V.M.C.C.
SOUTH WALES
SECTION NEWSLETTER
Twinned with the C.M.B. club of Belgium
Talks,
Social Runs, Film shows, Quizzes,
Road Trials, Coach Trips, Displays, etc.
Nov
2008
Dear
Member,
Nearly
the end of another year – I find it amazing just how fast time seems to
go. Anyway, we have
another tale from
Bruce G, for which I thank him as I’m always well aware of the fact
that most
of these newsletters are all about what I get up to as next to no one
provides
me with any stories about their own motorcycling. So – Bruce’s tale: -
The AJS scrambler
that I had bought
from Bill was used for my first two scrambles meetings. These happened
in 1963.
I entered for the long standing Whit Monday scramble at Cyfarthfa
Park,
Merthyr.
With an ex-army
haversack containing
various tools I remember riding into the paddock and a marshal trying
to stop
me. He probably thought that I’d mistaken the pits for the public
parking area. "What! you’re
going to ride that!!” He
sounded shocked.
I rode on until I
had a friendly
wave from a fellow competitor whereupon I stopped and asked if I could
leave my
bag of tools in his car boot for safety. Having been invited to do so I
then
took off the number plates and speedo and put the competition plates
that I had
made onto the bike. I was ready for practice, well, after the
scrutineering and
signing on.
The course was on
a hillside and
from the start the course narrowed into a gap in a hedge, suitable
for one bike only. A lefthander sent
us contouring the hillside through a mud patch caused by a stream. Then
there
was a steep drop, another left and we contoured the hill again and lo
and
behold back through that stream, but this time there was a really big
mud
patch. I was crap. I’d never
ridden through mud before and my legs were everywhere. My olive combat
jacket
was ringing wet and covered in filth as we lined up for the first race,
a 350cc
event, to be started by flag.
My most clear
memory of that first
race was the abuse that I received from the other riders. I wasn’t used
to bad
language, coming from Llanishen and being an ex-choirboy. (Oh yeh. B.P.)
Me floundering in
the mud
patches, riders
lapping me and shouting “Get out of the f----ing way” and several other
variations.
Years later in
classic scrambling I
met two of them, Cyril Hawkins, Welsh Champion, and his brother Ted.
They ran a
haulage company in Newport.
Actually I bought the Victor that Cyril had used when he moved onto a
CCM B50.
I used to pull his leg about the swearing and all. He claimed that he’d
never
used a bad word in
his life! Like hell.
Cyfarthfa Park
was a poor start but then it was my first meeting, so I entered
another. My
second scramble was to be held at Pop Hill near Dinas Powis and was
very
undulating, a favourite word for describing courses in the regs, with
lots of
craters.
An important
change from the Cyfarthfa Park event
was that the organising club
(Barry, I think) (yep,
it was, they ran three each year at Dinas Powis),
had decided on dead engine starts. On the fall of the flag,
riders would
kickstart their machines and ride off into combat. The ACU was
suffering from
noise criticism at this time. In this way it made the start of a race a
reliability test.
My Ajay was not a
good starter. I
just crossed my fingers. I remember the starter approaching me as I
frantically
kept kicking away, with the other riders dust in the distance and
shouting in
my ear “You’d better get out of the way sonny. They’ll be coming up
behind you
any moment”. It was a poor day but without any mud, which was a bonus.
The bike just
wasn’t up to it and it
had to be pensioned off. What I needed was one of those pretty Greeves
that
every other rider had and which Dave Bickers had won the European
Championship
on. Then I’d show them......... Bruce G.
Those
were the days, as the saying goes, when many competitors used to turn
up riding
their bikes, take road going parts off and then refit them after the
event to
ride home again. You were posh if your bike was kept only for
competition use. One
of the things about Bruce’s tales is that I can relate to them. I rode
a
scramble in Cyfarthfa Park
at one time back in the 60’s. I had a C15T with a red alloy fuel tank
at the
time – ok, ok, I know that the C15T was a trials machine and didn’t
have the performance
that a C15S had – but I wanted to have a go. I can’t remember much
about it all
now but do remember that towards the end of a lap I had the BSA
airborne over a
jump and I left the saddle with just my hands gripping the bars as the
only
contact with the bike – down I came, astride the fuel tank. Ouch!!!
That threw
me off and I was writhing in agony on the floor with both hands between
my legs
as two St
John
Ambulance attendees ran up to me. One was male and the other a female –
“What’s
the matter with him?” the woman asked her comrade and with a wry smile
the guy
said “Don’t worry; he’ll be alright in a minute or so”. At that point I
retired
from the meeting and decided that scrambling was not for me.
I
well remember the Pop
Hill circuit just on the
Barry side of Dinas Powis as I used to marshal there. One part of the
circuit was
where the riders came up out of a crater and then immediately turned to
their
right. My favourite marshal point was just behind a bush that was
straight in
front of their path as they crested the jump. It was something to see
the front
wheels up in the air before they landed firmly on the ground and then
turned
right. On one occasion a rider astride a BSA Gold Star came up out of
the pit
on full throttle – wheel in the air. No probs, thought I, he’ll bring
it down
and turn to his right in a second or so. Did he hell. I froze as that
front
wheel headed straight towards my head. Down I went and the back wheel
ran
straight up my legs, chest and over the top of me. He fell off and
quickly
picked up his bike and shouted at me “You ok mate?” Somewhat dazed, I
think I
nodded. The rider restarted his bike and was off again. He managed
another half
lap, fell off and ended up in the ambulance. I can still see his face
and his
red hair which, luckily to this day, I have never seen
again. I have a photo of me in my
Barbour suit with a perfect set of knobbly tyre marks all the way up
it. My pal
John
Drewitt,
who was also marshalling, just couldn’t resist the picture. Enough of
all that
– let’s talk two-strokes.
Recently
a small book has come into my possession and is dated 1915. These are
some of
the makes covered: - Allon, Appleton,
Clyno, Connaught,
Crossley, Dayton,
Diesel, Dolphin, Duplex,
Every-Clayton, Harding, Hewitt-Cooper, Ixion, J.E.S., Lamplugh. LePape,
Levis,
Low, Lucas, M.I.P.,
N.E.C., Paragon, Patchett & Booth, Peco, Petter, Premier,
Quadrant, Radco,
Record, Ricardo, Roots, Scott, T.D.C., Triumph, Veloce, Victoria,
Wilks, and
Wooler.
Of
that lot, 38 I think, I have only ever heard of 11 of them – but what a
diverse
lot they all are. There are single cylinder motors, vertical twins, Vee
twins, horizontally
opposed twins and also three cylinder motors etc. I’m sure that we’re
all aware
of the basic principles of the working of a, shall we say, normal
two-stroke,
such as a Villiers engine. Just think of a vee-twin where one cylinder
provides
the power while the other is used as a pumping cylinder to provide the
new
charge of fuel. One of the vertical twins is the Lucas motor and it
works as
per a single but with two pistons operating with a single combustion
area – all
well before Doc Joe Ehrlich pinched the split single design from DKW
and
incorporated it into his EMC machines. I can say that I knew the Doc
and found
him to be a mine of information. I used to have quite long
conversations with
him about the development of Rotax
two stroke
twins – all in my days as an International Scrutineer for the RAC.
Anyway, back
to this little book. There were many ‘conventional’
design engines in the
above list and just as many unconventional ones. Take the
Hewitt-cooper,
described as – ‘six cylinders and each
fitted with a pump piston as an enlargement of the working piston, and
these
are cross connected to charge in
the
ordinary manner through direct operated piston valves. Mixture is drawn
from
the carb by the pumping cylinder situated below the power piston, and
is forced
into the next power cylinder
through
the piston valves, which are driven by an eccentric on a sub shaft.
Have
you got that? I haven’t, and I have a drawing of the motor. The Wilks
engine
has a poppet valve to close the transfer port, whilst the Paragon
engine sucks pure air into the transfer port which enters the cylinder
prior to
the fuel charge – the idea being to cool the piston. The M.I.P. motor
is a
horizontally opposed twin with the pistons being double diameter – just
like
the Dunelt. The incoming gas is sucked into the cylinder on the down
stroke by
the operation of rotary or piston valves – the crankcase compression is
used
for scavenging purposes only. The Roots and N.E.C. engines use a sleeve
as a
valve mechanism whilst the Petter is listed as a semi-diesel
two-stroke. I’ve
seen one of them running and driving a saw at a farm down in
Saundersfoot. All
in all this book is a fascinating thing and I could go on and on about
some of
the strange designs, but did you know that back at the turn of the
1900’s
someone designed and developed a one-stroke. Think about it!!!
Merry
Xmas,
Bill
P
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