Not everyone has tall stories to tell. Summer-only riders and those weaned on newer Japanese bikes may only recall the day they first broke the 140mph barrier (whilst those on Tiger Cubs may have equal cause to remember the first, and probably only time, their steed forced its way through the 50mph barrier). Or the ride when the electronic ignition unit failed a day after the warranty expired with nary an authorised dealer in sight and how long they had to wait for the rescue van.
Now most UMG readers are more likely to be buying the not so reliable bikes from this first group, or they cut their teeth on British bikes, and are thus almost certain to have a whole catalogue of unlikely stories...
My first bike, a bright yellow D7 Bantam, took a violent dislike to Amersham in Buckinghamshire. A shame really as my friend Helen lived there and I visited her a lot. First visit, the Bantam wouldn’t start after a fuel stop - there was a simple answer except to a total novice. I’d put two stroke oil in the tank before the fuel and hadn’t shaken it enough.
A few weeks later the D7 was refusing to start again. After kicking it over a dozen times there was a nasty grinding noise from the bottom end. Only a mile to the railway station, and then a couple more from Marylebone to home. A quick engine strip down (I was to become quite expert at this) revealed a generator rotor that had worked loose and taken half of the crankshaft with it. So, in with the spare crank assembly - all Bantams came (or should do) with a large box of spares.
My older brother also grew up on a Bantam but his hated anything beginning with the letter B. His sheared all the bolts holding the rear sprocket to the wheel in Banbury (Ducati 900s do this too, although there’s no reason to suppose that the Bantam’s 8hp was the sole reason for this breakdown).
One night, he was trying to follow a car along an unlit road - Bantams have notoriously bad lights, and those with direct lighting where light output varies with engine speed make bicycle lights seem bright - but he lost the car and ran smack into a bollard.
On another occasion, with his girlfriend on the pillion - no easy task on a D3 Bantam he went to sleep (this was his speciality) and went off the road into a bush. Fifty yards onto the Severn Bridge the bike just stopped dead. He carefully pushed it backwards towards the toll booths, ignoring the £25 minimum call out signs, whereupon the bike mysteriously started first kick.
A lightweight Matchless 350 engine shoehorned into a 250 frame followed my BSA, proving to be even more full of character. It was always run on a tight budget - cheapest Halfords oil as it leaked so much, an air filter made of muslin over the carb bellmouth, and a rear chain that cost £2.50 from Pride & Clark and which wore out in 200 miles on a wet ride to Leeds.
During the tanker’s drivers strike I was on my way up to Leeds when I finally ran out of petrol, at about 11pm near Doncaster. Sitting next to the bike, wondering what the hell to do, another bike stopped. Its rider knew of a petrol station which had fuel, so we set off on his bike only to find it closed. He didn’t have enough to syphon from his tank so I was left sitting by the roundabout with the Matchless for company.
Greatly influenced by an article by Royce Greasy in Bike magazine which said if the bike breaks down you're dressed in what’s virtually an Arctic survival suit, despite the fact that Doncaster in winter is less hospitable than the Arctic, I was getting quite comfortable when a bike stopped. It was the same rider, he’d drained the petrol from his lawn mower - enough petrol to do 30 miles.
Would the Matchless start? Kickback, yes. Backfire, yes. Start, no. It was always the same, an unfathomable part of the bike’s psyche meant that one breakdown or malfunction was never enough. The points backplate had slipped but with the aid of a packet of fag papers (that’s right officer, they're for resetting ignition timing...) I was soon on my way again, reaching Leeds at seven in the morning; another twelve hour epic in the bag.
That Matchless provided much epic material. A trip to Wales, when the auto advance plate and the points cam parted company and needed an emergency welding job at a little engineering shop in Brecon. A blast down the M40 to Oxford (though, that’s a relative term as 70mph coincided with terminal velocity and terminal vibration), as I shut off for the first Oxford ring road roundabout, I found the front brake lever dangling from the cable, its pivot bolt somewhere back on the motorway.
One time, after an MOT test at a well known British bike shop, the tester came back, complaining that the front brake was useless - but it didn’t stop him writing out the certificate, he added, that they were like that from new!
Then there was a ride to Banbury with my brother on the pillion, when the bike decided to empty its primary chaincase all over his left foot (while he was wearing brand new tan leather boots). The trip when we rode back from Bicester to Aylesbury with only the pilot lamp on as the moon was bright enough to illuminate the road as though it was daylight. I could see the ammeter needle swinging back and forth between plus and minus 12V (the vibration, don’t you know). Then I sold it. I curse myself still.
A BSA Starfire followed which cost £50. Noisy, primitive and with a catalogue of nasty tricks, like destroying its alternator rotor outside London and only just getting home. Losing the carb drain plug which was replaced with a wooden plug when a long search back along the road failed to reveal the original.
A little later, the Beeza broke its con-rod on the M4 near Newbury. The piston had partially seized which wrecked the rod. I had to phone the emergency services but they wanted £30 I didn’t have, so it was a long, illegal push back down the hard shoulder - the joys of motorcycling are soon lost pushing a heavily laden Deadfire. Back to London on the train...
Terminal breakdowns were rare but good for character building - of marque and rider. My friend’s BSA A7 put a conrod through the crankcase on the A1. My brother’s Norton 350 split a piston, only making it back to London at 25mph, pouring white smoke out of the silencer. Starfires only break terminally, I’m sure, and the temptation was strong to remove the number plate and abandon it.
After a time I'd given up saying to people that I was visiting, see you tomorrow at eleven, starting to say see you sometime tomorrow (Bantam) or see you tomorrow (Deadfire) but with a complete lack of conviction. Journeys took on a veneer of adventure. Apologetic phone calls were made from telephone call boxes in many strange corners of England. Bags of tools and spares carried became ever more heavy.
Experience allowed quick repairs to common problems and dying arts were rediscovered. The gas stove preheating of a Bantam spark plug on mornings and the dash downstairs before it cooled; the loosening of a Matchless petrol tank cap to release the vacuum caused by a permanently blocked breather hole, whilst on the move; re-adjusting the Matchless’ points in two minutes flat; the strange ritual of the long-swinging kick needed to get the Matchless into life. By the time I moved onto a Moto Guzzi (thus neatly avoiding talking about a period despatching on a 250MZ that only broke a gearchange return spring - neatly repaired with a bungee hooked over the tank - and shed a few rollers on the rear chain to no apparent ill effect) things had changed. I could now be almost certain of arriving on time, though the G5 Guzzi gave several hours of roadside repair.
Riding to Exeter one rare night, in driving snow, with cars tearing past on the slippery surface, gave the Guzzi a hernia (aka broken throttle cable). An easy repair with the spare cable in the tank bag? Yes, except that the spare genuine Moto Guzzi cable was half an inch longer than the genuine Moto Guzzi original - ever tried unwinding half an inch of recalcitrant steel outer casing with only a pair of pliers, at night, in the snow, in the middle of the Devon countryside?
Another favourite Guzzi trick was for one set of points to stick together in cold weather, so that the bike would only start on one cylinder. This always demanded removal of the points cover, with the bonus of a free electric shock to warm up the rider.
But in all this I haven't mentioned all the rides when nothing went wrong. Which for the Starfire is quite understandable as the least eventful ride involved some impromptu motocross as the Wildfire found a combination of 60mph, Avon SM tyres and a 90° bend in the wet far too, daunting the straight ahead approach into a field was much more natural. My friend’s Norton Atlas did make a record breaking ride from Totnes to London in 3 hours 15 minutes.
And a summer ride from London to Ironbridge, when I started at 4am and saw no cars till I reached Oxfordshire at seven. Or racing a Morgan through Norfolk when I was on the Guzzi, with the wonderful noise of two V-twins disturbing the peace...
Tim Francis