Motorbikes

I loved the SFC twin. Built like a tank. 5 bearings on the crank and four of them rollers. Handled well, too.

That’s a great memory :motorcycle:

OK, here is one of me a few years back with my 1938 BSA M20 combi. Sporting her 500cc single cylinder side valve engine. Re-assembled with new paintwork and Very nice chrome work by a local firm in Stowmarket, Suffolk. The combination frame rake was set, but the chair was still in the shed with paint drying and waiting for upholstery panels to comeback. In this picture, I’m about to go for a spin up the A14 (A45 then). I strapped some bags of sand on the chair frame so I didn’t tip her over on the famously hairy, Haughley bends. I think I had her up to a breakneck speed of 54MPH . . . Happy Daze.

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very waspy !

Happy days. Was the bsa 500 the gold star?

Like the front fork arrangement

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Its an M20 with a 500cc single They also made an M21 with a 600cc engine. Both single cylinder. It was originally painted with khaki green, so this is my own colour scheme I am afraid. Not very fast but could pull trees down!

Yes, they’re called ‘Girder-forks’. The arrangement was common for motorcycles of this period. The front suspension (if you could call it that) was system of articulated tubular bars with one giant spring running down the middle of the forks with a damper screw, so the rider could adjust the ‘comfort’ for rough roads. I would imagine most riders during WW2 would have no teeth left after banging around on these all day.

It’s a lovely day here so appreciated riding one of mine (a little Honda CRF250L perfect for negotiating my way around the jammed city centre.)

Makes all those days of getting soaked (I’d rather get cold and wet than sit in a stationary car in Bath’s traffic) fade away in my memory…

I don’t really care much what I’m riding, any motorbike makes me feel good. It briefly transports me back to when I was in my teens and twenties

My father was not a fan of telescopic forks. He patented this idea - building at least one instance which he fitted to his bike.

He tested it with a light on the bar end and one on the axle - riding over a series of 2x2 beams the axle light moved, as you would expect, in a path up and down while the light on the handlebars described a straight line. Which was the goal.

If anyone would like to look further into this I can upload the rest of the patent.

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If there is one bike I regret selling, this is it. Girling rear shocks and steering damper sorted the 100+ MPH tank slapping if the front end became unloaded. Otherwise it handled a lot better than legend would have you believe. It’s the sound of it I miss most - a deep howl below the 6000 - 8000 RPM power band, and then an unearthly scream when the world started to go backwards.

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I had a similar one- an H1A.

When I went to school a local hooligan tore up and down close to the schoolon an H1 when I was at an impressionable age, possibly inspiring me to get a bike and start a ‘habit’ that’s lasted me a lifetime.

Years passed and I had gone through a series of bikes and moved on to more modern stuff (GPZ600r I think). I got a small bonus and saw an H1 for sale locally, I bought it- it was in a bit of a visual state but I worked on it a little and kept it for a couple of years.

Eventually I realised I wasn’t going to find the time to restore it and put it on eBay.

I got contacted by someone who claimed it was ‘his bike’ from the 70s. He came to look at it… sure enough it was the ‘hooligan’ that had inspired me with the noise (and smell) of his bike all those years ago. I sold it to him (probably for too little, about what I paid for it and around 10% of what one would fetch now- this was 15-20 years ago).

He came back with it about a year later on a sunny summer day, it was immaculate back to its original colour and all the horrible bodges were fixed.

I don’t regret selling that bike (but wish I’d kept one of the other triples that passed through my hands).

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My friend’s son…

I previously showed a picture of my friend from Helsingborg,.when he sits on his Gold Wing.

This picture below is of his son,.he builds and paints his own bikes.
Gold Wings,.Harley’s and more,he is incredibly good and also builds to order for others.


• This is my friend’s son Kent,.on his own Gold Wing.


• The same bike as above,.Kent has built and painted it himself. The bike is called ‘Viking’.


• This bike has Kent also built and painted himself. It’s Kent’s girlfriend on the bike.


• And here’s Kent’s girlfriend on ‘Raptor’,.a bike that Kent has also built.

/Peder🙂

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Ha! Yep - nowadays you could almost name your price for a 500 or 750 in good original condition. It’s why I’ll not sell the 250 Aprilia as good original Mk1s are now fetching more than their price new.

Here’s all I have left of my H1 days … a pukka factory H series workshop manual, which may itself be worth a few quid now. As can be seen it’s a well thumbed one, not because my 500 was much trouble, more due to fellow H series ‘hooligans’ who would borrow it or get me to service or repair their machines.

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Yep, remember the green meanies well.
Absolutely terrifying power, and the famous handling that thinks it has a hinge in the middle of he frame.
I remember someone buying one and it wasn’t performing so stripped it to find the middle cylinder was fitted with a tennis ball rather than a piston

The middle cylinder was a weak spot in what was otherwise a surprisingly reliable engine - especially given the average 500 pilot had more than a trace of kamikaze in him. The 750 wasn’t called the widow maker for nothing, and some of the wilder ones even imported Denco go-faster kits for them. Looking back now it was of course insane behaviour, but I can’t talk as I went on to similarly insanity by fitting a lorry turbocharger to a Honda 750.

Anyway, the fix for the dreaded Kawasaki triple centre cylinder seizure syndrome was simply to increase the carburettor main jet by 2 sizes, so it would run richer and therefore cooler.

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but I can’t talk as I went on to similarly insanity by fitting a lorry turbocharger to a Honda 750.
WTF
Ur now known as madman tibbs

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LMAO … Peder, in the second pic is that a bottle of champagne in a compartment in the fairing ?

That kind of ‘bike’ is the polar opposite of anything I would be remotely interested in, but I can fully appreciate the time and skill involved in customisations like that.

Pimp My Ride!

Here you are, taken in 1995. Just arrived to take part in an international Art Symposium, at Šternberk monastery, Czech Republic

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