The Ownership Years
Last month Michael Griffiths told us of his ‘Pillion Years’, but now, at the age of 16, it was time for him to move on…
Shortly before my 16th birthday I handed over the remaining money from my Post Office Savings Account to a used motorcycle dealer of unknown repute. That the premises occupied one of the arches under Brighton station gave a clue to the quality of the merchandise on display. I had bought a 1947 BSA 250cc C10L of equally unknown parenthood. Its most obvious feature was its patina – or, as we called it then, rust. The dealer very kindly delivered it to me at home in his van. He who laughs last, etc...
Of course it would not start. One of the boys who had given me so many pillion rides in the past came to assist. He removed the sparking plug and advised me that it should have two prongs sticking out into the engine, not just the pointy bit in the middle. A replacement plug was fitted and we pushed the bike down the road. I dropped the clutch and jumped aboard. It fired up and I returned to my house to get it off the road. We had a sideway affair between our house and our neighbour’s and I spent most of the next month riding it up and down there after school, glowing with pride.
With road tax and insurance dutifully obtained, on my 16th birthday I set off up the road for the first time, only to discover I had no top gear. As soon as I let go of the pedal, the gear promptly jumped out. Which left me with the world’s first two-speed C10. I returned home crestfallen. A rapid consultation with those in the know convinced me that the best way forward was to learn to ride with my foot on the lever rather than on the footrest. Adopting this new technique, I set off out of town for a short ride. Then I came to a hill and opened the throttle gradually, only to find that I was already going flat out. “Very strange,” I thought as a Cyclemaster was rapidly catching me up.
I returned home and pondered my fate. It was clear that the bike would go – just – and therefore it ought to get me to and from my first job located four miles away. I rode out again that evening to the office as a trial run. Amazingly, all went well, helped by my newfound ability to keep my heel on the footrest while holding it in top gear with my toes. On the way home I stopped for a gallon of petrol and checked the oil. Or, rather, where the oil should have been. It wasn’t there. Two pints later the oil tank was half full.
The days turned into weeks and the bike was burning so much oil that when he saw me coming the forecourt attendant automatically reached for the oil dispenser before the petrol pump. I sought the advice of my superiors and one gallantly test rode the bike for me. He asked if I had noticed the vibration when I applied the front brake. I said I had. Apparently the front brake drum was oval and needed to be skimmed. I thought ‘skimmed’ was a kind of milk. The cause of the lack of power and oil consumption was simple; it needed a rebore. In the expert’s words, the relationship between the piston and the cylinder barrel was like a cotton reel going up and down inside a beer barrel. The bike had to go.
I rode out to Worthing some 13 miles away to another ‘used bike specialist’ whose premises consisted of a battered lock-up in a large cinder-covered yard. Listening carefully to my needs, the proprietor pointed me in the direction of a tired-looking 125cc Tandon. I had never heard of them. But it had a Villiers engine which was both lively and economical – his words, not mine. I test rode it and it was. After the C10 it went like a rocket. With the deal done, I rode it home and was not disappointed.
The little Tandon served me well for about a year. It started every time and got me to work easily and reliably, which was mostly what I wanted. It also had rear suspension with the spring box located behind the gearbox adjacent to the swinging arm pivot, a very neat arrangement.
During this time I had taken out a subscription to Motorcycle Mechanics and to The Motor Cycle and had bought a second-hand copy of Motorcycles and How to Manage Them. Armed with this acquired knowledge I realised that the bushes in the front forks of the bike had given up when the front wheel started taking a long time to respond to the handlebars. Remarkably, an ex-school acquaintance offered to buy it from me for the same amount I had paid for it, fork faults included.
On a wet Saturday afternoon I wandered into Redhill Motors in Brighton, not knowing quite why. On either side of me were Bantams to Gold Stars and Tiger Cubs to Bonnevilles, all very shiny and very expensive.
The ‘cheapies’ were upstairs on a mezzanine out of harm’s way. At the back there was a pretty green bike which I learnt was a three-year-old Ariel Colt 200cc. It was the right engine size, had plunger rear suspension and looked a bit like a BSA C11G. I bought it. On the way home it started losing power rapidly going up a certain hill that the Tandon would take without fuss. I turned round and took it straight back to the dealer. “It needs a rebore,” I told the salesman. Awestruck, he wheeled it into their workshop only to be told by the foreman that I was right. Well done, Redhill Motors, they rebored it and fitted a new oversized piston and delivered it back to me with nothing to pay.
Very gradually I started spreading my wings by going out on it after work for maybe 30 or 40 miles and Sunday morning rides became a regular thing. But it was not a happy bike. The ride was harsh and the engine rattled. Bits dropped off it or became unscrewed at regular intervals.
It lived in our garden shed along with the family bicycles and one morning my father came indoors while I was having breakfast, grinning all over his face.
He said: “Your Colt has done a massive poo!” I rushed out to find half a tank of oil on the shed floor. In the finest of Ariel Colt traditions it had shaken the oil union joint at the bottom of the tank loose, thereby causing it to leak. Five minutes to tighten it up, five days to clear up the mess.
Then it started to become unreliable. From time to time it would simply refuse to start. I learnt how to check the fuel supply and spark in record time. It still would not start. Then for no apparent reason it would. Then, when I was ready to come home from work, it would not.
I took two days’ holiday owed to me with a weekend and used the four days to comb dealers for another bike. I ended up at Keys Brothers in Worthing, which is still there today. I knew one of the brothers sprinted a JAP V-twin along Brighton’s Madeira Drive, and probably elsewhere, too. They had a used Velocette 350 MAC for sale. Sadly, the reputation of Ariel’s finest had reached their ears and they declined to take it in part exchange. But, after half an hour of intense ‘discussion’, they gave in and the deal was done.
I left the Colt with them, they wrote me out a cover note and I set off with the Velo. On the outskirts of Worthing I turned into a roundabout and the bike was all over the place. Shocked, I did another circuit of the roundabout, but the bike would not go around corners. I stopped and put it up on the stand and very gently pushed the back axle sideways with my foot. It moved just over an inch. The swinging arm bushes were completely shot. With history repeating itself I took it straight back and asked them to sort it. Of course they did, with apologies; they were after all, ‘proper people.’
Four days later I rode it home. And the following day to work, and home again. I had a strange feeling that, for the first time in my life, I was riding a ‘real’ bike. I had served my time nursing third-class bikes along and now a new dawn was breaking. Roads were out there to be ridden, miles were there to be covered, places to go, people to see…
I wanted to ride it to Brands Hatch to replicate the journey I had done earlier on the back of the Thunderbird. There was a meeting there starring John Surtees on his MV Augusta, one of the last rides he would do before he switched to cars. It was the obvious choice, and my ride there was just… wonderful. Once I got to Redhill and turned East along the A25 I was joined by more and more riders as we cruised en masse through Westerham and on towards the circuit. There seemed to be a bunch of big singles around me and the noise as we climbed the hill at Wrotham was ear-splitting.
The tension at the start of the last event was electric. The bikes were being warmed up on the grid (on open pipes remember) and it was the loudest orchestra ever.
Suddenly there was a complete hush and a blanket of silence enveloped the entire circuit. Spectators were holding their breath and the riders were pulling their bikes back against compression. The starter dropped his flag, there was a scrabble of feet, bottoms hit saddles and the pack was away. Immediately at the front a red dart shot away as four 125cc cylinders came on song, and then screamed. Surtees went through Paddock Bend still riding side saddle and the crowds were in uproar. As he came downhill out of the corner he put his leg over the saddle just in time to brake frantically for Druid’s hairpin. Behind him other figures were emerging from the field to give chase. I cannot now remember the riders involved other than, I am sure, Derek Minter was among them. Matchless G50s chased Gold Stars chased Manx Nortons.
The wail of the Italian Four was being challenged by the roar of the British Single every inch of the way, but none could quite make the supreme effort needed to bring Surtees to heel.
I sat down on the grass bank by Bottom Bend exhausted. Then it was time to ride home.
Gradually, and with little fuss, the Velo was becoming an integral part of my life. I found myself buying presents for it: a fly screen, a leather tank cover and Vincent pattern bars. I learnt to service it properly, an oil change, a brake check, tappet adjustments and even, for heaven’s sake, a new back tyre. As well as transporting me to various bike events it also assisted my social life. Young ladies were encouraged to sample the delights of riding pillion and Saturday nights at the dance hall became mandatory. Remember that most oiks of my age rode motorbikes, none of us could contemplate running a car. On a Saturday night the cul-de-sac opposite the dance hall was jammed with bikes of all shapes and sizes. If it was raining the worst job in the world was being the cloakroom attendant. We all piled in, shoving our sopping wet jackets, helmets and boots at him, and after half an hour the place stank! On one occasion I rode there in shoes and the heavens opened. I learnt that doing the ‘twist’ in wet socks and shoes was no fun.
The last event I went to on the bike was Brands Hatch again, this time to see Mike Hailwood. Hailwood was riding a ‘humble’ AJS 7R. The word among the spectators was that this was a rather special 7R… Who will ever know. Of course, he led from the start with his usual panache but, on the penultimate lap, he threw the bike down Clearways. Mercifully the bike went one way and he the other. He walked away. During the intermission I was walking through the Paddock and saw him leaning against a fence. Summoning my courage I asked what happened. He lifted his right boot and the sole was worn away, exposing all his toes.
Now you know what happens when a stone hits your bare foot at 90 miles an hour.
Weeks later I traded in the Velo for a sidecar outfit, known henceforth simply as ‘the chariot’. It was another dubious purchase (I’m good at them) but I just wanted one. It was a 13-year-old plunger BSA Golden Flash A10 married to a Watsonian single seat sports chair, quite ordinary, nothing as exotic as a Jet 80 or a Steib. True to style, the first thing it needed was a rebore. The dealer (I’m flattering him with that description) said he would fit a set of Hepolite Duaflex rings free of charge which would cure the problem. He was right. The petrol consumption improved from around 35mpg to 50mpg and the oil consumption was improved, too.
But all was not well with the outfit. The sidecar seemed to be pulling insistently to the left, as if it wanted to get away from the bike. From somewhere I got an instruction manual on how to set the chair up and it seemed a bar in the front, or the fourth point fixing, was completely missing. I bought one, fitted it and all became well, even the lean in and out dimensions seemed to be spot on. Then there was the black art of left-hand turns which involved slowing the outfit down, then accelerating the bike around the chair. My chair did not have a sidecar brake so I had a steep learning curve ahead of me.
Slowly it all started to come together and I learnt to live with the one other remaining problem; the forks still had solo springs in them with solo trail. This was never going to be remedied because I lacked the money to have them altered professionally and did not have the skill to do it myself. Nevertheless, I decided to enter a couple of ‘navigation’ rallies with it and succeeded in coercing a friend to navigate from the chair. The navigator has no means of communicating with the driver due to the sound of a 650cc twin in torment continually bellowing in his right ear, so we devised a simple system. He banged hard on my leg once for right-hand turns and twice for left-hand turns. Of course, we always got lost, ran out of time and generally got back when everyone else had gone home.
But it didn’t matter, from now on in the pub we could honestly call ourselves ‘competitors.’
Generally I enjoyed the experience of ‘charioteering’ and, to my surprise, others seemed happy to try their luck as sidecar passengers, some even did it more than once. Then a friend who had shared a few solo motorcycle experiences with me started entering some trials. He had a new Greeves Scottish 250cc and let me try it out on farmland nearby. It was superb. I entered discussions with a BSA dealer in Shoreham-bySea and traded in the chariot for a NEW 1960 C15T!
Let the good times roll! Never mind the performance, in my eyes it was just pretty! I bought a dual seat in case I needed to replace the single seat for social occasions, then promptly filled out an entry form for a local trial. Sadly, I discovered that I did not have the ability for the precision control required for successful trialling; my friend gallantly explained that I was perhaps lacking in co-ordination. What he really meant was that I fell off a lot. However, the bike really excelled in riding green lanes and I enjoyed looking for byways to ride instead of pushing my luck doing trials.
The single seat left room for a significant pannier rack and with the purchase of some ex-WD packs for panniers (Pride & Clark) I dared to entertain the thought of riding out one morning and not coming home. Was this illogical? The bike had trials gearing, knobbly tyres and an inconvenient upswept exhaust pipe. On the plus side it was comfortable, very reliable and economical. Sometimes you just have to do these things. My father wrote to a friend of his living in Anglesey asking him if he would put me up for a few days. The reply was a ‘yes.’ The full horror of what I was proposing hit me: a journey of about 325 miles each way on a bike that was supposed not really to go on roads. I decided to book a night in a B&B about halfway there to increase my chances of survival.
Nevertheless, I managed it and, despite the eternally numb arms from the vibration, the aching foot from never-ending gear changes and the blisters on my clutch fingers, the whole eight days was a great success. The over-revved, overladen, underpowered C15T never missed a beat. On the Monday following the Saturday I got home it was back in harness taking me to work.
In 1962 I turned 21, did a few more trials on the bike, and was consistently unsuccessful. Eventually I gave up and fitted the dual seat and rear pegs, added plain tyres and it became a road bike. But the weather forced me back on to the rough stuff as in January 1963 it snowed. How cold was it? The sea in Herne Bay, Kent, froze. The first Saturday the white stuff was on the ground absolutely nothing moved. Our main A-road had four inches on it which would stay uncleared for three weeks.
At around mid-morning that Saturday the phone rang, my friend suggesting we should take the bikes over the Downs. We did. Riding through deep virgin snow on the roads was magical. We ploughed a furrow as we went and the snow either side of the wheels kept them from sliding away. The South Downs were a vast white panorama dazzling in the sun. We rode into a large empty field covered with foot-deep snow. Throttles opened, engines revving, we dived into it and then on to it, we actually got the bikes skimming across the top of it. Then I hit a mole hill hidden under the snow and the bike cartwheeled into the air and I went through the snow on my bum like a snow plough. I hadn’t laughed so much for a long time. Amazingly the bike restarted and we rode home.
Then out of the blue came the offer of an old Thunderbird, a 1951 6T complete with Mk1 sprung hub. I bought it. However, I decided to keep the C15 for the time being, just in case things did not go well.
This battered 13-year-old warhorse was the grand finale to my days of owning bikes.
It fitted me to a T. It was big, comfortable and docile until roused. As ever, I rode it to work, then on club rides. In due course I was moved to another office in Beckenham, Kent, on a temporary assignment. I rode the 6T there on a Monday morning, very early, and returned on the Friday evening, staying during the week in lodgings. For 13 months I rode this journey in freezing weather, pouring rain and occasionally bright sun.
The bike was almost permanently outside during this time, yet it never failed to start, never broke down and survived with minimal weekend maintenance. Home one weekend a friend asked for a lift and as he got off he asked me if I could hear my main bearings rattling. “No, I couldn’t, were they important?” Eventually I got the engine out, stripped it and took the crankcase to well-known AJS sidecar scrambles experts Ken and Ray Robertson in Hove. They fitted new mains for me and said the big end shells were on the way out. Always one to ignore sound advice I took the crankcase away and rebuilt the engine into the bike.
The engine was running well again and thoughts turned to touring with it. I transferred my ‘pannier’ gear from the C15 to the Thunderbird, then found an old suitcase in which I put wooden strips across the base (when lying down) and bolted them through to the top of the carrier. Crude but effective – a Stone Age top box? I thought I would go to the Lake District but I realised I could get further.
Friends in Carlisle were phoned and were happy for me to call in. Please note the detailed planning.
From Brighton, the Lake District was reached in a tiring day. The two things I found interesting on the journey were the vibration vertical twins make, sufficient on a long journey to make your arms totally numb, and I came across a motorway for the first time. Straight, with little or no traffic, and no speed limit. I was a dot on a sea of concrete. I wound the throttle open and the speedo crawled around to 85mph. I could go a little faster but whatever I did, I did not have to slow down. I discovered a new experience called cruising speed. But at 85mph the wind pressure on an upright rider with no screen was thoroughly unpleasant. I backed off and experimented until 65mph seemed comfortable for man and machine.
As the pubs were not yet open I called into a newsagent in a village and enquired if they knew someone who did bed and breakfast. They didn’t but suggested I called on a lady who might. This I did, but the husband said they knew no one locally but for £5 they would be happy to oblige me. After a good night’s sleep and a full stomach I set off again in pouring rain. I diverted slightly from my planned route because my map had turned back into wood pulp and I wanted to find Ullswater. In the event the sign may have said Ullwater but I never did discover if the lake was there as the rain was so heavy I struggled even to follow the road.
In due course I got to Carlisle and my friend’s house, left the bike in their shed and gratefully accepted the offer of a hot bath. I was absolutely shattered and had a job to be sociable during the rest of the day. The final straw was when I retrieved my possessions from the bike – everything was soaking wet. Once I had finished in the bathroom my place was taken by dripping clothing, I had stretched my friend’s hospitality to breaking point. Fortunately, there was a pub nearby and after a really decent meal and a couple of pints, honour was restored.
Suffice to say that the remainder of the week was great fun, the rain moved on to pastures new and a weak sun took its place. Places were visited, pints were drunk and yarns were spun.
Eventually I had to return home and, for no good reason, decided to do the journey in a day. I pulled into a service station at the start of the motorway to fill up and got chatting to a motorcycle policeman on a white police Triumph. Very helpfully he led me through the next two junctions before turning off to leave me to my own devices. I settled the speedo on 65mph, my adopted cruising speed, and the old Thunderbird settled down and just ate the miles.
Apart from doing battle with the old North Circular and South Circular Roads in London and stopping for petrol, the journey was uneventful. I arrived home with a day’s ride of 331 miles.
And so back to work. That autumn it seemed to rain every day. I was getting disenchanted with riding home every day in the cold wet rain, in the dark with poor lighting, and in busy traffic. My work colleagues were also getting fed up with finding our limited cloakroom facilities dominated by wet motorcycle gear and none-too-fragrant boots. One lunchtime I was on my way to buy a sandwich when I passed a local garage that had a split-windscreen Morris Minor in the window for sale.
The proprietor was primarily a mechanic running a service facility and only sold the occasional car, the Minor here was being offered on behalf of a customer. He also happened to be an ex-biker. We agreed that he would buy the Thunderbird and C15 from me, then I would buy the Minor through him from his customer. A bit complicated, but all parties got the results they wanted.
With an empty shed now and four wheels parked on the road outside, I felt as if I had sold my soul … but only until it started raining again.
NEXT MONTH:
Mr Griffiths returns to motorcycles…