Mighty Matchless
‘Bigger is better’ said the USA
In the days of big bikes and the men who raced them, ‘Matchless’ and ‘Curtis’ were pretty much synonymous terms.
Scrambling in the golden era was dominated by big bikes with big riders on them. Closely following the look of their roadster stablemates the dual purpose of these 500cc motorcycles was to attract attention and give the advertising and marketing departments something to shout about.
Their riders were of very different attitudes – some brash, outgoing, while others were quieter, preferring their results to do the shouting.
Such a lad was Matchless works rider Dave Curtis. Even now he’s still happier letting his results do the talking, or talking about the 600cc single his son Stephen was racing when CDB took the chance to snap the mighty machine at Northampton Classic Club’s scramble early last year – before Stephen got the thing dirty.
Initially, I thought the Matchless was a 500 until speaking with Stephen quite some months after the scramble. Like most people, I knew AMC could, and did, create various capacity machines for a variety of reasons, often because the American market demanded it or maybe an open event didn’t have an upper capacity limit and a bigger machine was allowed.
Mixing and matching components from various models has long been a simple way for the UK industry to create ‘new’ motorcycles.
Sometimes it was a case of “I wonder what will happen if…” and a crank from one era would be mated with a barrel from another, then a piston from some other machine in the range would be found to fit and all of a sudden there is the ‘…all new 456cc model’ which the marketing department would describe as ‘…a capacity chosen for maximum performance while maintaining ultimate reliability in a lightweight chassis…’ because that sounds better than ‘…we flung it together from bits we had on the shelf…’
Before heading into the whys and wherefores of this bike, it might be good to say what its catalogue description actually is – the bike in this feature is a 1959 Matchless G80TCS600.
Decoding this model number is reasonably easy. Matchless fans will already have done it, but for the rest of us the G80 is a basic 500cc roadster model from which the competition range was developed and used to promote. The engine got an alloy barrel and a few other lightweight parts such as alloy guards and tank to cut down on the bulk, but it wouldn’t be that much lighter than the road machine.
Matchless added ‘CS’ for Competition Scrambler to the scrambles machines. but the ‘T’ stands for Typhoon and the ‘600’ denotes the capacity – so, before you is a 1959 G80 Typhoon Competition Scrambler 600. And a mighty fine looking machine it is.
As this machine was created after demand from the USA market and most examples went to the USA,
that’s where I headed – electronically – for a little research.
In the days when the western deserts of the USA were open to motorsports, racing from point to point was popular – Barstow to Vegas is a famous one, as is the Big Bear Run. Once Triumph produced their 650 Trophy model the 500s were being left behind.
That something bigger was needed wasn’t lost on the dealers selling bikes in California – if the factory couldn’t or wouldn’t produce an answer to the Trophy, then perhaps they would and could, and did. As 150cc is a lot to give away in any race, the closer a bike can get to the capacity of the opposition the better. It’s not just a case of bunging a bigger piston in the barrel, as the metal available might not be capable of taking a bigger bore, or at least too big a bore which might leave it too weak and defeat the object.
It seems a Californian dealer went not only bigbore but lengthened the stroke to bring up the swept volume of the engine, and created a 600. These proved popular and the factory heard of it. To their credit they responded as best they could, (don’t forget AMC were not as wealthy as say the BSA group so couldn’t just throw money at a project), though talking to a few works riders it seems few factories threw money at their competition departments. Or if they did it was often in the wrong areas.
When the factory had a go at supplying the market it was done with a lot of in-house parts and using bits from the G50, at least for the ones built for Dave Curtis to test. There’s more detail on that particular engine in Don Morley’s book Classic British Scramblers, but suffice to say it sounded a beast to ride. Dave himself said he rode just exactly what the factory supplied him, adding “we would only change the rear dampers for Girlings, which they turned a blind eye to, but we made sure any bike going back to the factory didn’t have them on.”
A rarity
With a production run of not much more than 100, (accounts vary over the exact number), and most going to the USA, the Typhoon is scarce even in America, so one can possibly imagine how rare the model is in the UK. It can’t be denied having the name ‘Curtis’ helps if you’re looking for a Matchless and even when Dave was away from motorcycling and concentrating on business he would hear of bikes available.
This particular one was a USA import, maybe reimport is the correct way of saying it, and was all complete when it arrived with Team Curtis. Complete though doesn’t mean running or
working but it is a good starting point.
The impetus for doing something with the bike came when Stephen’s younger brother Simon needed a bike to race. “Simon had been racing a 600 Metisse which would have an engine similar to this one,” says Stephen, “things got a bit heated on the track and the engine went bang.” So, Simon apparently needed little encouragement to pull the black Matchless up on the bench with a view to getting it up and running.
The initial inspection revealed quite a few issues which needed attending to, biggest of which was that the big end had gone. A stripped sump bung was blamed for this problem and would need to be helicoiled.
I asked if the Curtis workshop did the rebuild, Stephen told me: “No, we send our engines to Ken de Groome. All our engines go to him and they come back right – there’s nothing fancy in them, no high compression ratios or wild cams making a bike unrideable, just good engineering and a motor which works.”
Stephen did say the inlet cam is a Ken de Groome one and is mated to a standard exhaust cam which gives the right amount of power and flexibility for a scrambles motor. There is a standard cylinder head on this engine too, though Dave mentioned a special head that Andy Lee from Cambridge developed, which has a centralised carburettor mount rather than an off-set one. “Andy made six of them and we’re looking at putting one on.”
AMC’S gearbox is popular with MX racers for the good reason they’re strong and have the right ratios for the job, so that’s what’s in here. Standard also is the primary drive. “We’ve got a chain in the case and a Matchless or AMC, really clutch, it’s strong enough for the job, easy to look after and is light in its action.” The whole power train of engine, gearbox and primary drive is slotted in to a typical 1959 frame. In fact the whole bike is pretty standard. There are some things which needed to be altered due to competition regulations, for instance these days if you’re scrambling a bike it has to have folding footrests.
In the era when factories were turning out competition motorcycles, ignition of choice would certainly be a magneto for the non-unit construction ones, be it BT-H or Lucas, with the latter being more in use as the era progressed.
The Lucas one came in several versions with two being specifically for competition work and to a much higher spec than the road ones. The version which interests us here is the ‘Wader’ one and is waterproof, as scrambles courses are often muddy or have stream crossings.
“We got ours rebuilt by a lad in Somerset,” says Dave, “we’ve had a few done there ages ago but he’s just a chap who works quietly by himself and doesn’t really advertise – you’ve sort of got to know him.”
Up at the front end, AMC’S Teledraulics are in place and still have the original style internals as the Curtises haven’t gone the route of fitting modern stuff inside old forks. “They work very well,” says Dave, “we’ve rebuilt them of course as they were a bit tired after 60 years, but apart from paying attention to the detail and assembly they’re spot-on.” At the rear though, there is neither Girling nor Jampot, but YSS – and the word is they’re excellent.
Moving to the wheels, the hubs are standard, as are the brakes, but there are alloy rims at either end, chromed steel would have been standard. “The original brakes are good enough as this engine has a lot of engine-braking and really shutting the throttle slows the bike down and the brakes just assist,” grins Stephen.
Topping off the bike is that fabulous Matchless tank, slim in its execution and lightweight as it’s in alloy. The oil tank however, is a steel one and is mounted on the left of the bike so the air filter can have a clear run to the carburettor. Asking about the riding position and Dave’s thoughts on what he rode for the factory, it was a surprise to learn the position is stock, Dave citing his earlier comment of riding exactly what was supplied. “I might have moved the bars in the clamps but that and change to Girlings was all we did.” He grinned when I asked if adjusting the riding position might have made him faster: “I just wound it up and hung on,” he replied.
Stephen suggests that the only difference between how the 600 was at the time Gary took the photos and how it looks now, is the seat: “at Northampton we had a BSA seat on, now it’s a Matchless.”