Dommie Dave dropped in on his way back to Cornwall on Friday - for a "few hours" ................................ left this morning [ Sunday ! ].
The usual reminiscing sessions and again he helped me with some joint memories for the "Last Roundup" Tale - coming along, albeit slowly.
We discussed this thread and he agreed with me about reaching the Ton back then - an aspiration to be highly regarded and not lightly achieved.
One particular rider and bike came up in our discussions - a 500cc Bullet. This was at a time when Enfields in general and Bullets in particular were not highly regarded as Cafe Racer material - and certainly not Ton Up machines !
There were my own Constellations of course - but they [ Constellations ] had an excellent reputation courtesy of their Thruxton Endurance performances - including my own ex Bob Mac / Ray Knight versions.
His first mods [
as MOST of the day ] were cosmetic - clip ons , rear sets the obligatory Goldie tank and silencer. A couple of flat out blinds up the Bye-Pass netted him a tad over 80 mph. And like the guy with the Arrow, he also disappeared from the scene for a few months. However this time we knew what he was up to ! He brought the cylinder head and bottom end round to me for porting fitting larger valves and blueprinting. We also scoured the Hepolite piston catalogues to find a suitable higher compression piston and eventually found one a couple of mm's larger in diameter. Yep, neither of us could remember what piston [ it WAS over 50 years ago! ] After careful balancing and assembly the engine was returned to him along with an Amal TT carb from one of my Goldies.
The final results [ including alloy rims and Goldie swept back exhaust ] gave him 105mph.
Was it worth it ? You bet...................... 8)