Here we go and a massive THANK YOU to Winston66 for being our first contributor
Pockey
Part one.
Sometimes I vaguely wonder about the meaning of life, but then it has been slowly dawning on me that apart from something like watching comedy movies like, The life Of Brian, or perhaps the two Ronnies’ or even the classic series of Steptoe and son. All of which in my opinion starred some of the finest comedy actors that I have ever had the pleasure to watch, i .e. the amazing BASIL FAULTY, read John Cleese, and of course all of the other fine actors.
I think that there is probably only one other activity that gives me more pleasure, and there are no prizes for guessing what that is.
The answer is MOTORCYCLING
Why is this you might ask.
The answer is, I don’t think that I can really either tell you, or even explain.
All I know is that I have been riding motorcycles for very nearly fifty four years, and I have enjoyed every single minute that I have felt a throbbing between my legs, and even then sometimes when there has been no sensation of something being alive down there, and I have been sitting quietly on the machine, at the finish of a ride, and enjoying reliving some of the moments just passed, I have felt an overwhelming sense of enjoyment and contentment. Need I say any more.
I remember vividly, my first experience at the tender age of fourteen years, as a pillion on an old 350cc. BSA side banger, with the noise of an open exhaust and the wind in my hair, (no helmets then), The quite scary leaning over when cornering and the panicky hanging on through the first few wild corners, and the seemingly reckless acceleration, all of this at less than 30 miles per hour ,the adrenalin rush with my heart in my mouth, a strange sense of relief when we stopped , and then an overwhelming desire to immediately have that experience again and again.
I had never known anything like that on my old push bike.
That was a defining moment for me, after that I used to pinch my older brothers 50cc scooter at every opportunity I could. But only when I felt safe from being caught by him. ( otherwise I would cop a bashing,)
Then it would be a very quick jaunt down to the end of our dead end street, and back. Before I got caught.
That was very reminiscent of what I had to do at eight years of age, in order to get a ride on a push bike. My parents would not let me get a bike until I turned nine, which incidentally I felt was most unjust.
When I turned fifteen I talked my mum into letting me get my car drivers licence, there was no stopping me then and for a short while I had full and interrupted use of that little two stroke scooter, The car licence covered motorcycles at that time . I thought I was the king shit of the street then. The brother by then had graduated to his first car and the use of the lowly two stroke was too demeaning for him so he very grudgingly and with much winging and showing of bad grace, he finally consented to my use of it.
The one big hassel I had with it was estimating the correct amount of car engine oil to mix with the petrol so that the motor would run properly without oiling up the spark plug and or making so much smoke that anyone following along behind me could see where they were going. Those were fun times.
After a few months I came across a disused Triumph Tiger 100, I think it was about a 1948 model, It was called the Tiger 100 because it was a 500cc. Twin it had iron cylinders and head, and when new they were supposed to be capable of doing 100 Mph. It had the real flash telescopic front forks, a speedometer that was graduated and marked out to show engine rpm. in whatever gear you were in, as well as the speed you were doing, you could see this just by looking at the correct scale on the speedo. dial. There was only a rigid rear frame , no rear end springs.
I promptly coughed up the total of my life savings ,This was the proceeds from several months of my lawn mowing round , To me it was a huge sum ,it was the massive amount of fifteen pounds, this was in 1958. I jumped on the thing got it started and managed to get it home in one piece.
Both mum and my overbearing big brother threw huge wobbleys ‘ and made a gigantic fuss, They carried on for days and days ,but it did them no good. My future destiny and paths were cast in stone, and motorbike stuff!!! and following the black stuff, wherever it went.
I was totally, totally, unrepentant. After all it was my hard earned savings. (not theirs), that I had chosen to squander on my stupid boyish fancies. Why was I not allowed to be a self supporting entity.
Now the Poor old thing, not mum , but the Triumph, had been laying disused for a couple of years and the motor condition was very sad.
At that time I had a part time job on Saturday nights at the local raceway which was a ¾ dirt track. This was a 440 yard oval shaped race track for ¾ speedway Cars and dirt track motorcycles.
My part time job was selling ice creams from a tray as I walked around. Initially I applied for the job so that I could get into the arena for free and then watch all of the races. Needless to say I spent a lot of time in the pits selling the refreshments to the competitors and their crews, and I made a lot of friends with many of the contestants.
Then on one Saturday afternoon practice session I turned up on my pride and joy, It was backfiring and blowing clouds of smoke . A couple of the older guys that I was friendly with took one look at it and on their own bat said. That if I wanted to, they would recondition the motor for me. They also happened to work in an automotive motor engine recondition business. Needless to say they never had to buy another ice cream again whilst I had that part time job.
The following Monday I spent another fifteen pounds in the local hardware store on a socket set which I still have, and some other tools and by Tuesday morning I had that motor out and sitting on the garage floor.
It was delivered to them that night after school. And the next two weeks seemed to be the longest two weeks that I had ever spent, Then I got the phone call to come and pick the motor up.
I saw the guys the next day and they handed the rebuilt motor over. It just looked absolutely great, They had even polished any of the aluminium castings that they could get at.
When I asked how much I owed them They just burst into laughter and when the mirth subsided they explained .There was no cost so long as I kept my mouth closed, The term they used was , the job was a buckshee because of the gratitude of a grateful boss. Apparently they did not like him very much.
Well I got the beast back together over the next few days then I lit it up, and did I get a surprise.
I had to take it easy for several hundred miles the motor was so tight it took a while to run it in, but the damn thing just wanted to go, and then go faster.
I had learnt a lot from those fellows, and in playing around with the motor I took the opportunity to port and polish the Y shaped intake manifold and I increased its internal diameter by about a half an inch in order to bring it out to the diameter of the carburettor throat and to match the machining of the intake ports of the cylinder heads.
The mufflers were in my opinion too quiet ,so a piece of steel reinforcing rod was rammed up them in order to remove the baffles and reduce any back pressure ,I thought that it was a good idea because the speedway bikes had no mufflers and single open pipes .
I had also read about exhaust length tuning and I experimented with the formulae and measured the internal length and diameter of the pipes and then adjusted the lengths accordingly. I must have got the lengths right because under acceleration at around 3000 rpm it felt that someone had crept up behind me and given me and the bike a huge kick in the pants, and did the exhaust note change, It was awesome.
This model Tiger 100 had a magneto set up for the ignition with a manual adjust for advance and retard function and this particular bike was fitted with a single carb. which had a one and half inch bore ( don’t think that was standard). When the motor was for a cold start you had to press the tickler. A small button, which was on top of the carburettor in order to depress the float momentarily, and slightly flood the intakes because there was no choke function.
Now here is a question for you older guys that think that you know something about carburettors.
What is one similarity between your girlfriend , and a carburetored motorcycle?
And for the uninformed,
The answer is.
Sometimes you have to tickle both of them in order to get them started!!!
I like that one. It appeals to my sense of humour.
When the motor was run in and had settled down I found that I was getting punctures in the rear tyre because I was ripping the stem out of the tube whenever I fanged it.
The solution then was to have three security bolts (fasteners) placed in the rear tyre to clamp it to the rim in order to stop it from slipping on the rim.
At that time I felt that the handling and the ride was too harsh because of the ridged rear end . I managed to get a replacement sprung hub rear wheel for the princely sum of five pounds (that was two months of lawn mowing work). I was still only a fifteen year old and still going to school .
I had a very nice friendly girlfriend when I turned sixteen and she thought that the new suspension, (and I ), was the answer to all her prayers, and it turned out that it was ,and we were, and my prayers were also answered as well!!!
The friends that I had made at the speedway had done me a huge favour with the motor rebuild, they would not admit it, but I suspect that they put into use some of their knowledge of building up the single cylinder 500cc speedway motors for their mates ,and that they had somewhat modified my motor. The damn thing was one of the fastest of the local road bikes for several years and even after three years of constant thrashing could still hold its own against any of the visiting of the latest model 650cc Triumph Bonneville and the Norton Commando.
At that time I was the king shit at the local greasy spoon cafe on Friday and Saturday nights.
When I was sixteen and still going to the local high school, The Triumph was the only method of travel for me. I even sold my old push bike I think that I got something like two pounds for it. That sale kept me in petrol for some time , I seem to remember that it cost something like five bob a gallon which seemed to be quite a lot to an under funded schoolboy that was bereft of any working capitol.
Unfortunately, without the push bike, I was then forced to use the Triumph on a daily basis. I must have been a sight, heading off to school wearing shorts and with my school books in a haversack on my back and driving that loud objectionable beast of a machine.
A couple of amusing incidents that happened around that time can still bring a smile to my face when ever I am reminded of them.
One day when entering the school grounds the duty teacher who was a power hungry, dumb young prick of a person, stopped me, and virtually wanted to throw the rule book at me, and also eject me from the school grounds, and bar me from coming to school whilst using the triumph as transport, as well as penalising me for not wearing the obligatory school cap, as part of the school uniform when outside the school grounds.
I am not sorry to say that I quite enjoyed the next few minutes of my life as I very politely but firmly informed that overbearing arsehole, what he could do to himself either in private or if he so wished , in public.
For once in my short life, I had right on my side, as far as my self determination went, whilst dealing with a bigoted and stupid authority person.
That gentleman was politely but firmly advised by that very naughty, errant, and arrogant youth, that a much higher authority than his took precedence over his determination as to what head wear I was to use whilst on that the Triumph. The skid lid laws had just been introduced and I was obliged to comply. As a consequence of that I was able to tell him he had shown me his real self, and that he was not only a complete idiot but a proper and real fool. As well as many other things.
Well the headmaster was called in to the fray and had to make a determination. I was forced into some sort of apology, but when I very politely explained that I had a legal drivers licence for the motorcycle , that It was my only form of transport and that unfortunately ,he The headmaster, could not force me to walk the 3 miles to attend the school that I was obliged to addend by law. That I felt that the duty teacher at the time was wrong in his determination of my actions and that there was no way I would ever concede any change in my behaviour or actions in this matter.
Well I got a verbal slap on my hand and was informed in no uncertain terms that I was riding that motorcycle on some very thin ice.
Well I had won that one. But for quite some time after that I made very sure that everything I did at school was squeaky clean. I had some evil eyes watching me.
About that time I had the good fortune to make friends with the school gardener, He was an older person of quite a colourful and varied background .
I had taken to parking the triumph behind his equipment shed as it was adjacent to the push bike racks and he had offered to keep an eye on it so as to deter any one from having a play with it.
The winter was coming on and it seemed to want to rain a lot, and so, on quite a few occasions when it was literally pissing down I would find my way over to his shed during the lunch break and share some of my lunch with him .He seemed to enjoy my youth full exuberance.
After several months, one day I mentioned to him that I was getting concerned about the motorcycle’s motor and when he expressed some surprise and asked me why, I explained that for several weeks, it, the motorcycle had not used any fuel and that I was getting several hundred miles to the gallon, this had me confused as it was quite contrary to any understanding that I had as to the workings of the internal combustion motor.
My companion went very quiet and did not comment for a couple of minutes, Then he gave a great sigh, broke into a huge grin ,winked, and then told me, that as the Triumph did not have a locking fuel cap, and that he had developed a soft spot for me? He, had been topping up the fuel tank from his lawn mower supply, at least twice a week, once on Mondays and again on Fridays, this was so that I had fuel for the weekend jaunts. What a nice guy he was.
The year I turned seventeen I started my first job and in those days, nobody and I mean nobody, that had a normal type job worked on Saturday, or Sunday. This meant that all of my friends and myself had two whole days every week to spend developing our leisure time activities and I admit that a lot of effort was devoted to these activities, we would clock some awesome distances on the weekend jaunts.
Friday nights the shops stayed open until nine Pm. This meant that we could congregate at the local milk bar and wait until everything was shut and the traffic had died down. That took about fifteen minutes, I think that the milk bar stayed open for us, as some of the gang would feed a few shillings into the juke box and then we could rave on.
When the traffic had dispersed enough, we then had the opportunity to use the town’s one set of traffic lights as a sudo set of drag strip start signals. Then we could practice our racing starts. I never thought about it at the time, but the local cops never turned up to reprehend any of us. I guess they were all off duty and had gone home and were tucked up with the missus of the time.
There were no anti hoon laws at the time. And as well as that as we were all under twenty one years of age so there was no pubing or alcohol for us miscreants. It was all good clean fun.
