'Hell boy, you don't look like much. You from that limey Classic Bike?'
'Er, Used Motorcycle Guide, actually.'
'Same thing, huh?'
'More or less.'
'You going to put my bike on the cover, son?'
'Anything's possible.'
'Now you're not going to thrash it are you? No more than 60mph, right?'
'No problem. I own a British bike myself, know how to treat them.'
'Because you break my bike, I'm going to break you. Right? It's like the love of my life, son.'
'Right.'
'Well, if you can start it you can have it for the afternoon.'
The way I recalled the drunken evening the night before the Yank had more or less demanded to be featured in the "UK's leading used bike magazine." Well, you know what drink does and the UMG ain't on sale in the States, so you can get away with murder.
The Ariel Square Four has a unique engine layout. Imagine two twins back to back, their cranks geared together. Not only do you get the narrowness of a twin but also better smoothness than a straight four. At least in theory, in practice the vagaries of British engineering mean there's a bit of lash in the gears which will give a very slight out of balance effect. Whatever, it's a damn sight smoother than my A10 or a Bonnie or even an Isolastic Commando.
Starting wasn't a problem. One hefty kick and she was chugging away happily. Nice sound, too, better than a straight four. This from one of the later, much improved versions of the motor, a 1956 job identified by its four pipe head. The early twin pipe head jobs had a determined tendency to overheat and even broke up the geared cranks!
The best solution to the overheating of the rear valves was done on the very rare Healey version by incorporating an oil cooler into the lubrication system. On the Mark 2 maximum power was a miserly (laughable for a 997cc four) 45 horses at a heady 5500rpm. Limited by both the poor induction routing for the single carb and worries about the motor exploding if high revs were ever employed.
It was almost immediately evident that the best way to ride the Ariel was by getting it into fourth gear as soon as possible. The excess of torque meant there was little need to play games on the gearbox. If there had been I would soon have taken a hammer to the engine. Either the gearbox or the driveline lash, or perhaps a combination of the two, caused terrible noises every time I hit on the gearchange lever and clutch. The latter was worthy of an ex-Commando owner and liable to render Jap owning wimps rather broken wristed!
The Ariel's a bit notorious for wrecking its primary drive and, indeed, its final drive chain. Definitely a bike in desperate need of a primary belt drive conversion. No doubt the plunger rear end had a lot to do with the way the chain needed constant adjustment - after a 200 mile blast it was left dragging along the ground. This invention of the devil was afflicted on many old Brit bikes before they had the sense to do the decent thing, fit a proper swinging arm.
The Square Four weighed in at 470lbs. Not heavy by today's standards but one of the heaviest buses on the road back in the fifties. Modern bikes get away with excess weight on the back of high tech if short-lived tyres. The Ariel was fitted with old Dunlops on its nineteen inch front and eighteen inch rear wheels. True, the bike had a much lower centre of gravity and better distribution of weight than modern fours, but this wasn't sufficient to hold it on line during speed testing in the Texan badlands. Basically desert, and if you fall off you've had it!
I didn't bother working the bike through its gears, just got her into fourth and wound the throttle open on this perfectly straight piece of road. Acceleration was never hard or heady in the way of a good Bonnie, but she slowly wound herself up. 90mph didn't require much effort. 100mph was a long time coming. Then each extra mph seemed to take a few seconds before it clicked up. 110mph on the clock and I gave up in disgust.
Disgusted, that is, by the way the bike had turned into a big piece of blancmange, defining the whole ethos of the machine, despite its excessive capacity and number of cylinders, as a big softy. By the time I was flat out, the two (wide) lanes of the road were taken up by the weaving, wallowing piece of shit motorcycle - just look at the frame to see what was wrong with it. Held together with cast lugs straight out of a pushbike foundry. I pulled over feeling like I ought to put a match in the petrol tank.
This feeling didn't go away when a loud tapping noise came from the back of the cylinder head. Oops! I turned the motor off, gave it a chance to lose some of heat that was boiling off the cases, not that much chance in the desert temperatures, though. After half an hour the oil had stopped bubbling in the tank and she started second kick. The noise had gone away.
Softly, softly, all the way back. It was a bit like a Harley without the vibration. Fat and soft, slothful was the best description, but also quite invigorating in the way you could sit in the saddle and play with the throttle between 30 and 70mph. Very relaxing if you're a bit brain dead and not far off your bus pass.
Cornering wasn't relaxing. A total lack of ground clearance allowed the exhaust to dig in on the mildest of bends. If there was a bump the suspension bottomed out, the crankcases threatening to dig a huge furrow in the tarmac. Bends weren't too common so I had no great trouble in avoiding returning the bike as a pile of bent bits.
My overall disenchantment with one of the most unique bikes in British history must've communicated itself to the machine because the seat suddenly went loose, almost throwing me off. I held on, stomped on the largely useless brakes and rolled her to the side of the road. A bracket had broken, probably down to my speed testing efforts and the vicious shaking the chassis had gone into at the ton-ten.
There was another stay holding on the rack which looked like it would fit. So I unfurled my toolkit (you didn't think I was mad enough to test a British bike without a back-pack full of essential items, did you?), took the bracket off and hammered it into shape. I took that moment to tighten up several nuts and bolts that had come undone and stuffed a rag where the oil tank cap had fallen off!
There wasn't much oil left in there, so the first gas station I came to I bunged in a litre of 20/50. Just as well because the tapping had started to come back. It went away once the fresh oil had a chance to circulate.
I found the bike quite tiring to ride. The suspension, though soft, let minor bumps rumble through the machine, whilst the bars were too high (Yank Easy Rider junk) to afford comfort for any speeds above 50mph. The lack of brakes was also a touch worrying with odd half mile long truck wallowing all over the road on occasion and myself forgetting which side of the road I was supposed to be riding.
I was pretty relieved to get back to the owner in one piece...
'Hell, boy, what the f**k you done to my beauty?'
'It's only a bit of road dust, mate, soon clean up.'
There followed a long list of expletives that don't bear repeating. I was forced to spend the next hour cleaning and polishing the bike to its previous mirror shine. It was lucky he had a spare bracket and oil tank cap, otherwise I would have been for it. God knows what would've happened if the motor had started tapping like it had after the speed test.
Don't think they'll ever give me a job on Classic Bike, though.
Johnny Malone