The Beezagent

Early US Shooting Star and Road Rocket pics

2011-04-03T00:40:00.001+01:00

I have a lot of BSA material lying around my hard drive that's badly filed so gets overlooked and forgotten about. In that category are some dealer photos of a very early US spec Road Rocket and Shooting Star that I recently re-discovered. These are interesting for several reasons so I thought I'd post them.

First of all, I haven't seen these anywhere else - which was the reason for getting them in the first place.

Second, they show - if the photos are to be believed - that early models had a couple of features that are specific to US models or that were dropped later in the first year.

For example, both models are fitted with Fat Girlings. I think the first BSAs these were fitted to were some of the earliest CB Gold Stars shipped in late 1953 - they had certainly stopped fitting them to bikes shipped in 1954.

Another feature is the wing-nut type oil tank filler cap. Until I had seen these I thought these were only fitted to very early CB Gold Stars shipped in 1953.

Finally, the standout feature on the Road Rocket of course is the alloy Road Rocket sculpture on the front mudguard.

Road Rockets were only available in the US for the first two years of manufacture and were only fitted with the 'rocket in the US - were UK enthusiasts sick with jealousy! BSA used different finishes and different cycle parts on some US models but something as unique and needless as this - there has to be an interesting story behind this. It's so un-characteristically BSA.

Since both photos use BSA's Daytona win as a promotional aid, this dates them as being not earlier than March 1954 though the bikes used for the photos would have produced earlier. Since the photographer credited is Moss Photo of NY, it's reasonable to assume that these were produced at the request-of or for use by the Eastern Distributor Rich Childs. I'm not aware of any difference in finish between East and West coast models as is the case with other BSAs around the same time - the Super Flash for example - but it makes me inclined to take a look at the despatch records some time - another blog, for another day

.If the photos are to be believed. What I mean by this is that the photos follow usual BSA practice of being at best, a touched-up version of an original photo or worse, a fairly creative rendition or imagining of the actual bike. The most creative ones that I've seen are of competition models not generally available to the public like the Daytona models, something that didn't help when researching these for restoration (add link).

Heavily re-touched BSA promotional photo of a 1954 Daytona Shooting Star. Many features are incorrect so this may have used a photo of an early prototype of the Daytona bike.

The picture above shows what is described a Daytona Shooting Start but the bike appears to be a mish-mash of parts from 1953 (e.g. megaphones, mudguards) and 1954 Daytona twins. I have seen original photos of the Daytona bikes in prototype stage with variations like these so this may have it's origins in a prototype also.
These 'artist impression' photos are at their least creative for over-the-counter models and of necessity - picture the scene at the dealer as the customer complains that the bike he bought doesn't look like the one in the photo that made him buy the bike in the first place!

Klamfoth restoration part #1 - a twin amongst the singles, a swinger amongst the rigids

2011-03-26T10:29:00.004Z

Previously I wrote about my involvement in Project Daytona that involved a team of researchers in Florida and Scotland restoring a 1954 BSA Daytona Gold Star and Shooting Start in-time for the 2004 50th anniversary of BSA’s historic first five places sweep-up in the 1954 Daytona 200 mile race.

The most obvious and defining characteristic of these bikes was that they were rigid framed, at a time when BSA had just introduced swing-arm frames. The research element alone for this project took years and was difficult enough at time to feel more like archaeologiy than restoration but we managed to tie-up most of the loose ends, or enough to make us happy enough to parade the bikes in 2004.

We also decided to build a replica (or a restoration if we ever find more original parts) of Dick Klamfoth’s 2nd place bike but if the specification of the rigid bikes had been a big puzzle to solve, then Dick’s bike was an even bigger one because it alone amongst BSA’s works team was fitted with a swing arm.

We had only a few poor photos to work from but reckoned that an incorrectly captioned photo in the Bert Hopwood book ‘Whatever Happened to the British Motorcycle Industry? was the same bike or at least the bike in prototype form. This blog entry explains why we think so.

Obviously, the first thing we did was ask Dick - but he wasn’t sure. Dick remembered that BSA thought that amongst the riders he would be best suited for a swing arm because he had ridden a plunger Manx Norton in the previous 2 Daytonas until a regulation change made them ineligible. Dick also thought that the bike was a lash-up from spare parts that BSA had when the bike he was first given went bad in practice. Other riders Gene Thiessen and Kenny Eggers (see link) seemed to remember this too, but Kenny Eggers also thought that it had been put together using a spare Daytona engine and the rolling chassis from a roadster swing-arm Shooting Star that had been sent by BSA for dealers to evaluate before these were officially launched in the UK. More doubt was spread when we saw what appeared to be a spare or wrecked rigid frame in a photo of Thiessen't trailer as he was preparing to drive home to Oregon after Daytona.

Post race photo taken around Gene Thiessen's car - with the 'spare' frame. Left to right are BSA engineer Cyril Halliburn, kneeling Bobby Hill, standing Kenny Eggers, kneeling Dick Klamfoth, unknown standing in white, Gene Thiessen and Al Gunter.

We wondered what kind of accident would be bad enough to need the whole frame and a spare engine to be used, and if it had been that bad you'd wonder why they didn't need a spare rider as well. The testimony was confusing and uncertain but on the basis that neither you nor I will remember much about this blog in 50 years time, we couldn’t be too hard on the guys to remember much about the bikes they last saw 50 years ago.

So we decided to look for evidence elsewhere and went first to the BSA dispatch records. Did BSA send a Daytona bike with a swing-arm frame? Was there an early dealer evaluation swing-arm Shooting Star? Service sheets and the the despatch records show that BSA did, and produced a couple of spares engine for UK dealer Fron Purslow but I couldn't find any record of a Shooting Star being shipped either with the Daytona bikes or before.

Detail taken from a BSA service sheet

Where next? I had looked at the pic in the Hopwood book in the past before I was ever involved in Project Daytona and regarded it as a bit of a curiosity, but didn’t think about it much more. Now I looked at it again but this time with the benefit of the research we had done to determine the specification of the rigid Daytona bikes, I saw things I hadn’t before. For example, the Daytona barrels, the Vokes filter, the Daytona front mudguard, stays and reversed front brake lever were all fitted only to the Daytona bikes but what we had to do was date the Hopwood bike to late 1953, or very early 1954.And there are two features that let us do that.

Image used on dealer promotional poster after the race shows the Daytona pattern front mudguard, pipes and megaphones

First, we knew that the alloy front mudguard was only fitted to the 1954 bikes, in 1955 this was changed to the standard roadster arrangement to placate the AMA’s regulations for homologation after they questioned some of the special used by BSA in 1954 and threatened to ban them. This was only averted at the 11th hour by the counter threat of an injunction from BSA West Coast distributor Hap Alzina that might have prevented the race taking place at all. The AMA capitualted.

Klamfoth's bike in '55. Also a swing-arm bike but shown here to show use of standard mudguards to keep the AMA happy.

Second, the fat girlings fitted to the Hopwood bike were only used very briefly between late 1953 and early 1954 – slimmer Girlings were fitted from late spring onwards.So we had a photo of a bike that was made around the same time as the Daytona bikes and was fitted with all the Daytona specific features.

We also knew that a swing arm bike was made and shipped to Daytona. Unless this was a pic of the bike sent to Fron Purslow, we couldn’t think of any reasons why this bike would be anything other than Klamfoth’s bike or perhaps the prototype of it – and decided to use this as research material for the planned bike build. Now as a quality check, we decided to take the Daytona film we had and blow-up some freeze frames of Klamfoth going round the South turn.As you can see, quality is lamentable, though it does allow us to confirm the front pipe and megaphone location and dimensions.

Still from the '54 film showing the arrangement of pipes, megaphone and number plates

What it also shows, though is a different seat. On the Hopwood pic there is an example of one of the Feridax –like (in 1955 they used actual Feridax seats) racing seats BSA made in-house for the 1954 bikes. In the blow-up pic, a completely different seat has been fitted with what appear to be rivets round the edge of the seat base. Until we know better, we’re assuming that this was a piece of ‘localisation’ applied to Klamfoth’s bike, either because the original was damaged (perhaps the accident Thiessen and Eggers mentioned?) or replaced to satisfy rider preference.

Still from '54 film showing the seat rivets

We do know that the others bikes had changes made to them once they had arrived in the US to suit the rider’s preference and the most obvious example being the rear brake lever on Egger’s twin which was mounted over the top of the brake plate, rather than underslung.

There are still some details we can only guess at, like the brackets and positioning of the float bowls for which we really need a good close-up shot from either side. But otherwise, we have enough of a blueprint to start work on the bike. In the next feature, I’ll pay attention to some of the Daytona specific parts and how we worked-out dimensions and specification, managed to find them or in one case – persuaded a manufacturer to resume production again just for us.

Project Daytona, August 2003 – Technical Challenges

2011-03-21T20:58:00.000Z

As mentioned in the previous update, bikes raced at Daytona had to comply with AMA class ‘C’ regulations - basically production bikes with a few permitted modifications.

These rules did allow for some special parts, as long as they were deemed to be modifications that were within the scope of owner-modification or had been made by BSA in quantities of 100 or more for homologation purposes.

Within these restrictions the 1954 bikes were prepared in the BSA competition shop under the guidance of Roland Pike. Given the green-light to proceed by Bert Hopwood in the Summer of 1953 he prototyped a Daytona special Gold Star using one of the Bill Nicholson designed rigid trials frames but fitted with lightweight cycle parts that could be fitted to either a twin or Gold Star.

The class ‘C’ regulations meant Pike had to use existing parts as much as possible – something that made our restoration task easier. For example, the low-slung triangular oil tank is actually two pre-unit toolbox halves welded together. The shrouds around the rear wheel to protect it from sand are simply alloy sheets pop-riveted to an alloy mudguard blade.

But there were some parts that were more difficult to replace, some whose purpose were difficult to understand… and some we had difficulty even seeing,

DificuIt to replace the Vokes filter challenge.
The Daytona bikes were fitted with Vokes oil filters. In their day, these were fitted to everything from GP Triumphs to racing Ferraris, diesel trains and anti-aircraft guns. So you’d think finding one would be easy, but no! We even resorted to calling round MOD quartermasters but no luck. On a whim we called Vokes who are still in business and by a stroke of luck spoke to a man who restores old cars. He looked around, couldn’t find any filters and decided to make us a batch from scratch after rescuing the original drawings from a periodic clearout – as simple as that. It became a restoration project in itself and required making tools, jigs and short-run alloy casting. But a year and a half later – victory!!

Difficult to understand – the slim barrel challenge
We were mystified by the barrels on our ex- Al Gunter twin since they looked like the slimmer profile type fitted to earlier twins – why would BSA do that? They also had a smaller number of fins and we wondered BSA had secretly deployed a short-stroke engine since they had experimented with these at the time? All was resolved in a conversation with Dick Mann who asked if we had the special thick flange barrels on our twin. We had overlooked the important difference - a thicker, stronger base flange.

Difficult to see - the Gold Star engine challenge
Our ex- McDermott Gold Star has a BB type engine but some of the internals are not BB type. By late 53 BSA already had the later big fin CB type engine ready but as was usual at BSA, didn’t plan to have this ready until the TT. We wondered if our engine was a BB with CB internals (where the scrutineer couldn’t see them) but looking at the parts we had, this didn’t stack-up.

So, back to the project archive and Roland Pike’s unpublished biography (which you can read on our web site) and here we found the answers. Pike made some heads for 1954 Daytona models using 350 castings machined to suit 500cc. He found these gave more power than the normal 500 heads due to better down-draft. He also used oval flywheels, a short 350 con-rod necessitating shorter push rods, larger valves and a timed breather. So basically, the Daytona Gold Star engines were Roland Pike specials.

The Great Cosmic Motorcycling Force
It’s been quite a journey so far - and we’re not finished yet! We’ve learned a lot on the way but two things are worth presenting.First, we learned not to discriminate when collecting information. If it didn’t seem relevant at first it often turned out to be so later - sometimes you don’t see the treasure until you’re looking for it.

Second, we’ve had some things that stumped us but each time we got lucky and an answer fell out of the sky just in time. The moral of the tale - the Great Cosmic Motorcycling Force provides for those who are truly in need.

Project Daytona, June 2003 – “More like archaeology than restoration…”

2011-03-21T20:46:00.000Z

Up until the early 70’s almost all bike racing in the US had to comply with AMA class ‘C’ regulations - basically production bikes with a few permitted modifications. So you’d think that would make restoring our Daytona bikes easy – they would be bog-standard catalogue bikes with a few permitted modifications, right?

Wrong! Apart from the special rigid frames used at Daytona that were the most visible identifier of a Daytona bike we found many other differences that made the research phase of the project long and difficult. It was in one of many late-night phone sessions to the US that team member Don Bradley remarked that as restorations go, this had been more like archaeology so far. Let me give you some examples.

In any research you go first to existing books, articles, documentation and records. But we have chosen a subject and period that is almost entirely absent from these. Forget the 70’s – this is the real ‘forgotten era’ of racing. If we suspected we might have a hill to climb this was confirmed when Gold Star technical authority John Gardner admitted he’d be learning from us, not the other way around.

We were drawing blanks all round so decided to find any BSA competition shop staff still alive – there aren’t many. A bit of detective work found Arthur Lupton, better known under his pseudonym ‘A. Golland’ as the author of the red ‘Goldie’ book published in the 1970’s. Arthur was a stalwart at BSA for many, many years who worked with competition shop staff. We were very fortunate to correspond at length with Arthur over a period of 2 years before he died.

The real star find would be Roland Pike who was in charge of developing the Daytona bikes in ‘54. We knew he lived in the US but had been suffering from Altzheimer’s disease in the last few years. We almost made it - he died 2 weeks before we got in touch with his daughter. However she gave us a copy of an unpublished autobiography from his BSA years that not only helped with the Daytona bikes but also provided a goldmine of information about other interesting BSA projects and working in Small Heath at the time.

There were also mysteries about the riders. The surviving works riders have been supporting us since the project started but there was one we couldn’t trace – Cliff Caswell. Last month we found him using one of those dodgy ‘we can find any person’ websites in the US!Recording and keeping track of all this information would be difficult in any circumstances. We were additionally handicapped by having a restoration team composed of people in both the US and Scotland.

The answer was an online web-based archive and project management tool. Documents, discussions, notes, images, details – all were stored on a web site so that team members could access it anywhere, anytime. Access was restricted to the project team or people who were helping us – we could do without the more militant Gold Star owners misinterpreting our speculations as gospel and taking us to task over them. But at the same time a public access section of the website was developed that would be used to publicise the project and provide information for BSA enthusiasts. This part of the site was launched at Daytona 2003 and can be found at www.restorenik.com.

Beezagent's Note:- this website was replaced in 2006 by www.beezanet.com

Project Daytona, April 2003 – 1 year to go

2011-03-21T20:43:00.000Z

Last month I wrote about the project to restore and parade the 1954 Daytona winning BSAs at Daytona speed week in 2004 as part of a 50 th anniversary event. Daytona 2003 has just finished and we now have one year to prepare the bikes and organise the event itself. Let me tell you a bit more about both.

The Bikes The Daytona 200 was the most important race US calendar - equivalent to the TT. At that time the race was run on a large oval circuit that had one straight on sand, one on tarmac. In 1954 BSA sent both Gold Stars and Shooting Stars to Daytona. Both were fitted with rigid frames as it was felt that the reduced weight was of greater benefit on sand than swinging-arm suspension. We are restoring examples of both machines for 2004 - Tommy McDermotts Gold Star and Al Gunters Shooting Star.

Although US regulations of the time required these to be production bikes in a future update Ill tell you about some of the very non-production (!) details we found while working on these and the difficulty we’’ve had researching them before restoration work started.

The Event Our event is intended to celebrate BSAs win in 1954, the original riders and BSA in general. It is actually a series of activities that will be held within the larger Daytona speed week, a motorcycling party that eclipses the TT in both scale and scope. Our smaller ‘party will consist of::-

Friday, Saturday & Sunday - Antique Motorcycle Club of America Concours event spotlight on BSA at Eustis
Monday and Tuesday – Parade lap with restored bikes and riders at Daytona Speedway
Thursday – Concours display and ride-out to Jerry Woods action and swap meet at Deland
Thursday evening – Banquet and ‘meet the riders event at Stetson University.

The project team, the surviving riders and other BSA luminaries such as Jeff Smith, John Gardner and Dick Mann will attend the banquet to talk about the race and answer questions. Others have been approached and are still to be confirmed – watch this space

Project Daytona, February 2003

2011-03-21T20:40:00.000Z

This was originally posted as a blog style entry on a website, documenting the progress of Project Daytona through research and restoration of two BSA Daytona racers in 2004 as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of BSA's historic win in 1954.

In March 1954 BSA won the 200 mile expert race at Daytona Beach, Florida. Bobby Hill won on a Shooting Star, heading a field of 107 riders to complete the 200 mile race in 2 hours, 7 minutes and 22.70 seconds at an average speed of 94.24mph.

The next 4 places were also BSAs, with the nearest American bike being Don Hutchinson's Harley in 10th place.This was the most important event in the US racing calendar, comparable with the TT.

Although this was one of BSA's greatest sporting achievements the event passed largely uncelebrated at the time and has been barely mentioned in books and magazines since.In March 2004 a multinational group of BSA restorers hope to rectify this injustice by celebrating the 50th anniversary of the win at Daytona 2004. Restored bikes - a Gold Star and Shooting Star - will be paraded by the original BSA riders, Bobby Hill, Kenny Eggers, Dick Klamfoth, Gene Thiessen and Tommy McDermott.

The event will be supported by the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association, will be attended by various luminaries in the classic bike scene and the intention is to make this a big event with lots of press! While I'm sure this news will interest the BSA nuts, club members might also be interested to know that the Scottish member of the restoration team is club member Myles Raymond.

Myles and his buddies in the US have been working on this project for the last 2 years on an epic journey that has at times been more like archaeology than restoration but is now.Myles will be posting progress reports in the newsletter as the project moves into the last 12 months before the big event in March 2004

Project Daytona, February 2003 – In The Beginning

2011-03-21T20:33:00.001Z

This was originally posted as a blog style entry on a website, documenting the progress of Project Daytona through research and restoration of two BSA Daytona racers in 2004 as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of BSA's historic win in 1954.

Why are some people who have never met and who live in different continents restoring bikes via the internet?

The story starts in the 1990s when some BSA enthusiasts in Florida wonder if it would be possible to find and restore a Daytona BSA, a bike that has always fascinated them. But there are two problems - they can't find a bike and can't find anyone who knows anything about them.

Although they don't know it at the time, another BSA enthusiast in Scotland is researching twin carburettor kits sold for BSA pre-unit twins in the USA. His research also touches on the Daytona twins, as these were fitted with twin carburettors. He puts the result of his research on a web site. One of the Florida guys, Don Bradley sees the reference to Daytona bikes on the site and emails the Scottish BSA guy Myles Raymond asking for any information he has about these bikes. Myles doesn't have much so asks what Don has. Neither has much but both agree that this is important information and that they should keep in touch and share whatever they find.

Myles Raymond - research and website, Scotland

A year later they get in touch again - things have moved on. Don has unearthed more parts, more information and has decided to restore the bikes in time for the 50th anniversary of BSA's 1954 in 2004. He wants this to be a big event and plans a celebration attended by the original BSA riders. By this time Myles has more information too, has some leads on UK contacts who may know even more about the bikes' history and is planning to create an online archive for the information.

Things have now reached a critical mass. Myles offers to help the project any way he can but thinks that because he is in the UK, he is best placed to find information or ex- BSA staff who might help. Don will head-up the restoration partly because he has the bits of bike that have been found so far and partly because Myles is by his own admission is a poorer mechanic than Don.

They decide that the only practical way to share this information is to keep it all on a website where it will be available to anyone regardless of location or timezone. Myles will build the website partly because he's done one already and partly because Don is by his own admission, a poor typist.

Don Bradley, Bob Birdsall - BikeRestorations, Florida

So a website is built and used as an online archive and project management tool. Early in the research stage while the team is still uncertain about the specification of the bikes the web site contains much information that is speculative. To protect against the more militant BSA enthusiasts who might interpret the web site contents as gospel and take issue a decision is made to keep the site private. The URL is only circulated among the project team members or trusted individuals who are helping.

In practice the website works spectacularly well, bridging the difference in distance and time and the restoration proceeds.

There are still problems to solve and questions to answer but by April 2003 the team is confident enough that they can complete the bikes to the original specification and the website finally goes public in April 2003.

Project Daytona’s un-fulfilled 2004 promise

2011-02-18T23:33:00.014Z

Throughout the year before the Project Daytona 50th anniversary event I wrote about work to restore the bikes and prepare for the events in and around the track at Daytona in February 2004.

After a series of accidents and lack of care on my part (even more embarrassing since I work in IT) I was unable to keep updating the website after 2005, then didn’t have the time to completely re-write the website from scratch. When I adopted a blog format to talk BSA to the world in 2009 I did so because it was easier than building a website from scratch again. I also promised myself that I would transfer material from my old BSA website (you can still look at this at http://www.beezanet.com/ ) to my blog. I just haven’t known where to start until now.

In January 2004, literally just before the 50th event we came across some film of the 1954 Daytona event. Very bad quality, clearly a copy of a copy of a copy but good enough to watch and more importantly provided a few more clues about the fascinating swing-arm twin that Dick Klamfoth rode to 2nd place (see blog entry "Whatever happened...").

I wanted to share the film with the world but was hamstrung by lack of an easy way to do this – but was before YouTube had been invented.

Looking back over my old site deciding what to transfer to my blog first, this seemed like the best candidate – after all, I did make a promise.

So now, I present the original website entry, literally the last one I posted before I got on a plane from Scotland to Florida with only a couple of explanatory notes added but more importantly, now with the film. And as an extra treat, film of BSA's other big Daytona win in 1971 when Dick Mann took a BSA Rocket 3 to victory.

February 2004 – Daytona film found
How lucky can a restoration project be?

We thought we were doing well when ex- BSA employee Colin Washbourne got in touch and offered us works photos of the twins.

We thought we were doing really well when we were offered colour slides from the beach in 1954.

So when we were offered some film from the 1954 200 miler we could hardly contain ourselves!
In January 2004 BSA owner Skip Kologski read about the Daytona Project on our website. He was pleased to see people keeping the BSA name alive and remembered he had a VHS tape of vintage races that included some footage of the 54 race.

He wondered if we might be interested and contacted team member Don Bradley in Florida. Don was immediately enthusiastic so Skip said he would send a copy.

Now at this point Don called me and to be honest, we worried that this might all turn out too good to be true and we'd never hear from Skip again. But Skip was as good as his word and a couple of days later a tape popped into Don's mail box.

And there is film from Daytona in ‘54... and ‘52... and 71! There is also footage from the 64 Jack Pine, 50's Laconia and others too.

At time of writing we're still going through the film trying to work out exactly what is on the tape and where it originally came from. Quality is variable, we believe the originals are a mixture of 8mm and 16mm but all are very watchable and some are great!

Some of the film appears to be promotional material filmed by or for Triumph, so copyright issues may apply. But the Daytona footage is not and we're currently trying to figure out how we can edit and convert this into downloadable MPEG files or streaming video that we hope to put on the website. If this is possible it won't happen until after Daytona 2004 - we're too busy with bike restoration and event planning.

But we do plan to take a copy along to Daytona so your best chance of seeing the film will be at the Project Daytona Banquet on the evening of Thursday 4th March at the Edmonds Centre, Stetson University.

This very special will be the climax of our 50th anniversary celebrations and will be attended by the BSA riders from '54 and other BSA 'guest stars' like Dick Mann, Jeff Smith, Norm Smith and Bill Tuman.

They will be YOUR guests for the evening with awards, talks and a Q&A session - we hope to see you there!

Daytona 1954 film

Daytona 1971 film

Whatever happened to British Motorcycle picture credits?

2011-01-09T09:39:00.029Z

"Whatever happened to the British Motorcycle Industry?" is a book about the rise and demise of the British motorcycle industry written by Bert Hopwood who served as a development engineer and ultimately director with BSA.

It was written by Bert Hopwood and has been staple reading (it's been re-printed several time since first published in 1981)for BSA, Norton and Triumph enthusiasts ever since. As with any account of history it should be treated as one version of events and in Hopwood's case sometimes reads more like a biography than an account but I'm sure that savvy, litereate people will know this and take a balanced view. You may be interested to read ex- BSA development engineer Roland Pike's views on some of the same people and events elsewhere in my blog (add link)and form your own opinions. As with all personal accounts, personal aspirations, vanity and ego all contribute to the final product.

However, none of what I've written in any way detracts from the contribution both men made to the British motorcycle industry in general and BSA in particular in whose firmament they are amongst the brightest stars.

But the subject of this blog is not about the people, it's about the pictures.

"Whatever..." is a great read but it's shame the picture quality isn't better. It's not a coffee-table book so we just have to accept and forgive the limitations of small-volume publishing. What's harder to forgive are the picture captions (and I have a specific interest in one, more of which later) which are in some cases frustratingly not as descriptive as you'd like and in some cases just plain wrong.

An example of "just plain wrong..." can be found on page 108 there is a photo of a single-cylinder NSU Sportsmax described as a Rennmax - which is a twin.

An example of "frustrating..." can be found on page 120 where what is described as a 650 Golden Flash is actually a 650 Super Flash and there's a great story attached to this attempt to sell the Super Flash to the French Police which would have been good to read in the book and which I may write about in another blog.

Another example of "frustrating... " can be found on page 116 where what is described as a Gold Star in a rigid frame is actually something much more special than that as it is one of the Gold Stars prepared for the 1955 Daytona 200 mile race on the old beach circuit.

There may be others too but I'll leave you to play 'spot the mistake' if you like.

Now - back to the picture in which I have a specific interest.

On page 116 there is another photo of a bike described as a racing version of the 500cc BSA Shooting Star twin from the mid 1950's. It is, but I think it's much more than that. I think it's the bike that Dick Klamfoth rode to 2nd place at Daytona in 1954.

This is the racing 500 twin in "Whatever happened..."

The bike in the Hopwood photo shows modifications and features that were only used on bikes prepared for Daytona. For example, the modified fuel tank with filler moved to the side. The Vokes oil filter. Twin TT carburettors. The special thick-flange Daytona barrels. The racing seat made by BSA that looks like a Feridax seat but isn't.

In 1954 BSA achieved their big-win at Daytona winning the first 5 places with a team of specially prepared Gold Stars and Shooting Stars. These bikes have fascinated me since I was 17 and my interest and work to find out more then ultimately get involved in the restoration of examples of both can be read about at http://www.beezanet.com

My motivation to do this was driven by a frustration that there was so little documented about them in published histories and what was published was often inaccurate.

These bikes were hand-made by a team in BSA put together for just this purpose and special in many ways but with the most obvious and defining characteristic being that they were rigid- framed so they would be lighter and so they could be used in US flat-track events after Daytona. However,the bike that Dick Klamfoth rode to 2nd place was different because it wore a swing-arm frame - why?

This is Dick Klamfoth on his swing-arm twin at Daytona in 1954

The work to research the rigid Gold Star and Shooting Star restored in 1954 took longer than the actual restoration itself and I described it at times as being "more like archaeology than restoration". If the history and specification of the rigid bikes was a big puzzle to solve, then Dick Klamfoth's swing-arm twin has been an even bigger one.

This will be the first in a series of blogs that will explain the research done that led me to believe that the Hopwood pic is Klamfoth's 1954 bike. And since I'm now restoring that bike too, it will provide an occasional update on the work.

More later...

You can read a book review here http://www.realclassic.co.uk/books/books05091900.html
You can read more about Daytona BSAs and my involvement in the project to restore a 1954 Gold Star and Shooting Star here http://www.beezanet.com/daytona

... another door opens - Thad Wolff

2011-01-01T17:06:00.041Z

Few people make motorcycle history. Fewer still do it twice in one year. To do so twice in two different events on two bikes that couldn't be as different from each other on two completely different circuits, one off-road one on... well that's got to be very special - right?

So - let me introduce Thad Wolff.

Since most of the people reading my blogs are BSA enthusiasts, if Thad hasn't previously come to your attention then you should know that he's a pro- bike racer living in California who has ridden both superbikes and vintage bikes.

His first historic achievement was in October 2010 when he became the first person ever race an electric motorcycle against petrol powered bikes in a governing body sanctioned race. This happened at Barber in Birmingham, Alabama in October 2010 and you can read about it here.

If Thad has gone electric and won you can bet your boots you'll soon see other people trying and probably Thad again too but this is another blog topic altogether.

Now then, his second historic achievement was to win the premiere open twins expert class in the revived Catalina GP in December 2010. Tou can read about it here and here and here.

Catalina is not just a name used for a US market Gold Star and a flying boat. It's a small, rocky island lying about 22 miles West of Los Angeles. In 1919 chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr loved the island so much he bought it with a view to promoting it as a tourist destination. William Wrigley is long gone and doesn't own hte island anymore but left his mark there in the form of an imposing art-deco casino, and his mark on the pavements of the rest of the world ever since.

I went to Catalina in 1998, accompanying my wife to LA on a business trip. A boat trip to Catalina was available and knowing that there used to be a bike race there I wanted to take a look. Catalina is rocky, fairly bare and the original race run mostly on small roads and dirt tracks around the island - more like an enduro than a road race - but was very popular until it stopped. I don't know if it was a growing environmental awareness that stopped the race but when I visited I thought that a far more active environmental lobby now would make sure it never ran again... then in 2010 it did!

I don't know much about the people who managed to pull of this coup but hats off to them. For this blog entry I'm concentrating on Thad Wolff.

Although Thad is no stranger to vintage bikes, he's a recent convert to BSA and thanks my buddy Don Bradley for his help and advice about BSA. For his 'Catalina Scrambler' he took a fairly standard Super Rocket, upgraded the suspension and hubs front and rear, took advantage of the hollow swing-arm spindle to move the gearshif to the left where he's more comfortable, modified a two-into-one exhaust to exit on the left and that's mostly it. The engine itself was not tuned beyond standard specification or meticulously rebuilt and blueprinted before the race, Thad pretty much "run what he brung" - way to go, Thad!

Now over to Thad to tell the story himself.

"Now, my story starts when I was born 1 year later in L.A. I grew up riding, then racing dirt bikes about 1 hour northwest of the city where I grew up. I became an AMA roadracer, and even raced the ABC Carlsbad Superbiker event in the early 80’s, which was the start of the on and off road super motoracing of today. I guess I consider myself a versatile and well-rounded motorcyclist and racer. I’ve also built all kinds of bikes, but never anything English. So, always learning more and more about that Catalina race, I decided to build a BSA 650 Catalina Scrambler “Twin Special”. I found a 1958 Super Rocket early this year with the original black and yellow plate. I thought it would make a cool street bike that would look the part with the chrome upswept straight pipes, big knobbies, and of course, that neat Catalina Scrambler logo on the tank! The bike was almost finished, when lo and behold, race promoter, “Vinnie”, announced that he was bringing back the races to the island. Was this meant to be, or what? Ok, straight to the garage, strip the lights off, longer travel, Honda forks with Race Tech innards, Works Performance shocks, 21” wheel, Dunlop knobs, 58 tooth sprocket, and number plates. All of a sudden, I have an Open Premiere Twins Catalina racer! Oh yeah, and one thing all of you Brit purists will cringe at: I used the rear brake crossover shaft to bring the shifter over to the left side of the bike. I’ve spent my whole life shifting on that side and this old dog doesn’t want to learn that new trick.

The race date was getting closer and closer. All sorts of rumors were flying around about the race and nobody knew if it was really going to happen or not. Everyone that had the foresight to pre-enter on-time, had their fingers crossed, and everyone else started to think they missed the boat by not entering on time, and they were going to be left standing on the side of the track watching everyone else race their way back into history. Things started to look promising when I showed up at the dock in Long Beach to load the bike into the container to ship it to the island. The helper kids took one look at the vintage BSA, with its beautiful chrome gas tank, and asked me if I could load my own bike. I did, but I have to admit, that I was a bit worried about walking away from my racer when I looked back and it looked like a sardine in a can with all the other bikes. So, now I have 3 days to wait before getting reunited with my bike at the impound lot (pits) that was just outside the town of Avalon.

Part of my race training is riding my mountain bike. I can leave my house and after 45 minutes of riding over the mountain range, I’m at the beach, and am looking out across the water at that now mythical space in my mind, called Santa Catalina Island.

I’m telling you, I can’t think of anything else for those 3 days, so I kept busy riding my different bikes. I knew most of the course was going to be fire roads, so I rode near my house on trails that I figured were going to be similar. I’ve been riding these same fire roads for over 40 years, and when someone asked me if I was any good at fireroadin’, I replied, “I better be!” Come to think of it, my race training program is a lot of fun.

The last afternoon at home, my wife, Jody, and I rode down to the beach. We sat at one of our special spots on the sand to relax and gaze across the water at the island. We’ve seen it thousands of times, of course, but this time was different. The thought of racing my bike on that island, in what could be a very historic race, gave my stomach a small case of the butterflies.

The whole Catalina experience really started to ramp up when we boarded the Catalina Express alongside hundreds of other racers and spectators. Everyone was so excited. I knew a lot of people on the boat and it was neat to meet new friends and just check out everyone’s choice of apparel. I was wearing a vintage Castrol jacket, a Bud Ekins t-shirt, and a BSA, I Love You hat. I was representing the vintage thing and it was fun to tell people I was going to race a ’58 BSA. The outline of the island and then Avalon’s famous casino magically appeared out of the fog, and within seconds everyone had their cameras and cell phones out to start taking the first of many pictures. I would like to know how many pictures were taken on that weekend. It must have been millions.

After checking into the hotel, we walked up to the impound area. There was a sea of bikes (over 800), all grouped in one spot. What a sight, all the variety of classic racebikes. Alright, there’s the Beezer parked next to John Hateley’s Triumph and there’s a crowd around them taking pictures. We walked up and I was proud to be able to answer their questions with the statement, “Yep, that’s my bike!”

The next thing on my mind was the track. We hiked up the way to the starting line where there was a flurry of activity. Tractors at work, a water truck, volunteers putting up ribbons and hay bales lining the track, people walking and mountain biking the track, Red Bull and other sponsors hanging banners, flags, and all kinds of colorful race stuff. Wow! I can’t wait for tomorrow morning.

The morning of the race is finally here. The alarm clock says 3:46. It’s set for 5:30 and my eyes are wide open. There is no possible way I’m getting back to sleep. It’s still pitch black, and while walking the streets, the only sound I hear is the squeak that my hand squeezer is making. I know my forearms are going to be hating it about 3 hours from now. As it starts to get light, I figured it would be a good idea to scope out the beginning of the race course. There is no practice and I thought I would at least look at the 1st few corners. The rest of the track is going to be a surprise. Hey, check out this steep downhill with a tight right, left, then straight back up to a steep uphill. I don’t know if my start line position will be the first row or last, but if its last, there could be a huge bottle-neck, pile up there. Who knows, I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

It’s time to put helmets on, and with a good luck, I love you kiss from Jody, the sound of the kickstarters and sweet sounding vintage motors get louder and louder. Hateley’s Triumph lights up. I respond with the sound of the BSA’s straight pipes. You could see everyone saying, “Man, those British twins sound sooo good!” I think such a big part of the Vintage Bike races is the sound. I couldn’t help but think of being at places like Ascot. Aldana’s BSA, Romero’s Triumph, Nixon vs. Lawwill.

Man, the atmosphere was absolutely electric! Fifty-two years earlier they were lining up in town and ripping down the streets before going out into the mountains, but with lawyers and lawsuits these days, all we got to do was a parade lap down to the boardwalk and back up to the start area. That turned out to be so much fun. There were thousands of people waving and clapping, hooting and hollering. Most with cameras and cell phones capturing this special moment. The bikes are finally back on the island! All of a sudden, a guy with a homemade cardboard sign saying “Go Lupo!” jumps out of the crowd right at me! It’s my old racin’ buddy, Richard Chambers. When we were in Italy, they nicknamed me “Lupo” (that’s “wolf” in Italian). I give him a big high five as I go by and howl like a wolf. I didn’t want that parade lap to end, but off to the start line we go. I end up on the 4th row. I’m at the tail end of the expert riders on the largest, oldest bikes. Premiere Open Twins Expert was my class with the newer vintage bikes in front, like early 80’s CR’S and YZ’s. Those guys have got almost twice the suspension travel and about half the weight. I sure am glad to have a bandana over my face because that CZ in front of me is running way too rich.

Row by row takes off with a roost of fresh loam spittin’ off new knobbies. I’m going to totally roost my buddy from town, Andy Reid. I can’t believe he lines up right behind me. Hey, he’s a funny guy. Maybe he wants the Old Beezer to pelt him. Everyone starts with their left hand on the rear fender and when the green flag flies I get the killer hole shot! Now can you just imagine the sound those straight pipes made going through the gears up that start straight? I’ve got nobody close behind me and my sights are set to catch the guys up ahead when I come into the motocross section. I don’t know the track and I want to hit this first jump at speed, but I slow and don’t fly too far but it’s a double jump and I’m looking down knowing when I hit the face of the next jump on this 355 lb. bike, I’m going to bottom out big time. Thank God for Works Performance and Race Tech but my race prep didn’t look too good when my bars slipped all the way down! I yanked them back up and told myself it’s going to be a long race. I don’t know if any of you have raced with loose bars before, but it’s not good. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now. We get up on those fire roads and the bike handles great. It’s the same frame as the legendary Gold Star and it slides bitchin’. Now, I’m catching and passing people. I can tell what they’re thinking when they hear the sound of that bike coming right up on ‘em. Maybe it would be a good idea to kind of get out of the way. On the second lap I started feeling real good on the fast, smooth stuff. There was one corner where no spectators were allowed. The turn was marked with arrows, skulls, and crossbones, and there was one guy standing there with a camera. I guess when you get rider and photographer together, sometimes the rider goes a little faster. Do you know what I mean? I came in there too hot and all sideways, but I figure it’ll be ok after I hit the little berm on the outside that is supposed to keep people from going over the cliff. Only problem was right where my back tire was going to hit, there was a little open spot where water runs off. That’s right where the back of the bike went off and I went down. The handlebars did too, but I looked back at the guy and waved, yelling “HELP”! Luckily, we got it back out of there and after finding neutral, we started pushing. I hopped on sidesaddle and the bike just barely started. Now I’m running along side the bike, bars still all the way down, levers pointing straight up and I almost crashed trying to hop back on. That could have been very bad. Anyway, I’m back in the race and now I’m trying to think of how I can come up with enough energy to yank these bars back up. It took all my might that I could possibly ever come up with to pull them up without falling right off the back of that bike. Ok, it’s time to settle down and bring her on home. I did, and was surprised to see on my timing sheets later that the last lap was my fastest. As a matter of fact, there were only 9 guys in the whole race that had a faster lap time than me. There’s the checkered flag. It happened…1st place! What a relief, and now the post race fun starts! I could go on and on about that. Dan Gurney was there to watch his son Justin race. He told me I was going pretty good out there with an emphasis on good. That sure made me feel good. Hey, lets all gather around for more pictures!

Well, that’s my race report. The rest of the races went off without a hitch. All the city folk loved us being there and you can only imagine the town wants us back next year. Who knows if it will happen or not?

As Jody and I relax on the boat ride back to Long Beach with the big old 1st place trophy in the seat next to us, we contemplated just how this weekend will go down in the history books. Only time will tell, but it sure felt good to know that we are part of quite possibly a very significant event in motorcycle racing history.

The Catalina Grand Prix is BACK!!"

I'm delighted to to have another welcome BSA owner keeping BSA winning in 2010 and hopefully beyond.

One comment to signoff with. You'll have noticed that Thad is wearing an Indian t-shirt in some of his pics? Don't panic - I sent him a BSA Team Daytona t-shirt.

Welcome to the gang, Thad.

Kenny Eggers - as one door closes...

2010-12-19T09:58:00.054Z

This blog arrives at the beginning of 2011 to tell you about something that happened at the very beginning of 2010 - the death of Kenny Eggers.

Kenny seated on the restored Daytona BSA A7 in 2004

It also marks the return of the Beezagent to active BSA blogging after a very difficult and distracting year.

In January this year Kenny Eggers, one of the BSA 'wrecking crew' that took the first 5 places at Daytona in 1954 died after a short illness.

Kenny started his riding career in 1941 at the age of 12 riding a 1929 JD 74 ci Harley. Racing leathers were temporarily put aside when he joined the army but dusted-off again when he returned to civilian life in 1948 and started riding for the famous tuner Tom Sifton, then a Harley dealer in San Jose, California.

Kenny quickly became one of the fast guys to watch on the West coast and in 1952 wanted to ride at Daytona but Harley wouldn’t give him a bike – they reckoned he was too small to hang-on to a bike for the full 200 miles of Daytona. In stepped West coast BSA Distributor Hap Alzina, who had kept an eye on Kenny after his performance at Belmont, a track south of San Francisco and gave him a BSA Star Twin on which he came tenth.

There followed a brief spell on a Triumph though Phil Cancilla but after a recommendation from West coast BSA regular Gene Thiessen he returned to BSA and Hap Alzina again in 1953 to become one of the famous BSA Wrecking Crew that was so successful at Daytona in 1954.

Riding a rigid BSA Shooting Star, Kenny came fifth and just a month after Daytona, the same bike fitted with high bars was used to win the 125 Mile National road race at Willow Springs California in April 1954 then win again later in the year at the Portland Mile in Oregon.

Kenny retired from racing in 1957 but didn’t retire from bikes which he rode and restored and I first contacted Kenny then met him as part of the Project Daytona 50th Anniversary Celebrations in 2004. I only met Kenny during the 50th Anniversary Daytona events that was involved in but he made a big and memorable impression.

At Daytona in 2004 I hoped to get as much information out of the BSA riders as I could for my website and private research. I wanted to speak to these guys and soak-up as much as I could, mindful of the fact that I'd be asking them about things that happened 50 years previously - how much will I remember about today 50 years in the future?

Not surprisingly, some memories were better than others but I got some of the best and most detailed information from Kenny and enjoyed an hour of pure magic at the track with him talking and taking notes.

I remember in particular I had shown Kenny an old photo with him and some other riders because I was trying to identify one of the other riders. I was pretty sure that I knew where and when it had been taken, but Kenny disagreed. At the time I politely accepted his correction but thought that actually, 50 years after the event he was probably wrong and I was right. Well afterwards I found out the he was right and I wasn't!

Kenny was a lively and entertaining character. At Daytona in 2004, Colin Washbourne had been inducted into the 2004 wrecking crew as an honourary member since he was one of the young engineers employed by BSA to prepare bikes for Daytona in the 50's and latterly had been helping us restore the bikes.

However, Colin had also been BSA sidecar champion Chris Vincent's passenger and as an ex- racer found a bond with Kenny that resulted in them both meeting enthusiasts, signing posters and t-shirts and talking BSA to enthusiasts during the day but finding some time in the evening to drive around Daytona fairly quickly in a car, managing a few drinks on the way and having a lot of fun. Old racers, huh...?

Anyway, it was these experiences that prompted me to describe Kenny as "...a bright spark..." in a magazine feature that I wrote after the 2004 event. I heard that Kenny had read this and took it quite the wrong way, thinking I was painting a less than complimentary picture of him.

Not so - in Scotland, when we say someone is a bright spark it's a very affectionate and complimentary way to describe someone.

Kenny was a real bright spark.

Kenny winning the 125 mile National at Willow Springs in April 1954, on the same bike he rode at Daytona just a month before.

Kenny on his 1952 BSA with Ang and Don Rossi, location unknown.

Kenny's 1952 BSA at Portland, Oregon. Couple posing behind are unknown!

Portland Meadows, Oregon 1954. No. 83 is Dick Mann on Kenny's 1952 A7 and no. 59 is Kenny on his 1954 A7. Dick won the ameatur and Kenny the expert. The gentlemen standing behind are Ang & Don Rossi, dealers & tuners from Santa Rosa.

Kenny and Bobby Hill at the 2004 50th anniversary celebrations at Daytona.

The BSA Super Flash Story

2009-02-10T00:23:00.005Z

For one year only BSA made a super sports 650 pre-unit twin called the Super Flash.

It was conceived specifically for the US market and most of the 700 machines made went there. Little information was published about them in their short life and they are rarely mentioned in books about BSA history. Few have survived.

Why make a super sports twin? The Super Flash is the first example of a bike produced by BSA specifically for a particular market, in this case the USA. The requirements driving it's birth were simple - raw power.In early 1950's World War W II was five years distant, but many wartime restrictions remained.

In the monochrome austerity of continued rationing, fuel and housing shortages a motorcycle was for many people the only affordable means of transport. With manufacturing industry still picking it's way out of the ruins and crippled by US war debts, manufacturers were exhorted by their government to 'Export or die'. And the biggest market was the USA. Meanwhile in the US where the economy had largely recovered by 1946 and car ownership was widespread, motorcyles were for sports and leisure time. Consequently US buyers were more influenced by racing success than in the UK, and at that time this meant big Indian and Harley-Davidson(60 cubic inch V-twins.

By 1949, BSA had a US distributor and started making an impression on both leisure and sports riders. However, US AMA class 'C' restrictions meant that the OHV racing bikes bikes made by British manufacturers were limited to 500cc. Recognising the importance of the US market, BSA's chief designer Bert Hopwood went on a fact-finding mission in 1951 and met US dealers and riders. They made it very clear to him that if BSA wanted to increase it's sales presence it had to make bigger, faster bikes. On his return to the UK in 1951 the Super Flash was conceived.

What kind of bike? Bert Hopwood had certain constraints to work within. Since swinging arm frames and alloy heads were already in the planning stages a new model was out of the question. The bike would have to use as many existing parts as possible yet produce a bike that was much faster than the existing roadsters.

An impossible task? In fact BSA already had considerable experience. Veteran BSA competitor Fred Rist had been riding a tool room special 650 in sand races that could reach 140mph. A 650 ridden by Gene Thiessen had taken the AMA class 'B' record at 151mph at the Bonneville salt flats in October 1951. They had also been sending 500cc bikes to compete in the Daytona 200 that by 1953 could reach 130mph.

In the end there was no replacement for displacement so a 650cc or 40 cubic inch bike was made. The finished bike looked superficially like a plunger Gold Flash but with the obvious external differences kink in the seat post to accommodate the TT carb. Gold Star type chromed blade mudguards and stays were used. A 2.5 gallon tank Gold Star quick filler, chrome panels and metal tank badges was fitted with a unique 'Super Flash' decal on the tank top.
Inside however, the engine used many components that were not standard Gold Flash. In the press that accompanied it's launch these were described as 'special' though in reality their specification had probably been proven in the Rist, Thiessen and Daytona bikes.

The Super Flash had a brief life. First Super Flash is shipped in February 1953. In the same month American Motorcycling makes the bike 'Motor of the Month' with a 3 page review written by Roy Bradbury, general manager of the BSA's East coast distributor Rich Child Cycle co. This was reprinted later by BSA and used as a 4 page advertising brochure. In April 1953 the first bikes appear in US showrooms. In June 1953 BSA issues a list of parts to dealers as service bulletin no. 4F. In August 1953 the "You can buy 'em bigger" ad appear in US mags. The bike is priced at $975.00. In October 1953 a colour A3 foldout brochure is printed, probably in time for the Earls Court Motorcycle show in November. In November 1953 the Super Flash parts list appears as an appendix at the back of the 'A' models twin cylinder spares book. In the same month, the last Super Flash leaves BSA.

Initially, almost all Super Flashes were shipped to the US. But by the Autumn US shipments slowed down and machines began to be shipped to BSA dealers in Europe, Africa, Australia and the far east. Midway through 1953 BSA had already demonstrated a swing arm frame so most people knew it was on the way. Enthusiasts had also guessed that a new range of alloy head twins was being planned for 1954. With it's plunger frame and iron head the Super Flash would have seemed a dinosaur in comparison so potential buyers, unless desperate, would have waited for the new models. As US sales evaporated BSA tried harder to sell remaining Super Flashes any way they could.

Shipping records and anecdotes from owners suggests that the machine specification was changed either to use surplus parts or by customising to seal a deal. Things like changes in mudguard type, tank size, mudguard stays, handlebars and colours. The most significant change was to use a swing arm frame on some of the very last models shipped in late '53 and early '54. With this change and the appearance of the alloy head Road Rocket imminent, the game was pretty well up for the Super Flash. In a production life of about 1 year around 700 machines were built in all.

Why have so few survived? Of the 700 or so made, very few have survived. At a casual glance the Super Flash doesn't have much to distinguish it from any other old pre-unit BSA iron head twin. BSA pre-unit twins have never been considered glamorous and would have been treated accordingly when the mechanical 'end' came. Left for dead in garage corners, thrown in the river or a skip - many Super Flashes must have met the same fate. One of the reasons for appearing on this blog is to provide information that will help unearth bikes currently lying unidentified in workshop corners. It will also bring owners and information together to help get more bikes on the road.

If you wanted to create a classic motorcycling legend from scratch the sports specification, short production life and low survival rate could almost be used as a template. But the Super Flash isn't a legend because it is simply too obscure. It has managed to excuse itself from published BSA histories by being a US only model - most of the books are written in the UK, by UK historians about the bikes BSA made for the UK.

And the reason for its existence is much more mundane. Like the later Rocket Gold Star the Super Flash was a 'bitsa' put together using parts that were mostly already available in the product range or had been tried and tested in the competition shop.

It was a stop-gap machine made in sufficient numbers to qualify for US AMA class 'C' racing until Bert Hopwood's product rationalisation programme bore fruit with the swing-arm frame and A/B series gearbox in 1954. But what a stop-gap!

Roland Pike Autobiography - Chapter 30

2009-02-09T01:57:00.002Z

Summary of development work

Rather than trying to visually compare inlet ports, we found it best to compare by measuring capacity with valve fitted in cc's using a burette, several engines that were down for power were found to be smaller capacity; 136cc instead of 148cc on an A7 twin, a B34 GS port 117cc extension 128 total induction 245cc.

All bench tests were carried out in uniform manner starting at lowest practical RPM and going up in increments of 250 RPM with no pause. Flash readings were never reported. We did try running power curves in reverse order starting at maximum revs and coming down but decided this gave false high readings.

Sandilands discovered almost by accident that a venturi shape after the carburettor can be 85% of the area of the carburettor body area with no loss of power, in fact it gave a small increase. We did most of our power curves with a flow meter hooked up between fuel tank and carburettor, this gives a valuable check on efficiency and also on correct carburettor settings.

When using two into one exhaust system it is desirable to have each pipe from the cylinder head to the junction of equal length if not carburation may be drastically affected at some point in the range. The way to avoid this problem is to ensure that each pipe has the same length to area ratio, in other words the longer piece will be larger diameter. In our experiments with the short stroke 500cc A7 twin we also found the angle of the two pipes at their intersection was important. I was at MIRA once waiting to use the timing strip whilst a group of Royal Enfield people tried to get the carburation right on one of the 700cc twins fitted with a two into one exhaust system, I noticed they were using the same diameter exhaust pipes of different lengths before the junction. Strangely enough this same rule holds good for induction pipes as found by Guzzi on their later single cylinder racers.

The A7 and A10 connecting rod bolts were originally BSF threads, we changed this to 26 threads per inch cycle threads as we thought larger area at the root of the thread would make a stronger bolt, we had to reduce torque when tightening the big end nuts proportionally, unfortunately someone in the drawing office forgot to tell the engine assembly and several bolts were broken before the error was discovered. Even more strange was the fact the broken bolts only happened to one of the several mechanics assembling the crank assemblies. I was asked to investigate, so sent Arthur Butler up to the engine assembly to watch how they did this torquing up. He returned a little later laughing with a small tobacco tin in his hand, It had plumbers tallow in it, apparently only one mechanic was putting tallow on the threads before tightening, with the results that nuts tightened appreciably more before the torque wrench recorded the correct torque figures. We accordingly tested some bolts with various lubricants on the thread and decided that important bolts such as connecting rod bolts should be assembled clean.

Oil Pumps.The BSA gear type pump is very simple and reliable, at one time we did some tests by simply running a pump on a drill press in a can of oil and measuring the temperature of the oil, we were surprised at how quickly the temperature rose especially as there was not resistance to the flow. On examination of the pump we decided that some oil was being compressed between the two gears, accordingly a small bypass was cut in the cover plate allowing oil to feed back to the inlet side of the pump. Further testing showed practically no heat build up in the oil. Some tests were carried out on A7 (using various viscosity oils, starting with 50 wt and coming down to 40 wt to 30 wt, 20 wt SAE 10 and finally 5 wt. We discovered that normal oil pressure was maintained on the SAE 10 50 wt, 40 wt and 30 wt. At SAE 20 viscosity pressure tended to drop particularly when hot. The engine was stripped at this point to see if the low pressure caused any bearing problems, everything looked pretty good. At SAE 10 wt pressure seemed very low in fact when hot was nil a further examination of the bearings and pistons showed no sign of trouble but the cam followers did not look too happy, starting to score.

A final run was made with SAE 5 wt pressure almost nil when cold, showed nil when hot especially when engine was revved up, finally the timing side main bearing failed. On stripping the engine we found the white metal had melted and run, but no trace of it in the oil or crankcase, when the sealing plugs were removed from the crankshaft the white metal, was found to be inside the oil passages of the crankshaft, the connecting rod bearings appeared to be in good condition. Apparently the light 5 wt oil was thrown outwards to the big end bearings by centrifugal force enough to lubricate the big end bearings adequately but in such quantity that it robbed oil from the main bearings faster than the oil pump could replace it.

One interesting test was when we set up a A10 engine and gearbox unit on the test bed driving the dyno by a short chain, the object was to try and measure the power loss in the gearbox in each gear. We could not measure the power in 1st gear as the dyno was turning too slowly to absorb the considerable torque due to the low gear ratio. As we expected the most efficient gear was 4th, the direct gear.

Surprisingly, 2nd gear was more efficient than 3rd gear due presumably to the fact that 2nd gear wheels were better supported than 3rd. The final part of the test was when we removed the gearbox and clutch and tried to run a fairly long chain from the engine to the dyno direct to see what difference was with gearbox out of action. To our surprise it could not be done, this rather long chain just whipped and banged and would not transmit power. We had to move the engine back on the block and used a short chain. Incidentally the power loss in 3rd gear was about 10% with about 8% loss in 2nd gear as compared with 4th gear with only 2%. One of the lesser known advantages of the eccentric rocker spindles is the ability to adjust the valves whilst the engine is running.

I suggested this to Reg Wilkes one day, however, he did not seem very keen to stand astride a high revving engine with a wrench in either hand so I appointed myself as the rocker manipulator. We started off on the 500 Gold Star race engine at about 5000 rpm with me firmly astride and adjusted each rocker until the maximum power reading was obtained. The engine was then blown cool with the fan and clearance checked, the inlet figure was something like .009" and exhaust a little more. Then the engine was run at 6000rpm and again rockers adjusted for maximum power and cooled down to room temperature and clearances checked, this time the inlet was .006" and exhaust .008".

Next a reading was taken at 6500 rpm and again clearances checked when cool. Now the inlet clearance was down to about .003" and exhaust .006", subsequent checks were made at 7000 rpm and 7500, with some pointed remarks made about what happened to me if the engine shuld blow up while I am astride it. The results at 7000 rpm were clearances Inlet .001" Exhaust .004" at 7500 rpm inlet nil, exhaust clearances .003". These were not exact figures (my memory is not that good) but the general trend was there at the higher revolutions the rockers and push rods were bending and whipping slightly.

Prior to these tests we had always set valve clearances with a cold engine, with inlet push rod just free to rotate and .003" clearance on the exhaust. The normal practice with regard to rocker angle in relation to valve stem has been to arrange for the rocker to be at right angles to the valve stem at half lift, the object being to minimise side thrust and cut down on valve guide wear. In the course of experiments with both the C12 and the A7 engine better running at high revolutions could be obtained when the rocker was at right angles to the valve stem at about l/32"to 1/16" lift. It was thought that this arrangement aligned the valve seat with the valve seat in the head just as the valve was closing, whereas with the common setting at half lift, the rocker side thrust will tip the valve slightly in the guide when seating and will have to realign itself as it seats. At very high revolutions there is not enough time for this and some efficiency will be lost. On the C12 this was visible even by turning the engine by hand, by inserting some packing between the rocker mounts and the head we were able to see the improved action. It is quite possible that most overhead valve engines using rockers could benefit from this rearrangement of rocker angles.

One unexpected results when trying a much larger and stiffer crankpin with plain bearing was considerable difficulty in lining up the flywheel assembly, presumably the wider shoulders made the assembly more rigid. Engine gaskets between rocker box and cylinder head usually made of paper were replaced with metal corrugated gaskets, these could be used over and over again and sealed better.

During the five years I was at BSA doing engine development I was fortunate in attracting some very bright and enthusiastic mechanics and apprentices, they all contributed to the progress we made with development of the BSA range. There was tendency to specialise but most could handle anything that came in the shop. Jimmy Gibbard did most of the odd machinery jobs, Jack Turner did the intricate inlet port arrangements and exploited the extra down draft angles and straight ports. Reg Wilkes, Bert Hole, Arthur Butler, Arthur Bridgewood, Bill Bently and Alan Sandilands could handle any aspect of engine building , the apprentices who spent more than average time with us were Gordon Smith, Robert Trigg, Ray Beech, David Harris and John Taft. Albert Dyde, ??? Harrison Ward and Hill came into the shop later. We also had some colonials like Barry Stormont and Cohn Mather during the winter months. I learned a great deal and was able to try out many ideas that I could never have done in the ordinary way, for this I am grateful to Mr Hopwood and BSA for this opportunity.

One of the chief abilities necessary in this type of work is to be able to 'sell' ideas to the Management, something I was not very good at. Thanks to BSA sending me to the USA on business trips I decided to emigrate and have had an interesting life in USA becoming a citizen in 1982, finally having my own business and a and a decent workshop including a dynomometer. I have not lost interest in motorcycles and at 75 own a 250cc Kawasaki 'Ninja', a remarkable little machine with a performance in road trim better than my old racers. We still enjoy trips to Road Atlanta to watch the motor cycle road each year.

Roland Pike Autobiography - Chapter 29

2009-02-09T01:47:00.003Z

A continental tour on A10 combination

As a result of our trip to Monthlery in May of 1953 to test the various models, I was keen to spend a holiday in France to show my wife the city of Paris and the other places I had seen and was also very keen to visit Carcassone the famous walled city in the Pyrenees.

We left our small daughter with her grandparents who lived near Folkstone and took the ferry from Dover to Boulogne using our BSA A10 sidecar outfit as transportation. We reached Paris after a rough crossing of the channel in time to garage the combination and go for a sight seeing walk. We took in the Eiffel tower and the ornamental gardens then had a typical French meal in a nearby restaurant. We stayed the night at the Hotel Vermont where Charlie Salt and I had stayed whilst at Monthlery. Next day we left Paris for Orleans and the Loire valley seeing many of the lovely Chateaux, we particularly enjoyed the Chateaux at Blois which served as the inspiration for Biltmore House near Ashville, North Carolina. We finished up that day in a little market town and stayed in a small country inn. Ruth and I had hardly a dozen words of French between us but fortunately some other English tourists arrived and spoke fluently. The inn was quite comfortable and we enjoyed an excellent dinner with wine in the evening. I remember reeling away from the table and going for a walk round the town and discovered a rope walk along a stretch of grass beside a wall with windlasses at each end, it appeared to be still in use.

Next day we drove across the Landes, flat and sandy and thick with pine forests, there was evidence of various forest fires which does afflict that area. The road was narrow straight and flat and rather bumpy, as we approached Bordeaux we passed miles and miles of vineyards and many of the villages we passed bore the names of famous red wines. Going through the city I noticed we were being followed by two policemen on what appeared to be BMWs but in fact were Gnome et Rhones built under licence from BMW They followed us right through the town, perhaps waiting for me to exceed the speed limit or some traffic infraction, but they did not sto top us thankfully. The next town of any size was Biarritz, a famous gambling centre in Edwardian days, the road runs close to the sea all the way from there to the Spanish border.

We decided to stop near there at a little town called Jean de Luc, tile hotel appeared to be full up, it is a resort town but the proprietress who spoke excellent English said she could put us up in the annexe. This turned at to be a cottage owned by an employee and nothing seemed to work in it. Plumbing was a very smelly affair. We ate in the hotel proper and excellent food it was. The waitress detailed to attend to us spoke no English but we managed to order a meal and of course wine and as it turned out although we were not sure what we were eating at times it was all delicious. Next morning after a restless night we were glad to make an early start, we had come to the conclusion French breakfasts were a waste of time as it consisted of just croissants & coffee. We had already got into the habit of combining breakfast and lunch and buying food from local shops, which was much more filling and satisfactory. At one stop for petrol the old lady attendant asked if we would like a glass of wine, it was very hot driving, we agreed and she poured us almost a tumbler apiece of a sweet white wine that she had in a large chilled bottle, it was delicious and more thirst quenching that we thought it would be. We could not cross into Spain on this trip as we did not have the necessary visas. The road came right up alongside the border in places, there were no customs posts at all these border points and there were signs requesting you to report to the nearest Custom post within 24 hours.
That night we got as far as Oloro and stayed in one of the nicer hotels of the trip. The owner had travelled all over the world, there was a grand display of trophies in the main hallway. The daughter spoke excellent English and they looked after us very well. On the way that day we had passed through a town called Mauleon whose main industry was making string soled shoes called espadrilles. I remembered my father had brought us some when he came back from a trip in 1921, you could not wear the darn things out. We had an amusing highlight going along on the outfit, as it being rather a hot day I had discarded some of the heavy outer motor cycling clothes, Ruth was reclining behind the sidecar windscreen, when three French damsels on bicycles started waving to me, but as they drew abreast they spotted my wife and they were covered with confusion when they spotted her. Next day we went to Lourdes, where faith healing miracles are said to occur but it was kind of honky-tonk with all manner of picture postcard stands catering to the tourists.

We were glad to get away from there and climbed and climbed up the valley Catercaux where the famous waterfalls are, we finally came out in the clouds, it was misty and we were unable to take any pictures so fell back on buying postcards from a vender. There were wonderful fields full of wild flowers. The head of the valley was at about 7000 feet but unfortunately it did not go any further and we had to retrace our route down again. Next on our itinerary was the ??? of Foix with an old castle to which we had to pay admission, they charged us twice the amount that was quoted in a one year old guide book! We left there the next morning and travelled through a small town called Montreal where I photographed a man driving some huge oxen. From there we went on to Carcassone, this was the high spot of our tour, after parking the outfit outside the main gate we spent several hours walking around the battlements and exploring the ancient city it has been beautifully restored to its ancient style with narrow streets with shops and a hotel and church, the whole place is on a hill and from the battlements one has a fine view of the countryside and the old town down in the valley. Reluctantly we left the old city and crossed the last ridges of the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean coast near Perpignan. At one little resort near the Spanish border we parked the bike and looked over the rocky cliff edge and for my pleasure was a girl who was brown all over, I guess she thought it was safe to sun bathe in the nude thinking she could not be seen.

We retraced our way towards the east aiming to go along the coast and up the Rhone valley and got as far as the old Roman town of Montpelier. After dinner we went for a walk round the town which seemed to be a rather nice place with decent shops in fact quite a pleasant city. Next day we passed through another Roman town, Nimes. Here there is the remains of an amphitheatre similar to the one in Rome, slightly smaller. On leaving the town we passed an aqueduct built in Roman times, it was over 100 feet high in places and in remarkably good condition. Rather than go into the Carn??? we drove across the salt flats where they were scraping up, salt from evaporating sea water. We then turned inland and took a short cut to Avignon of bridge fame where we joined N5 a main road and rather boring until we came to Montellimar which exuded a delightful smell of nougat its main industry, there were shops along the road selling it in various flavours. Wanting to avoid going through Lyons with its heavy traffic we took a detour and came out north of the city and on to ??A10ns for the night to stay at a hotel aptly named Hotel du Commerce, it seemed to have trucks and trains passing by all night. Next day we passed Vermenton famous for its potteries and fine chinaware stopping in a new hotel in Joigny. From here it was not far to Paris which we passed quickly through in the afternoon, the traffic as usual was moving fast and we had to drive quite hard to keep up, we took the road north through Beauvais, here on the weather deteriorated and we had our first rain of the trip, we stayed at a typical tourist hotel with much coming and going. The next day was a very soggy ride to Boulogne and Calais where we caught the afternoon ferry to Dover. It was still light when we disembarked at Dover being summer time but at quite a late hour. The Customs officer was quite intrigued as we had so little to declare, he must have thought we were smuggling as he made a thorough search of all our baggage and the bike, but our main was soiled clothing.

We collected our daughter next day and returned to ???. I had totalled 2300 miles in the ten days, the outfit was still running well except for a slight bearing rumble and a tendency to transfer oil from the chain case to the engine. We had had to stop several times on the trip to refill the chain case. It was easy to tell when the oil was low in the chain case as the whole machine felt rough. I am sure if I had not kept filling the case the chain would have overheated and broken. I reported this to Mr Hopwood who suggested stripping the engine and trying to find out the reason for the transfer of oil, as he had had complaints of this nature from the US.

The bearing rumble turned out to be the timing side main bearing white metal flaking away. This was a common problem. This time it inspired me to investigate the whole bearing problem, trying out needle bearings, bushes and improved white metal bearings. After re-assembly we set the outfit up with manometers connected to the rocker box and the chain case filler cap and the timing case. These water manometers were quite simply two glass tubes connected at the bottom by a rubber hose and partially filled with water, one tube was left open to the atmosphere at the Back to top whilst the other end was hooked up to the chain case or crankcase etc. The difference in pressure pushes the water up on one side and down the other. The height of one side above or below the other pressure in inches of water, for bigger pressure differences mercury would be used instead of water, flue to the mechanical breather valve the pressure in the crankcase at touring speed is about 4"- 7gi of water below, atmosphere, the crankshaft seal was the single lip variety designed to keep oil from passing OUT of the crankcase. So of course it did nothing to prevent chain case oil being pushed into the engine by atmospheric pressure, a change to a double lipped seal cured the problem.

Roland Pike Autobiogarphy - Chapter 28

2009-02-09T01:28:00.008Z

My trips to the USA

The BSA representatives in the USA, Alf Childs in the east and Hap Alzina on the west coast both realised the importance of racing for sales success in this market, and both were in favour of factory co-operation in these endeavours. In 1952 Alf Childs was in England for the Motor Cycle Show and while at the factory told the Board of Directors that he wanted someone to come over for several weeks and run a service school. Someone who can talk to the Dealers in their own language and who had some personality. I understand there was some talk of sending Fred Rist, he had been over before and had gone down very well, but he was not a technical man. Mr Hopwood suggested that perhaps they would like to meet Pike, he had been a motor cycle racer, has had experience and would be interesting to the Dealers and racers.

The first I heard of this suggestion was when I received a telephone summons to Mr Leake’s office, my first thought was to wonder what I had done wrong. After a quick tidy up I went up to the office and was escorted by Mr Leake’s secretary to the boardroom where the Directors, Mr Hopwood and Alf Child were waiting. They introduced me to Mr Child who sized me up and said I looked a dignified young man and how would I like to go to the States and run a service school? I looked across to Mr Hopwood and asked if he thought I knew enough about the rest of the bikes, and he said he would arrange it for me to obtain the necessary knowledge if I thought I could run a school. It was all laid on very quickly, the Motor Cycle show was in October and I was wanted in the States by November. It meant I had to get an American visa, smallpox vaccination and renew my passport and book my passage by boat. Passage was booked on the 14,000 ton cargo boat ???Media which had accommodation for 100 or so passengers, first class only. My wife and daughter accompanied me to Liverpool, we were taken in style in a company car driven by Mr Leake’s chauffeur. The ship left from the Prince of Wales landing stage the same as for the IOM packets. The ship moved out into mid channel and then just sat at anchor and on enquiry a crewman said they were waiting for flood tide. The boat drew a lot of water when loaded. I do not know what else it was loaded with but I do know it contained 14 BSA bikes that were being sent along for the service seminars. They were all painted in non-standard colours to get the Dealers reactions, this was due to a request by Alf Child, they were in chocolate, green, red, silver, you name it. As it turned out the Dealers preferred the standard colours.

The next morning when I came up on deck somebody said we were about to pass the south coast of Ireland, with my binoculars I was unable to see anything as it was rolling so much and in fact I felt quite queasy and also cold, so I went below. I had never been on a boat as big before, the cross channel boats and those that cross to the I0M were all under 3000 tons, even the boats to Belfast were around 4000 only. So the Media seemed quite big. It was fitted with Denny Brown stabilisers which cut down the rolling but not the pitching at times it would rise and fall over 20 feet, like riding a roller coaster. I had a short bout of 'mal de mer' but soon recovered and enjoyed the rest of the trip. A good many passengers spent the whole crossing below. Actually it was not a big liner and there was not much room, a small library, large lounge, a smoking room and bar and a dining room. There was a walk way round the Back to top deck, glass enclosed that if you marched around seven or eight times made up a mile. There were several friendly passengers which helped pass the time swapping yarns. Every evening at about 6 pm various ships officers invited odd passengers to their cabins for cocktails. I went to the Captains quarters one evening and also to the chief engineers cabin another time. At one of these functions I met Chris Morley the author and had a most interesting chat. Many of the American passengers tried to impress upon me how expensive I was going to find things in New York and I began to wonder if the seven pounds a day allowance I had would be enough.

Due to the rather rough crossing the boat was slowed and the trip took eight days instead of the usual six or seven scheduled. We finally arrived in New York harbour on a Sunday morning. I had never seen so many cars and traffic on the beltway. As we only had about 100 or so passengers the immigration check was soon carried out, not like on the 'Queens' where you had to stand in line for ages. The customs was a different matter, I had some films with me for use in the school, I had borrowed them from Castrol and Shell such as Geoff Dukes' 1950 TT and some Scrambler footage. Customs were quite awkward about them, wanting to keep them to check if they were pornographic. Fortunately I was met at the pier by Roy Bradley and Geoff Floyston from BSA and Malcolm ???2~lue of Castrol. Malcolm had lived for years in the States, he had come over originally to play soccer after WW1, he had a great personality and soon persuaded Customs that they were harmless.

When we went ashore Roy said they were going to show me a bit of New York, Malcolm however fancied a drink but the bars were not open so we went in a little coffee shop across from the pier, my first experience of a 'diner'., The place was full of longshoremen and sailors from the Cunard and White Star liners that were tied up there. In those days most everyone came to the States by boat and the docks were always busy, now its like a ghost town except for the odd Cruise ships. I still felt as though I was going up and down, after you get your sea legs it takes some time to get steady again. The lads were all for taking a cab but I felt I would rather take a walk as I had little exercise whilst aboard. So we walked up about 8th Avenue where they found a bar open, I settled for a beer not being a drinking man, they others fancied something more lethal. After Malcolm left us we took a subway to Times Square and we went to Jack Dempsey's restaurant for lunch and I enjoyed my first meal American style. There was an English movie then playing on Broadway called "Sound Barrier" so we went to watch this, later we collected my luggage from a locker in the bus terminal and ??? into our car.

After driving through the Lincoln Tunnel we passed through towns with to me strange names like Hackensack and Passaic finally reaching Nutley, NJ where I booked into a motel for one night with the arrangement that Roy would pick me up in the morning and have breakfast together. The motel was steam heated, and I having always been used to cold bedrooms opened up the windows as I felt I could not stand the stuffy atmosphere, however by morning it was cold enough for me to regret being so rash. After breakfast Roy took me to Rich Child Cycle Co and I was introduced to a bewildering crowd of characters, most of whose names I forgot almost immediately.

The schedule arranged for me was to, start a school that same morning which did not leave me much time to prepare, none of the bikes or literature had arrived but I did have the two films. It was my first introduction to American motorcyclists who appeared to me to be in some type of uniform, leather jackets and peaked hats not unlike Nazi Storm troopers and some had Harley Davidson emblems on. They appeared to be a tough looking crowd but in actual fact were a friendly bunch. We soon settled in-to the Service Department which Bill Carlton the Rich Child mechanic had turned into a class room for the week with blackboard, easel and chairs. Showing one of the films gave the fellows a chance to relax as most had been travelling over the weekend to attend the school. One had ridden his Star twin all the way from El Paso in Texas 2,500 miles, and he was not a youngster either, it had taken him nearly a week. In talking to these Dealers during the lunch break and in the evenings when we went out to eat I discovered that most of them were working as dealers part time, one of them ran a radio and electrical shop, motor cycles were a side line. Another worked in a factory all day whilst his wife ran the bike shop and he sold and serviced bikes in the evening. If he sold a couple of bikes a month he was happy. There was one who ran a full time shop in New Jersey and another in Washington, Long Island , but these were the exception. Most worked only part time in the cycle business which may be why BSA did not sell as many bikes as Honda did later on, as Honda built up a proper dealership network.

Shortly we had our materials unpacked and talked about the new models and what was coming along for 1953. They were interested in what I did at BSA and how the factory was organised, we showed the films of Scramblers and of the Ulster Grand Prix in the wet in 1948. They could not understand how the bike could do 100-120mph in the pouring rain and not slide off the road. They were also interested in my own racing experiences.

The actual Service part of the course was a bit haphazard, some would bring up a problem, we would discuss what we knew of it and a possible cure, to me it did not seem they we were accomplishing very much, but they went away at the end of the week apparently quite satisfied. On the Friday we went into some details of the Ariels, which I knew only a little about but Bill Carlton and one of the roadmen were able to cope quite adequately. Alf Child, Roy Bradbury and myself sat down on the Saturday and held a review of the first week, Alf wanted more emphasis on sales, so Roy had to lay on a bit of high pressure stuff and he suggested I talk more about the Star twin, so I prepared for that. The second week with a fresh group of Dealers went off better. Roy warned me that the third week was likely to be the toughest as the Dealers expected were practical men and likely to be argumentative. He kindly pointed out the most likely trouble shooters, one in particular was Herb Suddeth but as it turned out he was the most helpful co-operative pupil of the whole three weeks and I got along with him extremely well. Another pupil Sam Avelino who came from New England told me he had worked in the ship yards during WW2 repairing a number of British boats and he hoped I was not going back on any he had worked on because they were bound to have engine trouble. On hearing I was returning to GB on the Brittanic he was shocked and said it was a terrible boat and always breaking down, at that time I thought he was all bull, he said it had two big diesels that went wrong every trip. Sure enough on the journey home I noticed ,early one morning the thump thump thump of the engines was absent and on enquiry, I happened to be having breakfast at the Chief Engineers table, he said the inevitable engine breakdown had taken place with the old engines.

Fortunately they had a complete workshop down below and were used to having to' fix the engines, they were working on the one that had broken down, they had stopped both diesels as it was easier to work on them. Due to my interest he arranged for me to have a tour of the engine room and a young engineer was my guide, after donning a set of white coveralls, the two of us squeezed into a tiny lift and shot down into the bowels of the ship. It was pretty crummy compared to the spotless oil fuel steam turbines on the Media which I had visited on my trip over, to the US There were two big diesels twenty cylinders ten in a row but double acting like a steam engine, they were made in Ireland by Harland and Wolf. One of their problems was breaking valve springs, they used to stop the engine and change them, these engines ran on absolute crude oil, black globby dirty stuff which was fed through a De Lavel centrifugal separator just like those used in a dairy! Each cylinder had its own injector operated by the camshaft, to run the ship backwards they did not change gear but stopped the engine and reversed it. In order to reverse its operating rotation, this being a four stroke engine, they slid the camshafts along to an alternative position, so that a different set of cams came into play. In the meantime all the cam followers were held up by a sort of rack. The engine was then restarted in the reverse direction with compressed air, this accounted why this type of boat is not easily manoeuvred as a steam powered one.

The Brittanic had twin screws and was very broad beamed and weighed about 32,000 tons. Despite the breakdown I thought it very comfortable trip even though it was rough the passengers barely noticed any discomfort. The last week of the four I spent in the USA there was no school and we spent some time sorting out Rich Childs service problems. One day I took a day off and Bill Carlton and I went off to see Triumphs at Towson near Baltimore, Maryland.. The Service Manager at that time was Rod Coates, a great competition rider, Rod had won the 100 mile Amateur race at Daytona Beach in 1950 on a Triumph Grand Prix model. He showed me a special racer with all the wangles and fiddles he had conjured up to make it eligible for AMA class C racing. Later when be became an AMA scrutineer I am told he was not nearly as lenient as be had found the officials in his day as a racer. We very much admired the set up, of Triumphs at Towson which had been custom designed and built specifically as a motor cycle distributorship. BSA was running what was originally a car dealers premises in Nutley, however it was adequate for all that, it had a good parts department and a large showroom, although what good a showroom in Nutley I could not fathom. Whilst at Towson I met Dennis McCormack who managed the Triumph distributorship for years. Alf Child did not like us going down to see the Triumph outfit but as BSA had bought up Triumphs he could not really complain, he always regarded them as the opposition instead of a sister company.

During my stay in Nutley I was fortunate after a false start to find accommodation with Bill Carlton at a very pleasant house, the landlady Mrs Weidlich was a very pleasant widow around 70. I enjoyed staying with her and went back again on my second visit to the States in 1953. It was about seven or eight miles from Nutley but I was able to ride in with Bill Carlton each day.

On my return to the factory I had to give a report of my trip for the management and it was read out at a meeting and met with their approval, so much so that I was asked if I would be willing to go again in 1953 to Daytona. I knew many of the US dealers had asked if I could come for Daytona as they thought I would learn a great deal more of their requirements for short track events. Evidently Alf Child had approached Mr Leake with their request. The results were that in February 1953 I was aboard the Queen Elizabeth heading for the States. This time I sailed from Southampton and it was much more 'de luxe', even Cabin Class on the Elizabeth was more comfortable than first class on the Media. The voyage across was luxurious but uneventful, I spent three days at Nutley preparing for the trip to Daytona. Alf Child and Mrs were flying and wanted to take me but I preferred going by road with Bill Carlton as I felt it would give me more time to see the country. We were taking a half ton van loaded with all manner of spares, even complete engines, catalogues and literature for the bike show in Daytona. The van was so well loaded it had a tendency to wander and was very tough to drive. We did not get started till midday and it was snowing lightly, which did not make for a pleasant drive, just as it was getting dark we fancied something to drink so pulled off into a diner just into Maryland on Highway 301. Bill ordered coffee and asked for tea for me, the waitress recognised my accent and remarked as I was from England I would like a proper cuppa, she reached to a shelf and took down a teapot, which she dusted off and made me a decent pot of tea. I thought this rather good after being served in other places with the inevitable tea bag flopped into hot water.

We pushed on finally stopping at a motel in Maryland. Next morning we made an early start, sBack to topping in Virginia for breakfast. We took turns at driving and I remember passing lots of tobacco factories around Rocky Mount, NC we stopped finally for the night near Allendale, SC. We were really beat after driving that over loaded truck all day. Next morning was a sunny mild southern day and drive through Georgia down towards the coastal swamps, which did not impress me at all. By the end of the day we had reached Jacksonville, Florida where we visited the BSA dealer Bob King who was a great pal of Bill Carlton. Bob found us a motel close by and to our amusement were installed in the bridal suite. Next day we visited a dirt track meeting just outside Jacksonville. My first introduction to dirt track in the US, with some smart talk by Bill persuaded the officials that we had factory authorisation so between races we were allowed to cross the track to the pits. After watching two or three heats came the big final and we had been told to look out for Bobby Hill on his Indian. It was a sort of borderline eligibility case and a lot of folk opined it should not have been allowed on the track. It was a 750cc side valve though it had a lot of one off, non Indian parts on it. It had got passed the scrutineers by pointing out that Indians were not longer made and it was impossible to get genuine Indian parts and they used what they could find. The bike had modern forks and superior looking brakes that no Indian ever had. It was however, a genuine Indian flathead 750cc, very highly tuned with a ultra light frame.

Came the start of the big race and Bobby Hill stalled his engine, it looked as if the chance for a win by the number one champion was nil, all the competing BSA twins, BSA Gold Stars, Triumphs and Harleys were long gone, however the referee motioned to Hills mechanic to give him a push start and away he went. It was a twenty lap race event and unbelievably Hill worked his way up through the field to win. I had never seen anything like it, that was my first introduction to Bobby Hill. Later he used BSA doing extremely well on them, winning Daytona in 1954 on a clubman type twin.

After the racing we returned to Bob Kings staying another night in the motel. Next morning after some difficulty to change some GB travellers cheques only by going to a bank we drove on down to Daytona Beach, we found ourselves an apartment about two miles down the beach, we did this on advice from Cyril Halliburn and Bob King to avoid having riders bother us twenty fours hours a day. It was a very nice place with a view of the ocean but rather far out and you needed transportation to get to the BSA headquarters which that year were in the old Hudson dealers service department. We had the use of half the garage for BSA servicing and all the dealers and their riders came crowding in, talking and getting in the way. Alter unpacking our parts and tools we proceeded to service our machines. This being 1953 all we had were the heavy plunger rear suspension, iron barrel, alloy cylinder head Star twins. They were supposed to put out 43bhp, but we were experiencing valve spring problems. The prototype built in the Engine Development did put out 43bhp but all the Star Twins sent to Daytona were built by Production and tested in the engine test by Cyril Halliburn, who issued power curves showing 43bhp but when we got them to the beach for practice it was obvious that they did not have the power and were getting passed by all and sundry.

There were three of the previous years Star twins there, one of which had been hand built by Jack Amott, it was considerably faster than the new 1953 models. I would have liked to get a look inside that engine. In the race these wretched twins we had brought folded up one after the other, Warren Sherwood nursed his home into fifth place, the rest were nowhere. Paul Goldsmith won on a Harley and was sporting enough to come over to us and commiserate. One of our riders fell of and broke a leg. I persuaded Alf Child who owned the machine anyway, since the Dealer now declined to pay for it, to let me take it back to the factory and test it on my dyno, to which he agreed, remarking they were not as good as the previous years machines. As you can imagine he was pretty miffed with me, the bikes and the race results. I did not feel it was my fault as I had only been at BSA ten months and had not built any of These machines. The company was not too pleased to see the crashed bike but Bert Hopwood agreed that it was a good idea to test it and rind out why it was running as it did arid to then try and get the bugs out of it. Back on the dyno we got 39bhp and it took a good deal of work to get it up to 43.

The Directors asked me to come and give them a talk on my experiences in the US at Daytona particularly, as Alf Child had complained to them about me. Naturally I was not going to let him get away with this and I told my side of the story, particularly my dislike of being sworn at in a hotel in front of a whole crowd of people. Mr Leake wanted to know the exact wording which I was not keen to repeat, but he insisted, he queried my repeating and wanted to know why such an occasion had occurred. It was due to my late arrival at the garage to work on the bikes and I explained to Mr Leake we were situated nearly three miles from the garage and it was difficult to get a lift and on this particular morrning they had forgotten to collect me as arranged. Mr Leake appeared rather annoyed with Alf Child and complained to him of his attitude, this in turn upset Alf Child and I did not get invited to Daytona again.

During my two trips to the USA I had the opportunity to talk to some knowledgeable dealers and our Distributors and the impression I got was that whilst Daytona was an important event there were many other races in other parts of the States of equal importance to the sale of BSA It appeared they wanted lighter machines that could be used on the half mile and one mile tracks as well, a rigid frame but telescopic forks. I pointed out to them this was against everything we had been doing. In the IOM we had been busy developing swinging arm suspension and now the States wanted rigid frames and I was not at all sure the company would be willing to make them.

On my return to the factory I had a conference with Hopwood and Bert Perrigo and told them of the Dealers requests. I pointed out that Daytona consisted of two straights both fairly smooth, one on sand and one paved with 180 degree turns at each end, there was not real cornering involved so I did not believe a spring frame was essential and that a rigid frame might be just the thing for the hale mile tracks. They also wanted to know what type of engine would be best and I suggested the single would be lighter and have better torque but they argued it probably would not have enough power, but I pointed out the superior torque and reliability. In the end Hopwood said why not go ahead and make a prototype and see what we can come up with. This was the summer of 1953, our alloy twin race engine was producing about 44bhp, the best 500cc BB Gold Star single about 40. We were planning new bigger finned Gold Stars for the Clubmans TT races but they would not be ready until after Daytona, but the 350 BB Gold Star had had a new head with slightly more finning than the old ZB and much steeper down draft inlet port. So I got the engine shop to machine one of the 350 cylinder heads to 500 dimensions, the hemisphere was enlarged and 500 valve seats fitted, we used a large inlet valve and a moderately sized exhaust valve, of course doing this left things a bit thin in places but we cut up a scrap head and decided it was a worthwhile risk. On its first test run a 500 with this head did 42bhp despite the AMA restricting us to a 8:1 compression ratio. I put Reg Wilkes to work an this, he got real interested in this and tried everything and soon got 44bhp .

In the meantime the twin was also doing some 46bhp. To meet AMA regulations all parts had to be stock and have production part numbers and available to the public. So I drew one of Bill Nicholson's lightweight rigid trials frames and started work on it, we stiffened up the rear chain stays, made an oil tank from toolbox pressings mounting it low ,on the right side. We used aluminium alloy for the mudguards, chain guard, brake pedal and fork crown. Ultimately we made three prototypes in the Engine development shop, we got some extra help from apprentices, at one time having eighteen men in the shop in place of the normal seven or eight. We fitted a single cylinder engine in one frame and our best alloy twin in the other and gave the third to the production people to copy as we knew that possibly another hundred would have to be made.

The big day came when we took the two prototypes to MIRA. For our testing, we ran them in both directions on the timing strip, the single did 114mph, the twin 116. Mr Hopwood was of the opinion we would have to take the twin, two miles an hour was a lot and at the end of a 200 miles at Daytona that bike would be miles ahead. I did not agree and he wanted to know why. He was aware I liked the single and that it was reliable but it did not appear fast enough and therefore it was no use taking it. I pointed out that in racing it's not always the fastest bike that wins. Torque is important and the winning prize goes to the first across the line, not the one that crosses at the highest speed. He was anxious whether I could prove this theory. David Tye had his leathers on and so did I, he got aboard the twin and I got astride the single. We agreed to race by riding at about 20mph in bottom gear then as we passed a little white post open up for a sprint of about a mile. The torque of the single was so much better than that of the twin that it leapt away from the 20mph start and simply ran away, towards the end of the mile the twin started to catch up, because of its slightly higher maximum speed, but the single still got to the end first. Back in the pits Hopwood said to change bikes and try again to see if the rider influences the result, so we changed over and sure enough the result was the same. Hopwood looked at me and grinned and agreed I had made my point and that we would send four singles and four twins.

The results were better than we even hoped for, we won the 200 mile race and had five out of the first eight finishers. Gene Thiessen had the bad luck to have his bike damaged going up to the start which spoilt the handling and he finished 17th. The rest of the season BSA did very well on the half mile tracks. Many years later in 1970 when these bikes were quite old I saw two of these models at Reading Speedway in Pennsylvania still giving a good account of themselves.

The early CB and Daytona engines had oval flywheels with a short connecting rod from the 350, which we had found gave good results The short connecting rod enabled us to use shorter barrel push rods and so on and made it lighter. Not to mention other more subtle technical advantages. The flywheels were made oval to clear the bottom of the piston skirt, this was fine for us making a handful of experimental engines but when the production people had to make a hundred of them they complained bitterly. One day Reg Wilkes took a pair of oval flywheels and turned them down until they were round again and we tried these lightened flywheels in a bike, frankly I did not think the engine was as smooth, but the riders thought otherwise so that is how they were made from then on and that was the beginning of the DB series. The shorter connecting rod definitely gave us something, a little more power all over the range, I have carried out the same trick on VW engines and again found the shorter rod was better. In 1954 at Daytona the Harleys gave more trouble than usual so we had a bit of a walk over, but in 1955 the tables were turned, they had some excellent riders and the best we could manage was a 4th place. In 1956 we did fairly well to take 2nd to 5th places, a Harley won. Al Gunter made the fastest lap in the race at over 104mph before retiring with a broken swing arm bolt on the BSA single. In the time trials before the race the fastest Harley did 126mph The fastest Gold Star was around 120mph. Despite this the Gold Star was a match for the Harleys during the race.

Roland Pike Autobiography - Chapter 26

2009-02-09T01:03:00.003Z

Development Challenges

The BSA spring frame was originally designed and built by Bill Nicholson who was forever trying new head angles etc and it proved a job to tie him down to a final set up. However one day they got one of his Scrambler swinging arm frames up in the drawing-office, where it was faithfully drawn, the only changes being things like attachment points for civilised fittings such as pillion, foot rests, tool box attachment lugs and so on. They told me that they had changed the head angle slightly to make it more suitable for road use. Bill would ride in a trial or scramble, come back to the Competition shop, strip the machine and build an entirely new frame in a couple of days. I remember once he asked me to try a new rigid trials frame he had just built, he tested it by riding up the stairs at the factory. I rode this bike slowly around the shop in and out of the benches, I was no trials rider but thought it was perfect, Bill cut it up inside a week and started again. Never satisfied. If you want a thrill go for a ride with him in his A40 pick up truck.

The early frames were made in the frame shop on a fairly simple jig and welded. They had to do a bit of setting and straightening at first to allow for the distortion, but once this was overcome and production jigs built they had few problems. The only serious one I can remember, was the twin front down tubes breaking at the engine attachment lugs which were welded on to the tubes, this was overcome by using a longer scarfed lug slipped over the tube and welded. As well as road testing the frame was mounted on a special test rig in the experimental shop with eccentric rollers under the wheels, these were driven by a powerful electric motor which gave the frame a good workout. The frames completed their tests on this torture machine alright but we had reports of daily breakages on the Belgium pave at MIRA by the experimental shop testers. It was beginning to become worrying to the design dept as the go ahead for production could not be given until these breakages were cured. I remember Mr Hopwood was particularly worried at this time, as apart from the little Bantam, welded frames were new to BSA Mr Hopwood sent for me and pointed out I had had a lot of experience welding frames, and what did I think the problem was.

All I could suggest was that we found out the way they were testing them. He decided he would go to MIRA and see for himself. That night I was working later than usual, I heard a bike pull up outside the experimental dept and went out to see who it was, there were two young apprentices, one with a sidecar outfit which was carrying a new spring frame, on enquiring where they had been they said MIRA. testing the latest new spring frame and were quite pleased with themselves that they had broken another. I was not so pleased with their results and told them so, but they said it was what they had set out to do. On enquiring how it handled before, they admitted it was fine, and that it handled better then the old frame, on which if you had gone as fast you would have killed yourself!

Next day I met Hopwood and told him of my previous nights conversation, and he agreed I was right, he had been out that morning to MIRA. and had found them tearing around on the pave. He wondered what the best plan would be, so I suggested that they sent one of the old style spring frames and one new and make the apprentices ride them together, the old plunger frame setting the pace. Hopwood thought this a good idea and said I was a bloody genius. Next day they did this, young Povey wound up in hospital, he was riding the plunger frame bike, which broke when they started speeding he fell off and the other lad hit him. That settled the question of the better frame and production went ahead. The only criticism I had of the new frame was flexing when braking hard, the front mudguard used to hit the frame. We converted a standard frame to a single oval and tapered down tube, it definitely put a stop to the flexing, but the head angle was not quite right as we did not have the benefit of any sort of jig. Handling was not quite as good as the standard frame.

Low temperature bronze welding was used by Bill Nicholson and myself on our one off frames especially when using the aircraft quality high tensile chrome-moly steel tubing which is not suitable for normal fusion welding, it causes embrittlement. We used nickel bronze welding rod which was expensive and rather difficult to use, but which gave a very strong welded joint. Tests at the National Physics laboratory tore the steel tube before it broke the weld.

Ignition & Carburation. Our method of getting the optimum ignition timing was purely practical, we deliberately timed the engine on assembly about three degrees over advanced from normal, we then ran the engine on the dyno wide open throttle, full load at about 6000 RPM, then slowly retarded the ignition lever until the dyno showed maximum torque, then continue retarding the ignition timing until power started to drop off, then advance it back to a point where it gave maximum power. Stopping the engine we checked the timing on a degree disc and recorded it for that particular engine, then set the timing at this point with ignition lever at full advance. This method of finding the best ignition timing can be used on the road, the mountain mile in the Isle of Man was a good place to do this.

I am reminded of a mysterious malady that affected all our Daytona twin engines in 1955. Cyril Halliburn who was out there that year said they were in terrible trouble with points burning on the Lucas racing magnetos. Lucas were consulted and suggested fitting an extra condenser externally, connected in parallel with the internal condenser, utilising the contact breaker earthing brush terminal, normally used as a "kill" button. Everyone was of the opinion it was condenser trouble as the points rapidly became blackened and then misfiring set in. They could not do better than 7th and 9th place. Back at the works we set up a similar engine on the dyno and got Ken Norton from Lucas Experimental to come round and help with our tests. It did not take long to show results, oil in the contact breaker which in turn caused the burnt points. We stripped the magneto expecting to see oil coming through from the engine but on examination it was found to be clean and dry. After running the engine again with a manometer hooked up to the timing case we found that at 6000 RPM we had a pressure 4" to 7" of water below atmosphere in the timing case. The magneto had a single lip seal to keep oil out of the magneto but the low pressure was enough to lift the lip seal causing a drop in pressure in the magneto.

These racing magnetos had a breather pipe on the contact breaker cover which for some reason was bent in a loop ending right opposite the hole for the crankcase breather, so of course the faint oil mist coming from the breather was sucked into the contact breaker. All that was necessary was to bend the breather pipe on the magneto away from the vicinity of the crankcase breather hole. Since then I have experienced similar problems with Volkswagens with high mileage worn engines blowing oil up the distributor shaft and on to the points. On the TT & GP. carburettors the so-called air slide in the side of the carburettors admitted air to the air correction jet, it was only effective from fully closed to about 1/3rd open when the area of the air slide equalled the air correction jet, this range was equivalent to about three sizes of main jet. I think a tapered needle would have given more sensitive results and suggested this to CRB Smith of Amal but he was not keen to try it although he agreed that it would probably work.

One of the strangest occurrences to do with carburettors was when one day Reg Wilkes sent an apprentice from the test shop into our, main shop for a 1 3/32 GP carburettor and he misread the size and gave Reg: a 1 3/16th carburettor and they immediately got quite a jump in power. They reported this to me and I went to the shop and the test was repeated and there was no doubt it was quite a gain in power. I suggested to Reg to open the port to match, immediately we lost what we had gained plus a bit more, so we made a thin sleeve and pressed it in and the power was back. We repeated this on other engines always with the same results. A number of private owners of DBD Gold Star noticed the carb being bigger than the port and opened up the port thinking to gain power, but not having a dyno were not aware of the results. Later on we fitted a venturi behind the carb and picked up even more power. The smallest diameter of the venturi could be 80% of area of the carburettor. We tested this on several engines and it always worked and seemed to improve carburation. The venturi had to have the classic included angles of 22 degree in and 7 degree out.

We did some testing with SU constant vacuum carburettors on the Ariel 500 twin and on the 650 Gold Flash. At this time Triumph Thunderbird 650 was equipped as standard with an SU carburettor. We got good results on test but not so superior to the Amal that it did not seem to warrant a change. Also in the carburettor field we did some test runs on the Wal Phillips injector carburettor, not conclusive and in my opinion only suitable for grass track or cinder track racing. We were also convinced of the necessity of having racing carburettor flexibility mounted and insulated from engine vibration. We had a striking illustration of this one when Reg Wilkes was running one of our 500 Gold Stars, he called me into the test house to observe this engine and pointed out that it exhibited all the symptoms of weakness, fitting bigger main jets did not cure it even very big jets. So we ran the engine up at about 5000 rpm, the exhaust pip e glowed red and the exhaust note sounded flat and harsh. I thought I could see some movement of the flexibly mounted carburettor, so I grabbed hold of it, I experienced a strong tingling sensation in my hand, but held on and a remarkable change came over the engine. The note became crisp and the red glowing pipe literally went out and the mixture became rich. The float bowl on the dyno was always remote and insulated, but on this particular engine the carburettor was mounted on rubber canvas hose, to cure the problem we had to stretch rubber bands from the carburettor to the bed of the dyne etc in several directions thus damping out the high frequency movements of the carb.

Connecting Rods and BSA. I am not an expert on forging steel but I know the BSA smithy had a good reputation in Birmingham going back many years. They did a lot of work for outside firms as well as for the various divisions of BSA The Australian riders have told me that they Lave used BSA connecting rods in Manx Nortons with great success and a considerable saving in cost. I have been of the opinion that one of the secrets of BSA connecting rod forgings was in the tumbling they received. The forgings left the smithy all rough and covered in scale, a whole batch would be tumbled in a large wire basket, tipped from end to end over and over for a day or so and by the time they came out they were clean and descaled, almost polished. I believe the residual stresses in them from the forging operation were neutralised just as if they had been heat treated. The stresses had been literally knocked out of them and they were all ready to machine.

There was a learned article in the S.A.E. journal I had read describing how General Motors or someone had found that by shot peening connecting rods they became more reliable, with far less chance of surface cracks spreading and causing failure. I drew Mr Hopwoods attention to this article and he agreed that we should try it, by having three new connecting rods shot peened with the appropriate lead shot. (Mr Lupton laid this on and it was not long before I had three of the current Gold Star rods ready for test. After installing in an engine a series of power curves were taken trying out some other parts not connected with rods at this time. The first one broke after quite a short run so it was decided to go no further and the remaining rods were scrapped.

And we concluded that shot peening was not successful for us. Sometime later I wondered whether those three rods had been tumbled, on making enquiries months later no one was sure whether they had been or not, but thought probably not Anyway one wrecked engine was enough. When a rod lets go it usually does quite a bit of damage. Gold Star connecting rods were always polished as a final precaution against surface cracks, it could be that shot peening in place of the relatively expensive polishing might be equally effective, but it was never explored. The length of the connecting rod in relation to piston stroke has an important bearing on performance. For many years a ratio of stroke to -con rod length of 2: 1 was thought to be a good compromise. Some exhaustive testing along these lines was done and we found that for the standard 88 mm stroke 1.86:1 seemed best all round ratio. However, when it came to ultra short stroke engines a ratio of 2.2:1 became desirable to reduce piston acceleration at around TDC.

Pistons and Piston Rings. When I was first at BSA in 1952 I was able to borrow the 1949 500 Gold Star engine that I had used in the 1951 TT. It was of particular interest as I had on the last lap three times passed Dennis Lashmar who was riding a brand new featherbed Norton belonging to Harold Daniel, the same Norton that I later took on the Continent and finished 2nd at Hockenheim against some pretty good opposition. So this engine was no slouch and was pulling 6600 RPM. with the highest Back to top gear we could use, approx 125mph This old 1949 Gold Star had been specially built for Ray Hallett of Canterbury by Jack Amott, it was the old style non detachable rocker box, small fin engine. It had 8.1:1 ratio, 1 3/16" RN Carb , ??? inlet cam, Z exhaust, 4.375:1 Back to top gear and pulled 6200 on Sulby straight. When we got it on the dyno we got 37.5bhp which was what Nortons claimed for the long stroke Manx engine of 1951. We stripped the engine to find out what it was like internally, it seemed pretty good except for a cracked piston boss. So we replaced the piston and rings with the latest type, with narrow rings etc. On testing on the dyno with the new parts it gave 33bhp so we ran it a bit more and fiddled with jets and timing with no appreciable improvement, so we replaced the new style piston with one of the earlier type and immediately got over 36bhp. On examination we found the piston rings to be a little wider and the second ring had a groove machined in the inside diameter.

We contacted Brico and asked them why and was told it caused the ring to twist and thereby sealing better. To make a difference of over 3bhp it must have sealed a lot better. We then put a new 1952 500 Gold Star on the dyno it did not do as well as the old 49 job. The valve springs surged and it blew oil out of the breather and gave less than 35bhp. I spoke to Mr Hopwood about it but he did not seem to worry saying the 500 Gold Star was obsolete anyway and not to worry ourselves about it. The twin is the thing now. So I did not get any encouragement upstairs. We were however having so much trouble with the twins at that time that I felt we should do something with the 500 at least along the same lines as we had the 350.

For 1952 the 350 Gold Star had a new head with a little more cooling fins than the previous years, more downdraft to the inlet port and the inlet valve axis was changed, moving the valves apart a little which allowed a larger inlet valve. Mr Hopwood at this time was interested in giving the scramblers bike more torque at low speeds, so we had some 350 heads cast with smaller ports and used smaller valves as well. One of these was prepared and fitted to a factory scrambler machine, they reported that they could not tell any difference, so I took another of these castings and fitted it with l/16” smaller exhaust seat and smaller valve and at the same time made the inlet valve bigger, the results were very encouraging, we got more power and even more important perhaps a cooler running exhaust valve. The production Gold Star at this time used Jessups G2 for exhaust valves and every now and then one would break and wreck the upper part of the engine.

We had to go to a lot of trouble with these valves getting the shape and finish just right making sure the valve guides were not slack. A different type of split cotter was used and a quietening ramp added to the cams in an endeavour to let the valve down on its seat a little more gently. We also reduced the valve spring seated pressure, but still they would strip looking very hot, but with the 1/16" smaller exhaust valve after some hard test running imagine our joy when we stripped the head and found that the exhaust valve looked in better condition and it appeared to be running cooler. The bigger inlet valve did not lose any torque, in fact it was better.

High Camshafts. After the success of the MOV Velocette and Vincent HRD using these high camshafts, people have wondered why we did net try such an arrangement, in effect we did, the ultra short stroke 350 82 x 66 was very short overall, the push rods being about half the length of the normal B31 push rods. I would never have advocated making a high camshaft BSA Gold Star, if you are going to go to the trouble of redesigning, why not make the camshaft really 'high' and wake an overhead cam engine. A modern design could probably use a cogged belt, as used in many cars. People often associate overhead cams with high revving race engines, this is not necessarily so. Overhead cams will allow quicker lift and closing to valves which means more conservative timing and lighter valve springs (This in turn means better flexibility and quietness.

What about a Four? Why didn't we build a four cylinder, similar to the Italian MV 's and Gilera and later on the Japanese? In the first place the Italian fours were almost purely racers financed by other parts of the same company. The Japanese four cylinders were raced it is true but their production fours were only possible due to the conditions in Japan in the 60's and continued successfully by huge production figures using modern production methods. The British motor cycle was what people describe as designed around a centre lathe and at the end of the war we had a lot of worn machinery. In an endeavour to be less dependent on the tool room and model room I asked for and received two Colchester centre lathes and a Cincinatti miller, they all needed overhauling but once this was done were quite useful and I added own small 5" centre Little John lathe. On requesting a vertical Miller we got a veteran WW1, you could move the vertical shaft nearly 1/16" in any direction. We also managed to obtain an old surface grinder which was useful. I hoped this wasn’t typical of their reserve tools. The three cylinder BSA Triumph was typical of this attitude to production and must have been an expensive engine to produce.

Water Cooling. Not much was thought about water cooling until Tony Vandervell got Joe Craig to make a water cooled Manx Norton with the idea of using four of them in a row to make the Vanwall race car. When we heard about the gain in horsepower and its ability to maintain full power, I think we were shaken up a bit, but we loved all those cooling fins, why worry with anti-freeze or leaky radiators. However, with the aid of hindsight I think water-cooling might have been the answer to many of our problems with the vertical twins and also the MC 1.
Cast Iron Crankshafts.Harry Taft of Idoson made us or had made six crankshafts for A10 twin in 'nodular' or spherical graphite iron. We tested two of these to destruction, running at 6600 for 6 hours, there was nothing special about these cranks, they were made as close as possible to the standard steel crank and balanced to the same factor. After the first one broke the other was stripped for examination and then passed to the experimental dept. for testing on the road. I don't remember if I ever got a report on that one. With six hours at that high speed I thought that was pretty good especially since it did not have the milled fillet radii. Mr Hopwood however was not impressed, I guess 6 hours at 6600 did not seem much, so I ran a standard steel crank at the same speed, it broke at just around two hours, this of course changed his opinion.

The factory said they were not practical as they would have had to have 100% X-ray inspection. I do not believe this would have been necessary as they did not X-ray other castings. In my opinion a spot check from time to time would have sufficed. One unexpected bonus with the iron cranks was an increase in power, apparently the iron made a better bearing surface, it was also easier to cast the metal for balance purposes just where it was wanted.
Nodular iron is as strong as steel, Buick and Pontiac in the U.S.A. made connecting rods from this material. The name nodular iron comes from the formation of graphite molecules in the iron being round, whereas in plain cast iron the graphite molecules are flat, this makes a difference to the strength of the material. I designed a crankshaft assembly in this material for the Gold Star and got the research people to give an opinion on its feasibility, but it made no difference the factory apparently did not want to save money.

Herbert Hopwood and other personalities at BSA. Herbert Hopwood came from Nortons to BSA. Prior to that he had worked several years at Triumphs. At BSA he was first a draughtsman but very quickly was promoted to chief designer. At Nortons he had designed the Norton vertical twin, in my opinion the best of the many twins. He had imtimated to Mr Leake, Managing Director at BSA that he wanted a free hand in design, also a development shop which they had never had before. Previously whatever development had been done was in a corner of the engine test shop and by the experimental department, he got his way and had the competition shop made separate from the experimental. Mr Hopwood redesigned the A7 500 twin followed by the A10 650, both of which were badly needed and were an immediate success with the public. The original post-war A7 twin was a very different design and not too dependable. It had a very novel and expensive built up crankshaft designed I believe by Herbert Perkins. In those early days Mr Hopwood was busy turning out new designs, the MC1 250 racer and the MC4 which was half of an A7. The war department 500 side salve twin, the 500 overhead camshaft twin and a new four speed gearbox known as the 'A' box.

The best BSA's in the immediate post war years were probably the B31 and B33. The M31 and M 33 were the same engine in a stronger heavier frame, more suitable for pulling a sidecar. In those days the only BSA gearbox was the 'B', a big heavy gearbox that had occasional selector problems. It was this gearbox that was fitted to the Gold Star I rode in the 1952 Senior TT. The 'A' box was a more modern design with some resemblance to a Triumph box and it was very much easier to change gears. Since Mr Hopwood had worked so long at Triumphs and had a hand in most of their designs it was not surprising that there were similarities in the two designs. The only serious problem I can remember in the 'A' box was a failure under racing conditions of the layshaft bushes. I suggested fitting Torrington needle bearings which cured the problem.

I had already met Mr Hopwood once when I contacted BSA, about getting two engines for the 'Pike' BSA I intended to build for 1952. We did not have much to say on that occasion. I do not think he really was interested in someone with my Rudge and racing background but as he said after hiring me he did not know anybody else. He wanted someone he could trust to carry out his ideas and not oppose them, that was one of the problems with Jack Amott who if he did not like an idea would not use it. During my time I found this fault was not peculiar to Amott, the same problem I had at one time or another with all the fellows in the development shop, particularly with the best ones, the more creative they were the more stubborn they were likely to be.

To overcome the problem in the case of Reg Wilkes I tried a bit of applied psychology, but it back fired on me as I found that if you let Reg think he had thought of an idea himself he would work on it with enthusiasm. After about three year of this he was convinced that practically all the ideas in the Gold Star were his own. He told me so one day saying all I had done was use his ideas, what could I say? Perhaps I should have asked him to build a Gold Star 500 without the general shop improvements and see how it ran. Part of the problems at Nortons that Mr Hopwood had were the opposition of Joe Craig to the twin. Craig was an outstanding development engineer, the Manx Norton racing engine was probably the most highly developed single cylinder engine of all time. Unfortunately he completely ignored the rest of the Norton range.

You can imagine his humiliation when the Norton International which they used in the Clubmans TT was beaten handsomely by a Gold Star. We heard later that he had borrowed a350 Gold Star engine and tried it on their dyno and found out for himself that it put out 31-32bhp as against the 28-29 of the overhead camshaft International. The competition shop at BSA in 1952 was the responsibility of Bert Perrigo who was one of the most famous pre-war trials riders, always on a BSA. He was incidentally also helpful in getting me my job at BSA There were three mechanics and Bill Nicholson who was in and out all the time building his special frames. In those days Gold Stars had their own assembly line at the back of the office block with Sam Jones an old TT rider himself in charge. They dropped this arrangement when demand outstripped the facilities but that was when the best bikes were built. Every one was assembled by a man who what he was doing. When later they ran the Gold Star down the normal assembly line, they had to be virtually rebuilt at the end of it!

When Bert Perrigo was made sales manager to Ariels Dennis Hardwicke was brought in to take his place. Dennis Hardwicke came to BSA from Temple Press where he was on the staff of Motor Cycling and had written very flattering articles on BSA which led to his being given the job of competition manager. When he first came to BSA Mr Hopwood asked me to try and help Dennis until he finds his feet. I do not think Hardwicke appreciated this as before long he was trying to get my best mechanics to work in the competition shop and did eventually have a dyno installed so they could test their own engines, which was a waste of effort and unnecessary expense. He did a pretty good job as competition manager, too good in a way, he got all the best riders from other makes on BSA's which reduced public interest.

There were about nine draughtsmen in the drawing office over which Mr Hopwood presided with Mr Perkins in charge, later Ernie Webster - when Mr Perkins left due to ill health. Beside Mr Perkins office was an office where all records and specifications were maintained, several girls were employed as tracers and then another sub-office where secret designs were made by Doug Hele and Charlie Salt. These people were kept busy all the year round, what with yearly model changes, modifications as a result of service department complaints, and entirely new designs. Many of the ideas we made and tried in the development shop had to be drawn and have job number allocated, sometimes it happened the other way round, some small component would be made and tried and if successful have a drawing made afterwards. An example of how a major component, like the big fin cylinder head for the 350 Gold Star was planned would be a meeting like we had in1953 in Mr Hopwood’s office, attended by Mr H, Perrigo, Ernie Webster, Capewell and myself.

Mr Hopwood and I had briefly discussed the objects of the meeting beforehand. Once the meeting got under way Mr H turned to me and suggested as I had had some experience of these Gold Star engines, what did I think we should have for next year. I then listed benefits such as a new cylinder head and barrel with more fins, if possible a little more down draft in the inlet port. These ideas would be noted by Mr. Webster who then wanted to know what about the piston? I suggested a high dome design to use with the shorter connecting rod. Also I would like to make some changes to the crankpin design to ensure the cage runs on the outside flanges and does not touch the bearing surface, some small holes drilled to feed oil to the cage.I explained we had done this experimentally with very good results. Also, how about eliminating the small woodruff key on the timing side, as the key tends to weaken the flywheel. After this Ernie Webster wanted to know how they would ensure the oil feed holes would be lined up on assembly? Someone suggested a mark on the end of the crankpin. After the meeting Webster and I would discuss the details of this or that idea, before giving the job to one of the draughtsmen.

You will notice up to now there had been no mention of a 500 Gold Star. The company’s policy was that the 500 should be a twin, although of course they continued to produce the B33 and M33. Mr Hopwood managed to persuade the Board that having agreed to spend the money on a new 350 Gold Star it would not cost much more to make a 500 version.

The alloy twins made in very small numbers in 1951-2-3 were intended to be the 500 Gold Star of the future. The 1954 Gold Star engine was almost a new engine, it had the same bore and stroke as before but nothing else. ??? Jones was given the job of drawing up all the new parts and a very good job he made of it.

We eventually got a new crankshaft for the twins and connecting rods to suit the larger diameter crankpin journals. On first testing it we were 2bhp down on the older crankshaft, presumably due to the extra friction. When Mr Hopwood heard of this he wanted to know why and what were we doing about it, I mentioned the extra friction and he said to get it down to Halliburns shop who was in charge of all Gold Star engine testing. I was reluctant to do this as I felt one dyno is not going to be any different from another, but he insisted I do so. So I sent the engine to Halliburn for a test and he came up with the same results as we did. About two weeks later Arthur Butler by fiddling with the balance, drilling holes here and filling them there smoothed out the running and recovered the lost 2bhp, we never got more power from that engine, but we did get rid of the breakage problem. Mr Hopwood adopted a rather "I told you so" attitude which rather irritated me as it appeared that he did not trust me. But to a man like Mr Hopwood who had been opposed in every move he made, and who had tricks played on him, like the deliberate attempts to break the new welded spring frames, already described in a previous chapter, I suppose being suspicious becomes a habit and I should have expected it.

Doug Hele who also had come from Nortons had also worked at Douglas where he was concerned with their opposed cylinder 350 twin, with torsion bar suspension. Whilst at BSA he acquired a degree in engineering of which Mr Hopwood was envious but he soon overcame this. At BSA Doug Hele was concerned with the design of all the new designs the MC1 250 racer, MC4, the overhead camshaft twin, the scooter and the Dandy. He was a very good draughtsman and a fine mathematician, he was also a keen motor cyclist and used to like to ride motor cycles with some of our experimental engines. Later he returned to Nortons where he did the design work on their little Jubilee twins which unfortunately were not very successful, he also became involved in the testing of the desmodromic valve gear for the racing Norton

Roland Pike Autobiography - Chapter 24

2009-02-08T23:35:00.007Z

The problems & politics of BSA in the 1950's

Here is a little poem I made up.

The Motor Cycle Industry.
The labourers toiled, the craftsmen wrought,
The Draftsmen drew, the thinkers thought,
The planners planned, the salesmen sold,
But the bikes they sold looked very old.
Thats not to say they were not fine,
But ancient was the whole design.
The buyers paid their hard-earned gold -
For new machines that looked like old.
Designers sat and wracked their brains,
And got rude answers for their pains.
The things they drew were not too bold,
With ideas that were centuries old,
The stylist and the artist came
And still the drawings looked the same.
The conception lacked that final touch
Of which the keen demand so much.
Just then there came that way by chance
A lad who knew he could enhance
The models' looks and make them go
If only they would let him show.
He was taken at his word, and then
Got out his papers, books and pen.
Set down his ideas, plans and thought
He'd told them all, and kept back nought.
"Oh that won't work, nor that" they cried
As new ideas were made and tried.
Or when they did, the critics say
"We thought of that before today"
"That one's no good" they said in test,
"The ancient ones were always best".
They were so clever with their tricks, They ousted him with politics.

Triumphs came into BSA at the end of 1956 and took charge of the company that had bought it, only a few years before. Jack Sangster sold Triumph to BSA for $4 million, but somehow he still controlled Triumph and eventually got control of both companies.

This move did not seem to do BSA any good, they already appeared to be on a slippery road and no one appeared to know what to do to stop the slide. They laid off or fired 400 production workers at the end of 1956 and another 400 people at the beginning Of 195. This last 400 included skilled personnel, they were selected purely by seniority which was a big mistake as it left them with a lot of chiefs and no indians.

Some of those retained had not done anything useful for years but were just hanging on for their pensions. Triumph although they had high production figures did not produce as much of their motor cycles as BSA who owned Idoson Motor Cylinders, Monochrome, Jessups Steel and several small suppliers.

When BSA bought Triumphs it would have been logical for a BSA man to have been put in charge at Triumphs and to have them use BSA forgings, Daimler & Idoson castings and their research group to work in Group research at Small Heath, but that is not the way it turned out.
The class structure at BSA was quite feudal, there was no sense of democracy. You could not go upstairs to the Managers office without the Commissionaire escorting you unless you were part of management. There were five different eating areas. One for the Directors, a Monthly staff room, Foreman’s dining room, office dining room and the workers canteen. I suppose there was something to be said for this, but in this day and age most companies would have reduced the number of dining rooms to two or three.

Roland Pike Autobiography - Chapter 23

2009-01-25T08:39:00.003Z

The development of my favourite the Gold Star.

When I came to work at BSA in 1952 there was no programme of development for the Gold Star, at that time we seemed to just pick up problems as they developed and try to fix them. The 350 Gold Star did quite well in the Clubmans TT, their power output averaged 27 to 28bhp. There were a number of problems causing retirements in the races the most serious of these was the heads burning near the joint face. Cyril Halliburn who was my assistant in those days suggested it was the porous castings and wanted to blame the foundry, strangely, the foundry did not deny this but said they did not understand what was wrong. In the Isle of Man during the practice period several of the heads were discovered to be 'burnt' when removed for examination. My opinion was that the joint at the Back to top of the cylinder barrel and head left an annular gap varying from .005" to .035", the wider joints trapped some gas which detonated causing the burnt heads. The normal gasket was a fairly thick copper asbestos affair, the production people claimed an inability to hold tolerances on cylinder barrel spigot and cylinder head spigot joint to less than .015", the gaskets also varied in thickness. It must be remembered that this gasket also had to make an oil tight joint at push rod tunnel. My solution was to use a ‘Plexseal’ joint, this gasket was formed of aluminium foil .002" thick stuck together to form a laminated gasket whose thickness could be varied by peeling off a layer one at a time to get a perfect joint, keeping the annular joint gap to between zero and .002" and yet still sealing the push rod tunnel. My suggestion was accepted but it did not reach production until later in 1952 or early 1953.

Another quite serious problem was the crankcase breather, situated in the timing case. A small pen steel disc acted as an automatic flap valve, unfortunately it did not work efficiently if at all at high speeds, thus allowing a lot of engine oil to blow out of the crankcase. Some of the riders ran out of oil due to this, all complained of the oil all over the rear tyre. My solution was to build a rotating sleeve in the timing cover driven by a peg on the magneto pinion, this was made in time for our testing at Montlhery in 1953. This mechanical breather was very successful as it kept the pressure in the crankcase about 4" - 7" below atmosphere at all speeds, which kept the oil in the engine and rear tire cleaner. Surprisingly this breather contributed a slight increase in power of 4bhp over the flap valve. The best timing was for the port to open 20 degrees before BDC on each stroke. Another problem was the occasional exhaust valve breakage which usually did quite a bit of damage.

The Research dept came up with the answer here. A special nickel alloy Nimonic 80, after its use I never saw another one break. A difficult problem was valve springs. I would have liked to have gone to hairpin springs but this was not possible. We tried all the usual approaches, talking to Terry's, the spring experts, even our friends at Rover designed a spring to try, our own spring shop tried various tricks and materials but we were getting very little progress, then Hap Alzina sent some S&W springs for the twins, I decided to try these in a Gold Star and they worked beautifully right from the start, giving us a big increase in maximum revs. I suspected shorter connecting rods might show some advantages in several ways, firstly by changing piston motion relative to crankshaft rotation, also shortening the whole engine including the push rods.. We built some 350 engines using A10 and A7 connecting rods, these showed an appreciable increase in performance but we could not be sure what was due to the shorter connecting roads or the fact that they were lighter and had plain bearing big ends. Mr Hopwood agreed to have some special forgings made up using the shorter dimensions, this enabled us to carry out some direct comparisons which showed that we had got a small increase in power through the lighter alloy rods and plain bearing, but that a worth while increase came from the shorter length rod.

These tests became useful later on when we wanted to find out whether a one-piece crankshaft offered any advantages over the built- up flywheel assembly. It showed excellent results especially at high revs, the only problem experienced with one-piece crankshaft was the connecting rod detachable bearing cap. It is very difficult to make a connecting rod with a detachable cap as strong as the one-piece rod. These 1952 Gold Stars had push rods made of solid dural with steel caps rivetted on. We substituted some 3/8 dia T4 tubing with lighter end caps pressed on. You can imagine how much lighter these were. I made, a sketch of a rocker spindle which had the rocker bearing portion machined eccentrically and the Drawing office made an official drawing and we were able to eliminate the heavy valve adjuster that kept the oil in the engine and rear tyre cleaner. Surprisingly this breather contributed a slight increase in power .4bhp over the flap valve. The best timing was for the port to open 20 degrees before BDC on each stroke. Another problem was the occasional exhaust valve breakage which usually did quite a bit of damage

The lower half of the Gold Star engine was basically similar to the 1938 M24 Gold Star and to the B33 post-war iron 500, although the crankpin assembly was changed quite a lot, the flywheels were always forged steel. The pre-war and the immediate post-war ZB Gold. Star differed quite a lot, including having bore and stroke changes. I liked the non-detachable rocker box of the ZB, even though it was a bit of a fiddle getting the head off with the engine in the frame. This earlier design avoided the oil leaks that later Gold Stars sometimes experienced at the rocker box joints. The later big fin Gold Star engine which I suppose is the version most beloved by enthusiasts, came about in the following way. After all the debacles we had been having with the twins some of which I have described, it was decided that as we were making a new cylinder head for the 350 Gold Star, we could afford a 500 version of it. Brian Jones of the Drawing office, a very capable and gifted young fellow, set about designing the new head. Mr Hopwood told him to consult with me on it so every day I would confer with him his office, look over his shoulder and make a few suggestions. He was decent enough to incorporate some of them.

One of my ideas was that of sloping the fins between the two rocker box joints to get an air flow across the dead space on Back to top of the head. Of course we did not know what the air would do but it worked well in practice. I am always a little skeptical about the air flow paths around a motor cycle cylinder head particularly when mounted in the frame. The new big fin heads both 350 and 500 had a cooling fin area of about 520 square inches. We measured it by getting an apprentice to cut out pieces of squared paper to match all the fins then laboriously compute their combined areas. We were.of the opinion that 520 square inches should be just adequate for the 500 version and possibly over generous for the 350. I do not think that at that time we visualised using one of these heads on a 250. Some interim heads for 1954 Daytona models were made by using 350 castings machined to suit 500, these gave more power than the normal 500 heads due to better down draft inlet ports and slightly more fin area. Of course they were a bit thin in places and tended to crack. The new heads were ready for the 1954 TT and were an instant success, and by using larger inlet valves the 350 power was increased from about 30 to 33-34bhp'.

The timed breather was also used and the eccentric rocker spindle and Nimonic 80 exhaust valves. The improved valve springs and the laminated head gaskets all contributed to a most reliable engine. The 500cc version gave over 44bhp in IOM trim. These engines all had the shorter connecting rods, the 500 had oval flywheels to get piston skirt clearance and still have some flywheel effect this later however proved to be unnecessary. During all this activity on Gold Stars many other developments were going on. We tended to let the mechanics specialize as they seemed to be more efficient in this way. Reg Wilkes for example did most Gold Star development, Arthur Butler worked on A7 and A10 development. Arthur Bridgewood worked on the 500cc overhead cam twins and the MC4. Bill Bently exclusive on MC1. Bert Hole worked on the twins . Alan Sandilands did some work on the MC1 and a lot of special projects like a scrambler C12, special short stroke engines with one piece crankshafts. Jimmy Gibbard spent his time as a machinist making special parts for the shop. Jake Turner came in later as both machinist and mechanic and did a lot of work on 250 Gold Stars, was also responsible for machining the straight port head for 350 Gold Star. All of them at some time or another worked on the 'experiments to find optimum bore and stroke dimensions. We did some experimenting with chrome plated cylinders which was promising but inconclusive.

Due to the temporary shortage of aluminium because of; the Korean War some Gold Star cylinders were, cast iron, we were instructed to evaluate these in case the factory was forced to use them. They were terribly heavy, about three times the weight of the standard alloy cylinder. Much to everyone’s amazement we got slightly more power and no overheating, the piston rings also appeared to run better in the iron cylinder, which set me thinking. When the original tests were completed we knocked all the fins off the iron cylinder and turned it down to a heavy sleeve in the lathe,, then bored a standard Gold Star cylinder jacket to be just a bit smaller than the outside of the iron sleeve. The alloy jacket was, heated up and dropped on, making a nice tight fit, a flange had been left at the bottom of the line to sit on crankcase face. As the line's had been left about *" thick, the Back to top of it made a good seat for the cylinder head. Due to all the machining and shrinking process the bore had distorted slightly and the rings did not bed in very well, so we had it lightly ground true which left it about .002" oversize.

On test it performed very well, more power, better oil control and no scuff marks as we got with the standard austenitic liners. I discussed this with 'Brico' the piston ring people and they said they were not surprised and agreed to make us two special thick sleeves for further testing, one using the austenitic material and one plain cast iron. We gave these extensive testing, the rings bedded better and controlled oil consumption better with an iron sleeve. The tests were repeated with 350 Gold Star, again the plain cast iron showed up to advantage.

The Design office were interested but reluctant to admit that austenitic was not necessary. They changed to the thicker liner in production, but I am not sure whether they changed the material. Early in 1953 we tested some chrome plated Back to top compression rings from Brico in a special 350 Gold Star we had built for Charlie Salt. This engine had what was then the new eccentric rockers, a plain big end bearing in an alloy con rod. This engine was in the 350 Gold Star we had taken to Montlhery for high speed testing. It performed very well but the chrome ring even after hours of running never really bedded in. We reported this to Brico and they said not to worry as they were grinding these rings with a slight taper degree on the face, and that we should find them ok. After trying these new taper face rings we found them very much better and ultimately got almost 34bhp from this engine. Unfortunately the connecting rod cap broke up in the Junior TT due to the self locking nuts coming loose.

Following a hot tip I had received, we built a 350 Gold Star with cylinder axis offset 3/8" to the rear, this gives a peculiar motion to the piston, with the effect of a short connecting rod 4 3/4" long and 8" long going down and 1.4 increase in bhp, but it was a rough engine. Due to the good results I had had using a dural (RR56) connecting rod with plain connecting rod bearing in my Rudges I wanted to try this in a Gold Star. We had made a connecting rod of this type, made to my drawings, it turned out to be reliable and smooth but very little more power than the standard steel rod. We used this engine for comparison tests of various parts and ideas for several years. It was finally sold for scrap when I left BSA Quite a bit of testing was of moulded bakelite big end bearing cages, as they would have been a lot cheaper to produce than the dural cages used in production, but they failed at high RPM.

The original Gold Star BSA got its name by lapping Brooklands race track at over 100mph in 1938 ridden by Wal Handley, a very fine rider. This was followed in 1939 by an alloy engine version called a Gold Star, it had 82 x 94 bore and stroke. In 1954 we made a modern version of this engine to see if the longer stroke showed any advantages, using M20 flywheels, a pre war piston and modern cylinder sleeved down to 82 mm. It was a disappointment as it did not pull any better and gave 42bhp. Charlie Salt & I rode it around Oulton Park. It was also tested as a scrambler by Dennis Hardwick and someone in the Competition department. After a final strip down and rebuild we got 4bhp which wasn’t bad but at the time the standard 500 Gold Star was giving 45-46 quite readily and as much as 50bhp as flash readings. We made a range of 350 engines with bore and stroke ratios varying from 63 x 112 to 71 x 88 and 76 x 76, 8.x 66 and 85 x 61.5.

Not all at once but fitted in with other testing, the 82 x 66 engine was built in two forms both used one piece crankshaft plain big end bearings and outside flywheels. The first engine had a higher compression ratio and orthodox intake port merely straightened and given a little more downdraft. The best reading on this engine was 38~bhp, but one day it seized up so suddenly that the flywheel inertia twisted the crankshaft making it impossible to strip. The next version had bigger diameter mainshaft and lower compression ratio, due to unavailability of the pre-war Gold Star piston we had been using, this engine was very reliable and we did all sorts of tests using various carburettors, silencers and cams.

The best power with racing set up was 36bhp at 7250 RPM and 36.1 at 7750 RPM. The most interesting was the power obtained with road cams and silencer and monobloc carburettor 27.3 at 7000 and still pulled strongly at 2500 RPM. From these test in 1953-54-55 I became convinced that short strokes were the way to go. Modern 1988 motor cycles would seem to bear this out. The Gold Star head gasket joint system is rather unique and merits some comment, the push rod tunnel construction called for something other than the classic four stud joint to prevent oil leaks. The system adopted consisted of four long studs coming up from the crankcase in orthodox fashion, plus four more short bolts that simply united barrel and head from below, one bolt in the push rod tunnel the others at front and rear and on the left side. All eight bolts screwed into bronze inserts which are themselves screwed into the head casting. The system was not completely successful as we sometimes got leaky joints. Another snag was the difficulty in tightening the rear bolt, sometimes it was necessary to remove the magneto in order to get at this bolt, so we often left them out with no ill effects. At one time we went to only five fixtures, with no problems. on our special engines we adopted the final variation on these themes by making four hollow steel tubes to replace the crankcase studs and ran four bolts down from the head into the internal threads in the four tubes, which had external threads at their lower ends where this four bolt arrangement was fully proof against gasket blowing and greatly simplified head removal, especially with the engine in the frame. This last system would have been cheaper, but in spite of this was not adopted.

Connecting rod breakage used to be a frequent Back to topic of conversation amongst racing men as breaking at high speed can lead to some terrifying moments, besides doing a lot of damage. I believe the forged steel rods in BSA engines were outstandingly good. A number of Manx Norton riders I know used them because they found them more reliable than some of their original equipment. BSA had a great deal of know-how when it came to forging. No one else in the motor cycle industry forged their own connecting rods, other makes had to go to outside supplies like Laystall or Garrington. Naturally when you make parts yourself you have more control and you can try different components. We were lucky in that we had a good smithy and good people working in it.

About the time Lucas came out with a new racing magneto of the rotating magnet type, it was supposed to be less affected by vibration and more reliable but I was not very, impressed with its performance, it also had less range of advance, and retard. Personally I preferred the BTH magneto. We borrowed a 350 Manx Norton engine in 1956 which had a good power curve, we got 38bhp and very good torque with it, rather better than our own engines. On examining the cams we found that due to being a double overhead camshaft design there was very low reciprocating weight, enabling very quick lifts to be used without very 'long' timing. This particular Norton was a square engine 76 x 76 with squish piston. We built a Gold Star engine to these dimensions to test the so called squish effect using a Norton piston in a modified BSA head, this gave us 36.4bhp but we could get practically the same power with ordinary non-squish combustion chamber, maybe it only works with higher compression ratios, ours was 9.0: 1

The quality of mechanics who were employed in development was very high, there was not much they could not do. Alan Sandilands once made some prototype cams by hand. Jake Turner was a terrific machinist, very fast and accurate, he also thought up the method of making a virtually straight inlet port. Reg Wilkes was the artist who would fettle a piston and head until he got the maximum power that was possible.

We made some alloy tappets that were very light and worked very well, they seemed to be very compatible with the hard steel cams, the only problem was after about 500 racing miles they broke, but while they worked they were good. I feel sure that if we had been able to make larger diameter guides and stems to suit they would have been very satisfactory. Charlie Salt once set out to design a new crankcase for the Gold Star using a high camshaft, but it had to look like a BSA he was told. Sunbeam and Rudge had both made high camshaft engines pre-war with chain driven camshafts.

At various times we had problems with A10 and A7 connecting rods especially when used in the plain bearing Gold Star. We were trying to get away from split pins and castellated nuts and trying various patent self-locking nuts. The only one that was successful was the pinnacle nut which had a steel diaphragm to lock the nut. One of my ambitions was to utilise all the successful ideas we had used on the Gold Star and make them standard parts so that the B31 and B33 would use .the same connecting rods and valve sizes, push rods made of tubular alloy instead of solid, eccentric rocker spindles and the simple Gold Star rocker, but still retaining the iron heads and cylinder barrels. Unfortunately the production people could not see the benefit of these ideas. We did extensive testing with floating bush big end bearings mostly in the 500 Gold Star on the basis that if it stood full power and revs in that, it would certainly last in a lower power engine. The floating bushes were very much cheaper to make. During road testing at MIRA. Barry Stormont did 116 miles in the hour which was something of a record for us. It was in winter time and he was literally frozen stiff, we had to take him out to a warm cafe to thaw him out.

All through a long test programme, using factory bushes made by Glacier bearings we had no trouble, but when we started using their production samples they were almost useless, so we had to F->rop the whole scheme, which was a pity. We also tried a large diameter wrapped bush running on a large crankpin, we tried both bi-metal and copper lead, they were both satisfactory, but the larger crankpin was so rigid we had trouble aligning the flywheels. All these plain bearings really need a large paper filter built in to the engine, but all we had was a small tecalemit filter on the return oil line. Although either of these bearings would have shown a big economy I did not receive much encouragement. I think the factory was scared to make a change, although they already had these plain bearings in the twins during testing of the floating bush connecting rod bearing we had problems with over oiling. It appeared that too much' oil was being thrown up to the cylinder and piston, this we corrected by reducing the diameter of the flywheels and chamfering them.

The following summary of the development of the Gold Stars may be of interest.

1952 350cc
27 - 28bhp

1956 350cc
35 - 36bhp

1952 500cc
35 - 37bhp

1956 500cc
44 - 46bhp

We felt that these increases came from higher revs which in turn came from lighter valve gear, better springs, larger carburettors, higher compression with cooler running due to the big fin heads plus higher octane fuel. About 1955 the desire developed for a better brake for our scramblers. Since the management wanted to avoid spending money, as usual it was decided one brake would have to do for both Clubmans TT and racing Gold Stars-and Scramblers. Dennis Hardwick wanted a small intake for the scramblers, Charlie Salt and I wanted a big brake for the Clubman. We compromised on a 19O mm brake on Charlie’s suggestion, who told me he was banking on a belief that Hardwick would not know how big 190mm really was. As it turned out Hardwick didn’t. So we came out with this fairly large brake, with wide shoes which was used for some years afterwards although in my opinion it was not as good as the earlier cast iron drum with ribs around it. That was the best Gold Star brake. Charlie did not like it himself and he blamed Hardwick for the fact that it was too small as he would have preferred 200mm diameter. The l90 mm brake was designed by Charlie and it turned out to be rather heavy for its size.

Roland Pike Autobiography - Chapter 22

2009-01-25T08:28:00.003Z

The Terrible Twins

I have never liked the air cooled vertical twin, but they looked neat, were simple, had an even firing, smooth exhaust note, fitting neatly into the same frame as their predecessors, the singles. The vibration was terrible, it seemed worse than the single, at least it was more noticeable. To my mind the head joint on all vertical twins with one-piece heads and cylinder block was marginal and subject to distortion. At BSA we must have done a fantastic amount of work on twins, judging by my notes. BSA had made up their minds that the twin was the motor cycle engine of the future. Every time I rode one it gave me the willies - the vibration was so noticeable. We tried all sorts of cures to get rid of the shakes and I still think our best ever effort in that direction was a short stroke 500 we made in 1953. Charlie Salt & I ran and ran it until we wore it out but no one seemed interested in it. This short stroke engine was a 500 A7 using a 650 head, barrel and pistons slightly modified. The crank was machined from the solid. This arrangement gave a 70 x 64.5 bore and stroke and instead of having a bolt on flywheel it had a triangular bob weight machined in the centre of the crank and discs next to the journal bearings. It was a very smooth running engine, both on the dyno and on the road. Power output was similar to the Star Twin, using 7.25:1 compression ratio.

With further tuning and lighter valve gear it gave 36bhp at 7000 a specially developed two into one exhaust system, we got as much as 39 horsepower at 7000. It was a most exciting machine to ride, as you accelerated it went on a normal power curve, then suddenly the exhaust note would change and it would 'yowl' right on up to maximum about 107mph Back in 1953 on low octane petrol this was quite an exciting performance on the road. Charlie and I enjoyed that engine.

The so-called Star Twin camshaft was a sporty one designed I think by Jack Amott although the design office never gave him credit for it. It was quite useable on the road with silencers fitted and also useful with open pipes. The fellows in my shop told me Jack did all the work on cams and I have no reason to doubt their words. Later on we went to the Daytona camshaft which was really a race cam and not very good at low revs but good at high speeds. Amott did design a racing cam for the twin, but we were unable to make it work properly, it was too radical and hard on valve springs. Reg Wilkes mentioned that if the drawing office had stuck to Jack’s original design they would have been all right. I asked to see Amott's original design and Reg got his camshaft out of a cabinet and showed it to me. It had a much larger base circle than the drawing office version, although to be quite honest I could not see what effect this would have. Wilkes suggested I try it sometime, he was sure it would work better and it did. It was still pretty radical. I never could understand why the drawing office decided to change the base circle diameter. One of the disadvantages of a larger base circle is a higher rubbing speed on the other hand you can get a smoother easier ???

Twin camshaft problems. Whilst working at BSA Dennis Lashmar carried on racing my old 'Pike BSA' with the alloy twin engine. I think he had one good win on a wet day at Snetterton, when it ran cool enough not to blow up. Latterly whenever we went to Silverstone or anywhere to watch him, he finished up sliding along on his backside at about 100mph with a broken crankshaft. This was too dangerous I considered. Once just after the massed start at Silverstone, with the pack all bunched up and approaching Woodcote corner at over 100mph the Beesa suddenly seized and he was sliding along with bikes all round him! I told Mr Hopwood that if we could not do something about the crankshaft breakages we should drop the racing twin. He pointed out that as far as Lashmar was concerned it was his own bike and he could do what he liked with it, but the policy of the factory was to make a twin. I felt we should make a new crank for it to which he agreed and wanted to know if I had any suggestions. By this time Group Research were in the picture at BSA and they demonstrated to me in ten minutes what I had suspected for years. They came up with some very good ideas. One was that the crank needed larger crankpin journals .which would make it stiffer and get away from the frequency at which it now vibrated. Mr Hopwood agreed that their suggestions were fine for 1955 but at that time we had to use what we had. He was interested to know if any other suggestions and Group Research said to put a rolled radius around the ends of each crankpin. They demonstrated by putting a standard crankshaft on vee blocks over the Back to top of the electro-magnetic vibrator they had built.

Then started some sort of motor generator. The noise was like standing next to a jet engine at the airport, it went into a scream and from a scream to an outer pitch sound, onto another phase even higher, then they brought in the electro-magnetic vibrator and the whole place began to buzz. The frequency of the vibrator was adjusted to a multiple of 6,600, the crank vibrated with a high speed buzz, inside ten minutes there was a loud bang, the crank fell in two parts, broken at the usual point, showing the same sort of fracture that we had experienced after three hours running at 6600 RPM. It was a much quicker way of testing a crankshaft and without wrecking an engine. Next they set up one of their special cranks, with the rolled filet radius on the crankpin, it was subjected to the same test, buzzing away on the vee blocks, ten minutes passed, thirty minutes and it was still in one piece. I got tired of waiting and asked to be informed when it broke. It did not break and after one hour it was still good. I was very impressed and so was Mr Hopwood but the factory again did not seem interested, perhaps they could not believe it. This rolling process consisted of applying a ball ended tool to the radius under high pressure in a big lathe.

A few cranks were made, some for research, some for use on the dyno. It seemed fantastic that this simple process could make such a difference. Many years later when I was working for Volkwagen in the USA. I discovered that they cured a rash of broken crankshafts on the 1965 truck engine by the same procedure, except that they did not use a ball, but a small roller to form the radius. It cured the problem for Volkswagen.

Twin engines for Formula 3 We made a number of A7 race engines for this small race class in 1953. They were set up to run on alcohol fuel but were not very reliable and although we got close on 50bhp were repeatedly beaten by Norton singles doing far less. We actually 'borrowed' a 500 Norton engine designed for a formula 3 car, it pulled 42bhp but had 39 ft lbs of torgue against our 36 ft lbs. Part of the trouble with our engines was the installation, they did not get enough cooling air and in one case they had a restricted oil supply, using a long small bore hose from the tank to the engine, the sticky Castor oil simply would not flow fast enough. Another problem was at the head to cylinder block joint, there was a tendency when very hot for a slight blow across to the oil drain holes thus pressurising the crankcase, this blew oil out of the crankcase at every possible point. The cure was to fit small hollow dowels into the head and barrel joint, thus rigidly locating the head, and keeping gas pressure out of the crankcase.

The single overhead camshaft A7 In 1952 they were working on a single overhead camshaft 500 twin. It was a handsome engine with alloy head and barrel, fine pitch finning, exhaust pipe held to the head by nuts. The single overhead cam was driven by bevel gears and a shaft running up what would normally be the push rod tunnel, the valves were operated by rockers. Arthur Bridgewood was working on it in great secrecy in a little shop at the end of the test shop, he had to put up with the noise and fumes of engines being tested. At this point in time it gave the same power as the A7 push rod engine and broke crankshafts with equal regularity. The camshaft was lubricated by the rocker feed which was completely inadequate and of course it wore out cams and nd rockers. Doug Hele suggested using a single wide cam as they did on some Ariels. This cured the rapid wear but the performance suffered due to the geometry of the rockers to cams, one rocker being a trailing rocker, the other a leading one this giving different opening diagram for each valve. I personally felt that the engine could have been made to go if I had been given more freedom as I had with the Gold Star and MC4. One problem was excessive oil consumption due to an accumulation of oil in the rocker box which ran down the valve guides. This we cured by using a C11 oil scavenger pump to pump surplus oil direct to the tank. The feed side of the little oil pump was used to squirt oil through 1/16th holes on to the cam lobes, this cured the rocker and cam wear. At this point we needed a stronger crankshaft and a different design of cams to take advantage off the overhead cam arrangement. By this time Mr Hopwood had lost interest in the engine and said he did not think it would ever be any good, so scrap it. I think that’s what finally happened to it.

The A10 was if anything worse than the A7 when it came to vibration and crankshaft breakages because of its longer stroke. Actually most complaints were about the A10. Although the A7 was the one we raced so that we were more intimately involved in its development. BSA brought about their own demise by their attitude to progress. A favourite saying of Mr Leakes was "Don’t let us be pioneers". Back in the dim and distant past they had lost money on a few experimental ideas that had not worked and that had never been forgotten. Nevertheless when you are the biggest motor cycle manufacturer s in the world you have got to do some pioneering if you want to stay on Back to top. You cannot leave it to small firms like Velocette, who introduced foot gear-change, a successful spring frame, eccentric rocker spindles, a production overhead camshaft engine and many other innovations.

Alloy heads for the twins About the beginning of 1954 it was decided to make a production version of the twin with an alloy head, we had made experimental ones before for the racing people. The head had shrunk in valve seats which gave very little trouble but the spark plugs fitted into bronze inserts screwed and pinned into the head, these persisted in coming out when the plug was removed. I persuaded Mr Hopwood to use long reach plugs screwed directly into the aluminium head, this was very satisfactory. At one stage we could not make a decision on which was best, a single inlet port and one carburettor or twin ports and two carburettors, on the dyno there was very little in it. The first of the Star twins had twin port heads with detachable manifold, it could be used with either one or two carburettors. In point of fact the difference in power is only worth while when running on open pipes. Twin carbs and their cables have to be carefully adjusted to keep both cylinders pulling equally at small throttle openings and just off idling, which is a nuisance to the rider at best, assuming he can cope with the bit of DIY mechanical skill necessary.

After a year we had improved the port configuration and it ran so much better with one big carb that the twin carb option was dropped. We had found it useful to measure the capacity of the inlet ports and check on performance, about 142 to 150cc's gave optimum results. If an engine was down for power we often found the ports undersize. Like all aluminium cylinder heads, these expanded a lot with heads and at the outset we experienced stretched or broken head bolts. These bolts went downwards through the head into the iron cylinder block and would usually break at the root of the last thread, which was the weakest point because it took all the stretching. To overcome this we quite simply put the bolts in a lathe and reducing the diameter of the pIain portion to 10% less than the diameter of the root of the thread. This meant that the thread was no longer the weakest point and that the plain portion could stretch without exceeding its elastic limit.

This was completely successful on the first attempt and no more trouble was experienced with the bolts. They could stretch when the head expanded and return to their original length as the head cooled own. When the new twins were going into production however, Alan Jones who was Works Manager at that time phoned me to say they were unable to make the head bolt as needed, despite my pointing out that we bad found them necessary, he just continued to say they were unable to make them. I went on with my work and forgot about the matter, but I did not have to wait long, within a few hours the motor cycle test shop foreman was on the phone to me complaining the head bolts of the new twins were breaking right and left, so I referred him to Alan Jones. Mr Jones reiterated they were unable to make the bolts we had designed. Prior to this last call I had taken the precaution of calling the drawing office to say that Jones would not follow their drawings of the bolt thus securing an ally. Alan Jones got no sympathy when he had to pull all the bikes concerned back, dismantle the engines and use the bolt we had specified.

Roland Pike Autobiography - Chapter 21

2009-01-25T07:24:00.011Z

Of 250cc Gold Stars

During 1953 a Mr Thorpe persuaded Bert Perrigo that he should allow us to build a 250 Gold Star on a one off basis and a promise not to worry us for special tuning or special parts. I was quite keen to do this having always been interested in the 250 class. We had one of the experimental small valve scrambler heads left over and an experimental short 6" steel connecting rod, also a special pair of flywheels with crankpin holes specially machined to give 63 mm stroke. The crankpin was special for these short stroke flywheels in that the roller bearing in the centre was standard but the portion that fitted in the flywheels was smaller than usual, being 1.00" diameter and 0.00l taper giving a press fit, the nuts just keeping things together. With this very short stroke there was not room for the standard crankpin nuts. We made special long round nuts with a protruding hexagonal head these were cut off close to the pin after tightening. To remove them they were split with a chisel.

A standard 71mm bore piston and cylinder was used, suitably shortened. Alloy tubular pushrods were used, with lightened tappets, eccentric rocker spindles were used. After experimenting with several cams 22bhp was attained at 7000 – 7600RPM. The engine did not give as much power as the MC4 and it is quite likely that with further running the power increased but it proved very reliable and Mr Thorpe ran it for some years. Later on we built another Gold Star 250, this time using a one-piece crankshaft with outside flywheel and a Sunbeam S7 connecting rod with plain big end. This engine had a 1953 350 Gold Star head and cylinder barrel, the cylinder had to be shortened considerably only seven fins remaining. After quite a small amount of running 26.2bhp was obtained, then the inlet valve broke which ruined the head. When the engine was rebuilt a late type big fin cylinder head was used, a different cylinder head holding down arrangement was used, short steel tubes screwed into the crankcase, bolts fitted from the Back to top screwing into tubes, only four were used and we had no head blowing.

This was the final arrangement of our 250 Gold Star, it proved very successful, the best power recorded being 29.6 at 8250. It would run up to 9000 RPM quite reliably. The inlet port was a pressed in piece of alloy machined after fitting which gave a very straight port. Several engines were built to this design, one was a 350cc, using an 85 mm 500 Gold Star piston on a 61.5 stroke, this was later converted to a 250 by fitting a 72 mm Gold Star piston and was used in the Geoff Monty Special (GMS) for several years. Obviously these 250's were what could best be called ‘codge-ups' using 500 style crankcases for lack of a proper one, the cylinder heads being from 350s had unsuitable valve angles and sizes, the compression ratios were restricted, because of wide angle valves. In spite of these disadvantages proved in the GMS that this was the way to go. The lessons learnt from the ill-fated MC1 were not forgotten. The 250 Gold Star engine in a 500 Gold Star frame was timed at MIRA to do 108mph. In the GMS with some fairing it reached 115mph.

Roland Pike Autobiography - Chapter 20

2009-01-25T06:58:00.007Z

Tales of the Bantam C12, C15 & MC4

The BSA Bantam and the Harley Davidson Hummer were snatched from the Germans as 'reparations' after World War II. The Bantam started as a DKW in 1935 or 36 when it was considered modern with its flat Back to top piston, but by 1946 when BSA got it, it was already old fashioned. One could get about 4.5bhp from the 125cc if you were lucky, more often only about 3.5. The noise they made was dreadful and so was the oil they blew all over the test shop. We worked on them for a couple of years, making all sorts of experimental bits and pieces, none of which worked very well. I recall someone wanted to ride one in the International Six Days Trial and Bert Perrigo the BSA Competition manager persuaded us to build him a 'special'.

Reg Wilkes worked on it for a couple of weeks and got 5 or 6bhp over a wider range than the standard machine. Another time an Australian sent us under great secrecy his Bantam which was reputed to be very powerful and high revving and all the rest. It was highly modified and ran on alcohol blended fuel, they claimed 12bhp and had been timed to exceed 90mph We were suitably impressed and set it up on our dyno, we mixed the prescribed blend of fuel of alcohol benzole and acetone and ran it. However we could not stop it from four stroking and it would not give more than 6bhp. We were reluctant to jet it down in case we burned it up. So we gave up, deciding that the cold damp November air did not suit it, it apparently needed hot dry Aussie air.

In the development shop at BSA we used to hate the sound and sight of the Bantam. When I first went there we were responsible for Bantam development, but I disliked two strokes then and I still do. I suggested to Hopwood why didn’t he get Herman Meier who had been with on the Continental Circus trip in 1951 who was an enthusiast as I felt sure he would make them run. Finally after a lot of trouble with work permits and so on we got Herman over and he shared an office with me. He doubled the power of the Bantam in a few months. Unfortunately Herman was a temperamental type and I eventually recommended that he be moved to Redditch where the Bantams were made anyway. Here he got some good power outputs from the 125cc Bantam and developed the larger versions they eventually produced.
Occasionally a 250 C12 came into the shop, this was a simple and cheap engine, designed in 1935 as a light and inexpensive utility machine based on a Blackburn design used by Excelsior and Frances Barnett a year or earlier. It was novel in that the push rods crossed in the tunnel at the same angle as the valves.

One day the C12 production line was stopped due to repeated complaints from the Dealers of 'knock' from the engine. Mr Leake called a meeting of everyone concerned and told us to cure it or it would have to be dropped from production. A big panic ensued, several engines that were 'knockers' were brought into my shop and we found the in some cases the knock could be cured by retarding the ignition very slightly, but some of the worst examples 'knocked' regardless of timing etc. These were stripped right down for thorough examination, we noticed that the flywheels were made of cast iron whereas when the engine was first produced it had flywheels of steel stampings. We were able to get some of these and when fitted to the worst offenders it completely cured the problem. Whilst fiddling with C12 250cc we tried the alloy cylinder head from the Ariel Colt, a 200cc version of the same engine, this cylinder head cured 'knocking' and gave more power, which prompted us to make a 'deluxe' C12 which after a few quite simple modifications gave 15bhp. An engine was passed to the experimental dept for road testing, but I do not remember any conclusions being made and soon after the 015 was designed. This was another 'cheap' design based on the Triumph Terrier 150cc. In my opinion a poor thing.

The MC4 design which was very promising was essentially half an A7 twin, the better half I thought as it was more reliable than the A7. It was intended to make a 350cc version using A10 parts. This would have been helpful to the production people as so many parts would have been interchangeable. The camshaft had to be different of course for a single cylinder. The original design used a one-piece iron casting unfortunately the cast iron was not up to the job and the first one broke, possibly 'Nodular' iron would have done the trick or the larger crankpin as used later in A7 & A10 would have helped. At about this time (1952) we used our first alternators built into the engine timing case, this gave it an odd shaped bulge, they worked very well and used less horsepower than the regular generator with rotating armature. I think if it had gone into production some resistance would have been encountered from the typical motor cyclist over the odd appearance of this engine, but once they realised the advantages of the engine they would soon forget the appearance.

The MC4 gave half the power of the racing A7 but with much greater reliability. This could only be explained by the fact that the main bearings were only some three inches apart giving an inherently more rigid lower end than the A7, which suffered from crankshaft whip. One of the things we learned a lot about during the MC4 development was mechanical berathers. As designed it had a disc valve breather as on the earlier Gold Star, at high revolutions the little pen steel disc valve could not cope and as a result blew oil out in large amounts. The same problem on the early Gold Star caused several retirements in the Clubmans TT races due to loss of oil and too much oil on the rear tire became very mechanical breather conscious and tried to adapt the A7 mechanical breather to the MC4. At first it would not work satisfactorily finally we fitted copper pipe inside the crankcase, picking up breather air from a 'dry' spot in the corner of the crankcase. This was much more effective in terms of oil loss, but the crankcase pressure was disappointing until we retarded the timing of the breather valve by 70 degrees, it would then maintain a pressure inside the crankcase of between of 4 and 7 inches of water lower than atmospheric at all speeds. This kept the engine very clean, even when belting round MonthIery track at nearly 100mph.

Due to the MIRA test track not being completed we arranged to go to France and use the banked track at Monthlery for a week. We.loaded the MC4, a 350 Gold Star and two 650 A10 Police Specials into our van, which was my old race van which I had bought from Ray Amm in 1952, now fitted' with a V8 engine. Charlie Salt and I were the hobbledeboys, we drove the van via Dover and Boulogne to Paris. Arthur Lupton and Bert Hopwood drove an A40 Austin. Bill Nichols flew out to join us a little later. Strangely enough although Bill was such a dare-devil in Scrambles and on the road, he was completely over-awed by the banked track. He was unable to lap as fast as I did and I was putting on weight and my leathers were tight. Charlie being neat and slim lapped about 3mph faster than I did and I was a little faster than Bill. The demonstration of the police bikes to the National Guard was the funniest thing. The police were all Triumph enthusiasts and did not like BSAs. When our bikes lapped faster than the Police Triumphs they removed the silencers, saying "now we will go faster". We wondered whether we should remove our silencers as well and go faster still, but it was getting ridiculous. Their police model Triumph had the infamous sprung hub and at speed on the banking looked positively dangerous. It started to drizzle with rain and I thought now we will show them, our bikes had the old plunger springing, it seemed steadier than the Triumph on the banking. However they would not ride on the track in the wet. I did a couple of fast laps in the wet at about 103mph and was skating about all over the place. So we adjourned for lunch with the Distributor and his guests from the Guard Nationale. We spent the rest of our time there testing the MC4 and found the heavy front mudguards were holding our speed down to 93mph, so we removed front mudguard and tipped the headlamp to try and improve the streamlining - we could not remove jt because it contained switchgear etc. The bike was road equipped except for a megaphone in place of the silencer. This put the speed up to 96 for the lap. When timed the Gold Star and Charlie slipstreamed me on the MC4 we lapped at just on 99mph. When we switched bikes we could lap at 97. For a 250cc push rod machine which was not designed as a racer these times were very good, the engine was putting out about 24.5bhp. The racing Excelsior 250 claimed 22.5bhp on 50/50 petrol benzole. We were using pump fuel of 78 octane. However when we returned to the factory the Board of Directors decided against producing the MC4 which was a great disappointment to all of us, we who had seen its promise. A version was assembled with sheet metal covering over crankcase and gearbox, a different colour scheme and Sunbeam name on the tank, this was also turned, down. The C12 and its variations stayed in production.

Roland Pike Autobiography - Chapter 19

2009-01-24T09:49:00.007Z

The Importance of the Export Market

After the war Sir Stafford Cripps devalued the pound sterling to help Britain compete in the export markets, but unfortunately few businessmen appreciated the value of exports. I did not realise it myself until I was sent to America by BSA, then I realised Britain needed dollars to buy food, raw materials and fuel and to get them we had to export. To export you have got to give the customer what they want and that is what I tried to do at BSA. To be sure, Mr Rawson their Export Manager and Mr Leake were aware of the need for exports, but it was on the factory floor that this was not appreciated. Anything special was a nuisance it was an uphill job. I was not high-up enough to carry any weight.

Bert Hopwood and Bert Perrigo understood and did what they could and Mr Leake managed to give the Americans what they wanted. BSA had two representatives in the United States, Hap Alzina on the West coast and Alf Child of Rich Child Cycle company on the East. Alf Child was a great promoter, no doubt about it, but unfortunately he did not understand motor cycles as well as Hap Alzina. Mr Childs depended on others for the technical or specialised advice so that some of the information he gave us was not always good. As a result a lot of what he told us was disregarded, good or bad. Hap Alzina was just the opposite and was a pillar of strength, supporting the design and technical depts wherever he could. He was able to pull strings with the AMA that Alf Child could never do.

Alf Childs was British, born in Nutley, Sussex, UK. He ran away to sea when he was only 14. He had lost an arm and was known inevitably as the 'one-armed bandit' in New Jersey. He was a flamboyant character and often rude to people, but once you got to know him was very likeable. At first you could be very put off by him as he had a habit of being abusive and used the most crude language, not just about things but personal with it. At that time I did not understand his attitude and took offense. I intimated to Mr Leake that I did not want to visit Alf Child in the US anymore.

Finally Mr Leake found out my complaint and gave Alf Child a dressing down. I was sent back to America in 1953 for Daytona, during this visit I listened carefully to what the Dealers, their riders, Tommy McDermott, Warren Sherwood, Gene Thiessen and Al Gunter had to say and went back to the factory and explained to them that BSA had to produce a bike entirely for the American competition market. As a result I was given the go ahead to produce a prototype. I used one of Bill Nicholson’s production trials frames, welded light and rigid. The Dealers in America had said Daytona is only one race a year and we were putting everything into it, what would they do with the bikes afterwards? They were no good for the half-mile as they were too heavy, they wanted something light. So I decided that they could get something light and produced a prototype that weighed 276lbs by using a lot of light alloys, fitted with a Gold Star engine, it would do 114mph on the timing strip, mean speed.

The twin engine in the meantime had been developed to give more power and reliability using an alloy head and a hot cam, the power was available from about 5250 to 7250 RPM, but it was not so tractable as the single although it gave more power and was 2mph faster on the timing strip. Running side by side the single would reach the end of the timing strip first, although finishing the measured mile at a lower speed. We went to Daytona in 1954 with eight rigid frame lightweight racers, four with singles and four twins. Alf Childs wanted an extra bike for Bobby Hill, all we had available was a 500cc twin in a Clubmans type spring frame, ironically this was the winning machine! We collected five of first eight places, the best BSA ever did at Daytona.

The AMA at this time were very strict with compression ratios, the maximum allowed was 8:1, we were allowed 1 mm oversize pistons, so naturally all these bikes had the extra few cc capacity (508cc) and it did give a wee bit more power. BSA made 100 of these rigid frame, short track machines and some were still being raced on half mile and mile circuits twenty three years later. Later on the AMA allowed up to 9:1 compression ratio, which was more helpful to the twins than the singles. By 1958 the factory was not giving much support to the American racers. I remember we had difficulty in obtaining Nirnonic 80 valves in the US. Nimonic 80 is made by Henry Wiggins in the UK and should be readily available. A similar material is available in the States under a similar name.

An overhead valve engine running at high speed presents a difficult problem for the valves due to the weight of the push rods, tappets and rockers the valve springs have to be fairly powerful which in turn puts a load on the valves, particularly the exhaust valve which runs at bright red heat. A Gold Star running under full load and full throttle can demonstrate this, just look into the carburettor intake, a small segment of the exhaust valve is visible glowing red hot . The British motorcycle industry was at its peak of success in the days when people rode their motor cycles to work as well as for pleasure, owning a car was not so affordable then and the bike was much more convenient than bus, train or tram.

I think motor cycles are a viable solution to the future need for low cost transportation and with ever increasing costs of fuel. The bike takes up less room on our crowded highways. The utility bike of the future may well be a 250 single or a 350 twin, these could easily give 80 mpg, US or imperial! Bikes for Class 'C' Racing. When I first had anything to do with Class 'C', we felt very restricted due to the strict regulations. 8:1 compression ratio, kick- starters etc. Any competitor in a race could claim the winners bike on payment of $1500. This was to discourage excessive investment of money and time into a certain machine by the factory or dealer, and to ensure that all the race bikes were reasonably equal in performance. In other words a no-hope rider could theoretically buy himself the best machine at a race by simply claiming it. In practice this did not happen too often because anyone who did this would be regarded as un-sporting. I heard of a case where a bike was claimed and the factory concerned bought the would-be purchaser off by offering him more money not to claim it. Any special machines had to be approved by the AMA and at least 100 produced for sale to dealers. In 1953 we had got into quite an argument over this rule. BSA claimed the 1953 racer was a Star Twin with a few modifications that were available to the public. The AMA did not agree and told us we had to make a 100. Since we had not had any good results with the model, we knew we would never sell a 100 of them and finally made about 40 or so.

I remember Fron Purslow bought one and tried to race it in England on short circuits, with no success. One of the friendliest racers I met at Daytona was Al Gunter in 1953 and last saw him at Daytona in 1958 by which time he was a changed man. He had been terribly mutilated in various crashes although you saw flashes of the old Al Gunter in the smile and enthusiasm. He had tried to make a career out of motor cycle racing in the 50's, this was difficult and as he got older had to compete with many up and coming younger riders. Eventually he was confined to a wheelchair and in 1976 we heard of his suicide. Al Gunter had been a very enthusiastic racer of BSA's and co-operated a great deal in our experiments. In the mid '50's he was one of the fastest BSA men in the USA. The last time I talked with him, Al said he was getting over 50bhp at the back wheel of his Gold Star racer at 8000 RPM.

Harman and Collins helped him in these experiments, using special cams and special push rods to aid higher revving. At 8000 RPM I did not expect a Gold Star to last very long, which Al confirmed and said the motor was only good for a short track. Dick Mann another BSA rider who was riding Harley Davidson at Daytona in 1958. One time he handed me a factory racing Harley 45 cu. inch, flathead twin and asked if I had ever had a ride on one. I had not and he suggested I have a go. This was in front of all the Harley people and their eyes were popping out. Before anyone could stop me I hopped on and a rushed up the beach. It was fantastic and felt like a Manx Norton. It steered well, brakes were good, the motor pulled hard to 7400 RPM, then the power dropped right off and you went to the next gear. Torque was strong all the way. I don't know how our BSA riders ever competed with them.

Gold Stars that were raced on other US tracks got a certain amount help from the Distributors but the factory support was very limited. S&W valve springs came to our attention through Hap Alzina, he thought they might help the twins, they certainly did and Gold Star singles as well. We had tremendous success with them. According to theory they should not work! But then, theory says the Bumble Bee cannot fly.

Roland Pike Autobiography Chapter 18

2009-01-13T23:23:00.011Z

The Development Shop and Clubmans TT

The primary aim of my development shop at BSA apart from improving standard machines was to win the Clubmans TT. We were not supposed to be interested in International racing, other than in connection with the MC1 project. The scrambler motor was considered powerful enough. For the Clubmans models we were always searching for a little more speed and of course reliability. This went hand in hand with American class ‘C’ AMA racing, since what was good for the Clubmans was also good for class ‘C’.

BSA did not dominate the early Clubmans 500cc TT races which were won mainly by Triumph and Norton. The 1949 race for 350cc was BSA's first victory. Many BSA 350's were entered and few finished but that year the winner was a BSA.

They had plunger rear suspension, leaked oil, and tended to blow oil out of the engine breather, to the extent of running low on oil, causing seizures etc. Nevertheless, the two or three best BSAs on that occasion did very well, competing against Velocette KSS models and 350 Norton Internationals. In 1952 BSA had hoped to provide a challenge in the 500cc Clubmans with an all alloy twin engine which would be promoted as Gold Star Twin if successful.

However the regulations prevented their use as it was not yet a production model. A few standard A7 500cc twins were built to Clubmans specifications, they pushed out 36-38bhp which was about the same as the production Manx Norton, but in fact were unreliable and had a peaky performance, also did not handle as well as the single. In 1953 it was the same story, the old CB350 did quite well as did the 500cc singles of which there were two or three entered.

The 500cc BSA twins were getting pretty unpopular by that time because when the crankshaft broke, they often destroyed the crankcases and fetched the rider off. If this happens at 100mph it’s pretty scary. Triumphs were still going strong with their 500cc twins although they had their share of blown engines too. They won by the use of specially prepared hand picked machines and some good riders. By 1954 the Gold Star had new heads with big area finning, eccentric rocker spindles, shorter connecting rods, tubular push rods (instead of solid alloy) and Nimonic exhaust valves, a timed crankcase breather (which controlled the tendency to blow oil out on to the road and rear tires) and needle roller bearings on the gearbox layshaft. So far as factory involvement in preparing machines for the Clubmans went there was none, however we used to maintain a workshop in the Island for the benefit of all riders of BSAs. The riders who showed the best in practice might get the benefit of someone like Cyril Halliburn working on their motors. Triumph and Norton did the same thing.

Triumph had Ernie Nott an ex- TT winner working on some of their customers’ bikes. I was in the Island workshop keeping an eye on technical problems and helping Charlie Salt with his TT machines. Before coming to BSA Hopwood had designed the Norton twin, its outstanding feature was the way the cylinder heads were splayed, cut at the front giving better cooling and more fins where needed. This feature was patented, so of course could not be used by BSA.

Nevertheless the new A7 he designed for 1952 was a good rugged engine compared with the earlier BSA twins. It had a weak point in the timing side main bearing and rather small tappets, they wore more rapidly than they should, and also a tendency to vibrate and break crankshafts. We carried out a lot of tests to improve the timing side main bearing trying an all white metal bearing, a copper-lead bearing and a needle roller bearing. This last was far and away the best but required a different oil feed to the crankshaft to lubricate the rod bearings but as the factory did not want to make a change, we continued with the short life main bearing. The crankshaft breakage problem was really due to two things, the diameter of the crankshaft rod bearing journals gave a natural frequency of vibration that coincided with 6,600 & 3,300 RPM, any prolonged full throttle running at 6,600 rpm soon broke the crank adjacent to the rod bearing journal.

A member in the Group Research dept. gave this matter some thought and came up with the answer - a better finish in the fillet radius each side of the big end journal. In production the journal radius was done by the same grinding wheel that ground the journal, this meant that tiny microscopic scratches were left and this is where the fatigue fractures invariably started. His solution was to roll under high pressure a ball around each journal, leaving a perfectly smooth finish.

The layout of the Test shop.There were five Heenan &Froude hydraulic dynamometers and one electric dyno, an elaborate set up ideal for research work. The electric dyno could be reversed to drive the engine you were testing. Everyone was half scared of it, except Arthur Bridgewood, he used it a lot. He insisted that there was always an apprentice standing with his hand on the big knife switch to cut it off dead, if an engine blew up whilst running, current would continue to flow rotating the already damaged engine to destruction. The operator had to be wide awake and act quickly if something broke or seized. We eventually traded this dyno to Research for a nearly new DPX1. The other dynos were two DPX2, one DPX0 and two DPX1. When the MC1 came into the shop we had a new high speed dyno- a DPX3 .

Originally all the dynos were driven by chain from the engine sprocket, a very inefficient method, but simple. We used a 2:1 ratio to keep things simple. Anyone who favours primary chain drive should attend a test using chain drive. At about 6000 RPM take a reading, then get a squirt oil can and oil the chain, the engine will pick up an apparent 2bhp.

Heenan used to recommend a shaft and two universal joints like in a car, but we found them unreliable, the universal joints used to break up and fly all over the shop like shrapnel. We eventually went to a bonded rubber coupling which if lined up carefully gave good results. All the dynamometers were arranged in a line with their axis parallel, very neat, but very impractical, as the blast of cooling air and exhaust blew from one to the next, making it impractical to use more than one engine at a time, due to blast of air and if testing a race engine the noise and fumes, to say nothing of oil.

To try to get away from these difficulties and to control the blowing oil we had some metal shields on castors made which could be rolled around behind the engines. When cooling air blowers were turned on the shields tended to move around, they soon got coated in oil and one had to avoid brushing against the oily surface. This system remained in used for some years until the shop was demolished. The development shop was once a stable, it was quite old, with over 30 foot ceiling and heated by steam pipes. In summer the only cooling was by opening ventilators.

Originally there was no provision for letting air and fumes out, so a rather expensive sheet metal ducting system was built with a 6 hp fan drawing air from just behind each engine. Cooling air was blown over each engine by a powerful 'squirrel cage' blower, giving an 80mph blast. This cooling air was ducted in from the roof and it was possible to select cold outside air or warm inside shop air by operating a flap valve in a ??? WY' joint by means of a cord. When you run an engine under full power on a dyno you have to be wide-awake, if it starts to tighten up or the exhaust note changes you shut it off immediately. If there are two engines running, it is difficult to tell which is about to falter.

There was no objection to running an engine on the shop exhaust system for 'running in' purposes, this running in was an important part of testing a new engine, it will not deliver its best power until it is 'broken in'. Once a month we would take an engine at random from the production line and after a couple of hours of gentle running, take a full power curve, if it was down for power we would strip it to find out why. Should it be badly down on power we would take another engine from the same batch and test it, if it also was bad, we had to get that particular assembly line stopped until the fault could be located and corrected. Needless to say this was an unpopular action, but was necessary to preserve (the factory's reputation.

The only time I can remember actually calling for a halt to production was on the A10 line and later on the C12. Usually what happened was a cumulative effect due to tightness, maybe a worn tool, making one part slightly oversize and a corresponding part slightly undersize. Sometimes an extra hour running on the dyno would be enough to restore the power.

All Gold Stars and Road Rockets were tested by the engine test dept after a period of running in. The cylinder heads and cylinders were removed for inspection and individual power curves issued with each engine. Some BSA production engines were always consistent and actually gave more than average power. The B31 for example always gave at least 17bhp often more. The B33 500cc standard engine was another consistent performer giving 22 - 23bhp when new. The twins were not so good, the A7 500 was better than the A10. The B 31 was a good little engine, a 350cc single, with cast iron head and cylinder. By fitting a few Gold Star parts they were easy to improve. By merely fitting Gold Star cams (touring version) and a Gold Star silencer they would put out 23bhp. By going a little further, fitting eccentric rocker spindles, lighter push rods and tappets, shorter connecting rod, shorten cylinder to suit, Gold Star piston giving 8:1 compression in place of 6.5:1 they would give 27bhp and almost 100mph at no extra cost since these were all production parts. The B33 500 was much the same and could easily give over 30bhp.

Ariel used a BSA A10 in their Huntmaster and one day they complained of lack of power from these engines. I requested them to send me a 'bad' engine and I would test it on our dyno. Sure enough it gave only 27bhp. So we stripped it to see if there were any obvious faults, then gave it another 1 hours running and it was a little better. I noticed that they were using Ariel exhaust pipes and silencers which were different from the A10, larger diameter and slightly shorter and different silencers. We fitted standard BSA pipes and silencers and immediately got 31bhp by fitting one size larger main jet the power was just under 33bhp. We informed Ariel with what we had done but they did not seem keen to change things. Perhaps they liked the appearance of the larger diameter pipes.

Roland Pike Autobiogaphy Chapter 17

2009-01-08T01:19:00.002Z

HOW THE MC1 BSA'S RACER BROUGHT ME TO THE FACTORY

The story of how I came to work for BSA really started in 1951 when I rode a 1949 Gold Star in the Senior TT and actually finished on it. Through Hallets, my local dealer in Canterbury and Charlie Salt, who already worked in the drawing office of BSA who put me in touch with Herbert Hopwood. I told Mr Hopwood I would like to build two racers for the coming year, using BSA Gold Star engines but in lighter welded frames of my own design. He agreed to supply the engines through my local dealer. After a while I was sent for and told the policy of the company was not to make a 500 Gold Star, but they were willing to provide a 500 twin. I was doubtful, as I did not know anything about twins.

I enquired as to what they would supply me with and they agreed to an all aluminium engine that gave 44 horse power. This sounded terrific to me and I agreed to accepting it. Little did I know how awful the engine was. The power band was so narrow that you could step off it either way in 600 RPM or so. The 44 horsepower was a dynamometer reading that seemed difficult to reproduce on the track. I wasn’t the first to fall for horsepower figures, and I made the two machines one with the unit construction twin and one with a separate Albion gearbox and 350 Gold Star single cylinder engine. I had in the back of my mind to substitute a 500 Gold Star engine if the twin was no good.

The frame that Roland built - all welded & lighter than the BSA frame

I sold my AJS 7R and spent the winter and spring 1951-52 building these two as Pike BSAs. The rear part of the frame looked something like a featherbed Norton, but I used a single front down tube. One bike had an oval & tapered down tube and the other a round one, which subsequently broke and had to be replaced with a tapered oval section tube. Girling rear shock absorbers were fitted and originally Silentbloc swing arm bushes, but these proved to have too much give and had to be replaced with bronze bushes.

Later on when Dennis Lashmar owned the twin, he had many engine blow-ups, so we got permission to put in the 500 Gold Star single. This was two years later when the Gold Star produced 44bhp, and he did very well, engaging in some neck and neck rides with the great John Surtees at Brands Hatch. Surtees told me himself that Dennis used to give him a run for his money. In those days Surtees was running double overhead cam featherbed Nortons, the very best, so Charlie Salt wrote to me and asked "are you going to spend your life building and riding these back yard specials or are you to finally retire and look for a job in the industry?"

If I wrote to Mr. Hopwood at BSA and tell him a little bird told you, but don't mention his name, that you understood there was an opening that would interest me. I don't know why they were so secretive but that was typical of BSA. I wrote to Mr Hopwood and he asked me to come and see him. Hoppy took me to lunch and we had a long chat, about the development shop he'd set up, and the test shop, also the metal shop. The experimental shop built and tested bikes, the test shop did the routine production testing of Gold Star engines. Mr Hopwood had told the bosses they needed a test shop, remember this was in 1951, BSA was the biggest motor cycle manufacturer in the world, and they agreed telling him he could have the shed down by the foundry where Arthur Lupton had been developing an engine. Ever heard of that one? Phillips then patented a "hot air" engine and tried to sell the idea, ??? had carried out a lot of development work on it, and another two years, but they did not make any progress, so was dropped.

A competition rider, Jack Amott was taken out of the test shop and put in charge of development. I never met him, but I think ??? us in many ways. He really started the Gold Star off; and was brilliant at mathematics, but being outspoken he upset Hoppy every other day. Amott had been an old factory Rudge Racer years before and was injured in a crash, at I think Greeba. After that he became a good trials rider to the core. Unfortunately he got himself disliked and Mr Hopwood fired him because of his criticism of the MC1 250 racer then being built at BSA. Unaware of the fact at the time, I was brought in to build the 250 racer. At that time the MC1 wasn’t even in the test shop but in the research dept under Donald Bastow, who want ??? it but was asked to look after it, because of Jack ???.

Bill Bentley was put in the shop to assemble and run it. Every time the engine was run on the dyno, lubrication was ??? and rockers became blue with heat. Jack Amott had told them that the lubrication system was inadequate, they thought he was being obstructive, so he was fired, which paved the way for me to come up from the south to Birmingham to do the job.

Roland Pike's twin at Braddan Bridge. pic FoTTofinders

I was quite excited about the bike, and asked if they had had it running yet. Not yet was the answer but it will be run any time now and we want you to be here to watch it. I was asked if I had any criticism of the plans, but not wanting to upset anybody I pointed out I was an amateur racer after all, not a professional designer. They insisted however saying I had enough experience and that they valued my opinions. After examining the drawings, I pointed out that I did not think the oil would return to the crankcase from the rocker box due to the almost horizontal angle of the cylinder. Also that I thought plain bushes for the vertical shaft would not take 10,000 - 12,000 rpm. I didn’t think the fine tooth gears for the cam drive would stand up and I did not like the idea of the oil pump case being made of aluminium, and suggested cast iron, which eventually had to be done.

They listened politely to all this criticism from me, perhaps because I was new and had just started to work there, yet they had just fired Jack Amott for saying the same things. Of course they didn’t change anything until it eventually gave trouble, and eventually all the things I had criticised did give trouble, not all at once, but piecemeal, each time causing a delay of a week or months whilst the parts were re-designed and made.

The compression ratio was too high, after burning a number of pistons we went to a forged piston. Bill Bentley insisted on running the engine on 50-50 petrol benzole, as he could not keep it running on the standard pump fuel that TT regulations called for, so he was pulled off the job because of this. Alan Sandilands took over then and by some ingenious modifications to the lubrication system got the cam and rocker wear under control.

The MC1 took up a great deal of time and effort on my part, and the thanks I got for it was hearing via the grapevine that Geoff Duke, who was set to ride the machine had been told it had been taken away from me because I did not believe in it anymore and was said to be holding up progress.

Next they brought in Charlie Edwards the Norton race team mechanic, he was not an engine development expert just a very good and thorough race mechanic, and they seemed to think that as he was a Norton expert he would be able to fix the problems. A small test shop was built and Bill Bentley was assigned back on the MC1 development. Not surprisingly the problems continued, mostly overheating due to insufficient cooling fin area. The primary chain gave problems too, the chain case had as many cooling fins as the cylinder head.

There was a lot of bad feeling and BSA Managing Director Jimmy Leake complained that four years time and money had been wasted and were they going to race it or not? Finally he gave the ultimatum that they could race it if they could win. Finally I was called to a conference and asked if I thought it could win in the Isle of Man and I told them I doubted if you could even finish in the IOM. That was heresy of course, because whatever happened you were supposed to agree.

In the meantime I had got myself into more trouble by building a 250 Gold Star which on test at MIRA timing strip had gone ??? mph faster than the MC1. We had no lightweight frame for this engine and we had used a Gold Star frame. This did not go down very well as Hoppy thought I was trying to make him look foolish and he said "did I think I was smarter than they were?" to which I responded that I was only trying to prove a point, that the Gold Star was fundamentally right and the MC1 was wrong in several ways. I continued to suggest it needed redesigning, more cooling fins and gear primary drive. They had said it wasn’t possible, so my advice was to drop it. That’s how they got the idea that I had it in for the machine, but they were wrong.

I saw a lot of good in the MC1, we had worked hard on that engine, had got it to produce 34bhp at 10,500 albeit unreliably. We could get 31 to 32bhp at 10,000 rpm fairly reliably by dropping compression ratio, but Hoppy would not agree to this, he wanted 10:1 compression ratio. At this time the fuel for racing was about 80 octane.

We had measured the fin area on the cylinder head, it came out at 206 sq. ins. When you realise that the C12 had 224 sq ins, the 350 Gold Star 520 sq. ins and the 350 KTT 600 sq. ins, it was obvious that some difficulty with heat dissipation was likely. The primary chain was not used on the dyno so we had no knowledge of its problems until the engine was installed in the bike. It first showed up as a problem when the gearbox repeatedly moved forwards and tightened the rear chain. An extra strong adjuster had to be made.

Next the chain overheated and rollers flew off. A new chaincase was designed incorporating cooling fins. I believe this phenomena was due to the high rpm causing that chain to experience high centrifugal loading, enough to move the gearbox, there must have been a loss of power due to this, possibly as much 4bhp. Normally the rear chain had the stronger pull due to torque multiplication at the sprockets and gearbox. During the testing of the complete MC1 bike on the test track we had some interesting experiences.

In the Spring of 1954 we reserved use of Silverstone for a day. It was a cold damp day, Charlie Salt clad in racing leathers ready for a days testing, and after warming up the engine Charlie set off, he only covered a quarter of a mile when he returned and complained the bike would not pull, he thought it had seized up. I took a look in the oil tank, revved up the engine but could see no oil returning. So I got astride and letting in the clutch attempted to take off, but realised immediately what was wrong and turned to Hoppy and said "the big end has gone". They all wanted to argue except Hoppy, who accepted my explanation that I had experienced the symptoms before on my 7R. So it was agreed to put the bike back on the trailer. We subsequently discovered that the so-called experts in the experimental department who had installed the engine had reversed the oil pipe lines from tank to engine, so that it got no oil through and crankshaft was ruined. They were all intrigued to know I was so sure of my diagnosis and so quickly as there was no tell tale "knock". I recounted how with my 7R at Scarborough one time when running an alloy connecting rod with plain big end bearing I experienced the same symptoms.

The next testing was at MIRA test track on Good Friday 1954. This time we had a good run round the outer circuit, Charlie Salt lapping at 100-102mph, I was a little slower due to my extra bulk and weight. We then went to the timed straight and ran the bike up and down timing in each direction, Charlie was timed at 104mph in one direction. I took my turn and got over 100mph mark in one direction turned around to get a run back and had got up to the maximum speed and was approaching the timing lights when the bike started to weave and snake about, I shut off and gently eased the bike on the front brake, thinking I had a burst rear tyre.

Finally at about 120mph it went almost out of control and I averted a spill by jamming both feet on the ground. The back wheel had collapsed. They had used cast iron for a spoke flange on one side, this broke up and allowed all the spokes on one side to come loose, I had to push the bike back to where they were all waiting.

It was a comfortable, good steering bike and quite light. The Earles forks were specially made by BSA for this machine. A novel feature was the head stem arrangement, this being reversed from the usual set up. On the MC1 the head stem was fixed at Back to top and bottom to the frame and the head lug rotated about it, this allowed lower front end and fitted in with streamlined fuel tank, funnily enough I had suggested this arrangement to Doug Hele, when we were discussing a fork crown to clear the tank. The original fuel tank fitted at this time held less fuel than the later one which was intended to do the Lightweight TT non-stop.

We had the whole machine in a wind tunnel at Cranfield RAF College, to get the wind resistance down, the results led to a more streamlined tank. The people concerned with BSA racing (Hopwood, Doug Hele, Dennis Hardwick and Charlie Salt) all seemed quite happy with the performance of the 250cc racer but the 1954 TT came and went and the 250cc NSU was said to develop 38bhp and judging by the way they flew past everyone else this was no exaggeration. As it turned it out it was a good job we did not enter for the IOM with the MC1. I had some ideas for further development but was not allowed to do much more than change jets, we should have experimented with inlet pipe lengths, exhaust pipe length and diameter, even maybe some different cams, but unfortunately we spent two years just keeping it running.

When I was first at BSA I lived in lodgings near the factory, riding home to Canterbury each weekend - 186 miles each way. The experimental dept. loaned me a bike for this purpose. Most of the time I had a 1952 Gold Star touring version with lights & silencer and mag dyno. This machine had telescopic front forks and plunger rear suspension, with a hydraulic damper built in. It worked quite well, the performance with low compression and standard sports cams was quite moderate, maximum speed about 82-85mph. This commuting went on until late August 1952 when I bought a house in Olton.

I purchased a 1952 Gold Flash sidecar outfit from the company, the whole thing was overhauled and repainted dark red. I kept this outfit for some time and did quite a big mileage on it, experiencing most of the problems that customers had such as primary chain case running dry at steady 50mph crumbling, timing side main bearing failure and a broken sidecar connection, said incident occurring 80 miles from home at the start of our vacation on a Saturday, was fortunate to find a garage that allowed me to make sufficient repairs using their tools so that we could return home - the family’s comments will not be recorded.

Next post - Roland Pike Autobiography Chapter 18 - The Development Shop & Clubmans TT

The Roland Pike story

2009-01-08T00:52:00.001Z

For my very first post in my very first blog I decided to write about a BSA person rather than a BSA motorcycle.

That person is Roland Pike and there are a number of reasons for choosing him. First and foremost, he is someone that had interested me for a long time before I ever started my first BSA websites. Second, is that I've detected an increasing background count of interest in printed features, online postings and other websites over the last year or so. But the tipping point was an email from an aquaintance who has a longer standing and more personal interest in Roland Pike than I do. He emailed me to ask how I was doing and to point out a couple of errors in some material I had posted about Roland on my old BSA website. That was the tipping point - Roland was first up.

So in this post I'll introduce Roland Pike but in subsequent posts I will his unpublished biography of his time working with BSA.

Roland Pike was a development engineer at BSA between 1952 and 1957. After that he left to work with SU Carburetters for a while then emigrated with his family to the USA in 1959.

Taking a job temporarily as a sports car dealership mechanic in Roanoke, Virginia and after settling in, he went to work as a field tech rep for Jaguar in New York, and finally on to Volkswagen Atlantic, a several-state distributorship, where he did the same job and held schools for mechanics. He stayed there to retirement, then moved to Inman, South Carolina where for more years he had a backyard shop rebuilding VW transaxles. This was in the air-cooled VW era when US roads were still covered with millions of them. Roland was always fond of the air-cooled model.

Some years ago while researching BSA's Daytona Racers I tried to find Roland Pike as I had many questions to ask him about his work on these bikes and at BSA in general. I knew he had been living in the US for some time but I didn't have a contact address.

I eventually managed to get in touch with his daughter but unfortunately a week or two after he died. However, his daughter very kindly gave me a paper copy of his BSA memoirs with permission to publish these on a website as long as they were used for research and enthusiast purposes only.

So in the following posts are the memoirs, scanned, OCR'ed and mostly proofed (I'm still spotting some of my own typos) from the original handwritten notes. They are presented in the original form with chapters that start at 17 (I think the previous published volume had chapters 1 - 16) and with chapter 25 missing.

The memoirs are a gold mine of information for BSA enthusiasts or anyone interested in the internal workings of the British motorcycle industry during the early to late 1950's. As a snapshot of the politics and machinations they provide an interesting counterpoint to that presented in Bert Hopwood's book 'Whatever Happened to the British Motorcycle Industry'. As a piece of technical the memoirs provides a view at odds with some of the accepted wisdom about BSA motorcycles such as the MC1. They are also unashamedly opinionated, most notably in favour of the Gold Star.

But they show Roland to be someone who was too professional to let his preferences influence the effort or ingenuity he would commit, even to bikes he privately thought were developmental dead-ends.

For a few years in the early 1950's BSA arguably had the very best design and development team that ever worked in the British motorcycle industry. Bert Hopwood, Doug Hele... and Roland Pike.

Thanks to Bill Hoddinott for details about Roland's life during and -post BSA.
Thanks to Carol Smoogen for providing a copy of the Roland Pike unpublished autobiogaphy.

Next post - Roland Pike Autobiography Chapter 17. How the MC1 Racer brought me to the factory

Introducing the Beezagent

2009-01-08T00:47:00.001Z

Up until a few months ago I believed that the blogs were vanity pursuits - things produced more for the benefit of people who wrote them than the people they imagined read them. I still think that’s substantially correct but I had my mind changed when Ed Youngblood recently featured the Vintagent blog about Vintage Motorycles.

Now I’ve been reading and creating bike related material on the web for about 6 years now and I’m pretty tuned-in to other sources of information about vintage motorcycles on the web. Not much takes me by surprise but Vintagent’s blog did. It’s full of articles that are interesting and about subjects and material that are not covered elsewhere - what a find. I had no idea it existed and not only that, has existed for several years before I stumbled upon it.

The impact of this has been three fold. First, it has provided a new and regular source of information for me about something I love. Second, it has given my cynical, arrogant belief about the ‘worth’ of blogs a well-needed kicking. Third and most valuable, it has cured my writer’s block.

I have had a couple of BSA related websites running for about 6 years now. Development of these peaked in 2004 with the 50th anniversary celebrations of BSA’s big win at Daytona in 1954 for which I was part of the team that restored two old Daytona bikes for the event. Since then I’ve amassed a lot more information about BSA that I wanted to publish because, like the Daytona bikes story, it didn’t seem to be readily available anywhere else. My problem was that the web authoring package I used Microsoft Frontpage was replaced by a successor that had more features (and so more of a learning curve) than I needed so I looked around for alternatives.

I spent far too long looking at alternatives and fretting about the learning curve and the design of the new website before I realised that I a) possessed no design ability and b) was getting lazier as I got older and as a result I was doing nothing.

The answer wasn’t obvious until I looked at the Vintagent blog. The answer to having no aptitude for design is not to try designing at all – use a template. The answer to the learning curve problem is to use something that doesn’t require any learning anyway – if you can type, a blog offering will do everything for you. Add to that my long term requirements for something that is web based to make it easy to update from anywhere by me or a trusted deputy and with minimal effort will archive material and a blog gives me everything I need.

So here I go. Unlike most bloggers I have a lot of historic material in the old website to draw from at the start that should make it easy to programme entries ahead but let’s see if I can maintain the discipline.

And if anyone reads it!