For those who like old Motorcycles.

[polybear]

I get copies of Bike magazine every month (they come free with a savings account); the prices of modern new bikes scare the hell out of me, and are so complex that cleaning must be a real bitch.  As for fault finding - no hope on many things.

That three wheeled Yamaha Niken looks a real bundle of fun though.....

https://ridermagazine.com/2017/11/06/2019-yamaha-niken-leaning-trike-first-look-review/

 

[MrWolf]

What would put me off having one of those two wheels at the front scooters is the fact that Chris Evans had one for a start. 

 

As for the price of big bikes, yes it's ridiculous. Unfortunately in the UK the people who are buying seem to be age 50, good job, house paid off, kids grown up etc. The problem is that there is very little new blood coming in. What with the complications of getting a bike at 16/17 and the absolute garbage machinery that is available ( anyone who thinks otherwise should have a look behind my friends workshop, a mountain of broken down dross for which parts are either unavailable or cost more than the bike is worth ) l suspect that the motorcycle market will get smaller as teenagers will buy and run a car for less money and typical of most manufacturers, the price will go up to compensate. 

 

 

Edited November 28, 2020 by MrWolf
Stupid autocorrect

[rockershovel]

2 hours ago, MrWolf said:

 

That's one of those things that ticks my pet hate boxes. I suppose that the plugs from the cross drillings aren't removable. That would be too simple (and maintenance friendly) of course. Compressed air, long nylon brush bristle or fishing line.

 

Failing that, have you tried to see how far you can throw it? 

 

I’ve actually assembled on complete carb, which I think is good, from selected parts of three units. I’ll get around to fitting it, one fine day but for now the bike has a 38mm Mikuni. 

[TheSignalEngineer]

On 22/11/2020 at 13:12, rockershovel said:

The original Thruxton Bonneville was a 650cc twin built in small numbers for Production and Endurance Racing, in or about 1965. It won the Thruxton 500 Mile, hence the name (Velocette also used the Thruxton name, for similar reasons). 

Talking of Velocette, I used to live near to the site of their factory. I recently found this from 1933 showing bikes packed up and being loaded at Hall Green for transport to the 1933 TT. The van is a Python, the type regularly used for moving cars from the Singer factory at Tyseley a couple of miles away.

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrhg3881.htm

[MrWolf]

Oddly enough, only this morning, one of my sister's friends sent me a copy of this photo, asking if I knew what the bike is her great grandparents are sitting on. A Velocette GTP as it turns out.

 

 

[TheSignalEngineer]

23 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

Oddly enough, only this morning, one of my sister's friends sent me a copy of this photo, asking if I knew what the bike is her great grandparents are sitting on. A Velocette GTP as it turns out.

 

 

Smethwick registration plate.

Edited November 28, 2020 by TheSignalEngineer

[MrWolf]

Knew it was Birmingham area but not the district. Thanks, I will pass it on. I wasn't sure of the date but would say that the photo was mid 1930s

 

Any help on dating the machine from the registration number would be much appreciated.

 

I have to confess that I don't know much about Velos, not having had much to do with them. A friend has recently bought a Venom. The answer to the usual questions are:

Yes, he bought it from an old bloke.

Yes, it has been converted to electric start.

No, it doesn't work properly. 

 

 

Edited November 28, 2020 by MrWolf
SNAFU

[TheSignalEngineer]

17 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

Knew it was Birmingham area but not the district. Thanks, I will pass it on. I wasn't sure of the date but would say that the photo was mid 1930s

A lot of vehicles on the west side of Birmingham and the Dudley end of Worcestershire had HA plates as well as those in Smethwick itself. 

[rockershovel]

Somehow the sight of bikes which even then, would have  represented a considerable investment, being sent off unattended and packed in cardboard and string, pushed up a plank on their way to an event which represented the manufacturers’ principal advertising effort, speaks of a lost world... 

[rockershovel]

6 hours ago, MrWolf said:

Knew it was Birmingham area but not the district. Thanks, I will pass it on. I wasn't sure of the date but would say that the photo was mid 1930s

 

Any help on dating the machine from the registration number would be much appreciated.

 

I have to confess that I don't know much about Velos, not having had much to do with them. A friend has recently bought a Venom. The answer to the usual questions are:

Yes, he bought it from an old bloke.

Yes, it has been converted to electric start.

No, it doesn't work properly. 

 

 

 

That’s quite amazing https://www.alton-france.com/velocette-starter/    Mind you, on one level I’m not surprised. The iron engined Sportsters had an infamous reputation for being hard to start, combined with a weak kickstart ratchet notorious for skipping without warning and the conversion to electric start cured  that problem immediately. 

[Beechnut]

8 hours ago, MrWolf said:

Knew it was Birmingham area but not the district. Thanks, I will pass it on. I wasn't sure of the date but would say that the photo was mid 1930s

 

Any help on dating the machine from the registration number would be much appreciated.

 

 

 

 

The registration was issued May 1935.

 

Brendan

Edited November 29, 2020 by Beechnut
Qualify info given.

[MrWolf]

Thanks very much @Beechnut she will be really pleased to hear that.

[TheSignalEngineer]

Here's an old picture of my great aunt on a bike which was according to my mother owned by one of her boyfriekds. She thought it was taken about 1938/9. I think the bike may be an Ariel Red Hunter and I am looking to get a few more details for the album. It looks as if it has twin exhausts but I thought these were single cylinder so possibly twin ports? Any help welcome.

 

[rockershovel]

Ariel Red Hunters were a range of 250cc, 350cc and 500cc singles produced from the 1930s onwards. The twin-Port Head was a styling feature which was an optional extra, like the high-level “sporting” exhaust. They were a popular machine with a reputation for good finish and performance. 

 

The twin-Port styling died out after WW2, having no real performance advantage. Mostly they were dropped as manufacturers moved to swinging-arm suspension, although Panther persevered with them on the big “slopers” to the very end. 

[Beechnut]

I think you’re right about the bike and the reg is a March 1937 Birmingham issue.

 

Brendan

[MrWolf]

One of the most desirable Red Hunters there. They were still popular as a quick bike 20 years later. A friend of my father's had one c1957, like my scruffy little MTX80 thirty five years later, it must have been a good bike as it too got stolen twice. 

I think that maybe other than the Panthers, my Royal Enfield J2 must be one of the last of the twin ports. Registered 1952 but built 1951 IIRC.

[rockershovel]

4 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

One of the most desirable Red Hunters there. They were still popular as a quick bike 20 years later. A friend of my father's had one c1957, like my scruffy little MTX80 thirty five years later, it must have been a good bike as it too got stolen twice. 

I think that maybe other than the Panthers, my Royal Enfield J2 must be one of the last of the twin ports. Registered 1952 but built 1951 IIRC.

 

I think that any manufacturer who could pull in a WD order for ohv machines, dropped twin ports on cost grounds immediately (if they hadn’t already done so) and never reintroduced them. BSA had already discontinued them on the Empire Star models, new in the late 1930s. I don’t know of any manufacturer that produced a twin-port alloy head motor. 

[rockershovel]

Here’s something I’d never noticed... a continuity error, really... look at Dennis Hopper’s bike....

 

 

 

[spikey]

23 hours ago, polybear said:

That three wheeled Yamaha Niken looks a real bundle of fun though.....

https://ridermagazine.com/2017/11/06/2019-yamaha-niken-leaning-trike-first-look-review/

 

Ye gods.  OK ...I have to ask.  Can some kind soul please enlighten me about "an assist-and-slipper clutch and a quickshifter that allows clutchless upshifts".  Basically, WTF to the first and how's that work then to the second?

[Gibbo675]

6 minutes ago, spikey said:

 

Ye gods.  OK ...I have to ask.  Can some kind soul please enlighten me about "an assist-and-slipper clutch and a quickshifter that allows clutchless upshifts".  Basically, WTF to the first and how's that work then to the second?

Hi Spikey,

 

Here are my explanations for your enquiry:

1. A slipper clutch is for those that can't control a clutch lever with their left hand without the rear tyre breaking away on downshifts when tipping in for corners.
2. A quick shifter is for those that can't control a throttle twist grip in balancing the engine revs to the gearbox so as to alleviate the necessity of using the clutch on up shifts without smashing the dogs off the gears.

Basically they make totally unskilled riders look good in much the same way belt sanders help knee sliders look as though they have actually met with tarmac on corners.

 

Gibbo.

[rockershovel]

15 minutes ago, spikey said:

 

Ye gods.  OK ...I have to ask.  Can some kind soul please enlighten me about "an assist-and-slipper clutch and a quickshifter that allows clutchless upshifts".  Basically, WTF to the first and how's that work then to the second?

 

That’s seriously weird. 

 

“Assist and slipper” clutches are increasingly common, basically they have ramps formed in the basket so that if you do something stupid, it has limited automatic slip ... ABS for clutches, you might say. 

 

Triumphs (Meriden ones) used to have a cam in the selector mechanism, so moving the gearpedal momentarily released the clutch.. known as the “slickshift”, it never worked as intended. Some Citroen’s have, or had them. I’d assume it’s something of that nature. 

 

Like a lot of features of that sort, few riders would ever approach the sort of envelope where you would need them, and those who do, don’t keep their licences for long. 

Edited November 29, 2020 by rockershovel

[New Haven Neil]

Nothing new - CZs and Honda C90 type step-thrus also have clutches that disengage via the gear lever.

 

I can go up and down the box on my BMW without the clutch or breaking anything - as stated above, by Gibbo, if you can ride.....

[spikey]

BOF I may well be, but I just don't get all this "mode" stuff and whatnot on modern bikes.  OK, ABS I can see being well handy at times because however experienced you are, a patch of diesel on a wet bend at night can have anyone proceeding sideways up/off the road and it might just keep you on board.  But all the rest of it I really don't get.

 

I was actually nattering to a police biker a couple of months ago about this very thing, my feeling being that if you give the punters all this stuff to save them from themselves, surely it only encourages 'em to wring the bike's neck at every opportunity in the belief that the systems will save their asses.

 

He reckoned that among traffic police in general and police bikers in particular, it's about a 50:50 split on whether a lot of the technology is a Good Thing from the pov of keeping bikers out of hospitals.

 

This opinion brought to you by spikey, who famously got three "firsts" in his very first production race at Cadwell Park one fine Sunday in 1965 - first off the line, first into the first bend, and first on his ar$e ...

[TheSignalEngineer]

Wandering back to Hall Green, before the factory in Cateswell Road next to the goods yard was bought by the makers of the Velocette it was previously owned by a partnership Humphries and Dawes who made cycles and motorcycles under the OK brand name. Factory Messenger Walter Handley set the fastest lap at the first Lightweight TT race in 1922.

 

This picture of their products appeared in the GWR Magazine in 1925.

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrhg1786.htm

 

Shortly after the picture  the partnership split up with Charles F Dawes forming Dawes Cycles and Ernie Humphries forming OK-Supreme to build motorcycles mostly using JAP engines. The bike was good enough to win the Lightweight event at the 1928 TT using a modified JAP engine. OK bikes also finished 4th, 5th and 6th that year.

Production ceased around the start of WW2

[MrWolf]

An OK Supreme was one of the obscure motorcycles that my grandfather (b1904) owned. One of the now desirable 250 OHC models from the early thirties, nicknamed the Lighthouse. He apparently also had amongst many a BSA, a 20s Douglas, Levis, Ivory Calthorpe and a 1926 RadCo that he got off the heap behind the village garage. Latterly he had one of the last 500 ohv Sunbeams built before the war and a 500 Rudge sports that he ran well into the 1960s. Unfortunately I don't know if any of them have survived. 

Likewise my father's first bike, a 250 New Imperial registered JF 8981, last seen around Leicester area 1959/60.

 

 

Edited November 29, 2020 by MrWolf
Stupid autocorrect