Tuesday 26 January 2016

Raising Funds at Kempton Park



Kempton Park

Auto Jumble January 2016.

After a busy time at Christmas and launching into the New Year with some varied but not good motorcycling weather I have spent a great deal of time reading. Among the books that I read was Engines and Enterprise written by John Reynolds and is about the life and work of Sir Harry Ricardo. For me, this was very enlightening, and helped clarify some of the developments of fuel by Shell and his involvement with Triumph motorcycles. Sir Harry had done fuel efficiency testing for Shell and gave the company the information about what was the best oil to be used for fuel in the petrol engine. Along with this his friend and colleague Frank Halford also raced motorcycles. He had a 500cc Triumph side valve that needed to go faster. Was this a “Trusty” or a Model P?




So Sir Harry was enlisted to redesign the engine. This design had a four valve head made from bronze that had a pent-roofed head and a light weight slipper piston with a domed top and many features borrowed from the RHA Aero engine. This raised the performance to 20bhp at 5000rpm. A compression ratio of 8:1 was able to be used because of the new fuels available from Shell in 1921. Frank Halford raced this bike at Brooklands in the 1921season and with the new fuel Sir Harry and Frank managed to squeeze 25bhp out of the engine at 5000rpm. At the beginning of the 1922 season Frank easily won the open class against twin cylinder machines. In 1921 the success on the track lead Triumph to commission Sir Harry to design a 500cc single with many of the features of the racing bike but detuned for road use. The time line for production of this model was 1922 to 1924 although the bike at the Museum is registered 1926 there must be some reason for this. Was it hanging around waiting to be sold for a couple of years?



I found this book very interesting and seems to be a who's who of the automobile and aviation engineering world with even a mention of the surgeon who treated TE Lawrence after his accident on his Brough and after examining the head injuries suffered came up with the design of a safety helmet.

With not much happening on the biking front but I still managed to get out and about on the Kawasaki to a couple of bike meetings, got a very belated 25000 mile service done on the Buell and some catching up on DIY things. About ten days before the Auto Jumble I received a call from EGP enterprises about having a Museum stand at the Auto Jumble on Saturday 23rd January. I was up for it but was anyone else. Having a stand there was to try to generate some funds to pay for the rent of the site that the Museum stands on. Ealing Council have decided that Charities need to be paying something too! Even at a reduced rate this came to a staggering £20,000!!! This has launched us into a fund raising campaign to try to keep the doors open as long as we can.




The team got together a couple of bikes, the AKD and the Tiger 80 to help fill the space in the gazebo so Frank, Peter and me were at Kempton around 7am, still dark and cold but the weather for the day was being kind, we were set up in just enough time for the gates to open for the “Early Birds” at 07:45. We managed to hand out a whole box of flyers and at the end when the donation boxes were emptied and money counted our efforts had reaped some £159.92p. Many thanks for all those who donated. “Every Penny Counts” their generosity and support will help keep us going for a bit longer and thank you to EGP Enterprises for letting us have a stand. We have been invited back for the next Auto Jumble on Saturday March 12th. See you then if not before.