a hernia just getting it on and off the stand. Was there some sort of compromise? A reliable bike that was a bit lighter?
Well, yes there was: a newer BMW F650. Now, that was a good bike and very good value, with only 4000 miles on the clock after 12 years
– the previous owner had become quite ill shortly after buying it and it had spent most of the time in the corner of his garage, only emerging for its annual MoT.
Problem solved? Ah, is the problem ever solved? Apart from one electrical fault, it certainly behaved itself and did what it said on the tin and I rode it happily, summer and winter, for two or three years. Then of course, me being me, doubts started to creep in: though lighter than the R65LS, it was still quite heavy and by now, I wanted something to see me out as a rider and stop all the swopping around. And I did have a hankering after something British.
I did a lot of checking and got all the info about weights and availability of spares and guess what, the best answer I could come up with was a Triumph Tiger! A Bonnie would have been fine, but they go for silly money and actually, the supposed workhorse is pretty similar from most points of view but a great deal cheaper. So, off went the BMW and I began to scour the adverts in OBM and anywhere else I could think of. And do you know, there are very few Tigers for sale for some reason. I’m sure there are lots, but people tend to hang on to them.
I saw various possibilities, all of which were either overpriced or just awful and was beginning to think I’d made a mistake, when a promising 1970 Tiger T100S popped up – in OBM of course! – and I set off to have a good look.
It was a long way and the bloke who was selling – for health reasons, he told me – made it clear he wasn’t going to haggle. He was also not going to let me take the bike for a ride, even though my car was sitting in front of him: “I’ve had problems in the past,” he told me darkly.
Queasy rider
After a bit of negotiation, he agreed to take me out on the back and swop over half-way. This wasn’t as much of a good idea as it sounded, as I really wanted to try the bike with one up and also, I’m a reasonable rider but a terrible passenger! However, he was adamant, so we set off down the road, with me feeling increasingly queasy until we stopped to change over.
The bike went okay and there were various spares and a workshop manual to go with it, which seemed good signs. So I met his price, which seemed fair, and promised to return to ride it home once everything was sorted.
My wife wasn’t over-enthusiastic about driving me up there, but did so anyway and parked round the corner while I collected the spares, etc and made sure all was well. As I was about to leave, the bloke’s wife came over to me and said she was going to bring me luck – and you can’t have enough of that. She produced a magic wand (I’m not making this up) and waved it over me and the bike, saying it would bring both of us good luck from now on. I was a bit taken aback, but thanked her for her good wishes and set off home, with my wife optimistically following.
We managed to get lost several times, all due to roadworks and poor signage, of course, and I must say I promised myself that the first thing I would do when we got home was get some indicators. It’s really quite alarming going round roundabouts in between massive lorries whose drivers are definitely not looking out for hand signals!
That was more than three years ago and I think I’m finally settled as a born-again Triumph owner: the bike looks great and has been pretty reliable. The purple tank – very
1970 – attracts envious looks and people on new bikes come up to me in car parks to tell me how much they like it, which is definitely part of the attraction of old British bikes. I’m doing all my own maintenance and am eternally grateful for TMS Nottingham, which is about a mile away and supplies everything I need at a fair price and advice as required, which is free.
I’m sure this Tiger will see me out and my eight-year-old granddaughter is already sitting on the saddle and asking when I can take her out, so maybe it’ll stay in the family!
You see very few articles about Tigers and I do think they’re massively underestimated by the biker world. Mine will go up to 70mph if I ask it to and normally starts easily without the choke. What more could anyone ask?