DOUGLASTWINS.
Finding a single Banbury-eligible vintage bike in a barn is amazing enough, but Paul Miles does nothing by halves (or even thirds). He discovers not one, not two… but three premium Douglas machines
Finding a single Banbury-eligible vintage bike in a barn is amazing enough, but Paul Miles does nothing by halves (or even thirds). He discovers not one, not two… but three premium Douglas machines
Afriend of mine, another Paul, had recently been through the unsatisfactory experience of buying a 1930s bike from a dealer before finding out it came with a whole heap of undisclosed yet major problems. Refund duly secured, the money was scorching a hole through his pocket, as you might expect. A few days later I received a call from him, telling me he was off to view a Douglas twin and would I like to come along? Of course I would!
A week later we shared a car to deepest, darkest Surrey. In the interim period he’d discovered that there might well be more than one Douglas available, as the owner was an enthusiast of the marque. The machine/s were pre-war, our favourite motorcycle period. I quietly mused that, if he bought one and there was another up for grabs, I might buy the other then we could be the Douglas Pauls; how we laughed…
On arrival we were shown to a barn, an actual wooden farm type building! They’re in a barn! The previous owner was an enthusiast! There’s more than one! Giddy with excitement as the PO’s son opened the doors and I could clearly see five bike shapes, covered with old bed linen. Five! Two covers were removed, exposing two 125cc Hondas. Oh. Worthy machines, I guess, but not Douglas twins. That left three. I mentioned to the other Paul that I expected them to be restored and immaculate and wondered if we could afford them. He responded by reminding me that he had first pick. Sigh.
The covers were whipped off and revealed… three tatty hulks that didn’t look as if they’d turned a wheel in at least a decade. Turns out
they hadn’t. The owner, a lifelong enthusiast of all things emanating from the Kingswood factory in Bristol, had suffered an extremely serious fall a decade previously, resulting in an inability to ride the bikes he loved so much. Sometime after his eventual demise, the decision to sell was made by the family and there we both were, hoping to see at least one of them out on the road again where all old motorcycles belong.
As the Douglas machines were pushed into the light on flat tyres, the brakes squealing in protest, this trio of twins made for a very sorry spectacle. Rusty, dusty, faded and failed. Not having first pick seemed to be an issue no longer; I didn’t want any of them. That moment soon passed, of course, as I expect like you, I find it impossible not to look on even a hopelessly lost two-wheeled cause without doing the sums. Agreed, these were tatty, but they seemed to be complete at least and the family reiterated that the former proud owner had ridden them all regularly and even used them for overseas trips.
The fateful die was cast when PaulW whispered‘They’re too original to restore, of course, we’ll have to keep them as oily rag bikes’. At that moment I’d mentally, at least, become the proud owner of an oily rag Douglas.
The seller had all the paperwork, and numbers were carefully checked against the documents as well as a list of factory information we’d found online. It transpired that all three bikes were 1930 models, making them eligible for VMCC vintage class events like the world famous Banbury Run. This was a real bonus as most 1930s bikes are Goldilocks machines – too new for vintage events yet too old to really mix with the post-war and 1970s bikes used on regular VMCC runs. The trio of qualifying Duggies could be used in any vintage event. Closer inspection further revealed that they were all versions of fundamentally the same type of bike. Fitted with 600cc sidevalve ‘fore and aft’ motors, the three bikes appeared to differ in detail only.
The first, a sports S6, looked cosmetically the best, with a largely complete layer of chrome plate on the tank and virtually all of the tartan decals still in place. A shiny silencer completed the look of this faded beauty and the registration number began with ‘PL’ – almost Paul, surely a sign that it should be mine? A four-speed hand change gearbox completed the ensemble and I began to think of it as ‘my’bike already. Unluckily for me (or so I thought at the time) the other Paul thought the same and immediately called first dibs. Damn!
That left me with a choice from the remaining two. One was another S6, the other the touring version T6. The second sports version differed in small yet essential details. Firstly, it appeared much the scruffiest of the three, with a generally tatty appearance. Instead of the fourspeed box of the first bike, this had but three ratios, a gearbox thought to be more fragile, I understood. And finally, where the kickstart lever should normally be was a broom-handle length tube of metal – a hand starter!
The remaining machine, the tourer, came fully equipped with a factory rear carrier and tool boxes, foot boards instead of pegs, different forks with more trail than the sportier versions, fixed handlebars that were higher and slightly wider, plus an aluminium flywheel cover, presumably
to prevent skirt damage.
Hmm, which to choose?
In the end, it was easy. I’ve never been a touring kind of chap, preferring the sportier side of things, and I found the hand starter a compelling draw. So Paul had his and I had mine. What about the third? It seemed a shame to split them up so we agreed to purchase the final bike between us!
A deal for all three was struck, as well as further emptying the barn of an accumulation of relevant spares, including partial engines, magnetos and dynamos. The owner had even acquired along the way a massive Douglas powered rotavator about the size of a caravan and looking capable of digging a tunnel!
A few days later we returned to collect the bikes. As we were loading them onto the trailers thoughts began to turn to how much work might be required in order to have them up and running. Needless to say, an unofficial race had just begun…
IN RUST WE TRUST
On the bench after a quick wash down, my ruin of a Duggie began to reveal itself as a machine you might envisage as actually being in working order, albeit a very tatty runner. There seemed to be encouraging signs that the PO had carried out some relatively recent work. The spark plugs were brand new and a sealed Cyclon battery had been fitted, although a decade of slumber had rendered it as dead as a dodo. Even the tyres looked good. I changed the oil in the wet sump engine, with two filters to clean.
At this point I began to realise the truly unusual nature of the Douglas motorcycle. The Bristol-based company marched to
their own beat, seemingly oblivious to the conventions and undoubted idea sharing of their contemporaries. Wet sumps and filters were unusual, to say the least, as was the fore and aft arrangement of the cylinders, which promised an uncannily smooth ride. Douglas marketed these bikes as ‘the vibrationless twin’. Hmm, we’ll see.
No spark from the pristine magneto, but a quick clean and resetting of the points soon saw fat sparking restored. The very odd-looking carburettor sits low, about ½” above the exhaust pipe, and connects to the cylinders via an enormous manifold. Engravings on the Amal suggested a rebuild by specialist Martin Bratby, another good sign.
I’d changed the oils, had spark, so sploshed in some fresh petrol and began pulling the starting handle more in hope than expectation. After around two dozen fruit machine-style tugs on the lever it coughed. Three more pulls and it ran! Initially smoking like a Soviet power station, the mighty Duggie settled into a steady idle, the flywheel spinning smoothly.
Dare I? I did.
Not only did the first run (in more than a decade?) go well, but everything else on the bike worked perfectly: everything. The optional Cowey speedo read true and even the reliably hopeless pancake dynamo kicked out sufficient volts to charge the newly fitted battery. Aside from a little clutch slip and lumpy throttle response, it rode extremely well and was indeed vibrationless. A set of clutch springs was ordered via the club and another Douglas quirk was thus revealed. The entire clutch assembly is housed within the flywheel and the clutch hub appears to have 300 ball bearings that scattered to the four corners the second they saw daylight. The rollers on a Triumph clutch are as simple as a sealed bearing by comparison. The poor carburation was fixed by replacing the modern needle and jet with an original pair found among the spares.
And that was it, all done and on the road.
CHROME GETS YOU HOME?
PaulW’s shiny bike appeared to be in a similar state of fettle to mine – and so it largely proved. I should mention the differences between he and I. PaulW is very much the engineer, using his lathe to restore legends such as the Matchless Silver Hawk V4, and his regular ride is a very early cammy Square Four, so his approach was somewhat more forensic than mine. He changed the tyres, inspected the brakes, tidied the wiring, cleaned the magneto, flushed tanks, etc. I just changed the oil and pumped up the tyres!
For the next few days, short videos of sparking magnetos and spinning flywheels were exchanged and, less than a week after collecting these cobweb-strewn lumps of metal, both our bikes were up and running.
We had a local section run coming up and decided to take the Duggies. On the 60-odd mile run, the first proper use either bike had seen in decades, a few differences between these largely identical machines became apparent. Firstly, the kickstart machine started far more easily than the handstart lever bike; the latter usually needing twenty pulls from cold to fire up. Second, the four-speed gearbox, despite appearing to be a better choice on paper, is actually more tedious to use out on the road. Hand-change bikes have, by necessity, slow engagement, and swapping ratios as little as possible is usually an advantage – and so it proved. The three-speed bike was generally easier to accelerate up to speed and, amusingly, seemed to be slightly faster overall. In rust we trust!
The next few weeks saw a mixture of long and short rides as the bikes were fettled for maximum reliability. The hand-start machine now fires up with one pull from hot and three when cold, quite acceptable. Paul’s shiny four-speeder, despite his best efforts, remains staunchly in the silver medal position during our regular high-speed runs!
PaulW took control of the third bike as it quickly became apparent that it required
more mechanical attention than just an oil change; this bike had obviously been resting the longest while. The magneto armature needed rewinding before it could even be started. The inaugural ride highlighted a few major issues, including a terrible clutch action and horrid steering. I left him to it and over the ensuing few weeks new headraces were installed, the girder forks (of a different style to the other two) were re-bushed and the clutch completely rebuilt with modifications suggested by the owners club.
This T6 model is by far the rarest of the three and therefore the most desirable. I much prefer my hand-start three-speeder, of course! Paul had initially considered keeping the third Duggie as well, but the reality of owning two similar bikes with only detail differences soon revealed that to be folly, so the reluctant decision to sell the T6 was made.
THE BRISTOL BOMBERS
Of course, before the three Duggies were split up forever we simply had to have them all out on the road at the same time, and another vintage event presented the perfect opportunity for us to rope in another friend and ride the event in formation. The three bikes together caused quite a stir and, when riding off with a dozen or so other similarera machines, the qualities of these vintage machines were soon apparent.
A 600cc twin, even a sidevalve, has a great deal of torque, and the lusty performance soon saw us at the front of the pack, fast(ish) heading into the distance. Duggies of this era carried servo brakes and they are at least as good as anything I’ve used from the same period. The bikes are comfortable and steer nicely and there is almost no engine shake – the vibrationless twins, indeed.
I’d been riding a flat-tank AJS only two years their senior on the day before and the difference was astounding. My Douglas, Trusty Rusty, sped to an indicated 68mph on the day, nothing fell off, it started easily and ran well throughout the day. The AJS by comparison felt every bit the motorised bicycle it clearly evolved from; great fun, but dynamically far inferior and with acetylene lamps and bulb horn instead of the new-age 6V electric lamps and klaxon found on the Duggie.
I’ve been really surprised by these Douglas twins. Not previously being a patina man, I really thought my bike would be fully restored or moved on by now, but I absolutely love riding it. Old bikes with their original finish really do tell a story and my opinion of such machines has now totally changed, all thanks to my Duggie.