BEEZER SPECIAL
This unique machine fits together so well that you could be forgiven for believing it was built at Small Heath. In fact its components come from three different decades, and it inspired Odgie to the heights of delight on the subject of riding girder / rig
This unique machine fits together so well that you could be forgiven for believing it was built at Small Heath. In fact its components come from three different decades, and it inspired Odgie to the heights of delight on the subject of riding girder / rigid motorcycles…
While pondering on a way to introduce this feature, it struck me that not everyone is familiar with the joys of riding a GR (girder / rigid) motorcycle. Among my friends and acquaintances, nearly everybody in the local area owns at least one GR, to the extent that it’s easy to believe that they are normal classic bike fodder. It’s only when you stop to think about it that you realise they might not be relatively commonplace to a great many riders. It’s probably fair to say that many of us tend to be re-living our youth in one way or another (or some of us never left it) and, as such, bikes of the 1950s and 60s figure the most highly; either bikes we’ve owned, or bikes we always dreamed of owning. I suspect there may also be a perception that bikes of the later eras are more accessible, more userfriendly. But like many perceptions, this may prove to be not entirely true.
Riding a GR is something of a joy. Riding a GR for the first time can be something of a surprising joy. Forgo the temptations of the manic twin for a while, and waft along on a seductive single; hark back to even earlier times than the post-war models evoke. True enough, WW2 marks a watershed in so many ways. In the aftermath, we geared up for the hustle and bustle of rebuilding and reconstruction. By 1957 Harold Macmillan was able to proclaim that we’d never had it so good, as we rode relatively high on the postwar economic boom. 1959 saw the most new registrations of two-wheelers ever, and 1.75 million bikes on the road. The Sixties were swinging, the Seventies wild, the Eighties excessive. But dear reader, let’s step back to a gentler time...
If the Fifties were when we all started to become buzzin’ hipcats, back in the Thirties life was still somewhat more sedate. And while not making light of the terrible ills of the Great Depression, which is a whole story in itself, the Twenties through to the Thirties were a great time for motorcycle development. We moved from flat tank to saddle tank, hand change to foot change, sidevalve to ohv, rim brakes to drum brakes, and we introduced such impressive innovations as twistgrip throttles and fourspeed gearboxes.
Advances in engineering and metallurgy driven by WW1 were applied to motorcycles,
performance increased, and reliability became relatively, well, reliable. If you could afford a motorcycle it was something of a golden era. But are we looking back through very rosy glasses. Were girder / rigids any good to ride then, and are they any good to ride now?
Jamie is a man who knows the joys of GR ownership, as this is his BSA Special, and we spent a very pleasant sunny Sunday morning discussing the finer points. But even BSA gurus might be pondering on what exact model this is, so a little explanation first.
‘ The bike originally belonged to a good friend, Little Alan,’ says Jamie, ‘Everyone called him Little Alan, he was eight stone dripping wet and tiny. But he could start his Clubmans Goldie first kick. He had a small collection of bikes, the 500 Goldie, a Rocket Gold Star replica, a Venom, a Dominator, and a few more including this Beesa. He was a real local character, everyone in the local vintage club knew him, he wore the same Belstaffs he’d had since the Sixties, and the same old silver cork helmet. This bike was his sort of daily ride, you’d always see it propped against the wall under the kitchen window (only later would I discover that’s because the stand was broken...).
‘Sadly he passed away about three years ago, and his sister and his best mate Brian offered the seven bikes to six of his friends. I’d always loved the BSA, every time I saw it I could see myself riding it. I’d have preferred it under far better circumstances obviously, but when I was told I could have it, I just said yes down the phone straight away, I didn’t even ask the price.’
In case you haven’t worked it out yet, BSA never actually made this model. The basis is a 1940 ex-WD M20, certainly that’s where the frame and gearbox came from. The front forks are from a different model, Jamie hasn’t discovered which, but that top yoke isn’t like anything seen on an M20 (so if The Reader can identify them, we’ll pass the information
on). When Little Alan originally got the bike, it had a very tired B33 engine in it. He was going to rebuild it, but then his best mate Brian said ‘I’ve got that ZB32 engine under the bench.’ They were all Goldie owners and members of the Gold Star OC. ‘You can try that in it if you like.’
And so Little Alan’s M20 evolved; the tank and silencer, for instance, are from an Empire Star. All this was many years ago, so the bike has been in this guise for a long time. It’s interesting to note that, while it looks like it could have been an original factory model, Jamie’s BSA actually encompasses parts from the 1930s through to the 1950s. But big BSA singles evolved slowly, and indeed everything just bolts together just like it was made that way without resorting to endless fabricating. Not that Little Alan wasn’t a good engineer if he needed to be. The BSA is fitted with a Yamaha clutch which replaces the oft-criticised six-spring BSA original. Alan was always tinkering with something. On the day before he died he was in the cellar with a friend’s grandson, looking at the little disc brakes on his mountain bike and working out ways to fit them to vintage motorcycles. ‘You’d hardly notice them and you’d finally be able to stop...’
Alan was also adamant that this bike was a ‘special’ and not a bitsa. But since it could be really troublesome to start, he had another name for it as well. We shan’t reproduce the term here, but James Dean fans will be familiar with the phrase. ‘It’ll either go first kick or thirty-first kick,’ he used to say.
Since Jamie took over ownership of the bike he’s replaced the broken stand with an Indian item, and fitted a Monobloc carb which has aided starting no end. Indeed, he wheeled the bike out of his shed and, while just easing it over past compression, she fired and very nearly started. One further kick and she was away. And that’s one of the things Jamie loves about the bike.
‘It’s a reliable old thing, you’re not frightened to go anywhere on it, you know you’re going to get there. I rode it over to Goosnargh for the VMCC Flat Tank Run,’ (incidentally one of the best vintage runs you can ever do, it’s a hidden gem, 60 miles of gorgeous countryside, and a far better route than the Banbury), ‘and it just never missed a beat all day. Just stick it in top and waft along. It’s a scrambles motor, not a full Goldie, so it’s tractable too.’
As me and Jamie both know, riding a girder / rigid is a delight. With a decent sprung saddle, the ride is as good as a plunger yet it doesn’t suffer from that vague feeling from the rear end. Indeed, rigid motorcycles have an unexpected tautness about them – even swinging arm bikes lose something in the translation. Rigid machines don’t weave or
wallow, and the potential choppiness on very rough-surfaced bends is a small price to pay for such a feedback-filled experience. You know you’re on a motorcycle, everything is so direct and connected.
Up front, it’s only when you ride a girder sprung bike you realise how much stiction and flex there is in telescopics. True, the overall travel with girders is limited and big potholes are best avoided rather than clangily ridden over, but without the limitations of tubes sliding within tubes, the front end just floats along, gliding over most surfaces. Watching the little links absorb the smallest of irregularities is quite an engaging and therapeutic process. The truth is that girders work far better than you’d ever imagine. Small wonder that various manufacturers are still loathe to dismiss them completely, Britten and BMW being the two most obvious examples.
If you’ve always dismissed GR ownership out of hand, perhaps it’s time to think again. With the price of 1950s and 60s Triumphs and Nortons getting ever higher, good GRs can be bought for more or less comparable money. You won’t get the same wind-it-onout-the-bends thrill, you won’t be able to razz about everywhere at 80mph, but you will get Something Completely Different. You’ll get a perfect club run classic, a bike to delight you on sunny summer evenings down quiet country lanes, the seductive charms of a big single beating away beneath you. I asked Jamie what he liked most about his BSA.
‘You know, I love riding it, but I think most of all I love just looking at it. As girder / rigids go, I think this is as good as it gets. Everything is in proportion. I’d always admired it and I’m so pleased to own it now. I can walk past B31s and B33s, I can even walk past Goldies, but there’s something about this bike. I’m always getting asked what model it is, it looks so factory, yet it’s made from parts strung across three decades. It’s one of those bikes, it’s nothing too trick, but it’s greater than the sum of its parts.
‘I’ll never get rid of it, as long as I can ride it’ll never be for sale. I’ll put it this way; I had my 1925 Rudge and then I got this Beesa. And I looked at both bikes, and I had a heap of money in the Rudge. I’d always wanted one and I’d rebuilt it and it ran great, but to me the Beesa was the better bike, better to look at and better to ride. I sold the Rudge without regret, but I’ll never sell the Beesa.’