So, I agreed to the swap.
John brought the bike round in his van and we heaved the Norton aboard. It was immediately apparent that the Beesa required a fair amount of rebuilding - the electrics were non-existent, no brake lever or speedo and the engine components had been piled into place but not bolted together.
It was a leisurely rebuild not helped by the fact that it took me nearly two years to locate a brake pedal that fitted, by which time I owned three brake pedals that auto jumblers had claimed fitted the A65. I gave them to a pal who ran a second hand spares shop in exchange for his help fixing the clutch operating mechanism.
Finding the right clutch lever also proved difficult until I realised a part was missing from where the cable entered the engine case (or rather doesn’t enter unless you have the right part). I obtained the bit, yet another problem overcome. With help from another mate, it was wired up as 12V using a pair of used KH250 coils.
The big day dawned and Mike, the wiring wizard, and I were fettling the beast prior to starting her up. Juice in the tank soon produced petrol everywhere as the tap and carbs were leaking. A few fibre washers later we were ready. With trepidation I swung on the kickstart, after rolling the bike off the centre stand, itself perched on some hardboard to protect the old man’s precious driveway. Unknown to me, the hardboard had stuck to the bottom of the stand.
The bike spat back through the carb, igniting all the petrol that had dripped over the engine and subsequently ignited the petrol saturated hardboard, which rapidly became a raging inferno. I leapt off the bike trying to figure out what to do - if | put the bike on the centre stand it would be stuck on the hardboard, if I laid it down more petrol might spill out - in the end we kicked the hardboard out from under the bike. Only after a new carb gasket set was fitted did we dare try to start the bike again. It fired up but would only tick over.
The guy I bought the bike off came over and set the Amal carbs up and soon had it running properly with a tickover so low that I kept thinking it was going to cut out but it kept chugging away.
My Bonnie packed in a few days before we got the Beesa going so the BSA was soon pressed into service for the 40 mile trip to work. The bike performed welt enough, after making allowances for the SLS front brake which didn’t - I soon learnt to be ready to steer around vehicles. But within a month the motor seized on the way to work and I had to RAC it back home. Turned out there was no oil in it even though I'd checked it a few days before.
I rang up my mechanic friend, who came around with his van and loaded up both the BSA and the Triumph. The Bonnie had just a wiring problem so I was back on the road within days but the Triumph was stolen a couple of days later, so repairs to the A65 assumed top priority. One new set of pistons later the Beesa was mobile again and the first trip while running in was the ‘85 Thunderbird rally, although I couldn't keep up with the 80mph pace and had to chug along at 50mph - just had to drink quicker when I got there!
I had a six month ban over the winter and then a couple of long runs in ‘86 - to Kempton Park for the Magna Carta Rally and Southend for the rockers run (from Wirral). The bike behaved itself on both trips. One run involved going from London to Southend, then Southend to Chorley, with a stop off in Liverpool, all in one day. Naturally it pissed down all day but the BSA took it all in its stride - who says British bikes are unreliable? Stopping in Liverpool, around midnight, to make sure the side panel bolts weren't about to fall out (something they did with monotonous regularity) when a geriatric MAG supporter asked for a lift - so I did three miles with him on the back without a helmet.
I threw the bike up the road twice, the first time on the M58 heading into work. I'd been doing about 40mph on thick, tightly packed snow - the sort you can ride through without problems as long as you don’t brake or accelerate suddenly when the motorway warning lights flashed a 20mph limit. I immediately slowed to 20mph, then hit a huge sheet of ice and went down like the proverbial one legged man, luckily with no car drivers behind as bike and yours truly skated along.
I slithered all over the place as I tried to get the bike upright while barely able to stand up myself, but eventually managed to heave it to the hard shoulder, whereupon a police Range Rover reversed from the other end of the ice slick to ask if I was all right and then disappeared back up their end of the ice slick. Next, a huge truck came hurtling past, did three pirouettes and ended up facing the wrong direction. Again the police came back - it occurred to me that they would've been better off at the beginning of the ice warning people. After waiting half an hour the ice began to melt and I was able to ride through it. The light was bust, the bars bent and I had a bruised bum.
The second prang was again on the way to work. I'd ridden about a mile when it started raining, so I nipped back for waterproofs, which meant I was a bit late. I overtook a Marina full of old dears way too late on the approach to a roundabout and was doing about 40mph when I banked it over to turn left. I ended up running out of road and had to lean it over further and further until the bike and self were sliding along on our sides.
I could see a Granada bearing down from the other direction and remembered thinking that I hoped he was awake. He was and steered around us. I leapt up and gave a halt signal to the Marina just in case the old dear driving hadn't seen the crash, then heaved the bike to the roadside where I discovered the bars were bent double so that they pointed backwards; also, various scratches and bent foot pegs.
Luckily I had a tolerant boss who wasn’t too upset when the BSA made me late for work. As it did when it threw a split link on the M6 just before my turn off. I hiked to work after freewheeling along the slip road as far as possible. Later the RAC van turned up and took me to town to find a split link. The chap even got his fingers all greasy fitting it. The chain case was written off, but no other damage. There were two more occasions when I had to call on the RAC for help, both times due to electrical trouble and requiring their recovery service. First time it was a wire to the Zener diode shorting out, second time a duff rectifier which I traced using a test lamp between battery and fuse until the lamp went out after disconnecting various leads.
The A65 did about sixty to the gallon - pretty standard fare for a Brit 650 twin - and the fastest I went was 85mph, which it could sustain at the cost of a few bolts loosening off. The main drawback at those kind of speeds was the lack of braking power. One MOT tester pushed the bike all the way around his yard with the front brake pulled on!
Unusual for a British bike, in my experience, maintenance could be ignored for quite long periods - bits broke and wore out every so often but nothing too major, so I tended to make a mental note of what needed doing and fix it all in one go every three months. It was at its best chugging down A roads at 50 to 60, the more twisty bits the better as handling was spot on, although it was easy to run the stand aground on left-handers.
The bike was eventually pinched by a local wally and turned up in Brighton with a blown motor. I had to go down there with a mate’s van to collect it. A full engine rebuild was needed, but as I was heavily into rebuilding my Bonnie, I reluctantly sold the A65 for £150 - a sad end to a beautiful relationship.
Dave Pearson