Ariel were one of the more innovative British companies, coming up with such delights as the Square Four and, of course, the Leader. They also made singles and twins but they were always in the shadow of the then big three, Norton, Triumph and BSA. The radical Leader was brought to market in 1958, the year of my birth, a fact celebrated by the old man with purchase of one of the first Leaders to reach the showroom. He kept it for ten years and I had some fond memories of cleaning its bodywork and being taken for ever so brief rides.
I'd seen one around the town a couple of times. A terrible shade of lime green, that I assumed wasn't original. I saw it coughing asthmatically up the road with an RD style smokescreen. The ancient owner wore a trench coat and pudding basin helmet; it seemed a pretty strange way to relive one's youth.
A year ago I saw an advert in the paper. It had to be him. There couldn't be two Ariel Leaders in our town. He only wanted £450, so I thought I might as well take a look. The old guy reckoned he'd owned the Ariel for 20 years and had two crates full of bits that were part of the deal. He'd retired and didn't need to commute any more. He wanted an easy life in his garden not mucking about with the Ariel.
The bike was in reasonable nick, started quickly, ran nicely around the block and didn't make any strange noises. I agreed to buy the bike, gave him a £50 deposit with the promise to come back the next day with the rest of the dosh. As I was leaving, some cunt in a Roller turned up. He was most aggrieved when he learnt I'd bought the bike, tried to bully the old guy into accepting a larger offer but we saw him off.
A friend with a removal van agreed to pick up the bike and the crates, which turned out to be huge, taking the three of us to manoeuvre them into the van. Back home we pushed the crates off the back of the van, causing them to explode into splintered wood as they bounced on to the road. It was a long walk to my garage, no way we could shift the whole mass of the crates. It was much easier to carry the Ariel bits.
I seemed to have enough parts to make about three Ariels. There were even a couple of crankshafts, still wrapped in greasy paper. Not everything was in such good shape, two white-walled tyres had perished, fell apart as we bounced them down the road. Petrol tanks, mudguards, seats, exhausts, body panels, forks but no frames or wheels. I decided I'd sell most of it off, just keep the engine parts as they might come in handy. Over six months I picked up £750, as some of the bits I'd acquired were very rare. It was a pretty good crack.
The Leader is a very weird motorcycle to look at. In the design of its bodywork practicality won over style. The engine was totally enclosed, little could be seen of the back wheel and the huge front mudguard looked like it'd been pinched off a vintage Harley. The trailing link forks looked incredibly ugly.
The Ariel looks like it should weigh 600lbs but the reality is a mere 360lbs, which shows the cleverness of its design. A lot of that lack of mass is down to a compact 250cc two stroke twin, featuring a single carb, coil ignition and a four speed gearbox.
I went over the chassis looking for signs of looseness but in line with the new MOT certificate there was no discernible movement. The suspension felt on the soft side but on my initial excursions she tracked accurately. The front forks rattled over potholes and made the SLS front brake feel rather remote and wooden. Not that there was an excess of braking power, pathetic by the standards of a modern 125.
The four speed gearbox was the one weak spot in an engine that was, after all, 35 years old. It needed a hefty foot action and would often fly past the required ratio into a false neutral. There was also some jumping out of gear, especially when the bike was revved out. At 70mph in top gear the gearbox could suddenly leap into neutral, sending the revs soaring; just as well there weren't any valves to tangle. Revving the engine hard produced some grinding vibes, all the bodywork thrumming away and my feet doing a frenzied shuffle on the pegs. It was doubtless a quick way to ruin the engine and backing off to 60mph was much more relaxed.
Once into top gear it was very smooth running between 15 and 60mph, helped by the well oiled, fully enclosed chain. However, using the engine mildly around town would cause a very dense cloud of smoke. After about a quarter of an hour of this abuse, the motor would start cutting out as the plugs began to foul up. Usually, I could whip down the box and play on the throttle. The spark plugs would clear as a heavy dose of pollutants spewed out of the exhausts. Sometimes even abuse of the throttle wouldn't clear the engine. It'd cough, cough, cough and then finally fail. The only way to get the motor going was by taking off the bodywork and fitting new spark plugs. Not a five minute job.
As the clogging up could happen every day it soon became a bit tiresome. I had to run along in second gear, using the throttle to keep the engine higher up the rev band. This was at odds with the mild nature of the bike and its great age. To be absolutely honest, a C90 would've been faster, easier to ride and much cheaper to run as the Leader was turning in a pathetic 40mpg.
But I could be a stubborn bugger, having bought the bike I was determined to get some use out of it. I found some new brake shoes amongst the parts and fitted them at each end. These old drums were marginal when new, so it was important to keep them in good shape. The first fifty miles with the new shoes was frightening as the glaze had to be worn off before they worked. Even when bedded in there was a long delay until they started to take off the bike's momentum.
The Leader was quite manoeuvrable, several times I had to swing it around cars when I was unable to pull up in time. The legshields gave me a feeling of security as my kneecaps were no longer hanging out in the wind. The protection from the rain and cold was a revelation after most Japanese bikes which seem to have mudguards and fairings designed to direct water on to the rider at town speeds.
I didn't ride the Ariel over the winter. I took my car to work, the auto actually had better fuel economy but took about five times as long to make its path through the clogged traffic. Despite the weather protection the coldness seeped into my bones and I was frozen solid by the time I got to work on the bike; it just wasn't worth the effort. The rather remote ride also meant that iced up roads were a major hassle with the Avon tyres sliding away without the slightest warning.
No, the Ariel was much happier in the garage where I decided it was time to do something about the lime green paint. As I had some tins of black paint and an electric spray gun things took their natural course. I decided to take everything off the chassis and make a proper job of it. That was how I found that there was a lot of rust around the back section of the frame. I knocked the metal out with my screwdriver. The frame was a steel pressing with the fuel tank hidden within it beams. I used my welding tackle and some steel sheet to repair the rusted out hole. Luckily it wasn't on one of the structural parts of the frame, so I felt fairly happy about the repair. The bike was painted in deep black all over with just a slight hint of pinstriping. It was a major improvement over the lime green and I could pretend that it was a new bike.
I also whipped the heads and cylinders off as I had some new spares I could fit, effectively putting a brand new top end on the engine. The old bore and pistons looked well worn out, explaining, I hoped, the excess of smoke. Lubrication was a fairly basic 25:1 petrol/oil mixture with separate oil in the chaincase and gearbox.
Once the weather warmed up a bit the venerable stroker was pulled out of the garage and kicked into life. If anything, the smokescreen was even more dense than before. Obviously needed the bores bedding in, I thought. I took it easy for a couple of weeks then turned up the wick. One time I was revving the engine in front of the house when two fire engines came screaming down the road. I looked up, saw a huge cloud of dense smoke billowing up into the sky. The firemen reckoned I could be prosecuted for wasting their time but I heard no more about it.
The engine obviously needed some harder use to bed in the rings. A five mile blast down my favourite roads didn't help one bit. Fuel was being swallowed at the rate of 30mpg and the smokescreen followed me across the countryside. I decided that a 30:1 petroil mix would help but it made no discernible difference.
By the time I was halfway home the clouds of pollutants had become very embarrassing. There was a strange clanging noise from the engine which a little later revealed itself as the primary chain about to snap. We rolled to a halt when it finally went, about three miles from home. There seemed nothing for it but to push the Leader all the way home. I had become too attached to the machine to want to dump it in the nearest ditch. I was completely exhausted by the time the house was finally reached.
The primary chaincase was completely devoid of any oil. It dawned on me then that the smokescreen wasn't coming from the pistons but from a blown crankshaft seal. The period of storage in my garage had allowed the seal to dry out, resulting in rapid wear when I started up the engine. It could've been a disaster as I doubt if anyone is rebuilding Leader cranks, these days, but with the spares in my pile of parts there was just the problem of doing a complete engine strip.
I had an old manual to hand, the strip and rebuild went quite well but took about two weeks to complete as I had to make some gaskets. I soaked the crank and thus the seals in oil before I tried to start the engine. No point taking any chances, I only had one more spare crankshaft. The engine came into life after about ten kicks, spewed out a pile of oil then settled down to a regular tickover with just the slightest haze of smoke. Well, transmission apart, it had a practically new engine.
I carefully ran the bike in over the next 1000 miles. Maintenance on these engines is pretty minimal, just give the points a tweak every 500 miles and kick the tyres. Even though there were some heavy vibes at times nothing came undone or fell off, which in my experience is pretty amazing for a British bike.
Some hard use followed in the next four months as a new job meant some long distance commuting was in order. I bought myself a huge trench coat, pudding basin helmet and bright yellow waders just to get in sync with the nature of the Leader. The general populace looked upon me as if I was some kind of mental patient suddenly let loose on to the streets by a decaying NHS. Young children burst into tears at their first sight of me but I was quite happy with my lot in life. As strange as it might seem the siren song of the now well sorted Ariel had got to me.
God knows where I would've ended up if the motor, after a mere 5000 miles of abuse, hadn't decided it was time to intrude upon my rude happiness. Vibes went wild and the engine made terminal noises. The one thing I hadn't replaced were the gudgeon pins as there weren't any in the pile of spares. One had seized, the other was traumatized. I caught them before they had a chance to break up but the small-ends looked wrecked and one of the big-ends was loose. The pistons were also deeply worn around their skirts and the rings looked egg shape.
I ended up putting in the last crank and the old set of rings and pistons. A pair of gudgeon pins took a month to come from some mail order supplier who needed half a dozen phone calls to wake him up. Whilst I was waiting for the bits I spied a Royal Enfield 250 GT single for sale, at £500 it had to be a snip. I handed over the dosh and rode home. The Enfield was fast, flash and economical, miles better than the Leader. Once the Ariel was back in working order I sold it off for £1500, not in the least bit sad to see it go.
Using an old British bike as a daily means of transport in the nineties is a weird trip and not one I'd recommend if you don't have a vehicle as back up. Recently, it's been possible to buy bikes at a reasonable price, use 'em for a year and flog them off at a nice profit. The GT will go the same way next year. In the meantime I'll have rather a lot of fun!
Harry Taylor