All the parts in a Row
Another week and weather has changed from pleasant to cold. That means painting the Greenford Police LE is on hold until it gets a bit warmer. During the week I collected all of the parts except the body which is having some welding done from Eltec in West Drayton and got on with the priming creating a Hanging Garden of LE bits in my garage.
It was race against the weather to get some paint on the bare metal to stop the rust appearing again. I have a few bits that have top coat on now and only have the front mudguard to top coat and I can reassemble the front end. In between painting I was playing with my next restoration project. That being a 2CV van so I can carry around more bike stuff in the future. Over the weekend of 10th and 11th November was the Federation of Historic Vehicles event at Brooklands. I missed that one but the AKD from the Museum was featured in the event program and we had some free publicity.
At this time of year there is not much happening so it is the time for review and anything I can find interesting to talk about. I spotted an article in the Classic Motorcycle of June 1983 about an Excelsior Manxman a 250cc four valve head that on many races in its class in 1936, 37 and 38 and many more in the early fifties when there was no purpose built 250 available for racing and many people resorted to creating 250’s from 350’s.
Fred has a 250cc Gold Star from that time and there were similar things done to Nortons and Ajays. Surprising it has twin carbs but I remember that the early Villiers Starmaker engine also had twin carbs. Moving a bit more recent with Moto 3, do those 250cc engines have twin carbs? So little detail is given about the specifications of these machines, How many camshafts? What compression do they have? How many gears? I find all this quite interesting as it would help me to see why one machine is better than another at a race track. I remember when Motorcycle did racer tests in the fifties and sixties and they would publish the compression ratio, valve timing, Ignition timing and gear ratios for Nortons, AJS ( the OHC ones) and, if available for Velocettes, BSAs and anything else they tested.
In the same magazine was a reprint of a 1961 road test on a 350cc Norton Navigator, the 250 was the Jubilee. I was surprised that the top speed was only 85mph and fuel economy was 88mpg at 50 mph. Now I dream of fuel economy like that although having had a Harley Davidson FLT 80 it would get to 63mpg at a steady 55mph not bad for a 1340cc lump weighing 330 kg. I could also get something approaching that with my 58 Kawasaki ER6F but rarely more than 54mpg about the 09 one that I have. In between Kawasaki had remapped the fuelling as it was too lean and with my 58 model it would falter on an even throttle as there was not enough fuel going in to keep it running. I didn’t mind that as I was getting over 60mpg!
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