Best Brit Bike?

[Jon]

American Craig Vetter was responsible for the X-75 styling.
If you believed the wildly inaccurate "Smiths" then 130mph was possible . the truth is more like 110-115 in STD trim.
The Triumph/BSA conical hub was 2LS not 4LS, and was known as the "comical" hub for it,s extremely poor stopping power and was dropped in 72 in favour of a Lockheed disc.
The CCM,s do look and sound the dogs danglies,made from the remains of the BSA comp shop, but were a vastly overstretched C15/B40 and a nightmare to own/race. A big improvement was the Rickman (designed by Weslake) 4V head

I think a 'good' T150 with rayguns would hit 130... Naturally that was a carefully built test bike...But they'd get there. I had those grey faced Smith's clocks on my '71 T100R and they were internally adjustable so could be set up to be absolutely spot on. I worked out the revs/gearing and after checking and adjusting the tachometer which also had a brass adjuster screw in it, set the speedo to be spot on at 70 mph. Top whack on my lightly tuned T100R was 112 and it would lift the front wheel in first when it hit 4800 rpm. ~I don't think my T100R had the conical brake, it was full width with a scoop...that's where my mistake comes from.

I once spoke to an MX guy who had recently gone over to XT500 powered bikes from the B50 . He said a B50 would need a new piston and rebore after two meetings whereas the Yams would go a season without a qualm...Again, i think more to do with lubrication than metallurgy...The XT had a ferociously powerful trochoidal oil pump compared to the BSA's pre war thing.

[DRAG90]

I,ve yet to meet an accurate Smiths

T100 was certainly the best Triumph twin, much better than the 6/750,s

A couple of friends used to race CCM,s and they were nothing but trouble, 3 speed Quaife boxes and nice power when they went well.............which wasn,t often
A mate still races a 441 Victor in vintage MX but keeps it fairly untuned for reliability, uses expensive silkolene and changes it every race.
Another friend had an ex-sidecar racing Rocket 3 engine in a Rickman Metisse frame with full fairing which was capable of a genuine 140 mph

[Jon]

I,ve yet to meet an accurate Smiths

T100 was certainly the best Triumph twin, much better than the 6/750,s

A couple of friends used to race CCM,s and they were nothing but trouble, 3 speed Quaife boxes and nice power when they went well.............which wasn,t often
A mate still races a 441 Victor in vintage MX but keeps it fairly untuned for reliability, uses expensive silkolene and changes it every race.
Another friend had an ex-sidecar racing Rocket 3 engine in a Rickman Metisse frame with full fairing which was capable of a genuine 140 mph

I have an abiding memmory of going to a Haddon Hill scramble in the late '70's during that resurgence of four strokes that happened briefly. There were a lot of CCM's there and when the field left the gate the ground actually shook...It was amazing and very heroic.

Me, I'll take an HL, thanks! http://www.pelicanguanomotorsports.com/ ... 80x320.jpg

[DRAG90]

HL,s are very popular in pre 75 MX. Personally i like the XR500

Always fancied a Vincent Comet, the 500 single. Again much overshadowed by the 1000 v-twin, but the 500 is the better bike. Worked wonders for Brian Chapman

[Jon]

HL,s are very popular in pre 75 MX. Personally i like the XR500

Always fancied a Vincent Comet, the 500 single. Again much overshadowed by the 1000 v-twin, but the 500 is the better bike. Worked wonders for Brian Chapman

i saw Mighty Mouse beat a Z1 at Wroughton in the '70's. Super Nero was there that day too...Along with a Vauxhall Victor estate car which had a V8 mounted in the back where the dog normally goes... it wheelied well....

[Pjam]

How about the Black Shadow from the song! Is that the 1000 you refer too?

[DRAG90]

Yep, the shadow and rapide were the 1000,s, nice but overrated, unless you have a black lightning racing version, but i don,t much fancy riding it like Rollie Free

[digger06]

BSA Bantams were very reliable ... but only because the design was German.

DKW, we won the war, we took there designs
most small brit bikes were copys of eastern europe stuff, damn good too

[Jon]

BSA Bantams were very reliable ... but only because the design was German.

DKW, we won the war, we took there designs
most small brit bikes were copys of eastern europe stuff, damn good too

That's right, we took the DKW and rejected the Beetle. The first Yamaha was a copy of the DKW too...And later the Aerial Arrow and Leader two stroke twins were German Adler designs.

...And Bantams were not reliable by modern standards...They whiskered plugs and stopped on the road with monotonous regularity. What they DID do resist teenage thrashing for longer than an elderly four stroke running on dreadful old '50's tech oils because Bantams were petroil lubrication so effectively constant loss...The Villiers 197 9e motors (the one's found in the Invacar and almost every trials bike) was similarly reliable in that when it stopped you only had to change the plug, not the conrods!

it wasn't just bikes either. Somewhere I have a copy of a newspaper from 1953...The Coronation. In the small ads there are a number of cars for sale and there wasn't a single one with more than 10,000 miles on it that hadn't had a recon engine...Not one....The big deal was not that your car had needed a recon engine, but what the recon was...Of course a 'Gold Seal' was the one you boasted about.

The '72 Daytona I bought in 1978 had under 5000 miles on it and was utterly fecked...everything from the bottom end, mains, small ends, bore and pistons was knackered...Even the head was cracked...Shit oils....

My mate's dad bought a new Victor in 1963 and my mate inherited it in the mid '70's. In the handbook in the service schedule it said to replace the big end shells at 20,000 miles and do the mains every 30,000 miles. Those figures were based on early 60's oils. The Victor had a thoroughly modern engine with good cooling, a powerful oil pump and so on yet it was expected to go through it's end shells in 20,000 miles.

I reckon with modern synthetics you could run a Brit indefinitely without wear

[steveST100]

My 1970 T100T Daytona.
Best £200 i ever spent in the early 80's.Will have to get round to rebuilding it someday.
Front wheel is a 1972 GT750 4LS too powerful for the bike with the long forks fitted.

Also have a 1949 Triumph 3T 350 rigid preunit twin that a bought as a £40 tin bath full of bits.
This ones not mine though, mines still in bits.