Matchless G50 COVER STORY One for the road
Once a common sight on race tracks, the Matchless G50 with its distinctive red fuel tank all but disappeared until the advent of classic racing. But here’s one far away from its natural habitat…
With only 186 originally built between 1959 and 1962, it’s not surprising that the Matchless G50 was a rare sight in this country. Just a handful made it to Australia and New Zealand, usually brought home by returning ‘Continental Circus’ riders. By the ‘seventies the OHC Matchless was a relic, and uncompetitive. But then came Historic Racing which gave the big red machines a new lease of life, and spawned a plethora of replicas.
For the record, the G50 was, as Australian legend Jack Ahearn put it, “Just a big 7R”and he should know, since Jack was selected by Associated Motor Cycles (AMC), owners of AJS, Matchless and Norton, to pilot the prototype G50 at the 1958 Isle of Man TT. The plan was simple enough; to give the privateers that made up the bulk of the grids – many aboard the now venerable 350cc AJS 7R that first appeared a decade earlier – a reliable, competitive machine on which to contest the Senior class. Boring out the 7R engine to 90mm and retaining the standard 78mm stroke produced 496cc, with a new cylinder head fitted with bigger valves and a 1.5” Amal GP carburettor. Priced at £430/7/9, it was cheaper than the DOHC Manx Norton, and certainly cheaper to run with its single, chain-driven overhead camshaft, albeit slightly less powerful.
Only around 40 complete G50s were produced each year, but they became very popular with their intended market – the privateer racers – but by 1963 the party was over for the G50, as well as the 7R and the 350cc and 500cc Manx Nortons, after AMC discontinued production. In fact, G50s of a sort were made in 1963 – 25 machines called Matchless CSR (or Golden Eagle in the USA) produced for the US market with G50 engines in the road-going CSR chassis to comply with AMA regulations. The demise of the British production racers had the effect of giving birth to a cottage industry to keep existing machines running. In the case of the G50 and 7R, salvation came in the form of sidecar racer Colin Seeley, who had campaigned a G50-engine outfit with considerable success. After making lightweight frames to take G50 and 7R engines for a couple of years, Seeley took the plunge in 1966 and bought out the remains of the AMC Racing Department, along with the tooling and manufacturing rights for the engines and spares. The move prolonged the life of the venerable singles for several years (and gave birth to the G50-engined Seeley Condor road bike), but for the purists, and the record, the last real G50 had unceremoniously gone out the doors of the AMC factory in Plumstead Road, Woolwich, in the early weeks of 1963.
Fulfilling a dream
In Sydney, Robert Baillie, born in England but a long-time Sydney resident, had dreamed of owning a G50 and in 2018 finally managed to do so. He had no plans to race. His G50 would be a registered road bike; a café racer with unrivalled cred. Rather than look for an existing machine, he decided to assemble one from scratch, mindful of the modifications that would be necessary.
Robert explains the thinking behind the project. “To convert a race bike to a road bike required a number of additions and modifications. I thought about what kind of final “look” I wanted to achieve and in the end my goal was to make the bike look like the original bare race bike, with legal road additions to be visually minimised”. There were numerous problems to be solved, but the source of most components was Molnar Precision Ltd. in England, who has made parts, and complete replica machines, for G50s alongside their Molnar Manx business for many years.
The thought process began when he attended the 1964 Manx Grand Prix in the Isle of Man with his DBD34 BSA Gold Star. “I enjoyed being in Douglas with all the spectator bikes and even race bikes being ridden to and from the paddock area, and I noticed Manx Nortons with oil going everywhere from the engines, so I thought ‘that’s no good’, but I started to think it would be good to have a G50 on the road, those engines being more oil tight.
But then I got married and was away from bikes for a long time. I had an engineering business which I sold when I retired, and I thought it was time to build that G50. So I went to England and saw Andy Molnar. I ordered it in May 2016 but it took me more than a year to get the engine.”
“The frame was ordered unpainted as I needed to braze on brackets to attach a platform under the seat to hold the battery and electrics control module. The hump at the rear of the seat was the only place I could hide a battery. As well, lugs were needed to attach the rear light/number plate holder.”
It may sound a relatively simple process to convert a single cylinder road racer to road use, but as always, it was the small things that took up most of the time. Fortunately Robert’s training as a fitter and turner, and his later work as an engineer with a business consulting to the oil industry for specialist equipment stood him in good stead, especially in the electrical side. “As there is no generator, I decided to use low consumption LED lights and a lithium battery with a total loss system. A chat with a guy at a bike shop pointed me in the direction of a simple yet highly sophisticated German Motogadget M-Unit.
This connects to matching handlebar controls and
LED turn indicators, with built-in short circuit protection, an alarm, and a useful programmable time setting to cancel the indicators.”
One thing the race bike didn’t have was a roadlegal silencer, so Robert, a computer expert, set about designing his own. “Using 3D graphics, a paper model of the silencer was fitted to the bike which showed it had to be modified to miss the swing of the kick start lever. The bare bike was trailered down to Sandy of Staintune at Mittagong, NSW where they made a top quality stainless steel silencer, more or less as per my paper model. I spent some time with Sandy who impressed me with his ingenuity, humour and the high quality manufacture of Staintune silencers. As supplied, the gear lever and kick starter interfered with each other, so the gear lever was shortened by 25mm, and the kick start was heated up and bent until both items fitted the available space. A visit to a bike wrecker’s yard scored me a side-stand that needed to be shortened (twice) and somehow grafted neatly to the bike frame. There are numerous lugs and bosses on the G50 frame that are no longer used, or are to fit earlier models. A number of spacers were machined up to suit and the side stand now works well and is unobtrusive.”
Of course, another requirement for road use was lighting, which called for more thought, as Robert wanted to preserve the original look of the G50 as far as possible. That meant avoiding fitting a fairing, in order to use the distinctive cowling that graced all G50s and later 7Rs and which was primarily there to house the Smiths conical tachometer and provide the front racing number plate. Again, more 3D work produced a satisfactory result. “The original Matchless G50/AJS 7R cowl with its small Perspex screen was designed pre-fairing days to duck behind on the main straight, and to fit a racing number at the front. This was modified to fit a headlight, and was probably the trickiest exercise of all. Using 3D graphics, a bracket was designed to bolt the headlight to the bike and at the same time, fit it centrally into the cowl, which was not easy.”
“One of the longest headaches has been to get a working tacho. The original G50 cowl allows a single instrument between the top steering yoke bosses. In my ignorance I ordered a combined tacho and
“...the thrill was actually in building it, so if there’s someone out there who fancies a really different motorcycle, I am happy to talk.”
GPS speedo from the USA, thinking the tachos all work by picking up a pulse from the HT lead.
Wrong! My one needed a pulse from an ignition coil negative terminal, which the G50 did not have. After consulting many experts over many months, I had to accept that what I had, would never work. Necessity is the mother of invention they say and the final result of grafting two not identical dials into the limited space has worked out well. After all, one can’t have a G50 without a working tacho! The one chosen picks up a pulse from the HT lead.”
“It seems that one of the main oil leak points in British pre-unit construction bikes was the primary chain case. The G50 has a primary toothed belt drive, so the cover does not need full enclosure. No leaks! The clutch is a high quality NEB unit. As supplied, the brake pedal needed to be dog legged out and re-welded to clear the clutch primary drive cover. Having had some experience with 3D graphics, and some inspiration from Ducati for the ventilation holes design, a cover was 3D printed using fibre reinforced nylon. A company in Melbourne was found with a platen large enough to print the unit. So far with around 1000km on the clock, no cracks have appeared. With High Fill paint and final gloss coat it looks like a bought one! The frame was soda blasted and all black parts painted very expertly by Pete at Cutting Edge Motorcycle Paint Shop, Carlton NSW. I cannot speak too highly of Cutting Edge mirror finish painting quality.”
“There were numerous choices to be made in the bike build, including brakes, carburettor, ignition system and so on. The carb I thought should be an inch and a half Amal GP, (which has no provision for an idle setting) but Andy Molnar firmly suggested it should be a Mikuni. Remembering the occasional starting problems I had with a 500cc Gold Star; a Mikuni it is. It is a pity about the MPL ignition system for road use. Its housing is made to look like a magneto, but inside are the workings of a
CDI ignition system. This is an excellent system for racing but CDI gives a poor spark at very low rpm which means it is hard to kick start. Either the G50 will be easily converted back to being a classic race bike, or a magneto should be fitted for road use to get a fat spark when kicking the unit over.”
With the project down to the final steps, one last decision was what brakes to use. The standard G50 front brake, which has its origins in the unit fitted to the first production AJS 7Rs in 1948, is a fine looking single sided unit in a magnesium conical hub, but they are very expensive from the overseas suppliers (including Molnar) and fiddly to set up. While living in Sydney’s Hunters Hill, Robert struck up an enduring friendship with the late artist Alan Puckett, whose story was told in a very early issue of OBA. Alan owned numerous exotic racing cars (including ex-works Aston Martins) and motorcycles, among these a Vincent Rapide that was painted bright red, a Velocette that was painted white, a 7R AJS and a pair of Manx Nortons, a 350 and a 500, obtained from the late Max Robinson before he switched to the ubiquitous Yamahas. The 500 was originally ridden by Kel Carruthers who sold it when he went to Europe in 1966, and Robert recalls a special memory of that bike. “Many years ago I had a ride round Oran Park on an ex-Kel Carruthers Manx Norton that Alan Puckett owned. The thing that impressed me most at the end of the main straight was the front brake performance. It was a four leading shoe Fontana, probably the pinnacle of drum brake design just as disc brakes were starting to come into the picture. So that was my choice – a 210mm double-sided twin leading shoe Fontana, which are being re-made in England. This bike has a standard Matchless G50 conical rear brake.”
And so one day in July, I arranged with Robert to bring the G50 over from his home in Sydney’s
Eastern suburbs, to a location on Botany Bay selected by photographer Gary Reid. Sure enough, at the appointed hour as Gary and I stood overlooking the bay, we picked up the very distinctive sound of a thoroughbred single approaching. Drawing to a halt with the characteristic squeak from the Fontana brake, I was impressed as the G50 sat there idling nicely while Robert removed his helmet. It was still idling several minutes later as our discussion commenced, but when I suggested it be turned off Robert seemed apprehensive. At home, he has a set of rollers which are used to start the bike, but out here, no such luxury existed and he said he was not confident of re-starting it. However as the photography was going to take some time there was no option, so it was soon silent while Gary clicked away to produce the images you see here. Finally, it was time for the all-important riding shot (as well as my chance to have a short gallop on the bike), so I offered to kick start it. That’s when I discovered that my right shin would come into abrupt and painful contact with the reversed gear lever, so a push start was called for. Fortunately, it fired up straight away and Robert duly reeled off a few ‘laps’ for Gary’s camera. Then it was my turn. Having owned three G50s and covered innumerable miles on them I felt immediately at home, even though these were suburban streets, not a race track. Naturally the gearing was tall, and nothing beyond third gear
(of five) was called for, but the G50 happily buzzed around the block, and everything worked just as it should. All too soon it was time to hand it back, and we stood there savouring the sound as Robert disappeared out towards the airport, heading home. Subsequently, Robert has decided that should an appropriate offer be forthcoming, he would consider selling the G50. “For me, the thrill was actually in building it, so if there’s someone out there who fancies a really different motorcycle, I am happy to talk.” Robert can be contacted by email at abte@tpg.com.au