A breath of fresh air!

My experience seems to echo Harry Watkins in his letter ‘An Early Passion For Motorcycles’ in OBM428. I also was born in 1945, but a few months earlier in April. My first motorcycle was a 1940s side valve BSA C10. This was quickly followed by a plunger four speed C11. I then acquired a 250cc Panther 65 with Dowty Oleomatic forks. I soon discovered, just like Harry, this had been modified to a 350 although it was still registered as a 250.

Now Dowty forks are basically pneumatic. There was a Schrader valve fitted to the top of the lefthand leg with a balance tube to the right-hand leg.

To top up the pressure, air was pumped into the valve until a black dot appeared on the lower slider below the fork shroud. The handbook warned against using a garage air pump and stated only a hand pump should be used. Being a cocky youth, I ignored this piece of advice and eventually the seals blew out, the forks subsided and became inoperative, The oil also leaked out and ran down the slider into the front brake making that useless, too.

However, before this happened, I often used to top up the pressure using the local garage air line. One day while I was doing this, a car driver waiting for petrol became fascinated. Eventually he came over to me and said: “How does that work, then?”

I instantly knew what he was thinking and, feeling rather mischievous, I said: “Well, you see, one of the spokes is hollow. The air goes in here, down the leg, into the axle then through the hollow spoke into the inner tube.” “Wow,” he said, “that’s amazing!” I shot off pretty pronto before he could examine it more closely. I have always felt vaguely guilty about this. Perhaps that’s why I remember it so vividly.

Hugo Myatt, Pinner, Middlesex.