Mr Pelerin's recollections

Following on from last month's letter, this article was written by Clive Pelerin's father during the Second World War, when circumstances mean the wasn't able to enjoy his motor cycling ... Clive added the caption notes.

In these days of coupons when most of our joy in motorcycling has of necessity to be of the 'armchair' variety, I often allow my thoughts to range over the machines I have owned in the past. There is one feature that strikes me most forcibly and that is that when viewed in retrospect, it is the machines owned early on - in fact the older the machine the longer ago one owned it the better - that give the greatest pleasure in these reveries.

Why is it - and I believe I am not alone in this - that what at the time seem to be catastrophes, all resolve into laughable episodes?

The first machine I owned was a 350cc Sports AJS that for several years had been owned by my closest friend. I ran it as a solo for six months or so and early on found that the rather narrow tyres were very much more comfortable when run at well below the maker's recommended pressures - until one day the front cover peeled off when landing after a bump in the road.

Some kind friend gave me a speedo for this job and having fitted it, off I went to the nearest bit of wide open road full of 'joie de vivre' having 'hotted' the job up for the first trial with a clock. I was staggered to find that my formerly supposed 45mph was - well - 30mph! I took the offending instrument off as it spoiled the illusion of speed and after refitted it with 'speed' part of the 'O' removed - using only the milometer.

Egging on the Ajay

In connection with this trip there is one incident that always evokes a smile - I was egging the 'Ajay' up a slight slope and was just about to overtake a real old (it was old even then) 'Tin-Lizzie' which was loaded up with what looked like a 'moonlight flit' and whose engine seemed to be suffering from an attack of hiccups, each attack setting the plant pots and fire irons violently rattling. Suddenly out of each side of the driving cab, a man jumped and this pair continued to aid the asthmatical engine with one arm steering the comical outfit, putting my own disappointment quite out of my mind.

It was with this AJS also that I experienced the terrors of learning to conduct a sidecar outfit. For a while I was definitely under the impression that Newton's gravitational laws were disproved by a little devil pushing up the sidecar wheel, no doubt aided by the ultra-light aluminium bullet shaped sidecar.

I loaned this outfit to a friend for a holiday he was going to take in Norfolk - he too can tell of some adventures. It was whilst I was teaching him to drive it that he somehow managed to bewitch the gearbox so that the clutch ' came away in our hands' and there was no change left in the box at all.

We collected all the bits but to this day do not know why or what happened - nothing was broken, nothing missing and all worked for years after without complaint, for which I was glad because in those days, it took quite a considerable time for us to conjure all the internals into their dwelling places without a box of bits over.

About this time too, the hand oil pump developed a habit of allowing about half a gallon of oil at a time to drain into the sump and as the method oflubrication in those days was 'all loss' the tailpipe promptly began to lose it in a smoke screen that would have been a proud boast of a man-o' -war. It had happened to me several times but I had put it down to meddling passers-by. My friend however, found that in addition to the country

PCs being interested, it emptied his pockets as well as the tank.

I remember that he arrived home from that holiday with cardboard tops of cream cartons acting as liners for the sidecar tyre which showed a marked tendency to unorthodox bulges where not wanted.

The lighting system was acetelyne to begin, but I changed over to 'electric' by the simple plan of carrying an accumulator in the sidecar. This gave me many anxious times when the lights gradually dwindled down to fag-end brilliance, but at least the battery wasn't let down like that on the next bike I had- a flat-twin

"I was conscious of a glorious floating effect, until I noticed that the handlebars were curiously near my knees."

Harley-Davidson. On that occasion an overtaking motorist signalled me and on inspection I found that the accumulator was being trailed several yards behind the sidecar, having fallen through the acid-rotten floor.

This Harley gave what to my way of thinking was one of the earliest insights I had into the effortless comfort of sprung frames. The whole job was years ahead of its time, but the spring frame was accidental.

I was nearing work one day when, I at that time might have felt in a bad humour - and the old Harley-Davidson was 'going a treat; I was conscious of a glorious floating effect, until I noticed that the handlebars were curiously near my knees and the paint on the top tube was cracking and sparks were coming off the rock guard where it was rubbing on the road - yes, the down tube had broken as a result of a head-on bump shortly before!

Sheer thrills

For sheer thrills however, I don't think you can beat a 1200cc Indian with its throttle stuck wide open, with first the exhaust valve cable breaking then the magneto cutout breaking and only brakes of doubtful value on one wheel. I stopped by pulling the plug leads off.

This Indian I entered for one MCC Trial and will never forget the ascent of Park-Rash. I had standard tyres and of course stuck halfway, arriving at the top with a burnt out footbrake (goodness knows why), a trailing silencer with a roar like several Bentleys at full bore. The sidecar was a large, deep one, but I have vivid recollection of seeing at least 12in of daylight between the bulwarks and my passenger's 'seat; the descent however, was even more exciting. The one wheel just slid and we broadsided round precipitous curves and, horrors, a five-bar gate shut! We hit the loose stone wall, the avalanche of stones down the slope the other side rings in my ears now!

I traded the old Indian Chief for a 750cc Douglas and never did pride in ownership have such a big fall as my estimated value was ruthlessly slashed to one quarter, for it was three years older than I thought - its former owner had lost the original logbook and took advantage of my ignorance to boost up his price. However, as second gear in the Indian could only be kept in engagement by holding the lever with one knee, I suppose the bargain wasn't too bad.

I managed to earn a bronze in an Edinburgh with the 'Douggie'. I remember my passenger was a large, well fed fellow and it was great fun pouring him into the cigar-shaped sidecar body, getting quarts into pint pots wasn't in it. Good fit as he was however, did not prevent the Lake District rain from forming a bath for him in the ' chair' and when we got to Carlisle with quarter of an hour for lunch instead of 1 ½ hours, all we could do was to go to the hotel, ask the commissionaire for the day's papers and retire to - well, there we took off all the roller towels available and having a 'pennyworth' we dried each other down and using the newspapers as 'undies' put on our clothes and continued on our way.

The 'Douggie' as I bought it was a nightmare to start up, as the carburettor was much lower than the inlet ports and the induction pipe was a hopeless length, so I fitted two carburettors and was able to get good starting and better performance. Not long after I had altered these, I remember giving a tow (I always carry a rope) to an old, very old Royal Enfield big twin. It was a sidecar outfit and in the last stages of disintegration, they had been all day getting from Littlehampton to Chessington Zoo, the magneto chain kept jumping the sprocket, the adjusting screws were unmoveable and the driver knowing nothing of engines, had been putting the chain haphazard, ringing the changes of teeth until the engine went, on kicking over!

However, revenons nos moutons, the most ingenious admiration came from the driver of the RE that I had had in many long years, he squatted down in the road on his haunches and cried "Lor' lumme, Gert! Come an' ' ave a deck at this for a '... : engine!'; well it had towed him some 30 miles at a speed that his old machine hadn't moved for many years.

After the Douglas came the 1200cc Harley which was a great advance in all ways as it was a very much less abused machine than all my previous mounts.

One of my mishaps was clutch slip on Doverhay, and I have vivid memories of balancing the side car over the left-hand bank and exposing my posterior to over half the entry of a Land's End Trial as theywooshed past, causing me to telescope my anatomy as best I could to prevent my retreat being cut off. Another time, the dynamo failed on the night run of an Edinburgh, so deciding to go north by main roads running on the battery, caught for an hour in the traffic in Newcastle the amps began to flow again and as always we got to our journey's end before the first men of the trial arrived, surprising the officials ( at a beer bottle lunch) by coming the wrong way to the check.

On the way back from this trip, I remember giving a tow to an AJStwin, well on in years, stuck halfway up with a sheared mag shaft. He was a timid little man and I told him that if he found the rope was going slack to apply his brakes gently in order to taughten it up gradually, to avoid jerks. I was mystified by the apparent lack of power in the Harley all the way down the hill, only to find that on the upgrades they returned. When we arrived at Kendal and I walked back to unhitch the rope, there were two pools of melted grease puddling round his wheels. He had, I found, had his brakes hard on on the level and downhill, so that it was the reason I got 40mph uphill and less going down, as I doubt the poor man was nearly paralysed with fright at such a rate of knots.

With this Harley I acted as marshal in two International Six Days Trials (ISDTs) and several MCC events. During one International, I remember having a rattling good dust-up with a German sidecar outfit. I had no passenger and had a struggle to keep him in sight when I ran out of gas. I was secretly overjoyed to find that the outfit had been driven by von Krohn, one of their crack sidecarists, out of the trial through a frame breakage.

Whilst observing a hill in an 'Exeter' my friend and I got completely covered in mud thrown up by the competitors and later in the day two respectable citizens might have been observed standing in waders in a roadside ditch rubbing each other's waterproof with ditch water and newspaper.

To crown it, all we had booked a room in the biggest hotel in Bournemouth and my nose started to bleed and would not stop, so I tied a handkerchief round my head and let it mop up, of course it stuck to my nose and the obsequious flunkeys were most taken aback when we marched in as dignified as one can be in waders, motor coat and a bloody but unbowed head! There is also the anecdote of our evasion of the ' tipees' at this hotel by a backdoor exit that is best left to another occasion, suffice to say our name was most probably ' mud'.

Of my present Harley, probably one of the last few to be brought over before the war, there is not much to be written. The mileage covered has necessarily been small and events are all too recent, and as I remarked before, it is not until several years have passed that one is able to pick out of the wealth of everyday happenings those things that through the mellowing influence of the years, seem worthy of recording. It is the first factory new machine I have had and naturally my special pride. It is universally admired for its design and I like to believe, because it is kept reasonably clean. I have often been asked why I prefer to pay such a lot more for a cycle than a car can be bought for... Well, I can only answer, it must be in the blood!

Just prior to the war, I used it for quite a number of business trips up north and I noticed that there was more than a few of the engineers (and electrical designers) I met who had a secret pash for the great game.

Here and now all I can wish is that it will not be long before we can all start building up our stores of peaceful • memories again.

Above: This is the Harley-Davidson outfit, ta ken outside the Bay Hotel, Lyme Regis in 1949. My older sister on the left is wearing her school blazer but the others are unknown family friends.

Above: Photo shows him posing and looking rather important in his office in 1960, 10 years after selling the H-D Model 80.

Above right: This picture of the Harley-Davidson was taken before 1940, which is when he and my mother moved house. It's a riddle why he should have taken a rear view but it may have been one of several and is the only one to have survived.

Above left: My father in the early 1930s when he would have been 18 to 20 and the owner of the AJS, his first bike.

Below: A 350cc vintage AJS and sports sidecar, as owned by Mr Pelerin for his first motorcycle.

Right: Dad marshalling on an MCC Exeter trial. The magazine, Autocar - interesting that a prestigious car weekly would report a predominately motorcycle event - is dated January 14, 1938 and my father is the less than elegantly dressed individual in the top left. I think people were a lot tougher in those days; I mean, who now would consider wearing that stuff and biking overnight from London to Exeter, starting on Boxing Day, on primitive machines? Not me for a start!

Below: The last photo was taken in 1955 on Sidmouth beach with my father, my two sisters and me the skinny lad in the woollen swimming trunks which itched horribly and went embarrassingly baggy when wet. The Harley had gone by then and the family transport was a 1938 Vauxhall 14. As an aside, I found dad's copy of the Pitman's Motorists Library maintenance book for the car and apparently the tappets were adjusted with the engine running; there must have been a lot of squashed and hopeless feeler gauges around at that time.

Left: The rare Model W Harley-Davidson - Bonhams sold this one for £18,400 in October 2018.