THE SPECIALIST
If you need an exhaust system for your classic or vintage bike and want it hand-made in the traditional way, then there’s no better place to visit than this old-school workshop in Rochdale
Visiting Raysons Exhausts in Rochdale, Lancashire, is a bit like taking a step back in time. Down a steep alleyway tucked behind a row of terraced houses sits Raysons’ garage, a bold blue door with the name plastered high and bold makes it easy to spot the amongst the dark stone houses. After I give a few knocks on the hatch, desperate to get out of the rain and cold, I’m immediately greeted by Ben Hardman, aka Mr Rayson. As Ben welcomes me in, it’s hard to tell where to look – rows of exhausts dangle from the ceiling, tools cover the walls and heavy machinery fights for space with a collection of bikes in varying stages of undress.
Ben is the third generation of exhaust fabricators in his family, following in the footsteps of his grandad Peter Lee and father Ray Hardman. After Ray sadly died in a racing accident onboard a Dave Gawthorpeowned Honda CB500 while competing at Oliver’s Mount in 1997, it was left to Peter to pass on the reins and decades of knowledge to Ben. Peter ran and owned
Unity Equipe, a Rochdale-based bike shop that specialised in British bikes (BSAS in particular) and at one time was the go-to store for all things Manx Norton. In fact they regularly advertised in this very magazine, as some readers will surely recall. Ray used to work in this same workshop that Ben now stands in, providing all the run-of-the-mill exhausts that Unity Equipe needed, mostly swept-backs. Ray did gradually start to turn his hand to creating more bespoke pipes as his career progressed, although Peter, the master of hand bending pipes, was always on hand to help out with any race exhausts that were on order.
Ben isn’t the only Hardman getting his hands dirty in the workshop – his younger brother Tom often gets involved, hence the name Raysons.
Ray was a committed racer, and had been obsessed with bikes since he first got caught riding a 250 Honda by the police back in the ’70s, at the age of 16 – apparently he gave the three-litre Capri chasing him a good run for its money, though! Throughout Ben’s
youth his dad’s racing career was a huge influence on both him and his younger brother. Even today, almost 22 years after he died, Ben talks of him constantly and it’s touching to see the walls of the workshop covered in pictures of his father racing classic bikes. Although Ray wasn’t able to physically pass on his skills, Ben’s childhood in race paddocks has helped him carve his career, especially in the classic race scene. “With all these race bikes, I’ve seen ’em all. Because dad raced against them, I grew up crawling around the bottoms of these...” he says, gesturing towards a Manx Norton currently sitting by his workbench.
The workshop itself is utterly fascinating, and in between interviewing Ben and his grandad I can’t help but have a poke about. It’s like a backdrop out of TV series Peaky Blinders. Ben tells me it was originally part of a mill built in the 1800s, then turned into a school and a technical college. When he leads me upstairs, he shows me the original coat hooks for the kids and an outline of where the blackboard once hung in the ’40s and ’50s. Also up there are some of his dad’s old bikes, with Ben’s first bike (a TY80) and his dad’s old Fantic perched on a workbench – future projects. Sitting at the back of the workshop is a collection of seriously old heavy machinery; I ask how long they’ve been around. “Oh, they’re lend-lease machines,” Peter chirps in. What, lend-lease, as in from during the war? I ask. “Yeah, look...” says Ben, wiping a plaque on a polishing machine that says ‘Property of The Air Ministry’.
As I chat to him and nose around his workspace, Ben cracks on with orders. On the work bench sits his oxyacetylene torch, flaming away, ready to warm up the next pipe. Before heating the steel, Ben rams and squeezes sand into the tube, making sure it’s nice and firmly wedged in there, otherwise you get a kink or
‘IF YOU BEND A PIPE BY HAND, THERE’S NO WAY OF CHECKING, IT’S DONE BY RACK OF EYE’
damage the pipe from the force of bending. The sand helps keep that cylindrical shape – and apparently, if you tap the pipe on the ground, the note that rings out will tell you if you’ve done a proper job or need to put a bit more elbow grease in.
It’s interesting watching Ben at work; he seems to do it without thinking, constantly chatting away. For a man only in his early thirties he’s got an impressive archive of stories – and he loves telling them. As he stands there waving the torch over the clamped length of pipe, he keeps one arm hanging over the steel; at first I think he’s just casually leaning, but soon realise he’s gently bending the pipe, applying precise movements, forcing the pipe to bend, wedged against his arm and torso. Occasionally he picks up a template model and checks the curves, but as he tells me: “If you bend a pipe by hand, you’ve just got to look at it and make sure it looks right – there’s no way of checking really, it’s done by rack of eye.”
At first, when Ben showed an interest in making exhausts, Peter wasn’t so keen on the idea – despite his long career and life-long love of motorcycles. “I said don’t do it, you wont make any money, because I never made any money,” he says. But Ben persevered and his gut feeling told him that the classic scene was on the rise, such skills were needed and there was a bit of money to