BIKER CHIC!!!

Mary Kate Olsen sporting the latest in protective streetwear...

It just keeps coming back, like Herpes, and now Biker Chic is stronger than ever!  Every major fashion house has re-discovered the magnetic sexual pull of the black-clad motorcyclist, and cargo ships from China and Pakistan are foundering under the weight of thousands of cheap leather jackets headed to our shores.

LiLo in black leather..ish.  She's got a biker attitude, and looks like she's been chasing white lines...

It doesn't matter that the leather is under 1mm thick, as these jackets will never be used 'in anger', not even on a moped, because let's face it, ACTUAL motorcycling is dead as a doornail.  Kids today could give a hoot about escaping their schools, parents, or towns using two wheels; they're not interested in Anything but playing with their little screens.

Appropriate footwear for an oil-spewing Shovelhead?  Let's see you kickstart that puppy in heels...

A few oddball youngsters will pick up motorcycling like a foreign language, because they're strange, or their parents ride, but in general, motorcycling has lost its mojo.   The skills, fresh air, danger, and freedom granted by riding matters nought, and new bike sales graphs skid downhill like ski slopes.

On the runway, not the roadway...

But the 'Look' of motorcycling is HOT! Who needs to ride when HandM and Zara are selling such cool 'bikerish' leather?  When every model is stretched across an old bike, but are never photographed handling a 500lb motorcycle...or are fakey-photographed on a 'moving' bike, while perched on a trailer! 

A Matchless G9 in a 'fashion' shoot of the 1960s...eat your heart out, Kate Moss

[While this article hews close to the truth, it's really about April Fool's, folks!]

BACK TO WORKWEAR

A recent Double RL 'popup shop' in Bushwick Inlet Park, Brooklyn NY

A recent move to NYC brought the welcome impression that America has gone back to Work!  Especially in the former epicenters of industrial labor like Brooklyn and Portland, places where men and women would gather to make Things, in riverside industrial hubs renowned the world over for their products, gritty realism, and pollution - all signs that production is really Happening.  So it appears on the streets of Williamsburg, where bearded, denim-clad young men pound the pavement looking like extras from 'The Gangs of New York'.  I haven't seen this much dress code uniformity since the 1970s in San Francisco, with packs of 'Castro clones' roaming the streets in...jeans and flannel! (But highly tailored). Now we are 'worker clones', in which irony compounds on irony - Labor is dead, or at least, we're not doing any, we all just look like factory workers, lumberjacks, and tradesmen, while we click away on keyboards. 

A recent photo-op at Lumberjack Fetishists Anonymous

Real industry moved to China and the Third World, which are busy despoiling the landscape, a sure sign that actual Workers are hard at Work.  Since Chinese Communism has switched to state-controlled Libertarian Capitalism (is that even POSSIBLE?), Chinese workers have shed their 'Mao' uniforms of drab green... but have they discovered Workwear?  Is DoubleRL supplying the multitudes with authentic garb appropriate to an actual life of Labor?  I don't know, but they should.  Mao jackets were chic in US in the 70s, perhaps we can sell Chinese laborers distressed denim and flannel, which is actually made in China!  That would be a coup.

Tattooed pigs pulled from the Huangpu River, downstream from the Tattoo Academy of Jiaxing.  Pigs are used for practice by students, their skin being similar to humans'.  At the end of each school year, thousands are simply dumped into the river, upsetting Shanghai residents downstream.  'Hipster Pig Soup' is how Shanghaians refer to the river at these times.

While we're talking China, did you know that all 15,000 of those pigs floating in Haungpu River were TATTOOED!?!  It seems the Chinese are intent on winning the 'culture wars' as well as the dominating the global economy, and a massive tattoo training academy in Jiaxing is churning out new artists by the thousands!  Not only that, the factories which actually produce the 'authentic workwear' found in hipster shops worldwide is made right next door to the Tattoo Academy!  It boggles the mind. 

DSquared, figuring it out...

I predict the whole Workwear thing will soon float down the East, Thames, and Columbia rivers like so many tattooed pigs.  What's next?  We better start googling 'Conart' on ebay, because 80s/90s Hip Hop gear will shortly see middle-class hipsters spinning on their backs atop cardboard squares... mark my words!

[While this article hews close to truth, it's really about April Foolery!! ]

~1999 XLH1200C~

Sacraknucklehead Trike

Continuing with the trike coverage, here's a Sacramento based Knucklehead trike from the early '70's.

The seats and pipes look to be inspired by Tom McMullen's Corviar trike. Photo courtesy of Dr. Sprocket.

THE BLUE BIKE

Marty Dickerson on his Rapide in 1953 at the Bonneville Salt Flats

In 1948, an eighteen year old walked into ‘Mickey’ Martin’s Burbank Vincent-HRD dealership, putting a cash deposit on the $1120 sale price of a new ‘Series B’ Touring Rapide, starting a payment plan on what was then the most expensive motorcycle in the world.  The inspiration for his trip to Martin’s LA emporium were the boasts of a Vincent-owning Scotsman who spoke of leaving ‘long black streaks’ on the highway while passing cars, in third gear and 70mph no less. Readers of the late 40s motorcycle press were familiar with Vincent-HRD ads touting impossible speeds, right beside ads for x-ray glasses and miracle bodybuilding powders.  Very few Americans had actually seen a Vincent, even less had ridden one to test the claims.

Marty Dickerson, the youth in question, thought the Rapide was ugly, but he “wanted that power, wanted that speed”.  He was not disappointed with his purchase, and quickly came to understand he now owned the fastest motorcycle on the planet, and soon, as young men will do, set about proving that fact to SoCal motorcyclists who believed they had the fastest bikes.  Harley Davidson had been around since the early part of the Century, as had rival Indian, and their American devotees used the collected wisdom of decades of engine-tuning to make some pretty hot bikes by the 1940s, the toughest and fastest of which tended to be ‘strokers’ with huge motors of over 100 cubic inches displacement (1600cc).  Dickerson and his Vincent aroused the curiosity and pride of LA’s fastest street-racers, who formed an increasingly short line to challenge him to a ‘drag’.  No matter the fame of the engine builder or skill of his rival at fast getaways, it was always Marty’s Rapide which first crossed whatever waved-sweater or crossed headlamp finish line was laid, out there on the lonely roads appropriate for such contests.

There were other ways to test speed, and the SCTA (Southern California Timing Association) provided timed evidence to bolster a reputation gained on the streets.  At Muroc Dry Lake that year, Marty squeezed 118mph from his Rapide, while his buddy ‘Tex’ Luce, a Vincent mechanic fated to make his own mark on the racing world, found just a bit more, and recorded 122.04mph on the bone-stock machine, with all lights, mudguards, and mufflers intact and present. Motorcyclists are a stubborn and loyal bunch, and the evidence of a new ‘fastest’ motorcycle didn’t translate into immediate sales.  In truth, Vincent-HRD sales were dismal in California, and by June 1949, ‘Mickey’ Martin had 20 unsold Vincents languishing on his showroom floor.  Knowing of Dickerson’s antics in back-road street racing, and more importantly his success at the game, Martin hatched a plan to send young Marty on a ‘tour’ of the southwest quadrant of the US, to raise awareness of the Vincent-HRD marque in the best way – nudge, wink – he knew how.  Martin offered to cover all travel expenses, and take over the Rapide’s loan payments, and soon Marty Dickerson had the best possible job in the world for a 19 year old, being paid to street race all comers in small towns across America, astride the fastest production motorcycle built.

The Rapide becoming 'Californized', with a bobbed rear fender, trumpet exhaust, cowhorn 'bars...

For one month in that summer of ’49, Marty Dickerson had the ‘drag racing adventure of a lifetime’, covering 5000 miles through Phoenix, Dallas, Tulsa, Ft.Worth, Tyler, Kansas City, and smaller towns in Colorado and Utah.  He raced the fastest motorcycles And cars the locals could muster, sometimes legendary monsters which had never been bested.  There were close calls, such as when he didn’t have time to change a fouled spark plug before a race, and the Vincent spluttered on one-and-a-half cylinders while his rival rocketed ahead.  Quick thinking and a ‘poor man’s tuneup’ (downshifting from 3^rd to 2^nd at high revs to blast the plugs clean) cleared the cough and saw Marty take the lead once again. There were other times when ‘sore losers’, with much time and reputation invested in their Harleys or Hotrods, made a hasty exit the prudent choice for young Mr. Dickerson.  It must have been infuriating when some short, big-nosed kid on a strange motorbike (‘Harley R Davidson?’) kept pace with the Knucklehead you’d spent months tuning for speed, until your throttle was hard on the stop while you crouched low over the tank…only to watch ‘that kid’ shift into 4^th gear, and leave you eating his dust.

The Vincent had its problems in that hard month of racing, requiring the total replacement of a clutch cable and a few engine shock absorber springs, which weren’t expecting such abuse. 

Dickerson’s exploits were legend, and rumors spread like pond ripples from a cherry bomb about ‘a kid’ with a really fast Vincent, kicking butt all over the Southwest.  He came and went through towns so fast nobody remembered it was ‘Marty Dickerson’ riding, he was the Street Racer with No Name, but tales of his exploits reverberate to this day, and form the actual backbone of the Vincent story in America.

On his undefeated return to LA, Dickerson was employed at Martin’s Vincent emporium as a mechanic, joining ‘Tex’ Luce and another fellow with a history of street racing and record-breaking; Rollie Free. In 1950, Free and his pal Marty took a newly delivered Vincent Black Lightning to the Bonneville Salt Flats, and set about taking records in Class ‘A’ racing, in which special fuels were used. Rollie Free raised his infamous ‘bathing suit’ record (taken at 150mph, in 1948), making his Vincent again the fastest standard motorcycle in the world, averaging over 156mph. 

The salt bug bit Marty deep, and he decided to modify his trusty Rapide for higher speeds, choosing Class ‘C’ (pump gas) to avoid direct competition with his pal Rollie.  The Rapides’ transformation from ‘daily rider’ to ‘salt flat racer’ was completed with Lightning parts from the Vincent factory, and a change of color scheme: she was now the ‘Blue Bike’.   A new set of crankcases was required after 3 years of drag racing, and the Blue Bike gained engine cases marked ‘301’.  Two years of development were required before things really came together for this machine; larger carbs and hotter cams gave a new Class ‘C’ record in 1953, averaging 147.58mph, with a fastest timed speed of 150.959mph, on pump gas, with Marty sitting on the seat (not stretched out as Rollie did), and a class-mandated 8:1 compression ratio.  The Blue Bike was massaged, but all the parts were Vincent items, and the bike wasn’t so high strung that it couldn’t be ridden on the street.  That 150mph record stood for over twenty years!  It took a change of rules (allowing higher than 82 Octane fuel), and a hot Yoshimura Kawasaki, to break it.

Over the years,  Marty continued to develop the Blue Bike, returning to Bonneville in 1976, ’80, ’86, ’96, and finally, at 67 years old for the man and 49 years the machine, in 1997.   His later years competing at Bonneville were less dramatically successful than those early days, but had the important function of cementing Dickerson’s reputation among younger riders and new generations of racing enthusiasts, amazed at his stories and respectful of the legends around Marty and his Rapide.  All of which happen to be true.

The number of motorcycles worldwide which have endured serious competition for 50 years can be counted on one hand.  Within this very special group, machines which have taken world records at Bonneville, and cemented the reputation of an entire brand in recognizably stock form, can be counted on one finger.  The Blue Bike is unique.

If you want to see it in person, the Blue Bike is on display at Altai Design in Los Angeles.

Jasper's Trike

I still have a bunch of photos from Mr. Joe Hurst that never got posted. First up, his friend Jasper and his trike.

Joe say's Jasper (may he R.I.P.), was one cool dude.

I also have more trike photos from Dr. Sprocket and others, so like it or not...  More Tirkes To Come!

Shovelhead Blend Blog Filler

Here's a shot of my first big twin circa 1984 in Redondo Beach. It was what some call a blend bike. A 1974 FLH engine in a 1972 FX frame. At this Bob Job stage it was undergoing transformation from a Chopper to what I call a Stripped Dresser.

I've always liked the atmosphere of this shot. Digital is nice, but there's a warmth to film.

You probably would have to have been around the early eighties Harley scene to understand that. At the time fat was in and choppers were, well... sort of out.

After selling it in 1995 I wished I'd kept it to chop. 

Wise Guy Trike

The infamous Dr. Sprocket sent these vintage photos of Bob Wise's  chopped trike circa 1970.

While chronically underpowered, the 45 cubic inch falthead Serv-car makes for one cool chopper.

Talk about stance! Chopped Trikes were once very common. Even with todays re-intrest in vintage choppers, you don't see that many trikes.

 It's a small world after all! The very same Bob Wise submitted the two black conept drawings for Street Chopper's (June 1972), Trick Trike contest. My art is on the facing page. I posted this a few years ago which lead to me meeting the good doctor.

Fats... The Other South Bay Builder

When it comes to South Bay Choppers one might automatically think Dick Allen, but there was another well known local builder... Fats.  I've known of him and his shop (Sportster Heaven, or was it Haven?), his brother and have a magazine featuring their bikes (The Brothers Noriega), I need to scan. Personally I don't know a lot about him. My neighbor Steve Sharp knew him well, so perhaps I'll get more dope.

Fats (R.I.P.), built his own version of the Dick Allen springer. It featured bolted/pinned trees with a square (bottom), spring perch. Steve Sharp continues to build them the Fats way. Photo sent by Joe Hurst.

DRAPING KATE IN MATCHLESS ATTIRE

From WWD (Women's Wear Daily), possibly the best source of revamped motorcycle brand information on the planet!  Remember that Kate Moss was among the first models hired by the Malenottis to launch their Belstaff brand.

Kate Moss, a Matchless G9 twin, another model, and photographer Terry Richardson

"MATCHLESS MAKER: Matchless, one of Britain’s oldest motorcycle brands, is set to launch men’s and women’s outerwear collections in June — and the face of its fall/winter ad campaign is Kate Moss. Terry Richardson shot the black-and-white campaign at MC Motors, a former warehouse in London’s Hackney. Moss is pictured on a Matchless motorbike along with fellow model Andre Van Noord. The ads will break in June issues of “top-tier” titles, according to the company, which is still finalizing its media plans.

Kate Moss posing on a Matchless G9 twin, in a Matchless-brand jacket, with superstar photographer Terry Richardson.  Photo by Courtesy

“We are delighted to be working with Kate Moss on this first Matchless advertising campaign of this new era of the brand,” said Michele Malenotti, a member of the Matchless board, and the company’s marketing and business expansion director. “The campaign reflects the heritage of the brand, which we are excited about sharing with Matchless enthusiasts and consumers alike.”

Kate Moss for Belstaff.  I don't think Kate rides, but she ought to!

The brand makes leather and washed cotton jackets both for motorcycle enthusiasts, and for those who get their thrills looking hip on city streets. Prices range from 900 pounds to 1,300 pounds, or $1,340 to $1,940, for leather jackets, and from 600 pounds to 900 pounds, or $890 to $1,340, for washed cotton ones. All figures have been converted at current exchange. WWD reported in February [as did The Vintagent - read it here] that brothers Manuele and Michele Malenotti, the former owners of Belstaff, have taken control of Matchless. The passion for bikes runs in the family, as their father Franco Malenotti, founder of the family business Clothing Company, is an avid motorcycle fan. In 2011, Labelux Group bought Belstaff, known for its waxed cotton biker gear, and has been relaunching and expanding the brand globally.

In the current wave of celeb moto-gear, we present the revamped Velocette clothing line...just kidding!  Nice Venom; Ewan MacGregor for Salvatore Ferragamo; Ewan has a tasty collection of vintage motorcycles.  Will he be photographed wearing Matchless soon?  

Henry Collier, a design-engineer, entrepreneur, and winning rider, and his brothers founded Matchless Motorcycles in 1899.

 - story by Samantha Conti"

THE 'ALMA FOUR'

Story by Kim Scholer; Photographs by Jeppe Sorensen

Looking perfectly 'period', the Alma Four is a credit to its creator, Mads Bartholin

The original Indian Four is a design icon, in its time among the most elegant motorcycles to grace the roads. Many attempts have been made to build a 'modern' copy, often using water-cooled car engines, but stylistically they're failures.  Except one, which lives an ocean away from where the Indian, ACE and Henderson Fours were brought to life. Mads Bartholin always wanted an Indian Four, but like most of us, he couldn't afford one. Well-kept Fours go for about US$50-80K, and restoring a bad one will likely cost the same. ACE and Henderson Fours were just as out of reach, and acquiring something slightly less glamorous, like an Indian Scout, was not an option; Mads was firmly in the 'straight four' phase of his life.

An original ca.1928 Indian Four...

Mads had already built one such four; a Danish Nimbus, which he rebuilt with an Indian Four style exhaust system, 16” rear wheel, Harley-Davidson solo seat, and a wide handlebar, and ridden it as far as to North Africa a few times. But much as he liked the Nimbus, he found its 22 bhp engine too weak. Realizing the futility of tuning the stock 750 cc engine, he decided to replace it with a 1000cc straight four from an NSU car. "The NSU engine is air cooled, inexpensive, looks kind of right and there are loads of them around”, claims Mads. The fast, brutal looking Münch Mammoth used just such an NSU Prinz TTS engine, with five times the power of the Nimbus.  In 1997, he made moulds for a new Nimbus flywheel/clutch assembly housing to adapt to the NSU motor, plus a new sump to resemble the angular Nimbus original. A local foundry took care of this for a pittance, and after a few tries it looked right. Mads had suspected the car engine would be a bit on the large side for a Nimbus frame, which turned out to be the case. "It would fit – barely – but there simply wasn't any room for the gearbox or the gas tank", he notes, "so it was back to the drawing board".

First it ran with an Amal carburettor, then with a leaky updraft Tillotson, and finally with this updraft Solex. Gearshift mechanism is from a Nimbus motorcycle, the generator from a VW.

The project was redirected with the goal of creating a 1920s-style American Four. Many evenings and hours were spent at the basement workshop, where Mads would sit, beer in hand, carefully studying various 1:1 scale drawings hung up on the wall. Finally a version reminiscent of a 1928 Indian was decided upon. These first Indian Fours lack the comfort of rear suspension, and the elegance Art Deco fenders of the later Fours, and the upper frame backbone runs across the fuel tanks. The hybrid machine would be a couple of inches longer than its spiritual forefathers, because of the NSU's separate, longitudally mounted gearbox. Maintaining momentum on this project wasn't easy, mainly because Mads, while studying Industrial Design at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, was perennially broke as a student. "Getting married and having two kids took its toll, too," says Mads, "although thankfully my wife – bless her - has given this project her full support all along the way". On the other hand, with only partial employment, and an uncanny ability to trade favors with people 'in the know', he was able to move forward. Slowly, the sorry remains of an Indian frame, as well as a good number of repro parts, were acquired. Like the frame lugs, both fenders, the solo seat, a complete leaf spring front end and the throttle assembly. Initially a BMW or Moto-Guzzi gearbox was considered, but Mads soon realized that because the NSU's engine rotation would give a lot of reverse gears!  Eventually, a Nimbus gearbox with a new Swedish-built four speed gear cluster arrived at the workshop, along with its shaft drive and rear hub assembly. Somewhere on this journey the motorcycle acquired the name 'The Alma Four, 'Alma' being Latin for 'a particularly beautiful soul' [ah...hence Alma Mahler's legendary magnetism...pd'o].

The Alma Four is of necessity longer than the original Indian 4, to accomodate the longer engine, plus the gearbox and final driveshaft housing

Old brochures and factory photographs usually show the Indian Four from the right hand side, where the elegant exhaust system makes the bike look fast even while parked. In contrast, the left side of Indian Four engines were a mess, cluttered up with the carburettor, the magneto and the dynamo. Paying homage to the original, this is the case with the Alma Four too, even if the distributor hides tidily at the back of the camshaft cover. The updraft Solex carburettor, more commonly found on Ferguson tractors or 1930s Citroën Traction Avants, is mated to a modified NSU intake manifold, and a belt drive spins a Bosch VW generator. In 2002, the engine came together, while a stainless steel four-into-one reverse cone exhaust system was built, mounted on shortened exhaust stacks. At the same time an aqcuaintance rebuilt the frame to match the one-off engine and shaft drive rear end. Many other members of the world-wide Indian motorcycle fraternity had been watching the Alma Four project from the sidelines, helping whenever possible and enthusiasticly cheering Mads on. One of them even flew in from the Fiji Islands to have a look. 

An 'old school' conversion; a Nimbus shaft-drive engine installed in an Indian 4 chassis, some time ago...

Once back from the welder, the frame was placed on the workbench and the engine dropped in. The twin fuel tanks had to be designed and built from scratch, because the ohc NSU engine was much taller than an original engine from Springfield. This was a bit of a problem, as Mads wanted to keep the bike low.  Like the flywheel housing and engine sump, the fuel tanks were cast in aluminum. On the outside they appear stock, but underneath they're shaped to accommodate the large camchain housing, the overhead camshaft, and the valve covers. Plenty of work remained, of course; knurling the fuel caps, welding a bracket for the stock headlamp to resemble a cast item, even grinding the fender bolt heads to half their height were some of the dozens of jobs neccessary to make it all just right. The Indian designers back in the 1920s were damn good and Mads, now officially an industrial designer, was determined do at least as well.

Twin cast-aluminum fuel tanks are hollowed out to accomodate the tall overhead camshaft engine, and the protruding valve covers

In 2006, the Alma Four was finished; "The engine starts first kick, pulls strong, and the bike is steady like any other old 1920s large hardtail, at least up to the 100 mph I've taken it so far", according to Mads. Stopping the quarter-ton behemoth from high speed is a different matter, as the performance of the old Nimbus and Indian brake drums is limited. This NSU engine makes 40 bhp in its stock configuration, while the 1200cc version in the Münch Mammoth made more than 100bhp, and the final 1300cc NSU rally car versions made upwards of 300bhp, with oil-cooled cylinder heads and a turbocharger. "The engine is overengineered and the Alma Four weighs about one-quarter of the car it came from, so reliability is not an issue. Should something undesirable happen to it anyway, it's a fair guess that NSU parts will be cheaper than those for an Indian,” says Mads. "The front end is a repro Scout item, but a Chief version would have looked better, and a real paint job would have been nice too". But these are minor niggles. Unsurprisingly, even vintage bike purists give it a nod of approval, recognizing that no Indian parts were harmed to make this motorcycle. Was it worth spending all those hours building his Four, instead of working the same hours at a regular job, and simply buying an original Indian Four? "Definitely, if not for its value - which probably is on par with a 70-80 year old four anyway - then certainly for being able to ride a unique and comparatively much more reliable motorcycle”. The experience gained by designing and building a motorcycle almost from scratch, is priceless.  It will come in handy for the ohv Super X hillclimber now on his workbench...

MONTLHERY VINCENT: 100MPH FOR 6 HOURS

Coming to the Bonhams Stafford auction April 28th; the Montlhéry Vincent Black Shadow

The Montlhéry race circuit, just 15.5 miles south of Paris, holds a place much like Brooklands in England in the hearts of European speed-fans, but the track isn't a fractured memory from pre WW2, its a living thing in continuous usage since constructed in 1924.  Today the track is regularly pounded by automotive companies, being engineered to withstand 5,000lb racing cars traveling at 150mph - a far-sighted vision for 1920s engineers.  But then, French engineers of the early 20th Century were exactly that, out on the exploratory limbs of technology, making double overhead camshaft four-valve multi-cylinder motorcycles even in the 'Teens.  What Montlhéry became best known for, though, was long-distance record-breaking; while nearby Arpajon was an excellent spot for Land Speed Record attempts in the 1920s and 30s, Montlhéry was a perfect venue to circulate for hours around its steeply banked oval, being relatively smooth (well, smoother than Brooklands...) and amenable to 24-hour full-bore, unsilenced riding.

The most visible modification from 'standard' spec is the large capacity racing fuel tank.  The Shadow is a matching #s machine with History...

On May 13 1952, a pair of mildly modified 1,000cc Vincent Black Shadows arrived in Paris to attempt a new 24-hour speed record, with a slew of Vincent factory employees (including 18 year old apprentice John Surtees), a few pressmen, plus a French team contingent of riders, the record-attempt team manager, and timing officials from the FIM.  One of the machines was a 'test hack' which circulated for hours during testing, on which modifications were made for an average/acceptable riding position for the 11 riders participating; Phil Heath, John Surtees, Robin Sherry (AMC factory racer), Cyril Julian (TT rider), Vic Willoughby (infamous writer for The Motor Cycle), Dennis Lashmar,  and Danny Thomas, plus four French riders; Ken Bills was team manager.  All the riders save Danny Thomas were able to keep up the 100mph pace, so he was relieved of duty.

The Montlhéry Vincent Black Shadow in 1952, at the track

 Paul Richardson, the Vincent-HRD Service Manager, described the record-breaker thus:

"The record breaking machine is a standard Black Shadow with 8:1 compression as supplied to the American market. ... We used 1-5/32" T.T. Annals in conjunction with two inch open pipes, the fuel being non-leaded 80 octane... Lightning cams... We removed our front brakes and rear flap, fixed rearward foot rests were fitted... special five Gallon petrol tank and a Feridax perspex flyscreen. Modified handlebars gave a very flat riding position and riders lay on a Sorbo 'mattress' fastened to the tank top...Avon...Standard 300 x 20 front racing and 3.50 x 19 rear racing tyres..."  His complete (and delightful) account of the attempt can be found here on the VOC site.

Ted Davis, the Vincent competition manager, originally built the Montlhéry racers with a caged big-end bearing, an improvement over the standard crowded-roller item, but Philip Vincent insisted the standard item was good enough, and ordered them changed back to standard, 'to demonstrate the reliability of the standard Black Shadow', which of course it did, but not with the intended outcome!  It didn't help that France was having its hottest May on record - so hot that the Avon rear tires on the pair of Black Lightnings (brought over for high-speed records) shed their treads at high speed, and the Castrol XL oil was described by Davis (read here) as 'dirty hot black water' when drained from the engines.  

After ten hours forty minutes, the standard big-end of the Vincent crankshaft failed, and a deafening silence rang in the speed bowl; the team ran to the far side of the track (a mile!), and waited 20 minutes to push the bike over the 'line' to take the 11hour record.  While a Vincent never took the 24hr/100mph record (it took a Velocette for that one), the Vincent team still took and impressive eight World Records, including the six-hour record at 100.53mph and 1,000km at 100.67mph, and 10 hours at 99.17mph.   Other records were 7 hrs @ 99.73mph, 8 hrs @ 99.73mph, 9 hrs @ 99.40mph, 10 hrs @ 99.17mph, 11 hours @ 91.98mph, and 1,000 miles @ 99.20mph.

I mentioned above that TWO Black Shadows were taken to Montlhéry...one a 'test mule' and the other used in the attempt; both were tuned and prepared for the attempt, and both machines survive.  One is coming up for sale at the Bonhams Stafford sale on April 28th.  Apparently there is no record of 'which bike was which', but both can rightly claim to be part of the attempt at Montlhéry...

Roth's California Cruiser

Ed Roth's V8 powered California Cruiser was the prototype for the Ed Roth/Dick Allen joint venture Cobra Trike kits. I'll be posting the article from this issue soon.

More South Bay Originals

Here's Nasty Nez with his original Loco Motion knucklehead chopper. He later gave the tank and name to Dick Allen. If you go back and look up the post of Dick's Vincent chopper you'll see the same tank. The post of Joe Hurst's White Bear before paint jamming down the 405 also shows this tank.

Here's an early photo of Dick Allen with his Chrome Frame Chopper when it had a knuckle in it. I believe this is after the Choppers Magazine article when it featured a Shovelhead. The Chrome Frame Chopper has possibly been changed and rebuilt more than any other bike out there. Party on Girl! Joe Hurst said these photos have been circulating on Facebook amongst the old south bay group.