No-one else makes vertical twins the British
way. Yamaha, perhaps, came closest with their XS650 and both Laverda
and Benelli gave the dice a throw, but all three big twins lost
the point with their excess of mass. The Japanese make modern
vertical twins but don't put much effort into them, the GPZ500S
and TDM850 the only ones that come close to being interesting.
But British twins are as intrinsic to this country as some resolute
old dowager, and just as firm in their constitution.
Take two big flywheels, a couple of puny bearings,
hang off a pair of con-rods and the biggest pistons you can get
away with. Keep everything as simple and cheap as possible - pushrods,
chain primary drive and a minimal amount of metal in every possible
component. British designers grew up on postwar days of steel
rationing and never quite got over the shock!
The result of these machinations, a 650cc twin
weighing 350-400lbs, capable of putting 110mph on the clock and
flying through the bends. Some were better than others. Norton
had the best frame in their Featherbed design. Triumph had the
strongest and least vibratory engine. BSA's handled better than
Triumphs, were less vibratory than Nortons. Royal Enfield were
more advanced than anyone but that didn't stop them gushing oil.
AJS and Ariel never really made the grade but time has been kind
to their status, rareness working wonders on their credibility.
In fact, most of these bikes are so old and so modified along
the way that it's impossible to be definitive about which is currently
the best engine available. Even standard looking bikes can hide
much modified motors.
Some things never change. Triumph Speed Twins,
for instance, however well put together the chassis, however new
the bearings and however modded the suspension, still behave like
buckling bronco's in tight, bumpy bends at anything remotely approaching
a decent turn of speed. Featherbed 650 Nortons, even with upgraded,
balanced cranks, rubber belt primary drives and meticulously assembled
engines still vibrate like primeval old dogs above 6000 revs.
And BSA engines turn as finicky as a three-legged dog if you tune
them beyond certain limits.
On the other hand, there are any number of
well put together, upgraded British twins out there that are very
fine riding devices. As long as you stay within the definition
of sane motorcycling - rarely going above 90mph, with an 80mph
maximum cruising speed; gentle on the controls at all times. Out
of that you get plenty of cheap kicks, reasonable reliability
and a bike that goes up in value the longer you own it. This is
the kind of trip you want to get into if your licence is nearly
dead and you've had your fill of Japanese hyperbike thrills.
In the beginning, more or less, there was the
Triumph 500 5T of 1946 vintage, aka the Speed Twin. The infamous
Sprung Hub back end gave this bike the characteristics of riding
a camel whilst the engine vibrated furiously away. Its adherents
main claim for validity, except for its external lines, are that
all the elements of motorcycling are rendered miraculously direct
- that is you feel every road bump, and every ounce of effort
in turning petrol into forward motion. Those owners with any teeth
left have usually ground them down to the stumps! These are serious
classic bikes - the definitive engineering for a whole breed of
subsequent Triumphs, not to mention a vast array of imitators;
therefore seriously expensive. Two and a half thousand notes might
just get you in the game for one of the later examples.
Look for oil tightness, relative smoothness
below five grand (you'll need to try a few examples to see what
I mean), lack of exhaust fumes plus a quiet engine. Well built
examples don't leak much oil and have a very gentle tickover.
Hopefully, you'll find one with all the usual engine upgrades,
plus some modern drum brakes!
The 350cc version's so mild as to be dangerous
on modern roads but some people revel in the relative lack of
vibration. The 650cc 6T likes to break chassis parts when revved
out fully, but few owners subject their pride and joy's to such
outlandish abuse. All of these old Triumphs are limited by a lack
of practicality - unless you're the kind of old codger who enjoys
roadside intervals to fix minor problems (and many old Brit riders
are!) - and their classic bike status.
Another curious old Triumph of that era, the
antique sidevalve TRW. This was the mother of all old sluggers;
hardly any power, mediocre frugality and some strange handling
on anything other than smooth roads. What it had going for it
was an extreme simplicity and a certain ruggedness, the kind of
bike that could be bodged around the clock a few times. Of course,
time has also been kind to its looks and it's more likely to stop
traffic than some modern hyperbike. You can still find something
useful, if sensibly modded, for around the grand mark.
Move on a few years, some more interesting
Triumphs emerge. Though they didn't really fix the frame until
the mid-sixties, towards the end of the fifties something like
a 500cc T100 Tiger had a useful blend of power, practicality and
just plain good old kicks. Arguably, the singled carb 500cc Triumph
twin is the best of the bunch. For sure, its 30 horses lost out
to the more powerful 650's but practical cruising speeds were
actually very similar due to the bigger bike's excessive generation
of vibes. Well rebuilt, at around the three thousand note mark
they offer a lot that is best about old style British motorcycle
riding.
The purists still deride the change from pre-unit
to unit construction, arguments for and against on both sides.
What's far more important, these days, is the actual state of
the motor and the unit construction bikes certainly have a better
reputation for longevity when used in anger.
The most infamous of this bunch, the T120 Bonneville,
though it had a couple of years in pre-unit construction format
before the real thing emerged in the early sixties. A marvellous
line in style, enough power to put 120mph on the clock on a good
day and the best reliability of this era of British twins. Vibratory,
leaking oil and prone to bearing and valve-gear failure when used
to the full, most of these hassles sorted with a bit of modern
re-engineering.
A good Bonnie, as opposed to a bad one, is
an almost lyrical experience - once you get used to the vibration
and queasy handling on the early models. I'd go for a 1967/8 model,
that had the chassis as well sorted as it was going to get, had
reasonable brakes and suspension, as well as being the toughest
of the bunch. Dealers want five grand for such a bike, but the
private market will turn up a marvellous one for 3500-4000 quid.
As with many Triumph motors, they can keep
running with an awful lot of internal wear. It's not unknown for
someone to whip the head off when investigating a minor problem
to find out the whole engine's in need of replacement. The good
engines are discernible in their relative lack of vibration, noise
and oil leaks but you have to be a bit of an expert to suss the
good from the bad.
Another nice sample of Triumph engineering
from the sixties, the T100SS, had all the qualities of the earlier
500cc Tigers, better build quality, slightly more power and better
economy. In the kind of typical riding that British bikes are
subjected to, the T100SS is more useful than the bigger twins
and a generally fine tool. Though prices aren't bargain basement,
it's still possible to pick up something useful for around the
two grand mark.
One of Triumph's greatest mistakes was to push
their venerable vertical engine to 750cc; at least they didn't
tweak the power in the same way that Norton did. Prices of the
750's have surged ahead over the last year for no sane reason,
nostalgia being a strange and wonderful thing. Added to its extra
capacity, the factory often churned out Friday afternoon specials,
poorly fitted if not engineered components adding to the chaos.
Most of the nastiness should've been sorted
by now, plenty have been completely re-engineered using better
quality modern materials. Vibration is impossible to eradicate,
though, especially on the twin carb engines - so that makes a
late T140 Tiger the best bet as it also had the lowered saddle
height version of the oil-in-the-frame chassis (which was also
less susceptible to cracking up). The rougher ones go for under
two grand.
Nortons never quite matched the ease of style
of the Triumphs. The Wideline Featherbed frame limited the way
the tank and saddle could be moulded into an object of desire,
though the lines of the engine were arguably more attractive.
The motor that was to go on to infamy in the Commando series,
had its roots in the Model 7, something of a vintage relic left
over from the war that in no way presages the Featherbed's excellence
of handling. View the Model 7 as a decent enough old plodder and
it wasn't half bad but in no way up to dealing with postwar 500cc
Triumphs.
Norton' solution, in 1952, was a brand new
rolling chassis, the infamous Wideline Featherbed frame at its
centre, but it also benefited from Norton's race track success
with regards to suspension and steering geometry. The 88 Dominator
admittedly suffered from vibration, even at such a minimal capacity,
so much so that it could crack up early model frames.
It wasn't until the 1960 Norton 88SS Dominator
that the design really peaked, blending a 36hp 500cc mill with
the Slimline chassis, Roadholder forks and the best styling that
the Featherbed series was to attain. A much more manly device
than the Triumph Daytona, it could crack the ton without much
effort and steered with unheard of precision and fidelity that
if you overlook the lack of suspension travel is on the pace with
the more mundane Jap middleweights of the nineties. Three grand
up for anything remotely decent, but at that price it should have
all the engine mod's going, making it even better than stock.
Equally of note, the 650SS took the Norton
engine as far as it really ever wanted to go, could keep pace
with the Bonnevilles of the day and was almost the perfect embodiment
of the British twin... save for the way it could vibrate madly
when used harshly. An extra grand's needed over the 500 and it
may not be money well spent but there are plenty of engines that
have been totally sorted.
It's best to avoid the 750 Atlas and probably
all 750 Commando's. I say probably because there's the odd one
that has been detuned and upgraded that makes a remarkably useful
road tool. You have to be pretty quick off the mark to find them,
though. No, better to go for the 850's, in as mildest a form as
you can find, the later the better - post '75 Mark 3's in particular,
although many engines have been upgraded to superior spec. Three
to four grand, please.
BSA twins were somewhere between the Nortons
and Triumphs, eventually becoming passe when the latter actually
managed to make their motorcycles handle in a reasonable manner.
The pre-unit series the defining BSA's, the 650cc A10 the bike
of particular note. Its major weak spot, puny main bearings, all
but eradicated by the pervasiveness of the SRM roller bearing
conversion.
Most A10 motors are now well sorted, smoother
than the Triumphs but something of a plodder rather than anything
to set the blood aglow. Try to avoid the early ones, the chassis
not up to much - the duplex frame version with twin shocks is
the only model up to the nastiness of modern roads and even then
it isn't safe at speed unless sporting the TLS front wheel conversion.
There are still usable examples on the private market available
for less than two grand.
The A7 isn't a bad motorcycle, just a tediously
slow one. Unlike the A10, the better version's the A7SS, which
at least had enough blood and guts to stop the rider falling asleep,
more of a revver than the harsher 650. It's a better buy than
the later A50, which had to carry too much mass, although it could
last for a long time. One of the milder unit construction A65's
is closer to the mark, something like a Thunderbolt with the obligatory
SRM crank conversion. Plenty of well sorted examples of all three
models for less than two grand, making them something of a bargain
buy in British vertical twin circles.
Whilst Triumph, Norton and BSA were dominating
the sales charts and the roads, Royal Enfield were trying to bring
some relatively modern engineering to the genre, though they were
never to master the art of correct engine breather placement,
often derisively described as Royal Oilfields. Even in 1950, their
500 twin had the gearbox bolted to the back of the engine and
the sump cast into the bottom of the motor (though it still circulated
oil as if it was a dry-sump system). The 500 peaked in the Meteor
Minor of the early sixties, arguably a better bike than the more
main-line British twins but, these days, those twins have largely
been upgraded and have a reasonable spares situation. No such
effort has been put into the Enfields.
The best buy amongst the Enfield camp is one
of the last Series 2 mills which ended up in the excellent Rickman
frame. Here you have an almost modern British vertical twin, a
glimpse at how the breed might have developed if there had been
enough money around to exploit the talents of British engineers.
The Series 2, unique amongst British twins, actually had a wet-sump
engine, hefty main bearings and a dynamically balanced crank.
That added up to a mix of heavy power (not quite up to the standards
of the wilder Commando's but it could take any Bonnie), almost
as usable as an 850 Commando on the motorway (beyond 85mph vibes
began to go heavy) and sturdy handling that bettered the rest
of the Brit's in stability, the only limitation from its mass
when swinging through the tighter bends.
This is a serious motorcycle, then, likely
to appreciate in price greatly as rareness sets in. The spares
situation isn't desperate but it's nowhere near as easy as in
the mainstream of Brit twins. As there are no serious engine defects
there's not much re-engineering needed, the main problem from
fitment of shoddy parts - if you want to use this as a proper
motorcycle, bear in mind that the build quality is variable. It's
an easy way to write off four thousand notes if you don't know
what you're doing.
Whereas most Enfields have some interesting
engineering on offer, neither Ariel, AJS nor Matchless managed
to rise above the middle ground of British technology. In all
of these cases, look for something mild in nature, well preserved
and basically stock, though obviously the more new engine components
the better. If you join the relevant owner's club, the spares
situation is reasonable for engine parts but sometimes difficult
for the metalwork. Which at least shows they have their priorities
right!
AJS and Matchless were basically the same models
with different badges, eventually being taken over by Norton.
Ariel ended up as part of BSA, used the A10 engine in later models.
There are still some models of each make with motors running in
a pretty dire state, and they keep clacking away to the last possible
moment, which can prove expensive. It's more a case of avoiding
the Ajay Model 33 (that Atlas mill!) and tracking down something
with a few spare bikes thrown in as part of the deal. They can
be relatively cheap and sensible ways into the British bike scene.
So there you go, loads of possibilities, lots
of potential and some bargains. There's also a huge social scene,
great friends to be made and lots of people who'll go out of their
way to help you out. Can't be bad.
Johnny Malone