Interesting Bike Film On Youtube

Bloody hooligans

 

Thanks for posting Nikki, a lovely insite to motorcycles and who made them and rode them

 

Thanks for posting this video, Nikki. I just now finished watching the whole thing and found it quite interesting and informative. I really enjoyed the early footage and this aspect of the history of the British motorcycle industry. I thought the numerous negative comments about the riders in the last part of the video rather narrow-minded and uninformed. Especially the comments by the lady with multiple strands of pearls! But then, those comments are not so unlike comments people make about motorcyclists still today. Or, to be honest, comments in general that my generation (and sometimes I) am guilty of making about today's younger "millennial" generation.

 

The British Motrcycle industry of the sixties caused there own demise by sticking to the 40/50 odd year old parralel twim motor. I went to the National motor cycle museum in Birmingham before the fire there was a protor type Triumph across the frame four from the early 1960s, further round there was a Early Honda 750 four from the mid 1960s. The ENGINE LOOKED THE SAME and we are still riding the results of that foresight by Honda, shame Triumph didn't have the same foresite and perhaps we would still have had the motorcycle we once had.

 

Lord (Bernard) Docker was managing director of BSA until 1956, and chairman of Daimler (Birmingham Small Arms Company Ltd owned Daimler from 1910 until it was sold to Jaguar in 1960).

From Wikipedia:
At the end of May 1956, Docker was removed from the board of Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA), and he was replaced as chairman of BSA by Jack Sangster. The company, which owned the Docker Daimlers, had the Dockers return them.
The issues leading to the removal of Docker stemmed from the extravagant expenses he presented to the company, including the (Daimler) show cars made available for Lady Docker's personal use, a £5,000 gold and mink ensemble that Lady Docker wore at the 1956 Paris Motor Show that she tried to write off as a business expense as she "was only acting as a model" at the show, and Glandyfi Castle, bought with £12,500 of BSA's money and refurbished for £25,000, again with company money.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Docker


A couple of stories I remember reading (probably in Whatever Happened to the British Motorcycle Industry):

When the assets of the Triumph Meriden factory were sold off (in 1983?), one of the machine tools had a big welded up crack in the casing. The casing was damaged when Triumph's original Coventry factory was bombed in 1940.

Associated Motorcycles (AJS, Matchless, Francis-Barnett, James) bought Norton, and in 1961 Norton production was moved from Bracebridge Street in Birmingham to the AMC factory in Woolwich. After the move, they couldn't manufacture two Norton crankcase halves that would bolt together. Finally, in desperation, they contacted the bloke who had operated the machine at the Birmingham factory. They explained the problem, and he said "Did you take the wood?". It turned out that the machine was so worn that someone had to stand next to it, using a lump of timber to lever the shaft against the clapped-out bearings, otherwise it was impossible to drill the holes anything like accurately.


This might be of interest - the unpublished second part of Roland Pike's autobiography, covering the time he worked in the BSA development department in the 1950s.
https://beezagent.blogspot.com/2009/01/roland-pike-story.html