But cheap Greasy meals Are Hardly A Home On The Range

BIG BRITISH BIKES OF THE 50s & 60s
“Spiritual dry rot? Nah
mate, don’t get a lot of that
round ’ere.”
Jenny Wittich on lowered
Triumph-engined special.
16
as dandified and effeminate as their Brylcreemed
pompadour coiffes, and as menacing, like the high
jackboots and silver-studded black jackets with their
unpleasant echoes of Wehrmacht tank crews and the
Waffen SS – so that was a double result in the boys’
age-old struggle to differentiate themselves from their
fathers. As with D.H. Lawrence, post-war intellectuals
like Richard Hoggart disapproved in a different way,
writing in 1957 that “the jukebox boys” had “spiritual
dry-rot”. There may have been a post-war vacuum
morally – Sillitoe’s Arthur Seaton says “What I’m out
for is a good time – all the rest is propaganda” – but
getting away from the judgemental gaze of parents
and neighbours was one big reason to go to the caffs.
CHAPTER 1: THE ROCKER ROAD
As with the music, the evolution of the Rockers’
weapons of choice, mostly large-capacity parallel
twins, was decisively affected by influences from the
other side of the Atlantic, and nowhere more so than
at Triumph. Their boss Edward Turner was an instinctively skilled predictor of market trends; he didn’t
always get it right, but he frequently went against the
British motorcycle industry’s institutionalised ideas,
and headed its most successful company. Even before
the war he had seen the potential for his trend-setting
Speed Twin and Tiger 100 machines in the USA, a
place he liked. Paradoxically, at home he aimed to
produce motorcycles with the opposite qualities to the
ones prized by young Americans: bikes that were
quiet, smooth and with consciously graceful, almost
delicate styling. Also, unlike Matchless and Norton,
Turner at Triumph, despite having raced himself in
the Twenties, firmly discouraged factory-backed
racing as unprofitable.
Further, to tap into the mass commuter market, he
aimed to produce “Everyman” machines, light, low
and, like scooters, featuring as much panelling as
possible, which could be finished in bright, often twotone colours and which aimed to protect the rider
from road dirt and to be easy to clean. This was
progressive thinking but it largely fell flat, particularly
in America. (He also designed a couple of actual
scooters, but one was a heavyweight only released for
1958 after that trend had peaked, and the other an
automatic anticipating today’s twist’n’go, but undergunned at 100cc, bedevilled with teething problems,
and again, in 1961, too late against the Japanese.)
The Americans had other ideas. Since massproduced cheap automobiles had long ago undercut
motorcycle prices, and the vast distances and Interstate freeway network made travel virtually the
preserve of four wheels and more, so motorcycles
became all about leisure and sport. Triumph’s US
distributors saw their sales benefit from winning on
the dirt-track ovals, in enduros and latterly on tarmac,
and with higher-octane gasoline available and cheap,
they designed and produced sporting and tuning
goodies for the British twins. Turner himself at least
bowed to American demands for more powerful roadsters; having built the first commercially successful
500cc parallel twin, for 1949 he deftly expanded it
into the first 650. BSA had caught wind of this and
did likewise, and the other manufacturers eventually
followed suit.
There was direct American influence when the
men from Triumph’s East and West Coast distributors’
development departments visited Meriden, where
they surreptitiously passed hot pistons, camshafts and
valve springs to Henry Vale of Triumph UK’s tiny
“But cheap greasy meals
Are hardly a
home on the range”
Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy,
Elton John
Competition Department, which was mostly
concerned with scramblers and with twins for the
ISDT. The result began to appear on the sports roadster twins, the 500cc Tiger 100 and 650 Tiger 110,
from 1954, when they also first adopted a swingingarm frame. The effect on the café scene was
immediate. “Up to around 1954 to ’55,” said Bob
Innes, Ace regular and builder of Triumph-engined
racing specials, “in the flying jacket era, not black
leather, the majority of fast bikes had been retired
racers – AJS 7Rs, Mk VIII cammy Velos, single cam
Manx Nortons,” (all singles, and he could have
included pre-war Ariel Red Hunters tuned to run on
methanol, and post-war Douglas sports twins like the
90 Plus). “Then the Triumph started becoming the
thing. They were reasonably cheap, you could get the
spares, and they could be tuned – and they certainly
had the mystique. Triumphs were the most popular.”
The other manufacturers, as you will read, caught up,
sooner or later, but their products were less numerous,
and both their machines and the tuning parts were
more expensive. For Rockers, despite their drawbacks,
Triumphs ruled.
The café racer scene, like real rock‘n'roll, was quite
defined in its time period, and divided by the moment
at the beginning of 1961 when the media spotlight
focussed on the Rockers, first via an episode of Dixon
of Dock Green with scenes filmed on location at the
Ace and featuring record racing (Bob Innes: “In all the
years I was going down the Ace, from before ’52 till it
closed in ’69, I never ever saw that, a record race.”) A
few weeks later, the Daily Mirror hit its 14 million
readers with the “SUICIDE CLUB!” edition, the 6page cover story written by now-legendary
campaigning Left journalist John Pilger. Its central
motif was the ever-increasing casualty figure among
two-wheelers. In 1959, 1680 riders had been killed
and 128,614 injured. This had represented half of that
year’s road casualties, when only a fifth of vehicles had
been two-wheeled. And an alarming proportion of the
dead or injured riders had been youngsters.
Excited by the prospect of being bona fide Menaces
To Society, leather boys flocked to the Ace and, by
jeering and throwing things at passing motorists and
the police, drew the first full-on raid at the café the
night after the Mirror story appeared, with 20
arrested. From then on the police were more proactive on the local roads, and later in 1961 Parliament
passed the Hughes-Hallett Act, limiting Learner riders
to machines of 250cc or less.
Previously at the Ace, in an instinctively British
hierarchical arrangement, the hard core of the fastest
riders had sat at the two tables closest to the entrance,
with their bikes parked nearest the door outside. That
was lads like “Noddy” Barry Chase, the King of the
Ace, and skilled specials builder Ron Wittich, who
went on to ride production racers for Gus Kuhn, and
would die on the track in 1972. They were nightly
regulars, not just weekenders or drop-ins on Thursday,
the big night when Wembley Stadium a mile away
hosted Speedway, with crowds of up to 85,000 (it was
then the second biggest spectator sport in England).
Duckworth’s book quotes from a 1963 article in a
student magazine by Alan Hendry (600 Norton,
Triumph Bonneville), a regular Ace visitor who noted
that “most [of the fastest riders] had been engineering
February 1961
Daily Mirror shockhorror story led to
crack-down on speeding
Rockers and the Ace.
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BIG BRITISH BIKES OF THE 50s & 60s
CHAPTER 3: SINGLES: BSA GOLD STAR DBD 34 AND VELOCETTE VENOM
test of a ZB32, in both touring and Clubmans TT
trim, recorded top speeds respectively of 78mph
(5mph faster than a B31, and with better acceleration)
and 90-plus for the Clubmans on open pipes, though
it was noted that with the use of racing cams there was
a loss of all power below 4000 rpm – in other words it
was not suitable for road use.
If there was one word which summed up the Gold
Star, it was versatility. From the first, many engine and
trim options were offered, in pursuit of the ideal of a
machine which could be used daily, then ridden to
events at weekends, and with minimal work converted
into a competitive mount. There were different sets of
internal gearbox ratios to choose from, standard,
scrambles and racing, plus a range of engine, gearbox
and clutch sprockets. Several compression ratios were
offered: 6.5:1 for touring and trials, 7.5:1 for racing
on 75 octane Pool fuel, 8.0:1 for Clubmans and
scramblers, with 8.8:1 for the latter using a 50/50
Benzol/petrol mix, and 9.0:1 or 13:1 for racing, the
latter on methanol. There was a range of camshafts,
and it was relatively easy to change them without
having to dismantle the engine, as they rotated on
fixed posts pressed into the crankcase, unlike the prewar keyed type. And to alter the valve timing, access
to the distinctive timing case was simple.
Gold Stars were always something special, and one
thing that made them so was the price! A ZB32GS
cost £211 for 1949 – with a speedo a fiver extra! –
One of the best drum brakes,
BSA’s single-sided 8-inch
single leading shoe, preferred
by many over the 190mm
alternative.
48
supported Clubmans TT riders and scramblers; the
clue would be their bronze welding.)
In trials, among much other success, Nicholson
won the Scott Trial and in 1951 John Draper took the
Scottish Six Days. The ZB34GS 500s meanwhile had
been added for 1950, with the 350’s 71 x 88mm
dimensions bored out to 85 x 88mm, and the drive
side inner roller main bearing increased in size.
Already 500s had been supplied to the Army and BSA
teams for the 1949 ISDT, and proved their robustness
by taking 10 Golds.
This set the pattern, with the production 350
generally a year ahead of the 500 in engine development, until 1954/55 when the spotlight would fall
firmly on the larger machines. A 1949 Motor Cycling
Goldie wrote the book for
clip-ons. With twin clocks,
this was the café look – from
a factory, for once.
when a 350 Ariel Red Hunter was £147. By 1952 the
ZB32GS cost £242, where a B31 roadster was £167.
By 1960 the DBD34 500 Clubmans cost £307 11s,
against Triumph’s T120 650 Bonneville at £284 13s.
PATIENT DEVELOPMENT
What you were paying for began with the fact that
Gold Stars in the early Fifties were individually assembled from selected parts, with one or two mechanics
building each machine. After 1952, demand meant
that Goldies were assembled on the regular production line – and according to the talented but
independent-minded development engineer Roland
Pike, many then had to be completely rebuilt! BSA at
that time still made their own pistons, and Gold Star
ones were manufactured to a high standard, the skirt
machined with an industrial diamond giving a mirrorlike finish, and the crown turned to a high finish and
then polished. The flywheels were soon of a different
shape to the B31/B33, and also polished, as were the
crankcase, the ports and the con rod. Every Gold Star
engine was dynamometer-tested for power, and a
Certificate of Performance, showing bhp and torque,
was presented to the owner.
Beneath all this was Val Page’s strong, reliable
engine design, benefitting from his prior experience
working on Ariel and Triumph singles. The built-up
crankshaft turned on main bearings consisting of drive
side ball-race outer plus an inner roller, and a timing
side roller. The crankcase was further stiffened with
the addition of internal ribs, and a wider external rib
around the periphery of the case, linking all the bosses
securing the case to the frame. The 3-piece crankshaft
with its initially 8-inch pressed-on flywheel could
prove the Achilles heel for later super-tuned 500
racers, but was rarely a problem on the road. Four
Gold Star was a bike you
really could ride to events,
slap on race plates and foam
rubber for ‘chinning it’, and
ride competitively..
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BIG BRITISH BIKES OF THE 50s & 60s
CHAPTER 7: NORTON DOMINATOR 650SS
power and top speed. The only reason to build a
Triton now, apart from the fun of it, was because not
enough of the 650SS were made, and they cost 10%
more than the Triumph. Mick Gower, a 650 Triton
rider from the enthusiasts' Salt Box café by Biggin
Hill, told Duckworth that he could never pass his
hard-riding mate’s 650SS.
Norton’s superiority in the handling department
was already well known. Now its overall supremacy
was hammered home with three years' successive wins
at Thruxton by “the Lawton Norton,” as famous in its
day as the Trident proddie racer Slippery Sam would
become ten years later.
1962 650SS, with
determined rider and
optional siamesed exhaust.
Appearances were not deceptive, either. Motor
Cycling journalist Bruce Main-Smith tested the new
machine very hard and thoroughly, with wet weather
ton-plus laps of MIRA, one-way runs of 119.5mph,
and road trips from one end of the M1 to the other
(the motorway terminated in the Midlands then) at a
steady 90mph. Offering 49bhp at 6800rpm, the new
kid on the block aced the 46bhp Bonnie on both
DOMINATION DEVELOPED
Behind every great bike there’s a great designer, and in
this case there were two – or to be fair, three. The
original Norton twin engine had been laid out,
starting in 1947, by the great Bert Hopwood. The
engine in 1952 was then put in roadsters with the
state-of-the-art Featherbed frame, fruit of the inventive genius of Ulsterman Rex McCandless, who with
his brother Cromie had developed his ideas from
swinging-arm conversions to a complete all-welded
chassis which they sold to Norton. Then at the end of
the Fifties the engine was transformed into a true
sportster by Hopwood’s colleague and collaborator,
development engineer Doug Hele.
The first 497cc Dominator motor had been
conceived very much with a view to avoiding
perceived weaknesses in the great original, Triumph’s
Speed Twin. Hopwood had worked with Edward
Turner at Ariel and Triumph, and was well aware of
the Triumph 500’s proneness to overheating, particularly at the cylinder head; its tendency to leak oil; and
the way its gear-driven twin camshafts condemned it,
in Hopwood’s view, to be “fundamentally a rattler”.
Hopwood’s own ideal had to be trimmed to
Norton’s limited facilities. The name might still be
famous for racing success, but the Bracebridge Street,
Birmingham factory was small, and its machinery, bar
that used exclusively for the works racers, was antiquated. Hopwood had wanted a one-piece crankshaft,
not the production three-piece type; a die-cast not a
sand-cast engine; and an alloy not an iron head. In
addition the design had to fit in the existing plungerframed cycle parts of the ES2 single.
Hopwood opted for a single chain-driven camshaft
located at the front of the engine. The pushrod
The Bert Hopwood-designed Norton 500 twin, here for
1954 in Model 7 form, with less expensive single downtube
swinging-arm frame, which from 1953 was produced
alongside the Featherbed.
128
Tops for handling already,
1962 650SS gave Norton the
speed to truly dominate.
tunnels were cast-in at the front of the cylinder block,
avoiding Triumph’s separate exterior pushrod tunnel
there, which obscured air-flow back over the engine as
well as famously leaking oil. There were air-spaces
between the Norton barrels, as well as transversely
between the bores and the tunnels. The iron cylinder
head continued the good cooling theme via excellent
air-flow over the splayed exhaust valves and wide-set
exhaust ports. Vertical finning around them encouraged cooling air to pass between the ports. The inlet
ports were closer together, but slightly offset to
promote induction swirl.
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BIG BRITISH BIKES OF THE 50s & 60s
CHAPTER 8: AJS/MATCHLESS MODEL 31CSR/G12CSR
CHAPTER 8:
AJS/MATCHLESS
MODEL 31CSR/G12CSR
“The secret with CSRs seemed to be putting them together properly. Another guy had one of the ’62 TT
Marshal’s Matchless twins, with all the speed equipment – but it never went well. One night though, it was
finally going really right, and he decided to do a run past Johnson's. But his overtrousers were bungied to the
back of his seat, and they’d flapped loose and got tangled in the rear wheel. It put him off on the A20 at over
a hundred. He was all right. But he was a bit sick about the bike.”
Former AMC worker Harry Winch
A symphony of polished alloy
(those mudguards) and
chrome, the ton-plus ’63 CSR
for a while was a force to be
reckoned with.
140
A
MC, with their core AJS and Matchless
marques made in East London at Plumstead, south of the Woolwich ferry, were by
1960 the oldest continuous British motorcycle
manufacturers. But they had lost their way, both
financially and in terms of the brand.
They had an impeccable sporting pedigree, which
should have appealed to the lads. One of the founder’s
sons, Charlie Collier, had won the singles class of the
first ever TT on a Matchless, and throughout the
Fifties the track ohc single 350 AJS 7R “Boy Racer”,
and later the 500 Matchless G50, were staples of
Clubman competition, even after works racing had
ceased in 1956. But these pure ohc racers cost over
£100 more than the top twins and Gold Stars, and
had little appeal for the café crowd. And little of the
racing glamour seemed to rub off onto their own
twin-cylinder roadsters in the Fifties, and despite a
racing version of the G9 500, the G45, being available
from 1952 to 1958, it never thrived.
The start of the group’s decline has generally been
pinpointed to the death of the last Collier brother,
Charlie, in 1954. The goodwill generated by the early
adoption of BMW-derived “Teledraulic” front forks
ahead of other British manufacturers, as found on the
wartime “Forces’ Favourite” Matchless G3L single,
would be dissipated by short-sighted leadership from
’54 on under Donald Heather. “For management it
was all about money,” said ex-AMC tester Harry
Winch. AJS and Matchless always appealed to an
older rider with their “Heavyweight” big singles, and
in the Fifties they developed by agonisingly tiny increments with minor, inexpensive changes each year, a
storeman’s and restorer’s nightmare, rather than with
any genuinely new direction aimed at the rising generation, other than the unsuccessful “Lightweight” (sic)
singles. The rather narrow Teledraulic forks limited
the tyre size, and the brakes remained an inadequate
7-inch single leading shoe front and rear to the end –
both issues where money could, and should, have
been spent.
Eventual efforts to appeal to the youth and the café
crowd would often be ill-judged and inappropriate –
the two-tone colour schemes for 1960, and the “kneeknocker” or “Flintstone Special” outsize metal tank
badges for 1962, the same year all models received
gratuitous names. The G12CSR became the
Monarch, while the AJS Model 31CSR was more
memorably the Hurricane (ten years before the name
would go on the factory-custom Triumph triple). No
one paid any attention.
None of it was wanted or needed for 650 machines
which had initially suffered a fundamental problem
when pushed hard – their crankshafts could break,
usually near the drive-side bobweight. There were also
problems with rapid camshaft wear, plus piston,
barrel, gudgeon pin and blowing head gasket trouble,
as well as harsh, tank-splitting vibration. But if the
standard 650 model looked much like just another
Triumph or BSA twin, elements of the CSR version’s
styling were appreciated by the leather boys, and
towards the finish of the pure AMC line, for ’62 and
Very, very British. This was
AJS/Matchless twins’ last year
in thoroughbred form.
141