Dare to be different
All Ariel trials machines are four-strokes – and most replicas of Sammy Miller’s ‘GOV’ – right? Well, wrong actually, as this band of two-stroke brothers proves.
It’s rare that you can make a complete list of owners of a particular classic motorcycle. However, you can almost do this with these particular Ariel trials bikes – these are not the famous four-stroke HT5 machines (such as Sammy Miller’s GOV132), but instead the far more less often seen Ariel two-stroke trials machines – there were only 10 made, and every one different.
The stroker triallers all have the 249cc twin engines taken from the Ariel Leader or Ariel Arrow road machines in common, but the frames are all individual and unique, as there was no ‘works’ template to follow. Engineers from the early 1960s on have constructed or modified frames to make competition use of this effective engine.
A modified Ariel Arrow road machine was ‘trialled’ in the early 1960s by Sammy Miller, who also rode the Arrow in a famous publicity stunt, in league with Jeff Smith on his works BSA, trying to get to the top of Ben Nevis in 1960. Additionally, Albert Dove built a ‘proper’ trials machine in the mid-1960s, Harry Stanistreet created the successful Zundapp Mark 1, Roger Haskell constructed a machine from ‘works’ parts and recently Roy and Brice Haines have produced two special machines. Before looking in more detail at some of these machines, many people have asked why Ariel didn’t produce a works two-stroke trials machine in the early 1960s. A brief look at Ariel history and a conversation with Sammy Miller helps to shed some light.
about a two-stroke Ariel project that he was involved in. The Northern Irishman recognised a lot of people didn’t like the pressed steel frame, so he made a duplex frame to house the two-stroke engine. This frame was used in street scrambler form, known as the TS5. Miller rode it to and from work. Dealers who visited the competition shop saw the bike and persistently asked: ‘When can we have some of these?’
“It was becoming a bit of an embarrassment to the management because they didn’t really have anything to do with it,” remembers Sammy. He went to the Scottish Six Days Trial – winning on GOV 132 – and, on his return asked: “Where’s my little two-stroke scrambler to ride home on?”
He was told that ‘…they had instructions from the drawing office to cut it up and put it in the scrap heap.’ Sammy reflected that they could have had a street scrambler, 10 years ahead of the popularity of this type of bike in America.
Ariel managing director Ken Whistance was keen on competition so he entered Sammy on the Sports (Golden) Arrow in the Welsh Three Days. Reckons