The Weekends start here!

I love putting the clock forward for British Summer Time and the lighter evenings. It heralds the start of the busy season and the first event for me is the Pioneer Run.

But first Kempton…

Yes, it’s all getting too busy already! On Saturday when I should have been at some temple, building up body and mind for this strenuous event – or at least working out what tools and clothing I needed for the morrow – I was off at Kempton Park buying a bit of half-inch hexagon bar and a load of other old junk I don’t need…or do I?

There were a few interesting things there including this rather nice Tribsa Scrambler:

And there still seems to be no end to unrestored bikes coming out of the woodwork, although I guess that rather than new discoveries, they are bikes found years ago and squirrelled away for retirement restorations that have never happened. Remember, folks; it’s later than you think!

I know I’m not alone in being drawn to these motor cycle equivalents of Rip Van Winkle. This Jampot 350cc Matchless was up for £1450. Is that expensive? The mudguards and toolboxes are missing and restored G3LS Matchboxes don’t fetch a fortune… but on the other hand, what would you ask for it if you were selling? It’s mostly there and the tax disc (expired March 1965) means that even if there’s no V5, it should be possible to get back its number (although according to my book, VFC is an Oxford series from 1964 which is about ten years after the bike was made).

I think it’s another example of a bike that would make a reasonably OK buy as long as you don’t restore it. Oily rag, battery, chains and tyres and probably a magneto rebuild and I reckon you’d end up with a bike that would certainly turn heads for a bit over £2000- £2500 all in. Got to be better than £6500 to end up with a £3500 bike that looks like everybody else’s; but you’ve heard all this before…

So how about a couple of Threes?

It’s not every day you get the chance to buy an Ariel Three, especially two of them with consecutive numbers. They are probably best bought in pairs; after all it would be a bit grim on your own but racing around with a mate, on one each, could be pretty entertaining.

I found this unusual two-stroke tune-up head in a box of stroker lids. Not heard of the Mercury and don’t recognise the fitting; I think the fins went across the short dimension, suggesting the long sides are back and front; strange.

And finally, just by the gate so you couldn’t sidle past pretending to ignore it, was the ‘Farnsley Wassock’…

I am advised that this monster was the subject of much hilarity when it appeared on Ebay with stories of the ‘my Granddad rode that in the 1903 TT’ variety. Reminds me of the ‘Spagforth Whippet’, a red herring that swam about the VMCC years ago. The Spagforth yarn got so out of hand that the range extended beyond the basic Whippet, somebody wrote a history of the company and someone offered his services as VMCC marque specialist. Even today any unidentified vintage bike is likely to become a ‘Spagforth’.

So it’s good to see a bit of the old spirit of nonsense survives. Key feature of the Farnsley Wassock, I thought, was the use of light-but-strong aluminium pedal cranks for girder fork links. The dealer selling it (free with a bottle of vino, I guess) suggested we feature it in Classic Bike.  If only it had been a couple of weeks later, April 1st is on the way…

And talking of April Fools, well March Hares anyway, brings me to the world famous Pie and Ear Run. Now obviously if you’re going to borrow a 101 year-old motorcycle that hasn’t been used since last summer to make a fifty-mile journey on busy modern roads to a teeming seaside resort, preparation is needed.

But nothing is ever that simple. Luckily I was riding the same 1914 BSA as last year, kindly loaned by owner John Ley.I say luckily because there was no chance to do any preparation beyong topping up the oil and petrol in a car park. John lives in Oxford, near my mate Richard Duffin who does me the favour of bringing it with his bike in the van and returning it after the run. What more can you ask? I just have to hope the bike is alrght and I can still remember how to ride it from last year… It’ll be fine!

Well, not this time. A few fairly vigorous bumping runs around the car park produced no life at all. The BSA carb has no tickler button so you can’t tell whether there is even fuel in the carb – maybe BSA reckoned it would flood the engine too easily – either way, to check fuel flow means unbolting the fuel pipe and stupidly, lack of preparation meant I’d left my pocket-size Bahco adjustable behind. Dammit, get the tools out… Ah, nowt coming out of the tap…a quick double-act between me unscrewing the tap while Richard took on the role of the little Dutch boy, using his finger over the tank outlet to minimise loss of fuel, allowed me to clear the blocked tap and get away before getting a bill for resurfacing the Happy Cheater car park – note I said ‘minimise’ not ‘prevent’ the loss of fuel on their tarmac…

After that the bike ran very well for the rest of the journey.

Here’s a sort of handlebar-eye view. It’s hard to justify buying an expensive veteran when you’re probably only going to ride it once a year at this event but I defy anyone who has ridden the Pioneer on a borrowed bike not to walk away giving the subject some serious thought. Riding 1920s bikes is great but in truth they’re not really that different to modern bikes; they have gears, clutches, brakes – okay, modern bike riders may get a shock from the brakes but they’d find the same on a Bantam. Veterans, though, are a whole different ball-game – especially the early ones. Even the comparatively modern 1914 BSA takes a lot of effort. It’s like a bike jammed in top gear; you more or less have to bump start it – pedalling off is impractical with the pull-back handlebars; being tall, my knees hit them and in any case to pedal hard you need to counterbrace your body and you want straights for that, not wheelbarrow bars. So once underway, you’re  naturally anxious to keep going. When you see traffic lights or obstructions ahead, you slow to a crawl, trying to keep moving until the lights or the situation changes. Of course, you can’t just close the throttle – do so and the engine will stall with a vicious spitback. You need to do it slowly using the tank-mounted ignition lever to take the sting out of the spark. If you give it enough retard, it almost goes into a state of suspended animation, thumping like a slow heart beat beneath you. If the light stays stubbornly red as you reach the waiting traffic, you have to find a gap and filter through to the front of the queue. Hopefully you will have scrubbed off enough time that the light will change as you hit the line and you can gently awaken the old engine and coax it back into pulling you away; your rolling start carrying you cleanly away with the traffic. But if the light is still red  you have no choice but to pull the valve lifter and kill the engine. Inevitably, the lights will change a second later and you’ll have to push off and attempt a run and jump start, much to the annoyance of all the people you’ve just filtered past…

One rider either had a lot of nerve or hadn’t thought it through; he was wearing one of those dayglo bibs with ‘are you enjoying the traffic?’ printed on it. Presumably intended as a positive advert for motorcycles as you whoosh through London jams, I’d think twice about wearing the thing if it was me that was causing the traffic jam in the first place. I dunno, these vests are supposed to be an aid to road safety; I reckon he was lucky someone didn’t run him into a ditch. Fortunately he seemed to make it to the finish unscathed.

But the event does inspire a cavalier attitude: it reminds me of MAG runs years ago when a huge phalanx of bikes would block a town centre; I was brought up to despise mob behaviour but there’s definitely something about for once being the majority. Riding the Pioneer, you can’t help feeling absolved from road traffic laws and courteous driving – we are allowed to use the Brighton bus lanes but I’m not sure official leniency goes any further. At one point I was overtaken by a horde of mini-bikes, probably two dozen half-scale trail bikes with the odd monkey bike in chase. Great laugh; except, I reflected, at the next hold up… where, sure enough, in every conceivable gap there was a small motorcycle stuck, like flies in a radiator grille. Pavement it is then.  I heard some cheers from the mini-bikes as I thumped down the paving to the roundabout, hopping off the kerb just in time to enter a gap and be away. Trouble is you can get carried away, I made the fatal mistake of following Richard out onto a roundabout without making a careful enough check of my own, a bip from a cab reminded me not to blithely follow people; on these bikes, odds are the bloke in front only got through by the skin of his teeth…

Talking of attitude, I met a couple of stalwart types. First was the guy riding a sidecar combination in an ordinary flat cap. My mate told me he’d recently seen someone riding one of those scooters with twin front wheels without a helmet, so I asked the cheesecutter wearer if the law had changed regarding combinations. “Well as far as I’m concerned it’s got three wheels, so it’s a three-wheeler.” he smiled, “Nodody’s stopped me yet.” Blue Peter Badge for that man, I think.

But top on the roll of honour for me is Andy Brown with his 1902 Clement Garrard.Andy impressed me last year by using a whistle (seen here on a lanyard around his neck) to encourage people to get the hell out of the way. He pointed out that the law in the Clement’s day made no provision for horns, advocating a bell, gong or whistle to announce your approach – maybe they didn’t want to frighten the horses… Andy decided a whistle was the most suitable. But more than that, Corinthian that he is, it turned out he was slogging the tiny bike to Brighton while  awaiting treatment for a detached retina. Not to be outdone this year it turns out he’s recovering from a very recent cataract operation; proof that you can’t keep a good man down. Let’s hope he’s free of problems next year – but I would like to see the bike fitted with a gong …

A great event and great people; thanks to the Sunbeam Club and all the volunteers for organising it and special thanks to John Lay for the loan of the bike.

Cheers Rick