Old Toys For Boys

[delta7]

Here are some pics of some fond memories

My triumph bonnieville , cafe raced and chromed up with open mega exhausts. The turbo slogan on the back was a wind up because honda and everyone else were releasing their first turbo bikes around this time

unfortunatly the bike above was one of meridans dogs and was always in the workshop so I bought this a a spare, was a better bike

eventaully got fed up with the moneypit and went sensible

when I gave up bikes i got one of these to compensate

had to sell it to get furniture when I moved in with the wife LOL

[Jabo]

Woot!

2.8 Injection Capri? Quality motor guv.

[DD_Brando]

Yeah - I had the sheepskin car coat and the flat tweed cap to go with my yellow Capri (with beefed up rear suspension an 'go faster' stripes) which meant I inevitably got called Del Boy I got it at Bristol Car Auction for £150 and used it to ferry myself and a couple of other guys from Bristol to Ludgershall in Wiltshire efd (every f......g day) where we were building a new supermarket. And I bought the upgraded leaf springs, two bucket seats and a bank of four Italian carbs from a bloke who'd had them on his tricked out Capri, but who managed an epic fail when he tried to drive it out of a car park without removing the Crooklok first

Note: never connect the crooklok to the brake pedal, always the clutch.

I never had Trumpets though many swear by them. I did get a ride on a Trident once and it was pretty impressive, but BSAs and Nortons were always my first love.

My pal Birddog was a Triumph man though, and had a Bonneville cafe-racered with which he terrified the town of Torquay for many years.

[Friar]

Security tip for those that still need to use a "crooklock" I had one on my MKII Cortina, my Dad told me to drill through the shaft and put a padlock through it once in the locked position, that way they can not be sprung by a hefty foot. I know this to have foiled at least 1 attempt to still the car from out side my house by a known little sh1t who went on to take another car that night and attempted to run the owner over.

[Rattler]

Nice bikes, Dave. Have you seen my new one? It's my daily driver right now.....missus has the old Honda Hurricane.

And this was my 1st car, almost identical except without the T-roof.

Same colour, too. I ended up putting my brother's 1986 Mustang GT motor in it (4 bbl vice the '82's 2 bbl), and a set of the 10 hole mag wheels on it. Ran very nicely.

[DD_Arthur]

Spring of 1986 and I haven't had a haircut for nearly a year because a; I don't have to and b; I'm a student! To celebrate I buy a 1973 750cc Bonneville with a proper right-foot gear change and a rear drum brake.

"Wotcha buy that heap of shit for? It'll only go bang" says my Kawasaki owning brother as he took these pictures. He was right. Pretty soon it did go bang. Luckily my sensible option, an 850 Suzuki just kept on going and going and going, etc., etc. I pulled it apart in me mums shed and decided it required major engineering

The first thing to do was save some money. Well, quite a lot of money really. I started buying bits; a main bearing here, a gasket set there and sent the frame off for blasting and powder coating. Eventually I had enough bits to put the engine back together and install it in the frame. Wow! it started to look like a bike again.

This spurred me on to shell out even more cash. The only problem now being I was living and working in London and the bike was at Mum's house in Devon - a distance of some 150 miles. I spent more and more weekends in Devon. Seeing old friends, chasing women and fixing my bike up.

About this time I realised that even though I'm a born and bred Norffffff Londoner somewhere deep inside has always been a country boy trying to get out. I met a charming young lady who I realised was "The One". Soon I was living in Devon again with my charming young lady and soon she announced she was up the stick!! Bloody hell!!!!! In the midst of all this I finished Bonny.

Soon my charming young lady announced she was going to produce another!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My beautiful Bonny had to go in the name of domestic bliss and financial penury. However, I did aquire another one - same model, same year - in bits and with my newly found know how and contacts I set to with some gusto and a big, big box of aerosol spray paint.

Golly, how I wish I could turn the clock back sometimes and frollick with my little boys around daddy's bike once again.

[Sweper]

Utmost charming story lads! Thanks for sharing

[DD_Brando]

There you are, see, Arthur - the natural way forward was denied you, by way o' that there oil-in-frame Trumpet's bein' unable to carry a chair!

Here's a Panther with its own conservatory for the offspring - of which I also had a prime example - though mine was the correct colour for this Yorkshire heavyweight - coal-black!

This gent is called Gunnar (I know no more) and maybe the over-colourful livery was only available for export. Clearly it's done nothing for his sense of dress. But the smile tells all.

T

A 646cc single with a massive 88x106mm bore + stroke - in top gear (4th) at around 60mph this really was the source of the the old joke, "one thump per lamp-post" - and the company literature showed a line-drawing of a Panther chained to, and tearing down, a wall.

The proper colour-scheme is shown here in a modern setting:

..and it is a tad too clean for my taste

but you can clearly see the cast-in lug for the top link of the sidecar chassis just below the headstock. The engine is a stressed member, avoiding the need for a cradle frame. This example also looks to sport the Dowty Oleomatic forks. Air-sprung and oil-damped,they were developed from wartime aircraft undercarriage design.

Most of the sidecar-based rigs I knew back in Yorkshire had the left side silencer and pipe removed , and the outlet blanked, as there was one perennial problem with hauling around a small shed. You can look - but you can't clean - without wedging yourself 'twixt bike and chair so you end up watching your nearside chrome gently rust away. Back in the period before crash hat use became law I wore a long, waterproof cavalry coat and a trilby hat most of the time. Leather and jet-style lid; pub nights only

[delta7]

great stories guys,

that was a brilliant bike looking arthur, maybe youll get another some day.

Brando I always wanted to ride a panther, what was it like to kick over?

Is Rattler the only current biker in the group? What do you have now mate?

[Rattler]

Just a "little" bike.....

2005 Suzuki GSX1300R Hayabusa

[DD_Brando]

Kicking over the Panther could be a humiliating experience for the novice. Once mastered it was a doddle. The 'trick' was to fully retard the ignition and lift up the decompression lever mounted just in front of the gear lever - ease the piston just past top-dead-centre and just push the start lever down with your foot, hard. Not so much a kick, more a long swing, similar to starting a Velocette. Once it started chuffing, you eased the decomp lever level with your toe and advanced the ignition with the handlebar-mounted lever. I recall it needing a little choke on very cold mornings - again that was applied from another bar-mounted lever. That worked well for me every time. It didn't work so well for everybody...

I was sat in a cider house in the back streets of Cheltenham late one Saturday lunchtime when a uniformed gent with a pointed head entered the bar. Unperturbed by the hasty exit of several of my companions he asked "Which of you gentlemen owns the black combination parked outside?" Fighting the scrumpy-induced haze I reviewed the essentials: tax current, MOT ditto, insurance OK, unpaid fines none, and raised my hand in answer. "Well, sir, I believe I have apprehended a man trying to steal your machine." Reeling slightly, partly through being called both a gentleman and sir in the space of a minute, I followed him out to the street, where a ratty-looking individual in scruffy leathers was sitting slumped in the gutter, grasping his right ankle and swearing continuously. The rat in question was fairly well known on the local bike scene as a sneak thief - the kind that makes bikers buy expensive and heavy chains and locks; or, for my part, leave the ignition on full advance.

At the time, kicking over a fully-advanced Panther was probably one of Britain's best chances of putting a man in orbit - as our friend had discovered. Had he released his grip on the bars immediately we might have found out, but instead he held on too long and merely somersaulted over the front wheel to land in the road. Even the friendly copper had enjoyed relating his eye witness view of the event a couple of times for the benefit of the assembling crowd, and was enjoying the general mirth that ensued. Amidst the laughter we almost managed to get a pint of scrumpy into his hand.........

[delta7]

Nice Rattler !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kicking over the bonny was easy when you knew how, couple of squirts in the carbs, choke just right and a long slow arc, tho I got many a laugh at bike rallies when others who thought they knew better tried.

[DD_Arthur]

There you are, see, Arthur - the natural way forward was denied you, by way o' that there oil-in-frame Trumpet's bein' unable to carry a chair!

I have seen Oil-in-frame outfits so it can be done. Infact I think you could buy a Bonny and Watsonian chair, new, from Watsonian in the late seventies. I have only had two experiences of sidecars in my entire life.

1) Friends Beamish/Suzuki Trials Outfit. Slow, great fun, especially as he lived in mid-Wales at the time, though only the owner - after a great deal of practise - could steer it.

2) Friends Yamaha XS850 with "Sports" chair. Bought on a whim. One of two or three moments of absolute, unalloyed terror in my life was experienced in the chair of this vehicle. You were basically sitting in a one-hundred and ten miles an hour Canoe with ones backside hovering a mere four inches off the tarmac! The impression of speed from this eye-level overwhelms the senses. I accepted a lift home from a country pub in it one night. Oh Lordy!!!! Cornering technique seemed to be go-as-fast-as-possible-and-don't-brake-at-all-whilst-your-passenger-fills-his-pants.

I had to be helped out of the bloody thing at journeys end and then lie on my driveway willing my legs to work. I know my limits so sidecars; we'll you're a better man than me, buddy. S!

[DD_Brando]

Well. I did have a poxy little chair once, fitted to the XS650 Yam which was my first bike after the accident. I didn't carry a passenger very often until I'd re-learnt riding - which took me a couple of hundred miles to get confident. It wasn't until a mate who followed me on a group run from Crediton to Exeter told me that the sidecar wheel touched down only about 50% of the time! I'll quickly add, take a look at the map, lots of bends

It was, believe it or not, a Harley Davison chair Back in the 70s (80s) Harley bought out an Italian bike company - Aermacchi - and marketed a two-stroke, air-cooled 350 twin and sidehack, badged as a Harley. What were they thinking of?

[DD_Brando]

Can you plagiarise a photograph? A personalised print that might break a copyright

[DD_Arthur]

Side car wheel in the air!? Crediton to Exeter road? Yeah, that all sounds familiar. I have great memories from twenty years back of runs out to Hartland Quay hillclimb from Ottery St. Mary. We'd take the Crediton-Hatherleigh-Holsworthy road out to Bude and then up the A39. Sunday morning, west Devon=no traffic. Great stuff on a Trumpet with m8's on big Ducati's, Zed thousands, that sort of stuff.

[DD_Brando]

Ha haa! I rode a Zed when they were first imported - very embarrassing At 5'4" I couldn't reach the ground even on tippy-toes

[Friar]

So Arthur, the die was cast all those years ago....

[DD_Arthur]

Lol, very good...............and very spooky too!