Last Gig of the Year?

Yesterday’s Kempton Park Event was the last one I will attend before Christmas. The Yule celebrations are not particularly recognised in our house; I mean obviously when Finbar was a pup he used to get up especially early to start chewing the decorations but since he’s grown up we don’t really bother…

In fact the absence of a TV in the house leaves us blissfully free of the whole business, the only problem coming when you gaily nip out to the shops and wonder what the hell is happening… The cheesy music and stone faced shop staff in stupid costumes, looking like union conveners from Santa’s grotto soon remind you.

But not at Kempton Park. Not a set of clip on antlers or a yo ho ho anywhere. It was actually the bike show and autojumble this time, which for me just meant it cost a quid extra because as usual there was so much talking and sifting through junk to do that I didn’t actually get time to visit the show. That’s one thing against getting a lift; most people I know get there, look around, buy something and leave. I’m happy there till closing time. We had a visitor at home and I explained to her that I have been visiting cold car parks and digging through piles of scrap metal for 35 years now and every time as I get ready the excitement is still the same; even in my teens when I used to go with my Dad, he usually had to drag me by the hair to the gate. Now, speaking of rusty junk, check this out…

I was just standing at this stall, talking to a mate from Bristol about how we are ‘moths to the flame’ whenever there’s a ’50p per item’ pile of old crap  (and the number of feet visible in my picture reveals we are not alone) when I spotted something. An Indian helical primary idler gear from the 1920s…for 50p? I should say so. I looked closer and picked up a new old stock BSA gearbox camplate and a six spring clutch centre, then I saw an Indian clutch spring carrier and gear change arm…and a Norton clutch centre, and a good BSA gearbox mainshaft… My handful was getting bigger, it came to a whole £3.50! now that really took me back to my teens…

I couldn’t resist asking what was the story. Apparently, the stuff came from a long-established bike shop in New York – explaining the Indian parts. The American husband of the couple running the stall used to go there with his Dad for BSA parts as a boy. The proprietor packed up and eventually died – but nobody realised that the shop had never been cleared. The guy had apparently owned some thirteen houses locally too and all the properties were sold to a speculator who didn’t really do anything with them. It was only when he died that it was discovered that the whole lot was stuffed with bikes and parts. It has since been cleared, the couple I spoke to had kept a few bikes, and these bits were the sweepings from the, obviously rather moist, floor.

This is the stuff of legend really. We all dream of opening the barn door to find a dusty bike languishing in the corner but the parts hoard is almost literally the ‘b’ side of the same thing. It’s just as real and possibly even better than a barn find bike but it’s the tune you never really think of playing in your head.

But in my time I have shone a torch into a few tombs – usually cellars of bike shops. It seems that few motorcycle traders of old could really bring themselves to throw away stuff just because it had become unsaleable. My early days in the bike trade were characterised by opening drawers to find chequered mudflaps in displeasing colours (the nice ones had all sold) and those elasticated, dayglow shower cap things you were supposed to stretch over your headlight in daytime…(what was that about?!) and odd remaining parts stock for obscure seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time mopeds. In my first job I found a big metal dustbin filled with, well, dust; and on top of the stoor from the workshop floor, amidst the fallen hair, rusty washers, metal filings, sandwich crusts and mouse droppings I spotted some genuine BSA taps and dies. I spent my lunch hour delving and came away with loads of leftovers from the days when Redhill Motors had been a main BSA-Triumph agent. Yesterday’s rubbish, today’s gold…well not the mouse crap, pubes and sandwich crusts, obviously. Years later, when the Edinburgh British bike shop, Westpier Motorcycles closed, I recalled that the cellar was well known to be a veritable elephant’s graveyard. So while everybody else was busy wrestling over new Triumph bathtub panels and nacelle tops in the giant closing down sale, I quietly slipped down the stairs. What I found was an elephant’s graveyard alright…but without the tusks. Here some AMC gearbox internals – oh, from a Norton Jubilee; there a big journal BSA A10 crank – oh, ground to minus 60 and worn out… What’s that motor under there? Oh, a seized 250 Matchless, ah, a box-full of Bantam cranks – oh, all broken. The legend grew because a glimpse down the stair had revealed a full cellar but closer inspection proved it to be just all the scrap of thirty years that nobody could be bothered to take to the tip.

In reality, like the barn find bikes nowadays, the future of barn finds lies in second-time around. For the past fifty-plus years, people with ‘the knowledge’ have been identifying (like me with the Indian parts) and buying bits from autojumbles and squirrelling them away for future use. As they get older the possibility of needing them comes second to releasing the cash from their investment. So fear not, as you walk around autojumbles saying ‘you never see any xxxxx anymore.’ Although a lot of parts have been glue together to make complete bikes over the years, there’s still a lot out there, you just need to get to know the people who have got it.

Anyway that’s more than enough from The Pulpit, here’s my pick of the other stuff for sale…

Now unlike my friend Dennis Frost, I can’t claim to be a LE Velocette fan but look at these super stylish panniers…

The bike carried an ‘Eric Oliver’ dealer sticker too, how’s that for Top Trumps! Eric Oliver was one of the early post-war Grass Track riders, ‘back when Brands Hatch went the other way’ as the old timers will tell you, the posh track having originated as an anticlockwise grass circuit on the Kent hillside. A dashing man with jet black hair and mustache Oliver was also a famous sidecar racer.

Speaking of grasstrack, another thing that’s not really my bag but raised an eyebrow was this rolling chassis…

Being a ‘Rudge owner’ these days (see those boxes of crap in the corner of the shed there…) I reckon it’s a severely modded 250 Rudge frame. “It’s only £200 quid, you should buy it!” said my old mate Mick…but I pointed out that the first digit was not a £ sign but a 1…

Nonetheless, there were plenty of other interesting buys. As I have got older I lean more toward off-road styling than café racers and I liked this Cotton priced at £1950…

I also liked this Honda TL250; this is a pretty rare thing, I think most of them went Stateside,

And I guess that is where this B31 has been for most of its life, upgraded with a 500cc top end, this one was £2250.

There is something rather cool about American British bikes, have you seen ‘Motorcycle Gang’? This is straight off the set. The film is a pulp ’50’s classic, the story (and cast) more or less the same as ‘Hot Rod Gang’ for the four-wheelers among us. Street racer tries to go straight after bad accident but bad-news rival takes his girl and challenges him to one last race… You’re looking it up on You Tube already, I can tell.

Speaking of Johnny Colonial, I’m not a big Harley fan but I have always been a bit fascinated by these…

The XLCR Café Racer…really? I would like to do a road test of one sometime in CB, it’s just such a dumb idea but still, there’s something about it…

Of course, never mind your Vince Dutch and your Alan Ness, British customisers were doing some groovy stuff back in the day you know, hang your eyeballs off this swinger…

Well, yes. Thing is, back when I were a lad I would have been delighted to own a bike like this, but although I am equally delighted to see them around and would be sorry to see it turned back into A. Nother restored B31, I don’t really want to own one. My first ride on a chopper was Mick’s A65. I felt a bit of a berk riding it. My second experience was ten years later test riding a mate’s Bonneville chop after replacing the head gasket. Kids pointed and laughed and to be honest I was on their side. But hey, if you can get away with it, go for it man!

Something I find most charming about UK ‘customising’ is the whole thing of taking crappy ancient bikes and trying to make them relevant in later times, like this £2000 1955 BSA M21…

Note the custom instrument panel. Even I, with my appreciation of crap from the past, would struggle not to consign this to the bin…

But it is a thing of its time and should really be preserved in my opinion, after all the world isn’t that short of standard M21s yet. For sale on the same stall was this dear old ‘thirties Beesa, BSA made a confusing array of models in the 30. This is a B something or other…

B

Be nice if someone puts it back on the road as it is, I think this one was £2200.

Andy Tiernan had another anonymous BSA on his stall…

 

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And the dark days of my past were recalled by this little 98cc Villiers model, it’s a Norman, made in Ashford, Kent.

Needless to say I didn’t buy any of them, I’ve got enough to do already.

Cheers Rick