JerryThurstoncolumn
There’s puzzlement when a simple two-stroke engine resolutely refuses (and is still refusing) to play ball.
Asimple Villiers 147cc motor. It should have been so easy. Find a spark, add fuel, spinover and bingo… All you need after that is to abandon the garage and let the smoke clear. It is not like I haven’t done one before. Aside from one engine with a completely dead coil, five of the six with Villiers ignition I have worked on have burst happily into life after little more than a points buff-up and a precautionary clean of the carburettor. Even the most recalcitrant of them ran after a few spins, albeit very badly. It then responded beautifully to a tweak of the ignition timing and, ironically, now starts the best of them all.
Why is this particular example proving to be the exception? Frankly, I don’t know. It started off well; I found a spark quite quickly with just a thorough clean and adjustment of the points, and the inside of the carburettor was gunge-free. With fuel and spark, all I needed was compression and there seemed to be enough of that… With all of these an engine should go, and I fully expected to have a runner the next evening.
First spin, it even offered a little encouragement; a single pop along with a whiff of blue smoke. I’m thinking, ‘hooray, next time it’s away,’ but that’s not been the case. After three evenings of spinning it over, trying this and that, I have had two more pops and nothing more. What’s going on?
‘Aha… timing,’ I hear you shout. About 20 degrees before top dead centre should do it. I thought that, too. Full of hope that a 10-minute-long session should see the motor running a treat, I dived into the workshop.
That hope crumbled as I first set it on the timing marks provided by the factory, then to the marks that a previous owner had helpfully scribed into the flywheel, and then to where I thought it should be – all to no avail.
While I will never be the sort of engineer who turns a piston from a blank or makes a rig to re-wind a magneto armature without so much as a second thought, I’m handy enough in the workshop, certainly good and experienced enough to best an old Villiers... at least I’d like to think so. C’mon Jerry, this is a simple motor, how hard can it be!
Deeper into the ignition, I’m noticing that while I have a fat blue spark, it isn’t consistent. Sometimes, you have to spin the motor fast to generate one; at others, merely turning it over at a few rpm will give the steady blue crack. Condenser, maybe. It’s a faff to replace but worthwhile if it cures the no-go.
The Villiers condenser sits underneath the ‘pot’ that contains the points. This means the ignition back plate has to come off; on the face of it not a difficult job. The reality is different – a combination of corrosion and general two-stroke filth means a miserable half-hour trying to loosen the securing screw and the earth strap. I always assert that you should clean an engine thoroughly before starting work; I definitely should have taken my own advice here.
Finding that the back of the points ‘pot’ was wet lifted my spirit. Surely this was the issue? Any water ingress into the condenser would kill it? On these occasions I am compelled to see if I have had a win, and by half midnight it’s all back together and ready to test. Sadly, though it’s a fail, worse, in fact… I now have no spark whatsoever.
I’ve noticed this inconsistent spark phenomenon a couple of times. If I remove the flywheel to get at things in the ignition, once it is replaced, there is no spark when I spin the motor. Then, a little while later, if I spin it again, the spark mysteriously reappears. Sure enough, next morning I spin it over and the spark is back… Ruddy motor still won’t start though.
I’m starting to get a little desperate, convinced I’ve missed something fundamental. I decide to pop the cylinder off and having a look. Who knows, maybe there is something amiss inside? There isn’t! I do, however, manage to successfully remove a damaged exhaust stud and find a suitable replacement, so it was not a fruitless exercise.
So here I am, a week later. I reckon that this engine has now had at least 15 hours of my undivided attention and I’m not much further forward that I was.
On the plus side, I now know far more about Villiers ignitions that I did – not that this has helped to get it running!
Those who know more about these than me have suggested that although I have a spark in air, the coil could still be duff and can’t provide a spark against compression. Others have suggested that the flywheel needs re-magnetising.
Meanwhile, I’m on plan B, which is relegating it to the back of the workshop while I have a cuppa and a think…
After three evenings of spinning it over, trying this and that, I have had two more pops and nothing more. What’s going on?”
Can you date this motorcycle made by The Bridge Cycle Company of Chelsea? And would you have any information about this or its sister company The Stanley Bridge Cycle Company?
The Bridge Cycle Company was founded in the 1880s or 1890s by the eldest daughter of the Godfrey family, from my mother’s side. She had returned home from nursing at St Thomas’s Hospital, central London, after her mother died. Family history informs they taught Victorian ladies to cycle in the 1890s on a track in Battersea Park, on the south side of the River Thames to their Chelsea premises. Another sideline was storing cycles, for a small fee, when Chelsea football club were playing home matches at their nearby ground.
In the photograph, my greatgrandfather, wearing a flat hat, is standing behind The Bridge motorcycle, Miss Godfrey is sitting in the passenger trailer and her younger sisters and brothers, including great-uncle Frederick on the machine, are also featured. They were all involved in the business – the three smaller boys were her nephews. Frederick was a great character who was listed in the 1901 and 1911 census as a cycle maker; by the 1920s, he drove a 110hp Belsize motor (pictured with my mother and younger sisters outside the family holiday home at Whitstable) and later lived in Jersey, before moving back to England in 1940.
There are entries in commercial directories for the business as late as 1929, thus:
1912 Chelsea Commercial Directory: Stanley Bridge Cycle Co., 529 Kings Road.
1919 Post Office Location Suburbs Directory: Bridge Cycle Co., 58 Battersea Bridge Road, SW11.
1929 Chelsea Commercial Directory: Stanley Bridge Motor & Cycle Co., 529 Kings Road, Chelsea.
Ralph Stephenson, email.
Thank you, Ralph, for sight of such a delightful pair of photographs, with the motorcycle image giving a perfect insight of the first tentative steps of manufacture – days when machines were built singly or in tiny batches, and the sale of every motorcycle was a big event.
Although the machine built by Miss Godfrey’s business bears the legend The Bridge (derived I assume from nearby Chelsea Bridge) it is a 2¾hp 1903 season Rex, as illustrated by the accompanying advertisement, published in Motor Cycling, October 29, 1902.
The Rex Motor Manufacturing Company Ltd was founded in 1899 by brothers Billy (managing director) and Harold (sales manager) Williamson in Birmingham, to build tricars and then cars. They moved their business to Osborne Road, Earlsdon, Coventry in 1900 and displayed their first motorcycle at the year’s National Show, Crystal Palace, South London, when it was the only motorcycle to ascend the hill beside the glass palace without pedal assistance.
The first Rex motorcycles comprised an engine (such as a Minerva) clipped to the front frame downtube of a sturdy cycle. During 1902, Rex planned to dispense with the motorised cycle concept by designing a complete machine with more substantial motorcycle frame, braced rigid front fork and their own 2¾hp single cylinder engine with side mechanical exhaust valve and automatic inlet valve. The L-shaped tank had internal compartments, with one serving as a fuel tank, another containing the surface carburettor and yet another containing the battery (accumulator) and trembler coil, which was triggered by a rightside make and break (ignition points), the cover of which is visible in the accompanying images. Initially, a small dripper – which needed replenishing at
intervals – served to lubricate the engine, but soon an oil tank with hand syringe-like pump was fitted to the tank; initially, this was fixed under the tank’s foot (as per The Bridge image) and later was incorporated into the L-shaped tank box structure.
That The Bridge motorcycle is a 1903 Rex 2¾hp is in no doubt to my mind, but how did this conflict come about? The Bridge Cycle Co. may have become an agent for Rex and applied their signwritten brand to the tank for their own promotion purposes, or the Chelsea cycle maker may have bought machines in kit form from Rex – although
Rex weren’t well-known for trading in this way – or, the most likely, is the Bridge Cycle Co. designed and developed a motorcycle passenger trailer and united it with a Rex, with their brand applied for promotional publicity.
Sometimes known as ‘trailing cars,’ the passenger trailer was a short-lived device designed for towing behind solo motorcycles, or even cycles, if lightweight enough. One must pity the passenger who would have enjoyed/endured the road dirt and dung thrown up by the motorcycle’s wheels, oil spray, exhaust smoke and a jolting ride, though it was, probably, better than being left behind. A number of motorcycle makers – such as Coventry Eagle – or tricar builders (including Phoenix) offered these in the c1902-06 period, while cycle makers, including The Bridge Cycle
Co. and The Encore Cycle and Motor Co. of East Dulwich Road, London, who offered the Trexo Trailer, built them from scratch or from kits, and some firms (exampled by Mills and Fulford, Coventry) built ‘trailing cars’ before and then alongside their sidecar manufacture – later, they dropped passenger trailers.
Five years ago, my son Peter bought a totally dismantled
1922 842cc LMC V-twin, which came in boxes with an equally dismantled Humber. I assembled the LMC into a running motorcycle for minimal cost. As many give rebuild expense as an excuse for not restoring vintage machines from kits, we set a target of under £100. In the event it was running and able to chug up the road for £60, but then I blew another £60 on an oil dripper to attach to the hand oil pump after modification, a nice luxury rather than essential. It’s true I cheated at every opportunity, utilising parts from our spares stock – the silencer is held together largely by faith and its ‘new’ Japanese-made 26x3in beaded edge tyres were unused but in truth horrid flimsy things fit for nothing faster than a rickshaw. We gained them as protective packing for a small shipment from the other side of our globe.
Although the LMC (Lloyd Motor Engineering Co. Ltd., 132 Monument Road, Birmingham) was registered and the tyres would even have satisfied then current MoT test requirements, we didn’t fancy riding the bike far. After a winter’s storage, the tyre walls were heavily cracked despite tyre inflation being maintained. New tyres were required, and here Peter’s problems started – the front (Druid) forks of the LMC will accept a tyre of no more than 3¼ inches (82.5mm), and the rear forks aren’t much wider.
Knowing width would be a problem with brands priced at under £200 on the market, we measured inflated examples on friends’ machines – they all measured 3¼ inches or more across the balloon. Solutions included fitting very old period tyres or biting the bullet to spend more than £300 per cover for brands which may or would fit. With tubes, this would have moved the cost for two tyres up to almost £700.
Days ago, our friend Nick Smith recommended Peter try the newly developed Blockley 26x3in beaded edge tyre available from The Blockley
Tyre Co, Moreton-in-Marsh, GL56 9RF, 01386 701717, www. blockleytyre.com or email info@blockleytyre.com
The firm was founded to develop and make safe tyres for high-performance classic cars, for which it has earned a good reputation for quality. Knowing the current problems with 26x3 inch tyres, learning of Blockley’s good reputation among car enthusiasts, the Vintage Motor Cycle Club approached the firm to enquire if it would develop a decent quality, true-to-size 26x3 inch tyre to suit many larger and/or powerful later veteran and vintage machines.
As pennies aren’t to be wasted, Peter ordered one tyre, on a suck-it-and-see basis, at a cost of £120 plus VAT. It arrived the following day. Immediately, we were struck by its weight – certainly no flimsy job. The accompanying photos tell the story of ‘what happened next.’