Adventures on two and three wheels
Although he would progress to three and then four wheels, John Deards relives his early days on a motorcycle, inspired by his mother and father.
Ibought my first powered twowheeler in 1960 – the ubiquitous and misnamed NSU Quickly
– for the princely sum of £25 from a neighbour. That was a lot of money when your weekly wage was only £2 7s 6d but it was worth the money. It suited my five-mile journey to work and, although the acceleration could be accurately measured on a calendar, the fill-and-forget fuel consumption suited a printer’s apprentice’s wages just fine.
The little 50cc engine was unburstable and took a lot of stick from my inexperienced throttle hand. I bounced along on the undamped, leading link front suspension and the supremely comfortable rubber-moulded sprung saddle, a white Everoak helmet on my head and my brand new Belstaff Trialsmaster wax cotton jacket keeping out the cold and damp; I was more than happy with my new-found transport.
The top speed of the NSU was only 30mph so I decided to have a go at tuning the tiny motor. The cylinder head and barrel were removed and the interiors polished until they gleamed like mirrors. The tiny Bing carburettor was given the same treatment and everything carefully assembled, the normal cylinder head gasket being dispensed with in order to increase the compression ratio! The handlebars were removed and replaced upside down, giving a low ‘clip on’ racy effect! Finally, the saddle was removed and replaced with a home-made dual seat (plywood base, foam interior and a leatherette cover made to measure by my seamstress mother). The result was astounding – not only was it very uncomfortable but it refused to go faster than 25mph! Needless to say, the status quo was restored.
Even earlier days
My mother had been quite keen on motorcycles in her youth during the early 1930s. Having six brothers, three of whom were not only mechanically minded but trained mechanics, she often wheedled her way on to the pillion of their bikes, something her mother had strictly forbidden. On one memorable occasion, wearing a new white dress, she travelled from home in North London to Southend for the evening. On the way back, however, the bike decided to spew its oil everywhere and guess where most of it ended up? Her mother was not amused! On another occasion she was the passenger in a sidecar when a collision with a car occurred, thankfully at low speed and without injury. She told me that she was always urging her brothers to go faster!
My father, during the Second World War, rode a Matchless motorcycle during his time as a military policeman, in Ireland and India. He openly admitted that his expertise as a rider was somewhat in doubt, as he seemed to spend most of his time recovering his machine from hedges, haystacks and fields. One of the highlights of his twowheeled war service was providing part of a motorcycle escort for that well-known motorcyclist and ‘TT rider’ (but mainly comedian and film star) George Formby, when he visited Belfast to entertain the troops.
Following the war it was some time before he took up motoring again, but this time on four wheels in a little black Standard 8. Unfortunately, his driving skill behind the steering wheel was on the same level as that behind motorcycle handlebars!
My real enthusiasm for motorbikes came from my elder brother, who, in the late 1950s, began commuting from our home in Billericay, Essex, to his job in London on a Francis Barnett Plover 150. Its pressed steel frame, bulbous tank and AMC front forks were painted a lovely shade of British racing green, and on the tank was the FB badge of entwined gold initials on a red background.
It wasn’t long before he thought more power was required and the FB was exchanged for a 1955 Douglas Dragonfly. This bike was made in Bristol but was not a success. It was designed to be the British answer to BMW but was only produced for three years. In gleaming black with its 350cc horizontally opposed twin, chrome crash bars and non-standard megaphone silencers, plus a smart pair of quarter-circle-shaped metal panniers, it was an impressive bike. But it was an unwieldy and heavy machine, and that weight really came home when, on the way back from a scramble, the chain snapped when we were halfway home and we had to push it for about five miles!
Testing times
My little NSU served me well and it was on this bike that I took my motorcycle test in a thunderstorm at Brentwood test centre. All went well until the emergency stop. In those days the test consisted of the examiner walking once round the block while the examinee rode round three or four times. At some point he would step out into the road in front of you, his hand raised (and eyes closed?) and you were expected to stop. Brave man!
As I say, my test took place in torrential rain. Now, the brakes on an NSU Quickly were not the best available and in the wet they were, shall we say, unpredictable. So, after about two laps, when I least expected it, there he was in the road, hand raised and dripping wet. I threw everything on, put my full weight on the rear brake and squeezed the front brake lever until it reached the handlebar. Both brakes gripped then released, then grabbed again and I screeched to a
halt, the back of the bike hopping from side to side until I stopped inches from a rather white-faced examiner. He must have been impressed with my bike control because I passed!
Soon afterwards I visited my local motorcycle dealer in a back street of Brentwood and, after some keen negotiating, exchanged the Quickly for a real motorbike and became the proud owner of a 1959 James Cavalier. Basically it was the same as my brother’s FB Plover, but with a little more power from its 175cc AMC engine, plus the luxury of rear damping and a dual seat. The eggshaped engine was good-looking, although it was pretty gutless and rattled like a bag of nails. But it was reliable and your first real bike is always special, isn’t it! The engine did, however, need regular decoking partly due to the 16:1 ‘petroil’ mixture but also because of the engine design. The transfer ports were depressions cast in the sides of the cylinder barrel bore, and there were also two wedge-shaped projections on the cylinder head which slotted into two matching recesses in the top of the piston. These coked up pretty often and I got to know the inside of that engine quite well.
Love at first sight
In 1963 I acquired my first ever new motorcycle. Looking back, I think I must have bought with my heart rather than my head. Considering what was available at around the same price I can think of no other explanation for my purchase of a James Sports Captain! I could have bought a Greeves or an Ambassador or Cotton or DMW, all fitted with the far superior Villiers engine, but no, the Captain it had to be. Mind you, it looked the part. Tubular frame, curvy Italian-style tank with a chromed filler cap, telescopic front forks, twin shocks controlling the swinging arm rear springing, all covered in a sparkly, metallic blue flake paint job. Plus that highly polished AMC engine, now 199cc, chrome side panels and gleaming alloy sports mudguards and, the final touch, a Perspex fly screen! I always was a sucker for a pretty face! But it could certainly go; given a tailwind and a downhill gradient, 80mph was seen on the speedo more than once, and it was very reliable. Obviously, it was basically the same engine as the Cavalier so the aforementioned de-coke problems also applied.
Six months after buying the Captain I was returning from a sprint meeting at a north Essex airfield (North Weald, I believe, with George Brown on his Vincentpowered Nero the main attraction) with my girlfriend on the pillion when, at Stanford-le-Hope, a car driver turned across our path on a fast bend and we met on the white line. The bike bounced off his front grille, my knee smashed his headlamp and we bounced down the road sans bike, she still sitting behind me, hands on my waist! My heavyweight denims had a nineinch burn mark down one leg, which still smouldered as we staggered to our feet. The girlfriend was fine and the car driver gave a wonderful Uriah Heep impersonation (ever so ’umble), admitted liability, and took us and the bike home. As for my lovely Captain, it was a mess. I could have cried, but not in front of the girlfriend, obviously! It was repairable, just ; new forks, new frame and tank and new front wheel. Of course, being a British bike in current production, it took nearly four months to get a new frame from the James factory and, as is often the case, it was never quite the same after the rebuild.
Most weekends found me at a scramble, grass track or race meeting somewhere and then there was Brands Hatch, before the Grand Prix loop was added to the circuit, and before the M25. The only way to get from Essex to Kent in those days was to travel up the A13 to east London and dive through the Blackwell Tunnel.
This reminds me of a meeting at Brands Hatch in about 1965. It was just a club meeting but the crowd size was boosted by the added attraction of some demonstration laps by Rhodesian racing legend Jim Redman on the latest Honda racer, the wonderful 250cc Grand Prix racing bike with its incredible straight six-cylinder engine!
I managed to get a good seat in the main grandstand opposite the pits but, just as Jim Redman came to the line, a large Hell's Angel plopped down beside me. He was every mother’s nightmare: frayed denims, shaved head, tattoos and, to judge from his stomach, a drinker of the odd pint or four. Well, Jim revved up the Honda and took off, leaving behind the sound, that wonderful multi-cylinder wail, bouncing off the walls of the grandstand. Sheer music! At the end of the lap he really went for it, full bore. As he passed, I looked at my neighbour, and, to my surprise, he looked straight back and, with tears streaming down his face, his quivering lips slowly mouthed the word “Beau-t-i-ful”. And he was right.
Bursting the bubble
In the meantime my brother had thrown the Douglas down the road one night and, although he and his girlfriend were unhurt, they arrived home looking very second-hand with cuts, bruises and dented pride, and the Douglas was very soon swapped for an Isetta bubble car. At least it had a BMW bike engine!
Eventually (do I hear hollow laughter?) I too swapped my Captain for an Isetta. Well, all the women had ganged up on me, especially my girlfriend’s mother. The BMW-Isetta was actually quite a sturdy little vehicle – certainly the best of all the bubble cars – tubular chassis/frame, with a two-inch rollover bar round the front-opening door, Girling brakes and that indestructible 300cc BMW single-cylinder engine. The gearbox linkage was a joke, with more joints than a butcher’s window display, but you usually found a gear. Eventually. The handling was, shall we say, ‘interesting’! As it was the same length as it was wide, it needed coaxing round some corners, as I found to my cost one morning.
I was approaching a roundabout on the A127 Southend arterial road at about 25mph when, about halfway round the said roundabout, the nearside front wheel decided to tuck under and in a trice (sic!) I was somersaulting round the junction. I came to rest upside down, petrol dripping down from the fuel tank behind the bench seat and battery acid starting to seep from its home beneath the now-inverted seat. I decided to evacuate.
Reaching up to turn the ignition off, I kicked out a side window and crawled into the arms of a beaming policeman. He had been coming the other way and had seen everything.
His first words echoed my own thoughts: “How the **** did you do that?”
That sturdy roll bar was intact and had saved my life – the rest of the body was crushed to below shoulder height. I was totally unscathed and it wasn’t until much later that I realised how lucky I had been. As for the little car, as someone once said: “We can rebuild her!” The body was unbolted (just six bolts if I remember correctly) another body shell was found in the small ads and I was mobile again.
Not long afterwards the Isetta was exchanged for my first ‘proper’ car, with a wheel at each corner – a black, 1955 Austin A30, a snip at £55! Fiftyplus years later I am driving my 33rd car but deep down wishing it was my 30-plus bike! Since then I have had an occasional flirtation with two wheels – including a Vespa 150, an MZ 150 and a Kawasaki 250 single – but I have never lost my enthusiasm for two wheels. So, watch this space as I boldly go in search of the bike of my dreams and become (terrible phrase) a born-again biker!
In the meantime, I relive my twowheel dreams via Old Bike Mart every month with many thanks to the team who produce it.