The Hobby Years
After he moved from two to four wheels, Michael Griffiths admits that motorcycles were missing from his life for a while, but they would return…
Motorcycles did not reappear in my life until around 1969, and then it was by way of being a hobby rather than as a regular form of transport. Enquiries produced a 1936 BSA Empire Star 500cc in a state of considerable decay. The Empire Star is a noble mount and I happily set about trying to restore it.
I did not make a very good job of it. I am neither engineer nor mechanic. The words ‘tinkerer’ or ‘fettler’ are those that best describe my skill levels. Nevertheless, I got stuck in, had the engine out and carefully repainted the frame and cycle parts with the ubiquitous ‘Brushing Belco.’ In my defence I did make a reasonable job of this, having taken a deal of time to prepare the surfaces and apply many top coats of paint. I got various items rechromed and then set about the engine. There appeared to be little wrong with it, even the compression seemed acceptable, which was most satisfactory considering most of my previous purchases had required a rebore as a starting point.
The exhaust valve and seat showed signs of wear so I took the old one to a valve supplier who matched it against a current one and then turned the groove for the collets on it on his lathe. Very slowly the bike came together and, on completion, it started second kick. However, as always, there were two problems that I had missed. I took it to get an
MoT and stopped on the way to buy petrol but it would not restart. By now I knew the engine fairly well and I could not understand this. After a few minutes I tried again and it started, so all was well. Sadly it then failed its MoT.
The reason was the wear in the girder fork linkage. One of my unknown problems had come to light. In the course of collecting the bike the tester remarked that it would not start when hot, but was okay when slightly cooled down. This, he said, was due to the magneto windings starting to break down. The Empire Star carried a shield bolted to the downtube to protect the mag/ dyno unit from the weather. However, it also meant that the air did not get to the unit so it had a tendency to run warm – hence my trouble starting it.
Back at home I cut up some baked bean tins and fashioned some ‘shims’ out of them and took up the slack in the fork pivots. Creative engineering. Warning the tester that I had not had time to sort out the magneto, he nevertheless passed the bike.
A metal gate caught in a gale…
The first ride on the bike was great. It went well, the brakes were entirely satisfactory for its limited performance and the handling was reminiscent of a metal gate caught in a gale. I stopped and played with the fork pivot damper and the steering damper and tried again. A great improvement, now it was still like a gate, but without the gale.
I did a VMCC ride with it and got held up at some traffic lights. I did not want to stop the engine as I knew it would be reluctant to start again. This was the last straw for the poor old magneto, it kept the spark coming for the next 10 miles or so and then had me coasting gently to a standstill. I managed to push it to a small garage – fortunately downhill of my stop – where they put it in their oil store for me. I now had to get home. I started walking carrying my crash hat and stuck out my thumb. To my surprise the third car stopped, it was a Vauxhall Victor 101. When I asked the guy why he was happy to pick me up, he said: “It was the crash hat, mate… we’ve all been there.” I recovered the bike in a friend’s Transit, got the magneto rewound, and went on to do several more VMCC rides with it.
Flushed with this modest success I saw an advert for a Brough Superior basket case. It was supposed to be a 1938 SS100 Matchless-engined model. I use the wording carefully because in reality it was just a box of bits. There was a Matchless OHV V-twin engine, the frame could have been Matchless MX or it could have been a BS that George did not know about! The tank under all the filler probably had been on a Brough at some stage of its life. However, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the gearbox. Because the drive side engine main bearing has triple rollers, the crankcase is wide to accommodate this. Therefore, the Norton gearbox had to have a longer drive shaft to match it. Mine was a standard box and did not have one. While I was looking for the correct one I got the frame properly stove enamelled by a local company who made spring boxes for door return mechanisms. They had a large oven to bake the enamel on the spring boxes, and my frame went in a treat.
Another light engineering company who made high tensile bolts for industrial use made up a beautiful set of bushes for the Castle forks, and a wheel builder re-laced the wheels for me. It should be remembered that then there was no restoration industry as there is today.
If I wanted a bit made or repaired I went round the industrial estates until I found a company that was making parts and which might have the equipment to make the bits I needed, and then ‘chatted them up’ to come to my rescue.
For all my efforts in building a really satisfactory rolling chassis, the project foundered. I simply could not get the bits for the gearbox and a rebuilt gearbox to the correct specification was beyond my resources. So I sold up and moved on. That spring we were moving house and the new garage was too small for the BSA (which I still had), the car and a pushchair, so the BSA had to go.
The ultra-reliable Honda C90
Years passed and for no good reason I bought a well-used Honda C90. There is nothing to say about it. It started every time and stopped every time and in between it kept going, all the time. That’s what C90s are about, and in the first year I did a little over 7500 miles on it. Then one day I was mooching around a shabby industrial estate and came across a restorer of Citroen cars and vans. I like DS 19s and 21s and we got chatting. He asked if would like to buy one-and-a-half VeloSolexes? (is that the correct plural of VeloSolex?) Of course I would.
I added the good bits of the half bike to the other and got a good runner out of them. You have to be French to understand the ‘raison d’etre’ of these bikes and the local Honda dealer was not so blessed. The Solex needed an MoT. I said my bicycle with an engine attached needed an MoT. He said that a bicycle did not need an MoT. I said that mine had an engine on the handlebars so it needed an MoT… And so it went on. In the end the MoT was booked and the tester driven mad. He asked me how to start it. I said: “Pedal it, lower the engine on to the wheel, open the decompressor, pull out the choke, drop the decompressor, open the throttle and drop the choke.” What could be easier? He wanted to know where the light switch was, so I showed him. Of course they didn’t work because they run off the flywheel magneto. In the end he gave up, lit a cigarette and gave it a ‘Pass’ to get rid of me.
Riding the Solex was a laugh. If you are curious about these barmy machines I leave you to do your reading elsewhere. Mine had only one problem; when it rained the drive wheel would not grip the front wheel, the wet caused the motor to run while the drive wheel spun uselessly against the tyre.
Despite playing with the VeloSolex on Sunday mornings I managed to clock up a further 6000 miles on the C90 by using it to go to work on as well as for leisure rides. Then a change of job came along which took up more time, and I sold them both.
Joining the scooter fraternity
The only bike I had never ridden, or been on the back of, was a scooter, so when a red Vespa PX 125cc came along I had to buy it. It was in excellent condition and ready to go. I joined the scooter fraternity and the Vespa
Club of Great Britain and did a lot of club rides with it, including the mandatory ride to Brighton with about half a million other scooters. I also went camping on it.
The first opportunity was a night ride from Colchester, so I rode there from mid-Kent one Saturday, put my tent up, had something to eat and then left for a 10pm start. With others I rode a 45-mile route with the map tied to the handlebars and a torch tied to the handlebar mirror to read it. To my amazement not only did I finish, but within time as well! Then back to the tent and eventually back home on the Sunday.
I did a couple more weekend camping trips with the scooter club but somehow I didn’t fit in, their culture was not mine. Instead I decided to join the British Two Stroke Club and became a motorcyclist riding a scooter. This was good but I missed the camping, so, as I was still a VMCC member, I decided I would go to Snetterton for one of its festival events and camp there. I got an entry accepted for the track parade which caused a few raised eyebrows; a red scooter among vintage Nortons,
BSAs and others tended to look a little conspicuous. But the end justified the means: I got to ride the scooter round Snetterton.
I covered about 15,000 miles over the 30 months I had it and then it came to a sad end. The engine on a Vespa, unlike a Lambretta, is bolted directly on the side of the back wheel, which means that the scooter is inherently unstable. Engineers can explain this better than I can, but the result is that, very occasionally, the back wheel will step out of line and try and throw you off.
The first time this happened was when I rode down a lane covered in a fine film of cow slurry. The back slid out but I managed to ‘catch’ the scooter and did not drop it, but it gave me quite a shock.
The second time, many months later, was near my house. I cornered on what turned out to be dropped domestic fat or oil and the back slid out again. This time I was not so lucky and scooter and rider ended up in an undignified heap in the gutter. The rider was okay but the scooter suffered a broken kick-start, severe damage to the drive shaft and significant dents to the tinware. I walked home and arranged for it to be picked up.
During the following weeks I managed to repair most of the bodywork and was about to start on the mechanicals when an old contact from Vespa GB days said he was looking for a PX 125 for his son. My Vespa was ideal as he could finish the work himself, so he bought it.
In this unexpected manner my motorcycling days came to an end.
I have not bought or ridden anything since, although on several occasions the temptation has been strong. Since then I have gone back to cycling, still camping, and had many other adventures, but this is not the place for them.