Wringing Bells Part One
Long-time readers of this illustrious rag may remember Lester Morris’ tales of memorable rides in the late Fifties with his mate Fred.
Well, we recently heard from Lester again, and he mentioned that he had a few more tales to tell about trips with his mountain-sized mate on the Vincent Black Shadow.
So, Ladies and Gents, it’s with great pleasure that we welcome Lester back to Two Wheels, in this two part epic concerning a hair-raising journey to Orange, where a certain Mr Brabham was racing …
Hey, remember Fred? Readers of this magazine may recall him as a giant of a man, bald as a badger and with a fierce look about him, apparently a hard and tough character who would ask for very little and give even less in return; the sort of person not to trifle with in a dark alley somewhere. Or so you would think if you met him casually.
He belied his looks, for he was an enigma who, apart from his furious riding style, was a gentle man in almost every sense of that hackneyed word. He was a great guy to have on your side if the going was tough and about to get a whole lot tougher, and I know he would have given his right leg to the hip joint to anyone who asked for it. Happily, noone ever did.
He professed to greatly dislike dogs, and in fact endured a lengthy stay in hospital as a result of an altercation with one he tried to thump with his unpatented Dog Walloper, but he owned a pair of Schnauzers – a genuine character dog if ever there was one – which he loved with unabashed glee.
He owned a Vincent Black Shadow, that now-Classic 1000 cc Superbike which pre-dated the genre by some 25 years, and he rode that bike – which looked like a 125 under his prodigious bulk – as though there were no afternoon, much less tomorrow.
I know, for I often rode with him, or after him, or sometimes ahead of him, and I had to ride with my ring hanging out to avoid losing sight of him on the road ahead, or being run over by him if I got a break in traffic or out-guessed him into a blind corner on a winding road we knew little about.
One fast bike
The Black Shadow Vincent was roadtested in 1948 and achieved a top speed of 124 mph, with 110 mph in third and a handy 90 mph in second gear. A great performance even by today’s standards, though the ‘quarter’ was a bit casual at just on 15 seconds.
That road test report claimed the 450 lb projectile would pull up in a mere 22 feet from 30 mph, thanks to dual 7-inch brakes front and rear. You’d be hard-pressed to equal that with just about anything today. Fuel consumption was a trim 51 mpg.
Compare that spirited performance with my long-suffering BSA 500 single which was full-bore in standard trim at about 76 mph and took the best part of 18 seconds to slip through a desperate quarter-mile.
But my 1953 BSA, the same year model as Fred’s Vincent, was as hot as a furnace door. I had equipped it with Gold Star racing cams, the classic 65-2448 inlet, 65-2450 exhaust combination, an 8.5 to 1 piston, 1-5/32 inch carburettor, two-inch inlet valve – with suitably polished ports – and a large-diameter, unrestricted exhaust system.
I stress the bike was reasonably quiet, for it was fitted with one of the latest model Burgess mufflers from a T110 Triumph which relied on the absorption principle rather than a series of baffle plates in the muffler. This was achieved by a perforated tube down the centre of the long, tapered muffler, the tube surrounded by tightly-packed fibre-glass.
I could hardly claim you couldn’t hear me coming, the motor was far too punchy for that, but at least the hearty exhaust note didn’t break any windows in its immediate vicinity; at least none I was ever aware of.
To round the package out, the gearbox was fitted with a set of mediumclose ratio gears and a larger, eight-inch alloy-backplate front brake from the then popular A10 BSA650 twin was persuaded to fit, lined with Ferodo MZ41 racing brake linings. Oh yes, it pulled sidecar gearing as well; the 17-tooth engine sprocket from a 350 single, two teeth down on standard. Occasionally, for long trips, I’d slip the 19-tooth back on.
That BSA looked fairly ordinary to the uninitiated, but it went like a rocket and it would stand on its nose with a gentle squeeze of two fingers round the front brake lever. In fact, as we shall shortly see, it would often stop quite a bit too well!
Occasionally I rode a house-bound mate’s very trim little 1953 MAC Velocette. The all-alloy high-camshaft 350 single with a great swing-arm frame, almost perfect handling, an exhaust note as sweet as a song and awful electrics. It also left pools of oil everywhere it stood for more than a few minutes; the perfect example, some might say, of the legendary British motorcycle, which was always supposed to have the latter characteristic but in fact seldom did.
I rode that Velo for some years but almost invariably rode the faithful old BSA on longer trips, while Fred nearly always straddled the big Vincent whenever we tore off for a country blast, except for that notable trip to Junee which was featured in the pages of this comic some little time back. On that occasion Fred rode the rare R50S BMW, a then-current flat-twin super-sports model, tuned by the factory almost to the thin edge of reliability.
We covered many a hard mile on many a long and sometimes lonely road, Fred and me, and I marvelled then, as I still do now and again, just how complex a character he was – or still is, for I’m sure he’s alive and kicking somebody, somewhere, in jest of course, right now.
I first met him back in 1953 when I was punching a 1948 Triumph Speed Twin through the fog at Yetholme on the way to Bathurst, a dodgy bit of road where he zapped round me on a blind left-hander with the visibility at about two-foot-six.
Cheap race transport!
For those who never read the story, or like me are having some trouble with short-term memory, Fred was riding an outfit at the time with a racing bike tied on the chassis. He was being pushed along on a bar by a racing outfit he purported to be towing, which itself had a racing solo on the platform, while two terrified stalwarts on racer solos were being towed on ropes from the tail-end of the second outfit!
It goes without saying that both outfits had pillion passengers on them and thinking back, I suppose it would have come as no surprise had the two solo bikes under tow been carrying pillion passengers as well.
P’raps they had originally, for all I know, but the former incumbents could in no way be blamed for the exercise in self-preservation had they elected to bale out en route and trudge thankfully home.
You’d have to fill me with happy beans and tie me to the bikes to get me to embark on that journey, but I might have been persuaded to drive the lead outfit. Then again, I might not.
You couldn’t do that today – you shouldn’t do it then, for that matter – but let me assure the disbelievers that the illegal road-train of desperates assuredly existed and I have learned since the publication of the story that Fred and the Gang-of-Seven was not entirely unique, for they initiated something of a mini-vogue in this form of cheap transportation from Sydney to Bathurst.
Enough of the waffle: now you’ve met Fred, or re-acquainted yourselves with him, let me tell you of a late-Fifties trip to Orange for racing of a different kind.
Brabham’s back
“Hey, Fred here,” said the unmistakable voice on the phone,
“Orange is on in a few weeks time. Wanna go?” I told him I didn’t know of the meeting at all, which was odd as I was working in the motorcycle trade at the time.
“It’s the cars, mate,” he said, “Brabham’s coming back for it and all the big guns will be there. What about it? Pump a bit o’ blood through your brains for a change. Hee! Hee!”
I thanked him for concerning himself with my mental state and said of course I’d go. I quite like the Gnoo-Blas circuit at Orange, which had been used for a few motorcycle race meetings in the ‘Fifties, and which should have been quite viable for car racing as well, even though it was bumpy and on the narrow side.
Gnoo-Blas was wickedly fast and dangerous, the lap record ultimately some 106 mph average which was quick indeed in view of a layout which included Muttons Corner, a near-blind right-hander over the brow of a rise in the finishing straight: a first-gear corner which immediately followed a very fast left-hand kink.
A good viewing spot I thought, for the racers would be hard on the brakes and changing down while still making an exit from the fast, blind left-hander, the drivers – in those days – hanging more out of their cars than in them, their arms sawing away at oversize steering wheels, the tyres howling and smoking underneath them. Spin-offs and forays over the bank or into the shrubbery were sure to be par for the course on that difficult section of the track. A blast to Gnoo-Blas for some fast and furious car racing for a change? Yes please!
There was plenty of time to fettle the BSA before the race…err, run. A new set of rings, valve springs, check the exhaust valve and its seat, dig out the colder plug and one size larger main jet, pass a hankie through the points – in those days you could do it all yourself and in about three hours flat.
I was running about with a sidecar attached but that came off with the removal of just four 3/4 inch Whitworth nuts, leaving the chair on a pile of bricks and the fittings still attached to the BSA’s frame. Pity about the tyres, which were worn into more of a square profile than I would have liked and they were not terribly good. Olympic ‘Black Spot’ Patrols, they had about the same coefficient of friction on tarmac as a house brick would.
Never mind, a few hard days charging about on the solo would help feather the edges away a bit and my wife could always go to work in the bus – which she quite frankly preferred to do. Straight-line performance was not too impressive in those days and we got our kicks from cornering like mad-things. The badge of honour, courage, or more likely idiocy, was to have worn the sidewalls down so the tyres, in profile, were like a church steeple. Well, perhaps a gable roof?
Fred couldn’t make it until after lunch for he was to spend, as he said “the whole morning down the drain!” I should have asked him I s’pose, because I never did understand what he meant. He arrived in the mid-afternoon and we took off through the backblocks to Windsor for that magic blast over Kurrajong and along the Bells Line of Road.
It didn’t start out too well because we were pulled over by a police motorcycle just this side of Windsor, almost before we had got into stride.
Fred sat with his arms folded eyeing the police officer balefully with his left eye, the right one half-closed, as the cop eased himself off the Triumph and pulled his gloves off slowly, one finger at a time.
“Bit noisy, wouldn’t you say,” opined the copper as he slid a length of broom handle from a saddle-bag and ambled, ever-so-slowly, to the BSA.
“Ha!” he cried, as he shoved the length of the broom handle up the muffler and jazzed it around in what might be described as a most lascivious manner. “Just as I thought. No baffles. You’ve had a crowbar to that haven’t you son?”
I assured him I hadn’t and that the muffler was exactly like the one on his bike but he didn’t want to know. He thrust the clean end of the stick under his armpit and went back for his book as Fred slid the Vincent from under his large frame and leaned it on the propstand.
Fred 1, Cop 0
“A crude test procedure, but usually effective,” said Fred, as he deftly slipped the broom handle from under the copper’s arm, leaving a thin black mark in its place. “Lemme show you something. Come here.”
So saying, he knelt by the Triumph and thrust the device into its right muffler. He cranked it around then shoved it up the left muffler and repeated the lesson, his eyes heavenwards and his head cranked to one side like a parrot peering down a bottle.
“Whaddaya think of that, nong?” he asked, not impolitely. “There’s nothing in it as the burglar said when he trod in the family pisspot.”
“Listen to this,” he continued, rapping the thick muffler with the copper’s potstick. “Do ya notice it goes clink, clonk, instead of ding, ding?”
“It is jammed tight,” he lectured “with fibreglass packing. It absorbs the noise. It does not baffle it. Just like this one.”
He repeated the demonstration on the BSA and handed the policeman the dirty end of the potstick as the man goggled at him, his chin on his chest, and grasped the wrong end.
“Sorry, it’s dirty that end,” said Fred as he removed it again, “Do us a favour mate, drop your strides and bend over so’s I can clean it. Hee! Hee!”
“Run away mate, and know what you’re talking about next time will ya?”
The altercation was clearly at an end and I thankfully fired the BSA up to follow Fred as we left the police officer openmouthed and red-faced with an odd mixture of total amazement and terminal embarrassment.
Fred wiped the smirk off my face as I slipped alongside him while we trickled discreetly through the township.
“How did you ever survive,” he shouted patronisingly, “before I came along?” He shook his head sadly and heaved a huge sigh.
There was no ready answer to that, so I had to let it pass in the breeze.
Once clear of the town and apparently with no-one in pursuit it was on for young and old. The BSA was still on sidecar gearing and was a match for the big Vincent up the steeper climbs and through the tighter corners where its narrow crankcases – particularly on lefthanders where the big vee-twin could too-easily drag its clutch cover along the road – allowed for as spirited cornering as the knife-edge Olympics would handle.
Quicker going down…
The drop down Mount Tomah and through the sweeping right-hander saw us in very close company, but Fred enjoyed an edge up the fast climb on the other side and he swept away through the tippy-toe left-hander at the very top of the ridge. I came on again later down the road – don’t ask me exactly where – and lead the crackling Vincent along the ridges and down one or two steepish slopes. For some reason, which always escaped us both, I was quicker down hills than Fred and I was leading down a steep drop when we came across four riders in very close company.
We gathered them in without too much trouble, and I was surprised to see that they were all mounted on brand-new maroon-coloured 650 cm3 twin-cylinder Ariels. Sadly, the marque was coming to the end of its life at the time with the final year of manufacture of the classic Square Four 1000 already announced and the 650 Huntmaster twin – which was almost a badge-engineered BSA with different shaped timing case and rocker covers, Burman gearbox in place of BSA’s own and Ariel tank badges – was by no means a popular model.
Had they been four Triumphs it would not have excited much interest but it is entirely possible that those four 650 twins represented a large percentage of the Ariel Huntmaster sales in that year.
It remains a mystery to me as to who the riders were and where they were headed. My ex-Army gas-mask bag was flapping about and I had to make the swift adjustment of sliding it from behind my back to a more secure spot across my chest which let Fred and one of the Ariels slip past. I was hard-pressed to get around the Ariel for a few corners which gave Fred a chance to draw away but I ducked under the 650 twin as its centre-stand dug in on a tightening lefthander (Ariel and BSA twins all did this, which bent the stands badly enough to make it hard to lift the bikes onto them) and set sail after the shapeless blob which was disappearing round a bend some little way ahead.
Nearly, very nearly…
I pounced on Fred as he braked hard for a tightish right-hander atop the ridge before the steep drop into Lithgow and flung the BSA into the corner as I slipped a toe under the gear lever to slot it back to third.
Today that corner has a warning sign on it, indicating it is about two-thirds of a hairpin and I don’t know what its posted speed is, but I do know I dived into it about 25 mph too quickly, dodging round the outside of Fred as he was setting himself up for a late apex. For some obscure reason he blew the horn at me as I (very) swiftly saw that my apex, fortunately, was a little later than his!
I couldn’t pull the brakes on any harder and the dip just before the corner brought a sharp yelp from the tyres and a twitch of the handlebars as the suspension bottomed then leapt to full extension. I was in Big Trouble and knew all about it, oddly remembering – as I write this – the sudden stab of pain from a suspect eye tooth which reacted badly to a sudden intake of three-bagsfull of cool, fresh mountain air.
Imagine the situation, cos you’ve probably been there: A sudden high speed toothache, a horn blowing in your right ear, jolted out of the saddle, well on-line but much too quick and on suspect, square-section tyres, with about five metres of rough dirt and native shrubbery before a sheer drop to possible obscurity a matter of seconds away. Didn’t like that at all!
The bike fell to the right footrest. There was little but blue sky ahead and that yawning abyss, with the outskirts of Lithgow city spread out far, far below. I managed to grab second gear and release both brakes as the footrest graunched into the road, only a beat ahead of the bulbous leading-edge of a muffler which I had kicked-up and tucked-in to provide more clearance than I thought I would ever need.
My toes were still hooked under the gearlever and I couldn’t get my foot out for it was jammed between the lever and the road surface as I wrestled the bike to hold it down and keep the power just driving, when every instinct demanded I have the bike up again and slam the brakes on.
Oh, how I fervently wished I’d feathered the edges off those square tyres for a few weeks more as they fought for a grip they frankly didn’t have and the bike slid sideways towards the edge of the road. It couldn’t high-side me, the tyres didn’t have that sort of grip, and it couldn’t fall inwards because of a fat muffler, non-folding footrest and the rapidly-wearing sole of a Size 7 boot.
All that leverage was easing the weight off the rear wheel and causing it to slide. Of course it wasn’t tightening the apex of the corner as you would hope, because the front wheel was sliding sideways as well!
How did I know all this? Well, I wasn’t able to analyze it while it was happening – at least not all of it – but I nutted it out in the comparative quiet whichfollowed, you may be assured.
Phew!
A narrow concrete strip outlined the edge of the bitumen and it was only a hand-span wide, but I finished that terrifying few moments teetering on the very edge of the narrow strip.
Thankfully I eased the BSA upright again with the corner a long, long way behind. It was at once just a few seconds and yet an eternity before it was over, and I stabbed third gear greatly relieved to have got away with it. I was furious for having so badly mis-read the corner, and causing myself so much strife in such a short distance.
It was with a very dry throat and an elevated pulse rate that I slipped through the switch-back series of tight corners which dropped into the township, and I couldn’t resist looking over my left shoulder on the last right-hander into town where high above, on the lip of the escarpment, that forbidding corner lay.
I could have been on this very spot several seconds earlier had I panicked – which I very nearly did!! – and I would certainly have been in no position to be looking about at the wonders of nature if I had done so. The thought sent a cold chill up and down my spine, to settle in my loins.
Fred eased alongside as I soberly tiptoed into town, my flight-fight-or-fright mechanism re-adjusting itself for the next onslaught.
“Jeez, don’t ever do that again mate,” he showed genuine concern, “You shoulda seen the sparks! And you could smell the rubber hangin’ in the air!”
He reached out and actually touched me. I thought for a second he was going to throw an arm over my shoulder.
“Sorry I blew the horn,” he apologised. “Dunno why I did that, it was a reflex I s’pose. I couldn’t believe I’d do that. Do you know you looked around?”
I certainly couldn’t remember doing that, but if I did it had to be the briefest of glances because it didn’t impinge on the action.
He shook his head again as we slowed and finally stopped at the major highway intersection. “I didn’t expect anyone to be there. I thought I’d sewn it up.” He grinned a mile-wide grin. “You were flying mate. Flying!”
Yeah, I thought, flying without wings, and I bloody near got those too.
I wanted to get rid of the chill that had raced up and down my spine but we were on our way again in no time, bumping down the service station driveway and spearing off in the direction of the Pine Forest, one of my favourite stretches of road.
I’ve lost me cap!
We were just lining the forest up, the BSA on full-song, Fred’s Vincent crackling along close behind, when a swirl of wind whipped under the peak of the cloth cap I was wearing and plucked it off neatly. I usually wore such a cap back-to-front, but this one seemed secure under goggles elastic.
I pulled up as Fred zipped alongside and I told him I had to pull over and double back.
“Me cap,” I told him, “I’ve lost it. It blew off at the top of the hill.”
I turned and rode back, climbing off the BSA and peering about. Fred had of course followed me back, though he looked frankly puzzled.
“That’s it over there,” he said, pointing to a newly-laid cow-cake near the edge of the road. “No, sorry, it’s only a cow’s turd. I can’t tell the difference.”
He pointed to the top of my head.
“It’s still on your skull mate.”
“Come on,” he added impatiently, “Turn the bloody thing round and let’s get on with it.”
He was right, of course, for the wind had caught the peak and merely doubled the cap back and pointed it skywards. It was still held securely by the two-inch wide goggles elastic.
I dutifully grabbed the peak and spun the cap round till the peak was nestled into the back of my neck. Fred, as usual, wore neither cap nor goggle, though I knew he had the multi-coloured beanie and white-framed sunglasses he always carried somewhere in his gas mask bag.
“Hang on,” he said as I fired the BSA up again, “I forgot to do this earlier.”
Fred greases up …
He dug into the shoulder bag and removed a large jar of Vaseline, his universal panacea. He ladled a handful out and smeared it over his pink face, round his neck and over the top of his gleaming scalp.
“Helps with the windburn,” he said, “Probably worth a coupla mile an hour, too. Less friction. Hee! Hee! See what I mean?”
I could see alright, for with a head as big as a four-gallon drum anything which would speed up the air-flow around it could only be an advantage.
“You want some Re-Po,” I said, not leaving well-enough alone, “A cut-andpolish wouldn’t do you any harm. Now that would make you quite a bit quicker.”
He favoured me with a withering glare as he shoved the jar back into the bag, wiped his hands on a yellow polishing cloth and graunched the big Vincent into gear.
“Bottom of the hill, mate,” he shouted as he spun round and departed, side-on, in the direction from whence we had come, “Rollin’ start.”
I confess I shot off towards Orange and left him headed in the opposite direction, belting the spirited BSA through the gears as I dived along the road through the forest. Of course I was first through that twitchy stretch of concrete road – I have managed that feat without cheating, I should add – but I hadn’t fooled Fred for a second because he was close enough as I swept over the narrow bridge at the forest’s end for me to hear the magic, crackling exhaust of the big V-twin.
What a symphonic theme that exhaust would have made had Beethoven been a Vincent owner!
In the next instalment, Fred and Lester continue their journey to Orange, having another encounter with the constabulary, a drag with a Jag and sundry other adventures along the way.
By Lester Morris. Two Wheels, January 1987
Lester’s book Vintage Morris: Tall Tales but True from a Lifetime in Motorcycling is just that, a memoir of his many-and-various – and often hilarious – experiences in the motorcycle industry. It’s available as a paperback or e-book from large online booksellers, or you can order a signed copy by emailing the man himself at lm2@tpg.com.au. Volume 2 is now available also.
