A C11 Autumn
Last month, we saw how Neil Cairns had left a deposit on what was to be his first bike, despite his father having no knowledge of the potential purchase.
Iwent home in a ‘tizz,’ all excited at my new acquisition. Using the train from Fenny Stratford to Woburn Sands, I arrived home quite late. This was not unusual as I often stayed late in the ‘Technical Club’ room. My father was still at work, so I took the opportunity to explain to my mother what I had done that day. She was terrified I was going to bring the BSA home, but I explained I would keep it at the school’s Technical Club workshop. In July later that year I would be leaving school, but that was ages away to my young mind.
That evening I broke the news to my village friends as we all sat in the bus stop. One of us had been able to afford a packet of five Nelson tipped cigarettes, and we smoked them out of sight of adults in there. Up until then, they did not know of my plans. I had become the first one among us all to own his first motorcycle and they insisted I told them everything. They were as excited as I and, knowing my father, they asked about his reaction. I swore them all to secrecy as I had my other siblings. (I smoked from the age of 14 until my 18th birthday, never touching them again after.)
The little BSA C11 suited me well, it was small enough not to be too fast or dangerous for a learner, and old enough not to cost a fortune to buy and run. To anyone with money it would not be of any interest at all.
In 1963 a rich teenager would have purchased a nice new BSA C15 250cc, a machine aimed directly at this market. The C11 I had was of quite a vintage in that it had a rigid rear end. It had a pillion seat, and telescopic front forks of quite a good design. The single cylinder engine was of overhead valve type producing about 11bhp, but of very simple design. BSA was good at this, producing basic machines for the working man at a competitive price. Back in 1946 this C11 had cost £85 plus £22-19s purchase tax (total £107-19s – that's £107.95). It had three gears and could do about 100 miles per gallon if used in the 40-45mph range. The speedometer was set in the top of the petrol tank, and the handlebars very free of the multitude of levers seen on bigger bikes. There was no air lever, no advance and retard lever (as the
C11 had coil ignition with automatic advance built into the distributor,) and no decompressor.The only real complaint that could be levelled at the bike, which was also true of nearly every other middleweight of that time, was the tiny singleleading-shoe drum brakes. A good C11 might reach 55-60mph on a good day.
EARNING TO RIDE
I had a paper round to earn my pocket money. It was all of six miles long and covered the widespread parish of Wavendon, including Cross End, Lower End and Salford. I delivered for WH Smiths in Woburn Sands who supplied ancient but efficient delivery cycles with huge panniers to carry the papers. My last delivery was to Wavendon House in Cross-End, then a girls’ school, now a golf club. This had once been the Manor House for the village. They always had one of each paper for their library, so my load was heavy.
I was paid the princely sum of a pound a week, a huge sum in those days for a paper round. But as the shop had great difficulty getting lads to do this particular round, because of its length, it paid well. I arose at half six, to be at the shop by seven, to get home by eight to have my breakfast, don my school uniform and get out to the school bus by half eight. It was the wage I earned from this that I could afford to get the train home the odd evening from school. Now the money was to pay my insurance.
At dinner time the next day at school, Clive Peerless took me to see a little old lady in Cambridge Street, Bletchley who sold motoring insurance. If I paid her 10 shillings (50p) a week for 12 weeks, I would get a cover note. I could insure the BSA third party only for £6 a year. From there we went to the main post office and, having brought my savings book with me, I withdrew all of the £6 my account held. The insurance cost as much as the machine, very similar to today’s prices for a young rider. My mother was given £6 a week housekeeping by my father then to feed all of us, which gives some idea of values then. A Mars bar was then three pence (1.5p) now they are 60p+, equivalent to over 12 shillings in old money. Luckily the old BSA already had road tax, as I had no money left to cover that extra expense. The MoT only had a few months left on it, running out in June with the road tax due in July.
After school that day, Clive and I walked to the vendor’s home to collect the BSA. Whilst I had a provisional licence for riding it, I was a little scared that I did not actually have any insurance cover (until the full £6 was paid up.) I was not aware at that age that even if I wheeled the machine on a public road I would be ‘in charge’ of it, so would need to have road tax, insurance, MoT and a driver’s licence. I assumed wheeling it along would be safe. After the owner had handed over the buff log-book, the MoT certificate and a hand written receipt, I gave him my little life savings. He showed me how to put it on and off its centre-stand. BSA’s designers have never been very good at this as I had to really heave at the bike to get it to roll back onto the stand. Getting it off again was easy as one just shoved the bike forward with your feet on the ground.
I stood astride it and shoved it off its stand, then I was a bit shocked to realise how heavy it was. I was used to a push bike and this little 250cc motor cycle seemed like a ton weight to me. I very quickly learned the knack was to wheel it by the handle bars, their width giving quite good leverage over gravity’s efforts to ground me and it. Remember I was only just 16, tall and skinny weighing in at just nine-and-a-half stone. (By the time I was 21 I had filled out to 12½ stone, and alas even more now in late middle age!)
Then there was another thing
I had not bargained for. We had collected the BSA at about 5pm and it was early March. By the time we left the house to walk back to the school pushing the BSA, it was getting dark. I would need lights, but decided to risk pushing it back all the way on the footpath. As it was heavy we took turns, arriving at nearly 7pm. There were evening classes going on in the school building so everything was well lit up. I wheeled the BSA around to our little workshop, while Clive went to find the caretaker, who luckily was as enthusiastic over motorbikes as we were. Once the BSA was safely parked in the workshops, we had to tell the caretaker all about it as he would not let us go until we did.
I was worn out with all the pushing and Clive looked quite red in the face with the exertion. I was also over-excited with it all, and impressed both of them with my knowledge of the BSA C11, my technical drawing prize helping there. We all took turns in starting it up and listening to its even beat at idle. It was almost 9pm when we locked up that well-worn, 18-yearold, almost vintage motorcycle. I walked to Fenny Stratford station and caught the last train home to dream that night of riding my own motor cycle on sunny, warm days about the lanes and highways.
Now that I actually had a motorbike, and it was on view in the workshop for all the school to see, I was elevated within my peer group and almost a hero. In those days few people owned a family car, though numbers were rising. Ford was about to introduce its very successful Cortina. The bicycle, motorcycle or bus were the means of transport to and from local factories. Those who worked in the larger industries used either the train to Wolverton (which was free for employees of BR) or they were bussed to the brickworks in ancient coaches. Those working in Luton at Vauxhall were the car owners, as such factory work paid well.
So for a mere schoolboy to have his own private, powered transport was unusual. Many lads by their 18th birthday might have a motorcycle, purchased with their savings from their poorly paid apprenticeships, but only Clive and I had one so young. The BSA 250cc C11 is really quite grey porridge in the motorcycling world. It was a machine upon which to commute to and from work. It was economical, cheap to run, and simple to maintain.
RELATIVE VALUES
Though the little C11 was just another old worn out motorbike, to me it was a shining superstar machine.
In those days £6 was probably a bit too much to pay, but the recent rules on 250cc restrictions for learners had put up values on bikes under 250. The C11 was actually 249cc, and mine a very early model then worth little. In today’s classic collectors' market it is a rare model, and would fetch a small premium over those later models with rear suspension. Just like the antique world, the more useless something is the higher its monetary value! The earlier, and even more rare, prewar C11 fitted with girder front forks would fetch an even higher premium.
My mother was pleased that the BSA was being kept at school, as it was out of my father’s sight. Out of sight, out of mind. My brothers and sisters were far too busy with their own lives to bother with mine. Mary (two and a half years my junior) was aware of the BSA as she attended Bletchley Secondary School with me but, again, she had her own set of friends, and old motorcycles was certainly not one of their interests.
However, my village friends all wanted to see the BSA, so I arranged for them to visit the workshop one evening after school. I had cycled to school that morning as I often did when I had an evening class, as it saved me the train return fare of one shilling and nine pence (1s-9d; 8.5p.) Rather stupidly in those days I would rather add another penny to the fare and buy 10 Park Drive tipped cigarettes for 1s-10d (9p). Needless to say they were all very impressed with the BSA, now much cleaner having had a good wipe over with an oily rag. Like all poorly maintained British motorcycles, it leaked oil from its primary chain cover plus a few other odd places. Each and every one of them had to have a sit on it, and try to start it up. This entailed using the kickstarter, and not many of them had any idea how to use it correctly and, luckily, no one had any serious injuries, though a few got their first kick wrong and bruised ankles.
The C11 had no exhaust valve lifter fitted, which would normally be used to move the engine ‘overcompression,’ so that a good hefty swing could be given to the flywheels before the ignition sparked. On the C11 coil ignition was fitted, so there was a little ignition key like that fitted to a car, which went into the centre of the light switch in the headlamp. This was a novelty back then in 1946, as the majority of bikes then had magneto ignition. I had soon found out my dynamo was defunct, it was worn out and it did not charge. It must have turned out a bit of voltage as the ammeter needle would sit on the zero if just the ignition was used, but never over on the charging (plus) side. Switching on the lights produced a large discharge (minus) indication. To get round this I regularly charged the battery up on a mains powered batterycharger, but it was to seriously limit my night-time riding when lights were required. Today we would have worried about all the carbon monoxide running the engine produced in that workshop, but then we must have relied on all the draughts to ventilate the place. The village lads all went home with me, they too using their cycles for the six mile journey back. I was the only one with lights fitted, so I led the party.
As I was attending an evening class each week to improve my maths, one night a week I also attended the Air Training Corps (ATC) in Bletchley, and I also had one day a week at the Wolverton Technical College, along with my morning paper round; with all this cycling it was little wonder I was always busy and thin. We were taken from the school to Wolverton in a mini-bus, but I had to cycle to the school to catch it and to be able to get back home after.
My ATC membership proved useful when I later joined the
RAF, but there was an engineering apprenticeship to come first. The last few months of my schooling passed quite quickly. I had eventually paid up enough to be insured though the ‘club’ as we now called the insurance-hire-purchase system. By now another two class members had obtained mopeds and they joined the collection in the workshop. We got together a few times and took our machines out, by now my MoT had run out but the road tax was still current, so I risked going out on some of these evening jaunts. We did not go far, just around the lanes outside Bletchley and Fenny Stratford.
The mopeds were forever breaking down, and Clive’s scooter was exceptionally slow. I found the cost of petrol limiting me, and I had had to buy a set of ‘L’ learner plates and affix them to the machine.
July arrived before we were really ready, and we were all out looking for jobs. There were about 10 of us boys in the school’s technical class, and most of us obtained jobs locally. The majority went to Wolverton works for an apprenticeship, three of us including myself went to a local die casting firm’s toolroom, and the few left went to the General Post Office’s vehicle workshops in the town.
I had managed to obtain a Royal Society of Arts (RSA) School Leavers Certificate in Maths, Engineering Drawing, Metalwork and General Science. This was not in any way approaching the GCE 'O' level gained by those attending the Grammar School. Note that I failed English.
So my school days came to an end. I do not remember sitting down and thinking about it like that, I was far too busy getting myself into gear to attend full-time work every day. My new job was as an indentured apprentice on an industrial estate in Bletchley. I'd had to attend an interview with my father. It seems I impressed the interviewer and a few days later a letter arrived offering me the job. Within the job was a weekly day-release to Wolverton Technical College to continue my adult education.
Alas, with my very limited and poor dyslexic English ability, the writing-up of experiments and tasks was to prove a serious stumbling block. I could do the tasks, make the bits from drawings, design and draw things myself, easily work out how things worked but was almost incapable of writing about any of them.