Restorations

Last year was another successful and eventful period for the Museum, and below you will read about some of the classic motorcycles we have acquired, renovated and ridden.

As ever, the workshop has been a hive of activity, and alongside projects destined for display in the museum we’ve been helping owners improve their BSA B40 and Triumph Tiger Cub trials bikes, and we’ve created new ones whenever donor machines were available.

Our own bikes need regular maintenance, and the engine and gearbox of the famous AJS Porcupine racer have been checked over in readiness for more race parades. While the engine was dismantled we had the crankshaft rebalanced, which has greatly improved it. The equally famous AJS vee-four racer, with its liquid-cooled supercharged engine, was also due for attention after a serious number of demonstration miles. The piston rings and most of the bearings were replaced, and at the same time the wheels and frame were re-painted, so the whole machine is again better than new.

The number of bikes in the museum continues to expand (as does the size of the Museum) with new exhibits from a variety of sources. We restore new projects, which continue to surface, and display worthy machines restored by local enthusiasts as well. We also occasionally purchase interesting motorcycles, and our latest acquisition - a Douglas Dragonfly – is an excellent example of how inventive the smaller British manufacturers could be while working within a limited budget.

Completed restorations include the fascinating and unique Haythorn; a home built machine with an overhead camshaft, oil cooled, four-cylinder engine, and a novel two-speed transmission utilising two different chain drives to the rear wheel. This is the second of two motorcycles made by John Haythorn who was a Scottish automotive engineer working for a supercharger manufacturer. Its development ceased when he was transferred to war work in 1940, but it was already a useable machine that had been featured in the motorcycling press. The Museum’s re-creation of the Haythorn purrs along beautifully and shows just how advanced it was. It was featured in the May issue of Classic Motor Cycle Magazine.

Other exceptional machines restored during 2007 include a TWN Cornet donated by a local enthusiast. The TWN was made in Germany where the company was formed as an off-shoot of the British Triumph company (TWN stands for Triumph Werke Nurnberg) at the start of the twentieth century. The companies split in the 1920s, and Triumph-Nurnberg went on to develop fascinating lightweights before collapsing in 1957. Our machine was made shortly before the factory’s end, and is a ‘split-single’ with two pistons working in parallel under a common combustion chamber. The result is smooth running with no misfiring on small throttle openings, and torque and economy rivalling that of a four-stroke. Remarkably the Cornet has no kick starter as the manufacturers had complete faith in the Noris electric starter – and it still works!

We’ve also restored an ultra-rare matching pair of pre-War HRDs – a 500cc single cylinder Meteor and a 1000cc Rapide. The smaller machine is one of the first HRD-Vincents with an in-house engine, developed in a couple of months after proprietor Phillip Vincent became disenchanted with the JAP engines used previously. The larger motorcycle is one of the small number of twins made before the war, setting new standards for performance and sophistication. All three of these new restorations have been tested by Roy Poynting from the Classic Motor Cycle magazine, and the articles about them will appear shortly.

Among even more sporting machines, we’ve recently restored a grasstrack bike powered by one of the last, most innovative and rarest JAP engines ever made. Like most people, I didn’t know that JAP ever made a double overhead camshaft motor, but a small production run was undertaken in 1979-80 in a gallant, but doomed, attempt to match the challenge from Jawa/ESO engines. Other competition machines on the stocks include a TT Blackburn Cotton, which has loads of authenticated history, and the REG special. This private enterprise by Reg Geeson is a renowned double overhead camshaft twin-cylinder racer that was used by stars like John Surtees, Derek Minter and John Hartle. Completion of the engine has been delayed by the manufacture of new conrods, but restoration of the cycle parts is complete and the finished machine will be as attractive to look at (and hear) as it will be exhilarating to ride.

Naturally I’ve used the Museum’s existing racers in events like the VMCC’s Festival of a Thousand Bikes at Mallory Park in July, when I had an enjoyable outing on the Gilera Four and the vee-four AJS, despite a wet track on the Sunday. Besides the racers I’ve been able to fulfil a long-standing ambition by riding the Museum’s Grindlay Peerless in the Graham Walker memorial run. This remarkable machine has a sleeve valve engine – where the cylinder liner oscillates to open and close the valves – and it was donated to the museum by none other than John Grindlay, the son of the firm’s founder. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we won the Technical Merit Award at the end of the run.