PIP HIGHAM
Pip recalls Fergy time: and he’s not talking Man. Utd!
This is the story of Ian Fergus Baillie, a Fanny Barnett and an old Ariel twin! When I started school aged four Jim Baillie and I would sit in the sandpit. We learned to tie our laces together and walked home along the A6 every afternoon, we lived only 100 yards apart and we got on well.
For the next seven years we were in the same classes doing just about all the same stuff. After that our paths separated. I went to school a couple of miles away and Jim stayed near to where we lived, but I still went round to sit in the kitchen at Jim’s where he would play the guitar and I would attempt to play the guitar.
Here’s an extract from my diary from many years ago: Jim’s older brother Ian Fergus Baillie, or Fergie, had a bike, a Francis Barnet that he, in common with quite a lot of other people of his ilk, spent most of his time pulling apart and then fiddling with a bit, and then putting back together again.
It became obvious that each time it was rebuilt it had a different set of problems; it smoked too much, or maybe too little, the battery wouldn’t charge up or the exhaust fell off, or it simply wouldn’t go. It was intriguing and obviously much more fun than trying to get a tune out of an instrument that was clearly out of sync with my fingers.
So I spent a heap of time cleaning clutch plates and battery boxes, nothing too technical. After a bit I got to scrape gaskets and Hermetite off interesting metal bits. Occasionally I would stab various parts of my body with small sharp instruments and I would learn new words when Fergie banged his shin on the footrest when the kick-start neither kicked nor started.
One afternoon the Fanny B was running for a change. Fergie bawled at me to jump on the pillion seat as he didn’t want to let it stop or there might have been more kicking, swearing and, probably, not starting. So on I hopped and with a great twist of the throttle we shot off. Well, we rode off anyway, around the block and back, without stopping! It was great, Okay, it was probably making about 10 horses and weighed lots, but something about that feeling when the engine stopped coughing and actually started to run sweetly, pulling cleanly up to about 40mph – that was special.
Later Fergie sold the Fanny B and bought an Ariel twin, a 500cc Fieldmaster. It was bigger, heavier, had twice as many cylinders as the Fanny B and yes, it seemed to require much attention on a very regular basis, similar to the FB in fact.
It even had camshafts, tappets and all sorts of interesting gizmos that seemed to break or misbehave with alarming regularity. There were valves to grind in and floats to set and many mysterious compartments with oil in. The additional complexity and the subsequent increase in failure rate just added to the fun.
These were my formative years, whether they were safe, sensible or even possibly legal, well, you decide. I had no idea that in later life I’d be squeezing a living by doing very similar stuff on remarkably similar bikes. But they describe a process that educated me whilst also keeping me out of too much (serious) trouble.
There is a peculiar irony to the Francis Barnett episode that I’d like to expand on. In the late 1950s FB was a part of the AMC corporation. They had taken over several well-known British brands after WW2 – AJS, Matchless and others who had previously created a diverse range of bikes that were effective and commercially successful worldwide.
However, they invested sparingly in new kit to replace old designs. One area that did receive attention was the attempt to replace the Villiers engines found in most FBS with a fresh design from the pen of Vincenzo Piatti. The Villiers motors were tough and reliable, if a little dozy. The replacements were a disaster, being ponderous, nasty and even more dozy than the originals.
Subsequently AMC slid, ney, plummeted into decline as the elderly directors fell off their perches. At the same time the sun was rapidly rising in the East and a torrent of sweet, nimble, reliable bikes invaded the UK market.
The final offerings from AMC were shocking parts-bin specials with little of the quality and imagination that had featured so much in their predecessors; another sad episode in the demise of the British motorcycle game.
In contrast to that pitiful episode we have the amazing determination, foresight and sheer bottle of John Bloor who single-handedly took over the Triumph chalice and continues to take daring decisions to this day. Pity he couldn’t have been around to kick AMC into shape too, a couple of decades earlier. Piatti’s later work included Patent number 771502, discussed at length in April 2015 CMM! Check it out!