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The Initial Episode No 1 The History....!!
Hi again, Thank you for the welcomes, it is much appreciated, especially sending a thread out into the Ether, into the unknown type of thing, and chancing being ignored..... To begin my story, sad as it is.....!!!
I have a history of bikes, always have, but as the years and circumstance overtake other things, the various machines have gone the way of all things. I had an old WLA Harley way back about 19681969 with a weird, but original sidecar fitted. The chair was on the right hand side already, why I have no idea, but I really had no idea about much anyway back then. I bought it off an old guy who got it through old wartime stock sales somehow. He lived about 200 yards away from my home, had a rather pleasant daughter named Cynthia who kept smiling at me. I thought the bike was real ugly, but it was dirt cheap. I think I paid about £15 for it, on the road. The daughter told me he had tried selling it a lot, but he could not even give it away back then. I can count from memory about ten outfits in my road alone back then. We were so spoilt for choice. A guy over the way from me had a Arial Square Four with a monster double adult chair on it, nearby were several outfits, again, ex-military Sidevalves, mainly BSA M21's with different chairs attached. I eventually had a few myself, and that was also the bike I looked for before my current project appeared. The money paid for bikes was so little back then. I certainly recall my first BSA A10 outfit, a plunger model 1950 I think. It had a double adult chassis with a flat board on top with a large packing case of paving slabs for ballast. Off I went like an idiot, seized the gearbox because it leaked oil like the Titanic, it also had the same turning circle as well...... I rebuilt the gearbox cheaply, actually fitted my own made gasket, instead of a smear of Hermetite, and away we went for sometime. It cost me initially £12.10.0, or 12 and a half quid for the hard of hearing....!!!
So the years past, bikes came and went rapidly for years, then came the 'choppers', plenty of home brewed 6T Triumph Sprung Hub bikes got modified, I made a small fortune doing those for some years.... then marriage..... I acquired a Sunbeam S8, I had that for quite a while, although I did take the chair off so the wife could climb on the back..... I wanted a house, so the bike went, it was worth a bit by then, not enough... I missed my bikes a lot though. I acquired a manky old A65 BSA from my wife boss who had moved onto decent cars (promotion). I picked it up having been under an old carpet in London...... I did it up of course. It was a prototype A65 called a Royal Star, 650cc. Now before the serious people get onto me, the Royal Star is normally a 500cc, but a few bikes prior to the 500cc version were sold at 650cc. The model was plagued with gearbox trouble, what it was, was the gear quadrant would open up making changing gear virtually impossible. I bought a new quadrant, made a small bridge, riveted it in place, ground out a bit of the casing to allow free movement, and away I went again. I was doing an average of about 80 miles a day to work and back for a few years, then the sidecar hankering came back with a vengeance. Adverts abounded still, so off I went to Leicester and purchased a couple of old chassis's and a rather beat up Blacknell 'San Remo' chair. I rebuilt that, and one of the chassis, resprayed the entire thing Black, and off we went over Europe with my daughter in the rear of the chair, wife in the front...!!!
This was a long time ago of course, and cameras were not as prolific as today. One is me on the Sunbeam, two showing before and after A65, the last one is of the A65 again, but black with chassis. My wife kept all the other finished pictures in the divorce.....!!!! either that, or they are dreadful pictures anyway...!!!!!
Episode 2 should start soon after I recuperate from a minor operation over Christmas / New Year, and the Covid business dissipates again....
