Ronnie told me I had to have a go on his latest. Knowing his penchant for twenty stone mamas I was about to demure when he muttered the magic words, AJS. OK, Vincent or Velocette... or almost any model from the glory days of the British motorcycle industry would have been more impressive. But you have to take what you can get - the combination of the fearless nature of UMG, and yours truly’s well known need for bouncing the engine in the frame of test bikes, makes available machinery rare and I’m still waiting for that call from the glossies with an irresistible offer of fame and fortune (I keep binning the letters before they can get to you, son - Ed).
It was in this frame of mind that the AJS 14CSR was wheeled out into the daylight. Ronnie’s a cut and weld maniac so I was surprised when it turned out to be a stocker. Ronnie had found it in some old dame’s garage and bought it for the proverbial song. A bit of polishing, new cables, fuel and oil had it as good as new. Well, sort of.
The Model 14’s a fairly rare old bus, the CSR model even more so. Ran from 1958 to 1966, the later ones having better metal in their engines. A unit construction OHV single of 248cc with a bore and stroke of 70x65mm. The stocker made a mild 18hp, the CSR, which I was about to swing my leg over, twenty horses. Ronnie had already measured the engine up for a seventies style chopper, figuring that hippy nostalgia was finally going to catch up with the motorcycle game and he was going to make a killing! So he wanted the engine back in one piece but reckoned it was safe enough to 90mph on the clock.
I don’t know what the compression was (are there any UMG readers so fanatical about these things that they think I should look it up - surely not?) but kicking the engine over was akin to being kneecapped. It wasn’t so much the sheer force of slicing through the combustion chamber as the ill sited and poorly geared kickstart mechanism. I was wearing boots that would give a Nazi an erection, the times I slid off the pedal did no permanent damage but it was nevertheless an irritating little bastard.
Eleven long kicks it took, with old Ronnie pissing himself with laughter. I kept the throttle far enough advanced to make the front guard try to shake itself free from the vibes. Hefty steel it was, too, braced at several points to withstand life in the fast lane. Even though this was the sporting version, it was still a sensible shape, none of this silly minimal plastic nonsense.
The engine didn’t want to tick over steadily, Kept me busy on the throttle, determined not to stall it and go through the tedious starting routine again. Right through the rev range there was no escaping from the vibration - the clock read 19000 miles, the lack of engine rattles, knocks and smoke suggested it was still in reasonable shape.
By far the best thing was to clunk it up to top gear as soon as possible. I even tried running it in top at 20mph with a touch of clutch slip, but was soon dissuaded by the smell of smoking clutch plates and the fearsome amount of heat that was wafting up from the delinquent single. From 40mph onwards it would thump away like an idling pile-driver, smoothing out momentarily around the 60mph mark (relatively, it was still thrumming the pegs), then putting my teeth on edge as it accelerated past 70mph.
80mph turned up eventually, the bars actually trying to leap out of my hands. In the pursuit of retaining both the UMG’s and my own reputation for wanton abuse, I held the throttle to the stop as the Fens slid past in a blur that would make an expressionist painter’s reputation.
Commendable was the riding position, the way it let me easily brace my body against the wind, and allowed me to absorb the otherwise harsh bumps that hit the chassis via suspension so taut it was more like riding some rigid framed horror than a relatively modern motorcycle.
Acceptable, too, was the chassis geometry which ameliorated the need to keep the lightest of grips on the bars to avoid my fingernails falling off from the phenomenal levels of vibration resultant from putting the engine deep into its danger zone.
Be fair to the old horror, there appeared to be no falling off in power, it just seemed that every element in the motor was shaking itself apart, that they had been so distorted by the unlikely forces involved that added to the natural unbalanced primary vibration was another slew of jumping, rattling components so far from their design parameters that they were moments off exploding.
By 88mph I was all for backing off but still a small part of my mind was determined to better Ronnie's 90mph. I don't know if I succeeded or not because the next time I glanced down at the clock, the I whole headlamp assembly had swung loose in its clamp, going into a self destructive frenzy on the lower yoke. I was convinced, at that point, that a majority of the nuts and bolts were going to rattle free and leave me flying through the air on an exploded motorcycle.
Backing off, as in slamming the throttle shut, I thought I could feel the engine give a sigh of relief. I pulled over, spent an amusing (yeah, sure...) twenty minutes tightening up all the nuts that had come loose. The engine was also low on oil and the chaincase appeared to be spitting out lube like there was no tomorrow.
The rest of the ride was a touch more subdued, mainly because I wanted to give my eyesight a chance to return to normal. I felt like some cartoon character who'd had his eyeballs swivel in his head. The only other moment of insanity was trying to ear’ole the thing through a couple of tight curves at about 50mph. The marginally mounted swinging arm gave a few shuffles which coaxed the handlebars into shaking from side to side a couple of times.
Nothing to worry about, I thought knowingly, when the bike underwent an involuntary shuffle and tried to head for the other side of the road. I'd already worked out that the SLS brakes were a pile of horse manure, the drums actually distorting when any force was applied to the levers, so I tried to pull her over again.
The 330Ib machine was extremely reluctant to obey, though in normal riding it went where it was pointed without too much effort. The rather wimpy front forks had somehow become a bit twisted and thus locked up. My muscles eventually won the day, along with a little help from slamming the throttle shut, though the chassis didn’t like that either but at least it was doing its suicide dance on the correct side of the road.
When I mentioned this, Ronnie pointed to the tyres, some ancient Dunlops that had cracked sidewalls. I could’ve given the nutter a slap for endangering the Malone frame, but I suppose I should have been professional enough to check it out before swinging a leg over. Yeah, sure.
So there you go. A properly rebuilt and tyred CSR's probably the business, but some old horror that’s been stored away for a couple of decades is another matter entirely. I suppose you could brace the chassis, sling in a modern Jap engine and have some fun. Even mad Ronnie was wondering if a couple of Isolastic mounts would work in his chopper, which says all you need to know about the engine.
Malone