Star STRUCK
Craig Whittaker set out to buy a BSA Golden Flash. Instead he ended up with an A7 Shooting Star. This, then, explains how not to buy a Golden Flash…
After owning a Sunbeam S8 for 20 or more years, I decided I needed another bike, so I could have one to ride while working on the other, as you do. The bike I really decided I needed was a BSA Golden Flash, a great classic bike with good handling and a great engine that allows for motorway cruising when required.
So my search began, constantly scouring the TradeMe internet site, which is a New Zealand version of eBay – although way better. Unfortunately, BSA Golden Flashes weren’t coming up very often, and the few that did went for the better part of $10k for a good one with the great swinging arm frame. Several months later: no joy, which led me to start looking at eBay and the UK dealer websites. So many great bikes for sale, fantastic!
The exchange rate was looking quite favourable (as it does now) and, after much searching, I found a great A10 at Bill Little’s dealership. After some enquiries and more details and photos it was looking quite good although still a bit costly (for me anyway) at £5000. With shipping to NZ and other expenses it was looking like quite a lot of NZ dollars.
It was then that I found a great-looking BSA Shooting Star at Venture Classics, a dealer recommended by Rowena, for a very reasonable price. It was originally a standard A7 and had been given an SS engine transplant which probably helped the price, along with the fact that it was painted black rather than the sparkly green. To me it still looked very good. A lot of emails, phone calls and negotiation went on till it got to the point where I thought a good deal could be done.
Now came the hard part: getting agreement from the lady in charge. Being the brave soul I am, I emailed her from work stating the pros and cons and explaining that I could easily sell it for purchase price or more when it arrived in NZ. As soon as I got the go-ahead I emailed Chris to say it’s a done deal – woohoo!
I quickly managed to sort out someone to freight the BSA from the UK and a friend of mine is a customs agent in NZ, so that was also arranged. Once I knew what ship the bike was on, and even the container number, I found I could track it across the world (what a great way to spend time at work) until ultimately it arrived in NZ. Once it was cleared from customs I received an email from my friend with the all the paperwork to allow me to pick it up – really loud woohoo!
Immediately I took a day off work, hitched up a trailer and drove for nearly an hour. I live in the countryside so it’s a bit of a drive to get anywhere, but eventually I reached the warehouse near the airport to pick it up. I remember thinking it was a strange shape when they loaded it and once home I unscrewed one of the panels to find... a jet-ski?! A phone call, which included some swearing on my part, and another hour later found me back at the warehouse where another crate was loaded onto the trailer. This time I took off a loose panel before leaving and had a peek – holy moly! I decided right there and then that I’d done the right thing. There was all this glossy black paint and very shiny chrome in the crate. It looked beautiful.
Once I had it home I managed to attach
the handlebars and kickstart, then somehow prised it out of the crate and off the trailer by myself. It was about then that it started
raining and, weirdly, all this fog arrived. All I wanted to do was throw some fuel into the tank and take the BSA for a blast, but I thought better of it in wet foggy conditions with no lights, as I hadn’t hooked up a battery. At least I could see if it would start. Right: I presumed its routine would be much the same as my Sunbeam. Turn the tap on, tickle the carb until I can just feel some petrol then kick... OK, kick again and she fires up. Very loud woohoo! What a great noise.
An hour or so later the weather cleared and all was ready for a ride around our local, rural roads. Wow, what a blast. The BSA seemed so powerful after my Sunbeam and it made a fantastic noise, just great. I even found it a bit scary and wondered if I could manage the power of it – you can probably tell I’ve never ridden a modern bike with any sort of sporting tendency…
A day or two later I hooked up a battery and expected the worst – the wiring looked terrible and Chris had told me it would need re-wiring. I tried the electrics. Wow, just about everything seemed to work including the horn and the light in the speedo. Fantastic. The rear light wouldn’t work but a quick inspection soon found the problem – no wires!
I got this fixed up at a local auto-electrician and proceeded to complete the paperwork for registering the bike in NZ. This took some time as the powers that be decided they didn’t like the over-stamped frame number so I had to jump through a few hoops and complete more paperwork before I could take it for its first fitness test. Funnily enough, somehow my bike’s odo seemed to increase by 500 miles between when it entered the country and getting the paperwork completed… And quite a lot of the time during this 500 miles, I would leave home on a perfectly sunny day only for it to cloud over and rain at least for some time while I was out. Maybe someone was trying to tell me something? After one such countryside cruise I was nearly home when I noticed the toolbox lid had sprung open and of course all my tools were no longer in the box. I retraced my route but couldn’t find anything. A couple more Sunday rides followed until I spotted a familiar rag on the side of the road, where I walked up and down and rediscovered my lost tools – fantastic!
I left the BSA at a testing station for its certification test, near to the motorway I use to go to work. Once it was completed I picked it up to ride the rest of the way to work in the city. I hadn’t gone far when I realised the bike was getting quite wobbly in the back end. Crikey, what’s going on here? I had to stop and check and found the back tyre was rather flat. Hmmm. I knew there was a garage just off the next exit, so I slowly and scarily rode the wobbly beast to the garage, pumped up the tyre and quickly took it to a workshop a few miles up the road for it to be fixed – not something I’d like to do again, thanks.
Now that I’ve done another 500 (legal) miles, including quite a number of rides to work, charity bike rides and just hooning around country lanes, I feel I’ve got to know the BSA quite well. The handling is just great, the ride is a lot firmer than the Sunbeam but, wow, it goes around corners so well and is so much fun. I’ve also had my spanners out and have replaced the rocker box gaskets. Rather, I should say I installed some, as it didn’t seem to have any. So now I feel like I know the bike a whole lot better – and the oil leaks are very minimal. I’ve also had to replace the rear chain, as on one charity bike ride I only lasted 10 yards from the start before my chain broke. I did win a prize for the first breakdown – hard to beat really.
All in all, I absolutely love the BSA. It has quite decent acceleration and it will cruise at motorway speeds without too much trouble. It has a great feel on the road, nice and solid and it goes where you point it, and did I mention the fantastic way it goes around corners? This bike is probably better than your average BSA swinging arm frame in that respect, in that it has two-way damping on the front forks, and the only way you can tell is the extra nuts on top of the yokes.
The brakes are fairly average, but probably quite typical for a bike of this vintage. They’re good enough to stop and bad enough to ensure you keep a decent following distance when riding in traffic. My only criticism would be how on a steep hill it will run out of puff and get a bit slow. Apparently you only need to advance the spark to allow for this, but unfortunately mine has an automatic magneto so it’s not an option – at least not until I find a manual one.
I’ve wondered if I would swap my BSA for a Golden Flash if I found one, and the answer is, I don’t really know. Maybe if I borrowed a 650 for a weekend I could make an informed decision? Regardless of that it would have to be a really good Golden Flash or the Road Rocket / Super Rocket version: gorgeous!