I was quite happy with my life until the day Brian turned up at my house, clad in leather jacket and denim jeans, proudly showing off his 1961 Triumph Bonneville. That gave me pause for thought, even if my thought processes at 52 are a little slower than they used to be. A whole bunch of us in the sixties used to have great fun roaring everywhere on British tackle before we suddenly got old and the rice burners took over.
About a month later, Dave, another old biking friend, had taken the plunge back into his youth, heady with nostalgia and a disgustingly large grin he turned up on an immaculate BSA 650 Rocket, the tuned version of the infamous A10. Both bikes had cost over three thousand notes, an expenditure that had left the women in our lives speechless. The wife could see the way things were going, what with the way I pored over Classic Bike rather than listen to some suddenly boring and inane TV rubbish. She put her foot down and said no way.
For the next several months I spent the weekends helping out my friends with the maintenance tasks, being taken pillion on the bikes and occasionally being allowed a blast. They were determined to get me back on to two wheels and the glorious feeling of freedom and fun attained when riding the bikes was the best way to convince me to defy female logic and damn the consequences.
The women, despite the fact that they had once been apparently keen pillions, now refused to entertain the idea of putting a leg over the pillion perch. They formed a united anti-biking committee as fervent and devoted to their cause as the most oppressive government committee you'd care to imagine.
When Dave's engine seized up they were delighted and when Brian and I came off they felt wonderfully vindicated - indeed, it gave me pause for thought as I wrenched my back and lost a deal of skin from my thigh. Our defences were almost breached by female wrath but a fantastic London to Brighton bash in the company of a huge pack of British bikes put the spirit back into us. It was in Brighton that I saw a well sorted but not quite immaculate Norton 650 Dominator. I was always a Norton man, just as Brian lusted after Triumphs and Dave would not hear a word said against BSAs.
The owner was keen to sell and appeared to know what he was talking about, listing an impressive array of improvements done and modifications made. A test ride was all that it took to persuade me it was necessary to hand over £3250. It was much smoother than either the BSA or Triumph, down I was assured by the owner to the dynamically balanced crankshaft and single carb. Handling was Featherbed precise, light yet stable.
A week later the deed was done, not a word spoken to the wife. When I roared up to the house, somewhat stirred and shaken (crazy traffic, ancient brakes...), if looks could kill I would have dropped dead on the spot. I was sent to Coventry for a month, had to cook my own meals and wash my own clothes. Eating fish and chips every day got me back into the sixties feel of things, as did wearing ragged jeans and a second-hand leather jacket.
We were all in work, at collar and tie levels of responsibility, so when I turned up on the bike, suitably dressed for biking and not work, I was met with amazed stares. I had to keep a suit in the office and change when I got there, which placated my bosses to a degree, but they still dropped heavy hints about letting the side down. I couldn’t have given a damn! As the wife had feared, once more into bikes I didn't want to get off the damn thing. Every spare moment was spent riding or fettling the Norton.
There is still a great debate as to how good or bad British bikes were. The enthusiasts claim huge mileages with little attention needed, the cynics that by the time they got you out of your street a trail of bits would have been deposited and a gallon on oil splattered over the tarmac. The truth is that they varied greatly. Quality control was a quaint, foreign idea back then. If you were lucky you bought a machine where all the tolerances went the right way and it ran pretty much like the designer had intended. If you were unlucky you ended up with a Friday afternoon special, which would give endless trouble.
That was then. After 25 to 30 years of use and abuse, rebuild and bodge, it was anyone's guess what was going down inside the polished alloy of their engine casings. I was lucky with the Norton, I had evidently bought a good one with all the available mods performed and the engine rebuilt with loving care by someone who knew what he was doing. It didn't even leak much oil, mostly out of the primary chain cover. Having said that, the carb, valves and points needed setting every 500 miles and the chassis needed a thorough going over to stop bolts falling off.
Dave's BSA was by far the most troublesome of the trio. Its engine had been bodged together by a cheapskate who was only interested in flogging the immaculate looking machine for as much profit as possible. The first seizure was due to mismatched pistons, the second to failure of the main bearings and the third to a valve breaking up. He was not a happy man. We took the motor down to the crankcases, had SRM put in new bearings and do a proper rebuild with new barrels, pistons and valves. We were immediately impressed by the relative smoothness of this refurbished engine and it has run well since then.
The Triumph has been somewhere between the two. Its crank and pistons have not given a moment’s concern, but it eats valves, rockers and tappets like there is something seriously out of true. Primary chain stretch is also a major problem despite replacement of the chain and engine sprocket. Oil seeps out of the cylinder head gasket, around the pushrod tubes and from the gearbox seam. It will do about 1500 miles before serious attention is needed to the top end - it may be the poorer quality of replacement components that causes the chronic valve problems!
Although we might have entered our second youth, we have done so with a great deal of maturity and common sense. We used to ride like lunatics, now we gently roar along with due note taken of the ancient drum brakes, the horrendous traffic conditions and, yes, the relative slowness of our reflexes. We have not exceeded 90mph so far. It has to be admitted that at that kind of speed all three bikes are entering fierce vibration zones that hint at disastrous mechanical consequences. Mostly, our cruising speed is in the 60 to 75mph range which suits us as well as the bikes (we disdain to wear full face helmets and the like).
On the road failures, over the last 18 months, have been rare after the bikes were sorted and their various idiosyncrasies adjusted to. To achieve this we have to spent a fair bit of time each week on maintenance chores (my youngest son loves polishing the chrome and alloy much to the wife's distress) and the aforementioned speed limitations adhered to.
Even riding in the winter months had its good points, although I could not convince either the wife nor anyone in the office that riding through snow and ice was evidence of anything other than advanced senility. I do not suffer greatly from the cold, which obviously helped, so I was able to pit my skills and the bike's handling abilities against the horrendous road surface conditions. It required a gentle hand on the throttle and perfect balance to commute through the worst conditions but I made it through the winter months without falling off. The bike needed daily polishing to keep the cosmetics up to scratch but I was greatly impressed by the way she would often burst into vibrant life first kick in the most atrocious conditions.
My friends were not quite as mad as myself, they laid their machines up during the worst of the weather. We plotted and planned a month in France, riding the bikes down there and enjoying freedom from wives and worries. May was decided upon as the best month, warm enough to really enjoy the bikes but the country not yet infested with moronic tourists, an excess of caravans or herds of football spectators.
It rained all the way down to Dover (from Birmingham). So heavily that we all had ignition problems, the bikes going on to one cylinder and sometimes stalling. We went through a couple of cans of WD40 before we made it to the ferry and were completely soaked through. A change of clothes, a few coffees and a bit of grub allowed our spirits to lift when almost magically the rain clouds disappeared and what was left of the day's sun made an appearance.
Another old biking friend had a cottage on the outskirts of Argentan, where we had arranged to spend the night. Disaster almost struck when all three of us reverted to riding on the correct side of the road after stopping for petrol and oil. I thought there was something wrong but couldn’t put my finger on it until an irate artic driver flashed his lights and blew his horn. We scampered across his bows with only moments to spare. Our pace was restrained after that, even more so as darkness fell and we had to rely on our headlamps - British electrics famous for many things but not for lighting up the road in front to any great extent.
Perhaps predictably, the BSA's main (and only) fuse blew leaving Dave aboard a running machine with no lights (the ignition is separate, an ultra reliable magneto). Replacement fuses kept doing the same trick. We were about six miles from our destination, so it was decided that Dave should ride in the middle, my front light and Brian's rear hopefully insuring his safety. He was a bit white faced and short of breath when we arrived at the cottage, something to do with not being able to see where he was riding. We were a bit dismayed to find that no-one was at home, but found the key under a large stone and let ourselves in.
The owner didn't turn up the next day either, so after scribbling a note of thanks for the free food, drink and shelter we were on our way again. The electrical problem was just a wire that had come loose and was shorting out on the frame. We weren’t far from Le Mans, so it seemed like a good idea to have a look around. Unfortunately, before we arrived Brian's primary chain snapped. Poor chap was towed into Le Mans and we then had to spend the rest of the day hurtling around the town trying to locate a length of chain of the correct pitch and size. We found a cheap hotel for the night and moved out early the next morning.
We were way behind schedule but it didn't seem to matter. The sun was shining, the bikes sounded beautiful and the twisting roads to Lyon beckoned, over 300 miles in a day. We were all a bit tired by the time we arrived there and the bikes were running very ragged, Dave’s BSA having protested such prolonged abuse by shedding the rear light assembly. We picked this up off the road before it could be flattened by another vehicle, hammered it straight again and bolted it back on with a triple ration of spring washers.
The next morning we were up with the dawn, toolkits in hand, two hours spent fettling the machines. They ran much better after that attention. A lovely, easy 200 mile ride down to Sete followed where Brian had a holiday home in the form of a studio flat. It was a bit of a crush, the three of us and all our gear, but we were only going to use it for sleeping, spending the days exploring as much of the area as possible on the bikes. A great time was had over the next three weeks, the machines running like clockwork under the kind climate. At one point, in St Raphael, we were pursued by a pack of French widows who were not perturbed by our biking gear or unorthodox means of transport... they probably reckoned us so strange that we had to be rich eccentrics.
Surprisingly, everywhere we went the machines drew a large crowd, who congratulated us on riding the bikes so far from their native shores, and wanted to know the histories of our machines. Even the plastic replica crowd, mostly youths. in bright full leathers, would talk to us, even though we inevitably drew attention away from their pose machines. We must have done over 3000 miles running around Southern France predictably, the Triumph needed attention to its valvegear twice but the other two machines needed just their dose of regular maintenance.
The journey home was hard going. We had foolishly decided it was a good idea to do over 500 miles in one day back to Argentan and our friend’s cottage. We changed the oil, did a full service and said the requisite prayers the night before. We left before first light, knowing that we would need to beat the traffic and do as large a mileage before lunch as possible, to keep our spirits high. It was definitely a challenge to do that kind of mileage at our age on such old bikes.
We actually made fantastic time to Lyon, cruising at 70mph most of the way on deserted roads. We were through the town and charging hard to Nevers before 8.00am, just missing the worst of the traffic. We were using good A roads where the queasy handling of the Triumph would not limit our progress. Occasional bursts of speed to 80mph was perhaps pushing our luck, but it was one of those rides where everything comes together. By midday we had made Bourges, about 175 miles from our destination.
We celebrated our progress with a two hour lunch of epic proportions whilst the bikes were allowed to cool down in the shade of the cafe. We went easy on the wine and doused ourselves in excellent coffee to give us the energy to get going again, It took five hours to do the final part of the journey, as we were slowed by heavy traffic through Tours and Le Mans and were feeling rather lethargic ourselves after the heavy lunch. The bikes were ragged and ratty after such a day of abuse but we were in great spirits when we finally met up with our old mate at the cottage.
He was overwhelmed by our enthusiasm for the bikes and made us promise to track down a suitable machine for himself (another Triumph fanatic). So much cheap wine was consumed that the next day we were not up until noon. The bikes needed several hours worth of attention to restore them to sound health, so by the time we were ready to leave darkness was descending. We stayed another night and headed for the ferry the next morning. Calais, the English Channel and finally good old England. The customs officers were most amused by both our and the machines' age, good naturedly waving us through.
The ride up to Birmingham was identical to the ride down, rain and more damn rain. Another couple of cans of WD40 went west. By the time we reached home we were all convinced that it would be a good idea to retire early and go to live in France! That tour was over three months ago and we won't be able to repeat it until next year. The bikes are still in fine fettle, the wives as angry as ever and all three of us determined to take this British biking experience even further.
John Cumme