Fred's Bikes Page
My earliest experience with powered two
wheelers was with an NSU Quickly moped. It belonged to my father and
was "borrowed " by me for riding around the garden. One day
I hit a large pothole and there was a loud cracking noise. I
sheepishly put the bike back in the shed and said nothing. The
following morning my father was riding to work and was surprised to
see the handle bars moving towards him and then the sound of the
engine hitting the road. The frame, which was a simple pressed steel
beam connecting the steering head with the rear wheel, had snapped in
half across the holes for the engine mounting bolts. It was made very
clear that if I wanted to destroy motorbikes I would have to pay for
them myself.
After a couple more years riding around the local
fields on various wrecks belonging to friends I finally reached my 16th
birthday, rushed out and bought for £12 (a fortune, I was earning
£4.10s a week as an apprentice at the time) a Triumph Tiger
Cub. This 200cc lightweight gave me a crash-course in the art of keeping
a British motorcycle running. I soon discovered that oil is cheaper than
crankshafts ( £4.10s exchange..yes a weeks wages) and that if drastically
over-revved the crankcase pressure would rise so high that the contact
breaker housing would be fired out of its mounting on top of the crankcase.
Having passed my test and to satisfy my need for
speed I bought a Triumph Twenty-one. This
350cc twin although laughably slow by modern standards was a revelation
after the Tiger Cub and I traveled many happy miles on it. I then fitted
it with a 5TA engine and this soon convinced me that bigger is better
and so eventually I sold the bike and it was replaced with a Triumph Thunderbird.
This had one of the first 650cc unit-construction Triumph engines and
provided fast, reliable transport. Alongside the Triumphs I also ran briefly
a 350cc Matchless and dabbled with racing BSA Bantams (!)
Then for some reason I (maybe the Matchless) had
a change of taste and started a long affair with Norton singles. A friend
sold me a 500cc ES2 model and the lazy long-legged feel of it was a complete
contrast to the revs and excitement of the Triumph. Apart from it's occasional
habit of shaking the mag-dyno loose it was remarkable reliable. Inevitably
the need for cc's took over and I obtained, from the back of a barn for
£15 (those were the days), a model 19R.
This 600cc creature, with a rigid rear end and long Roadholder forks,
was designed to tug a sidecar, but in solo form it was great fun. The
engine was the classic "one bang every lamp-post" and the handling
was reasonably confidence inspiring (especially after the rubber-framed
Triumphs). (Update! having recently examined this bike again I think
it may be a Big 4 fitted with a Model 18 engine.) Thus mounted I
bang!........bang!.......banged my way into the early 1970's. Then I saw
a Ducati !!
I had been aware of the Ducati marque for some
time, but they were the stuff of myths. Italian exotica; MVs, Guzzis
and the like were names from the racing press, the road machines
being incredibly expensive if available at all. Then one day I read a
glowing road-test in a magazine for a new model- the Ducati 450
Desmo. This sounded the business, a hundred miles per hour sporting
single with low bars and high footrests and painted bright yellow as
well !!. A few phone calls later and I was off to Faulkners
motorcycles in Oxford, the nearest dealer that had one in stock. Well
it was beautiful little bike, but next to it was something completely
new to me, a Ducati vee-twin. Available in Italy for a couple of
years, and now being imported into England, this was the touring
model, the 750 GT. In effect it was two
Ducati single cylinder top ends grafted on to a common crankcase and
fitted into a frame based on Colin Seeley's design for the works
racers. I left the shop thinking "Got to have one" as well
as "£999" -the asking price.
By now I had moved into an entirely new line of
work that involved a lot of fun but next to no money and so for a
couple of weeks common sense took over and I decided that a sensible
person earning £22 a week gross really shouldn't spend a grand
on a new bike.
And then I read the road tests, they all praised
the engine, the brakes and the handling. They also said the electrical
system was rubbish, but the final paragraph in one of them was the clincher
" where else can one find a 448 lb. (wet) bike with tractability
exceeding a Commando, with a top speed higher than that of a Honda 750-4,
and smoother than either, to boot? And at 56 hard-ridden mpg. too?",
good-bye common sense- hello a £999 debt.
A few weeks later I was riding home on PBW 611P, my
new toy. The road tests were spot on, it truly was a fabulous
motorcycle with the ability to cover large distances at high speed
with handling and road holding that by the standards of the day were
exceptional. The down side ?, the detailing was dreadful with
beautiful alloy castings held in place by unplated fasteners that
would rust if a cloud passed overhead and a electrical system that
was a joke. There was no provision for setting the ignition timing of
the two cylinders independently, the only way to get both to fire at
the correct time was by varying the contact breaker points gaps !!.
Luckily very soon Lucas produced a version of their tried and tested
RITA ignition system to fit and once it was installed the engine
became even smoother and maintenance was reduced to checking the
timing with a strobe every couple of years.
Now that I owned a bike capable of traveling large distances
my touring itch started and soon the miles were mounting up. Each summer
me and my partner Gerry would pile the bike with camping equipment and
head south for six weeks. Usually it was the call of the mountains and
so in time the Alps, Pyrenees and Dolomites all echoed to the glorious
sound of a Ducati twin being worked hard. As well as the long summer trips
there were also visits to European bike rallies such as the Stella
Alpina and what has now become an annual pilgrimage to the Le
Mans 24 hour. On top of it's touring ability the Ducati was also a
great machine for brain out high speed thrashes and in those days before
speed cameras and nose to tail traffic me and my friends would spend many
a happy hour riding our bikes in the way they were designed to be used
- flat out.
Two accidents over the years resulted in two cosmetic
rebuilds, but the engine was always fantastically reliable. A gearbox
bearing failed at about 50,000 miles and once the clutch fell off when
I was 20 miles from home returning from a 3000 mile European trip, but
that's about it for breakdowns.
Eventually everything wears out and after 15 years
and 100,000+ miles it was no longer viable to keep clocking up the
miles, spare parts had become difficult or impossible to find and so
reluctantly PBW 611P went into retirement and I was in the market for
a new bike.
By this time Ducati produced nothing with the pretensions of being
a "grand tourer". The Paso ,with it's fully enclosed bodywork,
had little provision for carrying large amounts of luggage and the
sports models were just too single minded. I spent some time researching
what was available. The Kawasaki GTR1000 had the right credentials as
did the Yamaha FJ, but after years of V-twin power they seemed a bit too
rev hungry and vibratory ( of course Ducatis vibrate, but the lumpy throb
as you accelerate from low revs is a totally different affair compared
with the all pervading tingle from a 4 cylinder motor at speed ). BMW
were phasing out the boxer twins and the new K series was a unknown quantity
( and pig ugly ). So I turned my eyes towards Italy again and Moto Guzzi.
A brief ride on a Le Mans convinced me that I had been spoilt by Ducati
and if I rode a Guzzi the way I rode a Ducati I would soon be making bike
shaped holes in the local scenery. But I did like the engine. To cut a
short story shorter in the end I bought a Guzzi
California Mk.3. So after years of thrashing around at silly speeds
I was now in cruise mode.
To be continued