Ronnie was one of those old hippies (aren't we all?) who going on fifty still had hair halfway down his back and an air of not quite being all there. It was amazing that he'd survived at all, given the amount of substance abuse and the way he used to speed on Jap fours, but there you go - it's a strange old world. Ronnie had always seemed to be there, popping up in unlikely places with even more unlikely tales. We knew each other because we both liked British bikes...
When he had his head together and needed some dosh, he worked as a bike mechanic. When he told me he'd built up an Ariel 350 from scrap, I had every reason to believe it was probably going to be okay. Ronnie suffers from colour blindness, though, the purple and pink contraption that he wheeled out would have every Ariel enthusiast in the country frothing at the mouth.
This visual affront started up straight off with a merely languid kick. Ronnie's ideas of safe motorcycling include a straight through exhaust - a reminder of the time one blind cager had broken both his legs. If they didn't see him coming they couldn't ignore the sonic boom of the 350cc thumper - not if they wanted to keep on living. Ronnie had a thing about Viking helmets and extra large tyre irons, to keep the cagers in line.
He gave me the thumbs up as I knocked her into the first, the front brake held on to avoid the almost inevitable clutch drag and the possible indignity of a stalled motor. With all the exhaust racket there was no way we could hear each other speak.
The clutch went home with a squeal, the bike shot forward on the throttle and just to let Ronnie know I hadn't gone all square on the deal, I revved the motor until the valves floated. Some people will try and tell you that old British bikes don't vibrate - and it's maybe even true if you never use serious revs - but an old 350 gets going like a buzz-saw when used in anger.
It's then all a matter of what you can take. Fingers and feet go numb first, then vision becomes a little strained, then teeth start falling out and bits of motorcycle are spat off. On the Ariel all that seemed to happen at once, within the first few moments of caning the throttle to the stop. I thought maybe Ronnie was going senile, had forgotten the tenuous art of successfully rebuilding old British engines.
But then I backed off the throttle, hooked up to second, and gave my eardrums some relief by only taking the throttle halfway round. By contrast the engine felt sublimely smooth, although in reality it still thrummed away beneath my knees as if it was some turbocharged monster rather than having trouble knocking out more than 20 horses.
Ronnie had muttered something about a high compression piston and wild camshaft lobes, which knowing him meant he'd fitted stuff meant for an entirely different mill - a concoction of parts that worked miraculously well together given their disparate sourcing.
This was borne out when I finally attained top gear. From 50 to 90mph the bike catapulted forward like no standard Ariel 350 could ever hope to emulate. It was all blood and guts, of course, absolutely no finesse to the production of power. On the overrun the engine backfired with a staccato beat and loudness that would have battle-hardened veterans looking for the armoured division.
If acceleration was massive fun, finding a constant cruising speed was a different matter. The engine just wasn't happy at steady revs, hunting and surging at the same time. Whilst the thrill of acceleration submerged much of the maddening vibration, holding a constant velocity emphasized the primitive nature of the OHV thumper - and judging by the way the motor revved, the flywheel had been lightened, no doubt altering the balance factor to an extent that would've had the factory's designer gnawing his knuckles.
In days of yore, the only way that the vibration was subdued on thumpers and twins, was by careful matching of engine dynamics to chassis characteristics, and good old Ronnie had further complicated things by welding a hefty rear mudguard to a cut-down rear frame that would have the bosses at Harley screaming at their copyright lawyers. Ronnie's excuse was that anything not welded to the frame tended to fall off!
Suspension wasn't Ariel's finest, either. It was sixties Norton at the front, a fine set of rebuilt Roadholder forks that were more or less up to modern roads - they were a bit too lightly sprung for my tastes but then ganja (and god knows what else) had kept old Ronnie as thin as rake and he could probably have got away with something off a moped. Girling rear shocks, similarly, had probably been sourced off a 125 or something (so if you came out to find your motorcycle sitting on the rear tyre, sans shocks, you know exactly where to look).
I'd guess the much modded Ariel weighed in at around 350lbs, and with an absolute maximum velocity of the ton, which even I couldn't hold for more than a few seconds, the chassis was never going to be exactly stressed and apart from a little looseness down to the lack of springing, I never really had any dangerous moments.
I have, in fact, ridden a lot of more recent Jap stuff that felt less well securely planted on the road and a lot more edgy when the tarmac turned a bit dodgy. However much you might want to laugh at some of the engineering in old British bikes, they did at least know, by trial and error, about ergonomics and how to make the rider feel part of the machine - and even Ronnie's machinations with the welding torch couldn't completely destroy that!
The front brake looked like a late Norton TLS drum, reputed to be one of the best in the business but this particular example revelled in grabbiness without any compensatory power. My guess is that the shoes were either off something else or well past their sell-by date. The rear drum was standard Ariel fare and not half bad, whilst slamming the throttle shut was like hitting a brick wall. I didn't even bother asking Ronnie about the front brake, I knew what the reply would be: 'Brake? What ya wanta brake for, mate?'
Above and beyond all this, the Ariel had a solid feel to it, built as it was from alloy and steel with none of this plastic rubbish. Its rush of acceleration, baying silencer and strong handling gave the impression that it would cut right through cars if they didn't get out of the damn way and that in any accident the bike might, just might, end up with a few scratches whilst the cage would turn out to be a complete write-off. This was just an impression, mind, I didn't really want to leave a trail of ruined cars in my wake. Perhaps it was just because the bike was an intimate part of Mad Ronnie's life and he'd left his indelible stamp deep in the machine's heart.
After an afternoon aboard the Ariel I had somewhat mixed feelings. As a practical tool it was limited by its excessive vibration and unwillingness to cruise at a sustained velocity - neither problem afflicts stock Ariel 350's when used mildly, I hasten to add (you can put that rope away now, lads...). The problem with a stock 350 ridden mildly is that it's a touch boring, which couldn't be said about the way this machine punches out its power, nor the way it can generally be flung about. As a quick fling it was good fun, as a long term proposition I think not...
Perhaps the machine knew how I was feeling as it conked out on me. It felt like the sparks going down. I tried the kickstart a couple of times. When a fireball blew back out of the carb a curious ped leapt about a yard in the air, clutched his heart and stumbled away from the potential fire hazard. Ah, thought I, the timing's slipped. Sure enough the points were far too wide. I guessed the setting (experience, son, experience) and got away with it. Ronnie didn't seem surprised, was already going over the bike with his spanners, tightening down all the loose bolts. Maybe you can take things a step too far in modifying these old Brits. Maybe not...
Johnny Malone