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A visit to "Fellside Cottage", the home of Ivan Rhodes...Mr Velocette to so many people worldwide...part 1

January 21, 2014, 11:33 pm
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As I mentioned in a previous post, Mrs DQ and myself were in Europe in September 2013 and I took in Velocette friends in The Netherlands and Germany.
Traveling home to Sydney I made a "dog leg" via Manchester, UK with a train trip to Derby, set up in a hotel prior to a per-arranged three day visit with Ivan Rhodes for archival and historic exchange on Velocette...

Ivan arrived on the Saturday morning in his 1925 model 20 Rolls Royce which was a surprise and we took a detour to the Rolls Royce Heritage Centre where there was an open day....
Nothing like a Rolls Royce Merlin V-12 aero engine mounted on a trailer and started for the visitors...
Then off to "Fellside Cottage".....
Visitors were expected so Ivan had a quick tour of his garage where the Roller lives...nice early Velocette, possibly 1913ish, then a KTT with a works head in a road frame setup...and a Geoff Duke special....before we moved into his workshop proper...


Note the MAC oil tank used as a test petrol tank to allow access to "the works"...
Works racing "lowboy" frame used for the 1951 IOM TT racers....
Below....The Geoff Duke Velocette with KTT engine and showing the in-frame primary chain oiler.



The extensions at the bottom of the forks, soft soldered on, were done by Eric & Harry (jnr) Hinton when they owned it in 1958 and campaigned it in Europe. Harry came 5th in the West German GP on it and according to Eric thought the older ex works engine it had in it at the time, different to the one in it now, was quicker than their Manx Nortons.
A pic from the Hinton archive of the time...


A glance at the rear garden of "Fellside Cottage", the photo "stitched" together hence the strange light effect...
Then into the workshop, almost clinically clean...





A welcome visitor was Dennis Frost, The UK LE Club Archivist and Historian. He'd driven the 3 hours up from London with the ex Bertie Goodman Mk.1 KTT in his van, then Bob Higgs rode over on his Velocette Vulcan 1000cc V-Twin special with Steib S501 sidecar attached...we were off to a pub nearby, one of Ivan's locals for lunch where John Goodall joined us on his Mk.1 KTT....DQ was ushered into the sidecar and we were off....


The outfit built by Bob who has been involved with Ivan's projects...The Roarer and Wiffling Clara....had completed over 95,000 miles with a replacement big-end at 60,000 and Bob was off to ride to Spain on it the following week.
The engine is so quiet and powerful, I asked Bob the top gear ratio... 4.4:1... a Venom is 4.9:1.!!
The folding gearlinkage to facilitate easy kick starting is very clever Higgs design...



Well that's it for this post......Ivan and the lads are joining me for lunch...!
Why not join me in a later post for more on my time in what has become to many "Hall Green".....
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A visit to "Fellside Cottage", the home of Ivan Rhodes...Mr Velocette to so many people worldwide...part 2

February 17, 2014, 2:38 am
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Well I'm back from a nice "pub lunch" at Ivan Rhodes local and back to "Fellside Cottage" in Bob Higgs wonderful creation, the Vulcan 1000cc V-Twin Velocette with Steib 501 sidecar....
A great experience...
For those who wish to know more, short of speaking with Bob at a Velocette function, search for a copy of "Classic Bike Guide", August 1993, No.28...pages 46-50 give a good account with photos of its creation.
So join me for part 2 of my time in Derby in September 2013 with Ivan Rhodes for a photographic glimpse of what many Velocette enthusiasts today call "Hall Green"....
We had much to discuss and I'd brought across with me for Ivan copies of the note books of the late Frank Panes who was a works Velocette race mechanic...much KTT and works engine test information in them...
Like a peak...?


And so it goes on.....perhaps more for a post on another day.....
Back at Ivan's he decided that as Dennis Frost had come up from London with his ex. BJG mk.1 KTT, that we'd go for a ride in the nearby countryside through the lanes he knew....
Firstly he wheeled out the ex Alec Bennett 1928 IOM 350 TT winning Velocette....
And below, the bike with Alec Bennett aboard after winning the Junior TT with Percy Goodman, managing director of Veloce at the time, congratulating him.
 As I mentioned earlier, Dennis Frost got his mk.1 KTT out of the van...




Then out came the Model O...the 1939 experimental 600cc  pushrod
twin road bike designed by Phil Irving with rear suspension....
So off we went for a 15 mile ride , DQ started on the Alec Bennett KTT and what a responsive and light handling bike it proved to be...but then, as you would expect of a, then, TT winning machine.
Often beside me I could hear the throb of the exhaust from Dennis Frost's nice Mk.1 KTT.....
After some 8 miles we stopped and Ivan swapped onto it with me on the "O"....
Idling, I put my hand on the petrol tank top, the handlebars, but little in the way of vibration could be felt...
Taking off I have to admit I stalled it, but one prod had the engine idling again nicely and snicking into first I was off after Ivan.
Accelerating away after Ivan showed it a nice smooth twin, but the RH sweeper coming up posed a little surprise as after the Bennett KTT the steering was quite heavy and took a little effort on this initial corner... suitably prepared the bike cornered nicely thereafter.
Difficult to comment on the rear suspension as the roads were smooth and the bike braked nicely and I had no need to try the brakes in anger...

 Veloce and Phil Irving patented their rear suspension efforts as was used on the Model O and an experimental MSS with rear suspension.

All too soon we turned into "Fellside Cottage" and my special ride on two historic machines was over...
 Tony Ainley and a friend, another racer, whose name regrettably I can't recall, called around with the friends racer on a trailer and the hope that we could shed some light on what they felt was a special front brake, perhaps even a works one. However neither Ivan nor I could recognise it and after a chat on Tony's efforts in the Classis 500 TT in the IOM this year during the MGP time...and Tony overcame his bogey and cracked the 90mph lap average...well it was in the 92 region all good stuff.... they left us to our devices..



Bidding goodbye to Bob Higgs a little earlier and Dennis Frost, off on his 3 hour trip down to London, I spent another hour or two in Ivan's workshop between my scanner and digital camera....
Ivan insisted I sign his visitors book...duly done...

Glancing around the wall I spied a pic with Les Archer on "Wiffling Clara..." at Brooklands in 1933.
The real Wiffling Clara lurked nearby.....


In need of a pee I was surprised to see the wooden cistern chamber with lead lining in it....

One of the projects now taking Ivan's time following his almost 9 year effort to restore the burnt racing Velocettes from the National Motorcycle Museum at Coventry was, after failing all efforts to acquire one of the three 1936 IOM TT DOHC Velocette cylinder heads and camboxs...all three have been in Australia since WW2.... he had the tooling made to reproduce a replica of one of these engines.....
We spent time examining the machined camboxes and cylinder heads and the cam train, which incidentally the gears in the cambox are on the same centres as the post war DOHC setups, of which Ivan has several. Well rather the postwar set are the same as the 1936 set!
Lets have a look at the original setup from 1936 from a factory photograph of the time...
Now to Ivan's efforts and Bob Higg's was heavily involved with this project and continues to be so....
So following a rather full day, Velocette wise, I retired to my hotel to review the day, run over my notes and added to a list of some items we felt we needed to discuss.
Ivan arranged to collect me the next morning for a Sunday session at "Fellside Cottage"....
Care to join us...?
See you on the next post.....
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A visit to "Fellside Cottage", the home of Ivan Rhodes...Mr Velocette to so many people worldwide...part 3

March 21, 2014, 7:16 am
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Well I thought I'd bring to a close the saga of my visit with Ivan Rhodes in September last year with the two previous posts covering much of what occurred.
For this post we'll spend more time pictorially, won't cover all the stuff I did, but perhaps a post-script post in the future to cover anything left....
The Velocette factory used large folio books to record the details of the motorcycles they built, with the invoiced date, model designation, engine, frame and prewar anyhow the gearbox number. The dealer/agent supplied to and sometimes this was Schoefield Goodman...unrelated to the Goodman family who owned Veloce Ltd, but who were a Birmingham forwarding agent that sent the bikes ordered to Australia, New Zealand etc.
If the name of the original owner was known, then it was often listed with their address.
So let's have a peek at a folio book from 1938...
An enlargement of the lower LH page which covers the MOV model in 1938....The dealer supplied to with the town they were in is visible.
The agreement between Veloce Ltd and Stanley Woods for the 1939 season...drawn up by local solicitors who still handled Veloce's work in the 1960's...
Interesting is the retainers, money wise that Stanley Woods commanded as a rider...
Stanley was to ride for Velocette in 1936...
His retainer with Vacuum oil in 1934 was £1500 for the year...

Velocette's original approach to Stanley Woods in June 1935 asking him to ride for them in 1936....
Ivan spent much time in the last years repairing and restoring where possible all the racing Velocettes badly damaged in the fire at the National Motorcycle museum...illustrated is the crankcases of one engine and the cylinder....
A factory 350 SOHC ,likely 1937 or 1938, racer.....Velocette 350 and 500s can easily be identified by counting the cylinder finds....10 for a 350 and 13 for a 500, although with this example the blue background of the racing number confirms it.


In a frame on the wall of Ivan’s workshop is the note from the Veloce Ltd liquidator informing employees that the main gates are locked and no vehicles allowed to move in or out…employees had to enter the works through the office entrance. The final demise of Velocette.
 1938 and 1939 works final drive sprockets were splined internally, rather than the usual Velocette crucifix type. Both 350 and 500 used this, although the 350 used the smaller primary chain type...1/2" x 5/16".
Interestingly the 500 used 1/2" x 3/8" rear chain as Norton did rather than the more usual 5/8" x 3/8" on their MSS roadsters.....
 The mainshafts were a bigger diameter than the previous racing gearboxes...1" diameter.
Another interesting fact is that the works cylinders had wider cylinder stud spacing and this was achieved by using eccentric crankcase studs...



Forged pistons prewar made by Hughes, Johnson of Oldesbury...

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Velocette and a re-eneactment, come revival of the 17 years of the Castrol 6 Hour production race at the Motorcycling Victoria's Broadford complex, some 70 km north of Melbourne

April 23, 2014, 12:53 am
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The Castrol 6 Hour race was an event in Australia that ran for 17 years from 1970 to 1987. It was a production machine race with very strict compliance rules which, to avoid hassles for the pre-race scrutineering, some entrants had a new out of the crate motorcycle sealed by the then ACU of NSW and raced it.....
The first event in 1970 saw a Triumph Bonneville 650 take the line honours with Len Atlee and Bryen Hindle the victors.
For the next event in 1971 I entered my 1967 Velocette Venom Thruxton  with co-rider ex international Dennis Fry and good friends, John Herrick as reserve rider and Jim Day, our pit crew.
I detailed the event in a previous 6 Hour race post....
So lets forward to this years Easter weekend....
Motorcycling Victoria has a 420 acre tract of land some 70km north of Melbourne, Victoria and Motorcycling Australia with sponsor Penrite Oils made "a celebration of The Castrol Six Hour, 1970-1987"the theme for the weekend open practices on all the circuits on the complex....
The complex has multiple circuits as mentioned, but the theme was centered around the road race circuit...
I took a partial panoramic view of part of the circuit....
There was a good representation of the many hundreds of bikes that entered the event over the 17 years as well as some of the riders of that time.... Joe Eastmure, won, well took the chequered flag first in a solo effort in 1972 on a 315cc Suzuki, only to be disqualified for having removed the horn from the bike....tough regulations! 
Len Atlee won the first event in 1970, Dave Hiscock from NZ, Graeme Crosby...Croz to many, from NZ. Bill Horseman from Adelaide South Australia and so on......
Yes DQ was there and while we couldn't get my original VMT458 Velocette which is still in Perth, Western Australia,John Jennings stepped up onto the plate and having engine number VMT457 Velocette Thruxton ( both his and my bike came out in the same crate to Burling and Simmonds the Sydney motorcycle dealer in Feb.1967) with the bike in a similar patina paint wise to mine of the time, a set of racing numbers to the colour and spec. for the 1971 supplementary regulations for the race, and his bike became my old race bike.....!
John Jennings VMT457
DQ aboard VMT458 during the 1971 event...

While there were no races on all the circuits, per se, open practice was on in various classes of motorcycles and in the road race area, from the 6 hour class; pre 1963; pre 1975;pre 1990; road bikes, novice;road bikes,intermediate.
Lots to see and so come with me on a photographic stroll through the areas around the pits and up to the fence on a section of the circuit for a look.....
Fancy a cup of coffee first? An enterprising local with a Yamaha and replica Dusting sidecar equipped as a coffee bar did a roaring trade all weekend...mind you he worked his butt off....

A racing 1954 Adler MB250, with owner, Otto Muller, head cut off by DQ, looking on....
 

Jeffery Richardson's mk.8 KTT slides off the starting rollers.... 

John Jennings slips out for some practice......

An old friend, Phil Vergison was also there with his camera and sent some pix along for me to utilise....

 
Joe Eastmure, to the right with his ( unsure about this...) 315cc Suzuki, 
 1972 6 hour bike....
 Joe out on the Suzuki with #9 Jim Scaysbrook on the former Hailwood/Scaysbrook Ducati entry from the 1977 event.

The Carbury.... a home made V twin royal Enfield....
JJ brought along his little racing MAC Velocette...
Nic-named "Li'l speedy".....
So how did DQ and crew get to Broadford....?
Well my C4 Citroen trailered down my 1960 Venom and Jim Day's 1965 Venom Clubman....with Peter Underwood riding his 1960 Venom the 750 km from Sydney and back...a sort of "running in"...we had Ben Wolven trailering his Norton Interstate with us...
Pictured is Jim Day, front with Peter Underwood having a well deserved 
"cuppa".
So we'll finish off with some pics of Mitch over from Western Australia for the event having a run on #34 while Tony Keene and John Jennings prepare to load VMT457 for the trip home...

Thanks John....VMT457 was a worthy replica for my old warhorse VMT458....long gone.
 But I've still got the crashed silencer from the 1971 race...


Ouch....!


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Jimmy Guthrie...the Norton "Star" of the 1930's until his untimely death in the German GP, 8th August 1937...

May 11, 2014, 7:52 pm
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I don't intend this to be a life history of the Jimmy Guthrie, others have perhaps covered this elsewhere, rather it's a potted look at his racing in photographs I have in my archive from a variety of sources and for who I acknowledge copyright if it still exists.
His racing career in the IOM TT spanned from 1923 when he retired on a Junior Matchless to 1937 when he won the Junior TT and retired in the Senior TT.....riding in 24 TT races in all.
He ran a business in Hawick, Scotland in the 1930's.....
Some of the following photographs come from correspondence with Guthrie and Allen Schafer of Grafton, NSW...
Whilst he was always associated with the Norton Racing Team, in the 1930 Lwt. IOM TT he rode an AJS, winning the event....he pictured to the left.
#20, starting the 1933 IOM Junior TT on a Norton...Guthrie finished 3rd.
#2, starting the 1934 Junior IOM TT race which he won.


At the 1934 French GP at Dieppe.
 
Sometime in 1935 and unsure where...Jim Guthrie, Stanley Woods and "Crasher" White .




#16 Jim Guthrie, Norton at the start of the 1935 Junior Swiss GP and during the race.#9 is Walter Rusk, also on a 350 Norton.
1935,1 hour record breaking Norton of Jimmy Guthrie, 114.092mph.

1935 during the Dutch TT at Assen.


 
At the start and during the 1936 Swiss GP.... #14 J.Guthrie,#18 H.Fleischmann NSU,#2 F.Kammer NSU.
During the 1936 Belgium GP at the Circuit de Floreffe on his 500 Norton, winning the race.
 After winning the 1936 Senior IOM TT.
 The winning 1936 Norton team.
 
Some of the work of the illustrator, Jock Leydon.



Guthrie at the 1937 IOM TT races...
 
In the pits of the fateful German GP of 1937, Sunday 8th...Stanley Woods wife Mildred, Jim Guthrie and Freddie Frith...perhaps the last photo of Guthrie before his untimely death during the race. There are conflicting reports of what happened, so I won't make comment here....
Condolence letter from Norton Motors to Allen Schafer.

Condolence photographs from Norton Motors with the text on the back.
The Guthrie Memorial on the TT course.


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The Roarer re-created...Dan Smith in Vancouver, B.C.,Canada builds a second Velocette Roarer from scratch and The Velobanjogent called in for a "photographic look"...

June 7, 2014, 12:21 am
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In late March this year during a rather lightning visit to the USA to interview Hedley Cox the last remaining member of the post war Velocette racing team... he was a race mechanic...and this story is for a future post, shortly.....I was in Canada visiting my son-in-laws family and good friends, The Muehlings who live in Surrey on the outskirts of Vancouver. Win Muehling suggested we call in briefly to see Dan Smith the recreater of amongst other things a prewar Vincent series A twin and an prototype AJS V4 cylinder prewar machine....his latest effort is to recreate the one off Velocette Roarer 499cc twin racer of 1939. Initially it was the engine which was displayed at a motorcycle show in Vancouver a little while back but which is now the complete machine as you'll see by my photos...
But first a look at the Roarer made at Veloce in 1938/39, a creation of Charles Udall a then designer at Velocette.
 At Veloce, just before the 1939 IOM TT, Percy Goodman, Tommy Mutton and Chris Lomar work on assembling the Roarer...

The finished machine was taken to the 1939 IOM TT races but despite one lap at a relatively slow speed it was never raced and WW2 finished racing for some 6 years and following the resumption in the later 1940's the FIM ban on supercharging meant the Roarer was mothballed.
Veloce must have been confident as they had entered it in the 1939 Senior IOM TT race....it was a listed as a 499cc Velocette, whereas the normal single cylinder 500 racers were 495cc...see the program..

It languished at Velocette for years before being cleaned up and the internals removed to lighten the machine for moving around and appeared at motorcycle shows in 1956. The internals of the engine were stored under a bench in the race shop in a cardboard box and unknowingly a family or mice or rats made their home in it and the urine from them rusted the parts beyond further use....
Following Veloce's demise in early 1971, the Roarer was exchanged in a deal with John Griffith who ran Stanford Hall and on his tragic death in a high speed car accident ( not his fault) on the M1 in the early 1970's, passed into the hands of Vintage MCC  luminary "Titch" Allen. 
Prior to "Titch's" death Ivan Rhodes acquired the bike and started the long restoration, made more difficult by the loss of all the engine internals which were made from scratch by Ivan's son Graham.
The finished machine is a credit to the Rhodes family and has been displayed as far away as New Zealand and Australia.
The partially completed Roarer in the race shop in 1939.
The Roarer engine on the way to the test house for running in or power testing on the special dynomometer installed for it.
Tommy Mutton centre.
Stanley Woods on the Roarer at the 1939 IOM TT...
The Dutch Velocette Owners Club Committee visited the UK in 2008 for the UK Velo Club's AGM and then later visited Ivan Rhodes at "Fellside Cottage"....President Carl Drees is pictured with the Roarer as it was then...the photo below shows other members of the Dutch VOC with the bike....
But now on to DQs visit to Dan Smith's workshop for a look at his latest project and the finished Roarer engine...built from drawings made by Dan from photographs, exploded views in motorcycle magazines and help from Ivan Rhodes....Dan had all but finished the frame and wheels for his completed machine and as I write this I wonder how long before the engine fires up and he rides the bike...?


What an effort and a great job...congratulation's Dan....

Finally a photo of Ivan Rhodes with his 1939 original, taken in Australia when the roarer was part of the NZ Classic meeting at Pukekohe in the 1990's, featuring the three major supercharged machines of the era.... The Velocette Roarer, The John surtees owned ex. Schorsh Meier 1939 TT winning BMW and Sammy Miller's AJS V4.
And a Leyden cartoon of the 1939 era depicting the politicised situation in Europe at the time with WW2 imminent.

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A Pictorial look at the 1976 Castrol 6 Hour Production race..held at Amaroo Park Raceway on the northern outskirts of Sydney...

June 30, 2014, 7:40 am
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I've always been a rather keen photographer, especially in my earlier days for black and white images and some of my early work was done with Voigtlander Bessamatic M cameras,  Zeizz Ikon Icarex cameras, Leica M3 camera... all 35mm format as well as a Mamiya C3 2¼” square 120 format camera.
I used mostly Ilford FP3  125ASA B &W film, developing it myself and utilised a Durst enlarger with Schneider lenses for printing photos on Ilford paper.
I have some some years back converted to Canon digital SLRs, progressing through EOS350, EOS450, EOS550 to my current EOS6D. 
Enough of this technical stuff....
Many of the film rolls I shot were cut into strips and filed into envelopes for later printing but for some reason this didn't always occur and recently looking through my negative collection I've come across the unprinted ones...
Using a Microtek 1000XL larger format scanner with negative capability and software I quite like, the images have finally "come to life"...
In the early 1970's I rode BMW motorcycles and a friend, John Galvin who was the Metzeler tyre importer to Australia became involved in the Castrol 6 Hour production machine race. A race for standard and I emphasis standard motorcycles...little in the way of modifications were allowed. I rode in the 1971 event on my 1967 Velocette Venom Thruxton 500.
People from the NSW BMW distributor, Tom Byrne, Don Bain in particular who I knew from my interest in Velocette and it's earlier successes in Australian racing from 1930-1955 when he was a  champion rider, asked me to lap score for them in the event.
So let's look at my "photographic involvement" in the 1976 event. One which carried the hopes of some of the major motorcycle distributors in Australia...as this list from Jim Scaysbrook's excellent book on the race series from 1970-1987 shows....

 

The practice period for the event is in the week leading up to the race on the Sunday. Riders mill around awaiting a practice session to start...

Joe Eastmure and Dave Burgess on their R90S #8
 Murray Sayle, Bryan Hindle (back to camera) Greg Hansford and Helmut Dahne.
 
Preparing for the Le Mans start....
 
The start sequence....
Tony Hatton #2 BMW R90S and Roger Heyes #3 Team Avon Z1-B Kawasaki
The first two hour stint over, the Hatton/Blake R90S refuels....
Team Avon had  to refuel every 1.5 hours, 4 stops to the BMW teams two stops....
Team Avon had practiced the refuelling stops and they did their stop to take off in 6.5 seconds...you read it right...!
As shown in an earlier post of the tyre war between Metzeler and Avon, the Avon on the 4 cylinder Z1-B 900 Kawasaki was marginal to last the distance...they had to be able to get out of the pits after their last refuelling stop avoiding being ordered to change the tyre, a certain loss of the race.
Their last refuelling stop caught the chief scrutineer, Chris Peckham, off guard and he's pictured rushing up to look at the rear tyre, but they got out before he could see the tyre and below shows the tyre or what remains of it after the race....!
The results of the 1976 Castrol 6 Hour race from page 103 of Jim Scaysbrook's excellent book of the race's history 1970-1987 and also from Jim's book, p.92, the poster by artist Alan Puckett depicting the winning tactic for the race that year by team Avon...the 6.5 second fuel stops.....
 
The cover of Jim Scaysbrook's excellent book.....



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The Velocette Factory....... looking through some Veloce Ltd. and other sources photographs......

July 29, 2014, 5:44 am
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As I've said in the several previous posts (1), (2)(3) I've done on Velocette publicity photographs, I often acquire more, many from different sources....
Veloce Ltd of course manufactured the Velocette motorcycle....
Lets have a brief look at the factory at York Road,Hall Green in Birmingham they occupied from around 1927 and some earlier factory pics in the 1920's.
Originally it was the old Humphrey and Dawes works in which OK Supreme motorcycles were made.
Following the success of the K engine in the 1926 IOM Junior TT, demand increased for Velocette motorcycles and a decision was made to expand and thus the purchase of the Hall Green factory occured.
Veloce Ltd remained in this site until their closure in February 1971.
Veloce Ltd were in several premises prior to Hall Green....
The following is not a complete list year wise, but a guide...
In 1905 Veloce Ltd was in Gisolt Passage, Spring Hill, Birmingham
In 1913 Veloce Ltd was in Fleet St., Birmingham 
1920 Catalogues show Veloce Ltd in Victoria Rd., Six Ways, Aston in Birmingham.
Then by 1927 Veloce Ltd was in York Rd., Hall Green, Birmingham

So I'm not always sure of their origin, but there is a good chance they came from "The MotorCycle" and "MotorCycling" , the copyright of which is now held by Morton's Motorcycle Media in the UK and to who I acknowledge credit if applicable.
Some are from Titch Allen's "The Velocette Saga", published originally over 16 editions of the monthly magazine "MotorCycle Sport"from Jan.1969 to April 1970, then as a hardback book under the same name in 1994. Others are from the Burgess & Clew book "Always in the Picture", first published 1971. Then of course Ivan Rhodes, "Velocette...Technical Excellence Exemplified", first published 1990.
Mick Walker's "Velocette, production motorcycles" publishes 2006; George Beresford's "The Story of the Velocette", published 1949 and Len Moseley's "My Velocette Days", published 1974.
Dai Gibberson came over for the 2012 National Velocette Rally at Bundanoon, NSW in October and we shared files.
Some of these are from his sources....thanks Dai.
So lets have a look at the Velocette Factory over the years...



 
Hall Green works.......

Around 1939, Stanley Woods opens the next test house .
Tommy Mutton in the new test house with a mk.8 KTT engine on test.

Drilling LE crankcases and above photo setting up LE conrods for machining.Welding the box section LE frame in a jig.
Must have been cold in winter in the works....
Peter Goodman, to the right, with the last LE off the production line at liquidation of Veloce Ltd.
After liquidation in Feb. 1971, the Veloce Ltd sign is now gone....

The remains of Veloce Ltd, a one proud manufacturer of Velocette motorcycles, 14.06.1972....

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A look at trade advertisements in the August 1935 copy of "Motor Cycling in NSW".....this monthly magazine was sold in Australia from 1933 until 1938 when it was incorporated into "The Australian Motor Cyclist".....

September 2, 2014, 3:51 am
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Trade motorcycle advertisements in motorcycling magazines give a fascinating look at what was sold to the general motorcycle enthusiast.
The magazine I've chosen for this...for no obvious reason...is the August 1935 copy of "Motor Cycling in NSW", taken from my archive....
Little comment is needed from me other than to remind you it was an Australian magazine, but British  and American Motorcycles were supreme at the time.


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Photos from the archive of Ross Slaughter on his father, Les Slaughter, a well known Australian racer on Velocettes....

September 29, 2014, 12:20 am
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Les Slaughter was a well know name just prewar with racing Velocettes in Australia up to his untimely death in the 1956 Ampol Trial in an MG TF.....
Les, left with Bill Mayes on the promenade of Bondi Beach in Sydney with his MGTF just prior to the start of the 1956 Ampol Trial.
Sadly the car rolled on a bridge and they ended upside down in a creek, with little water, but with no help they both drowned...a terrible ending for men intimately involved with the motor trade in Sydney.Les was a foreman at P & R Williams the NSW Velocette distributors then later involved with BMC cars...
His son, Ross, has kindly helped with copies of his father's photo archive and they are of great interest and I'll run several posts to cover them....
As well as road racing Velocette's, Les scrambled and hill climbed BSAs and was involved prewar with Penrith Speedway west of Sydney.
So lets have a look at some of Les's pics from just prewar up into late 1940's..


 Looks like Les on an OHC Norton and on the Old Vale Circuit at Bathurst which was last used in 1937...

1939, Les on a BSA at the Mt.Nebo Hill Climb near Wollongong, south of Sydney.


Three pics of Les on a 2000 mile economy run in 1940.....
 Les on his 500 Goldie at Bathurst entering conrod straight.... Senior race 1940.


The 1946 NSW Victory TT at Bathurst, Easter 1946....Les on a Mk.7 KTT Velocette.
 
 Bathurst 1947, Les,#8  Mk.7 KTT chases #94 W.Hedley, Norton....
Probably late 1940's, but unsure where...Les to the right, Alan Burt with a MAC scrambler of sorts and beside him, Jack Humphries...


 The ladies, pit crew...urge on #24 Les Slaughter and #8 D.Nichlos at the Poplars circuit, 05.03.1949.

Les on the dirt, unsure when or where....

Geoff Duke was in Australia in early 1956, during the European racing off season.....
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The A.T. instrument..Speedometer, Tachometer and Smiths A.T. instruments....

November 6, 2014, 4:08 am
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Sometime in 2009 I did a post on the Smiths racing tachometer, the ATRC tachometer, badged Smiths and coded ATRCxxxx...
It has generated interest over the intervening years and I've manufactured a few more as a result of the post.
so lets have another look at this instrument that carries this A.T coding...
They are characterised by the pointer rotating through a slot in the instrument dial with the pointer blade sweeping the surface of the dial rather than from completely above it as in other speedometers made by smiths and other manufacturers.
The A.T Speedometer Company Ltd of 140 Long Acre, London WC was advertising in "Flight" magazine in July 1915 so they are one of the originals in automotive,motorcycle and aviation instrumentation....
Sometime around 1927-1930 Smiths Motor Accessories acquired the firm and they were manufactured in Chronos Works, North Circular Road, London N.W.2...
Their speedometers had been in Rolls Royce cars since the 1920's and in Bentley cars from 1933....
Lets have a peruse of a 1934 A.T. catalogue to view the items they made.
In the early 1950's Smiths responded to the demand for a racing tachometer without the inherent lag of the chronometric principled tachometer and introduced the ATRC version....see my 2009 post on this.


Following are examples of car and lorry dashboards from around 1955 which utilise the A.T. versions Smiths made.



 
Smiths AT speedometer from a Leyland bus....
During 1964,1965 Smiths made industrial versions of the A.T. Tachometer available also....
As mentioned I did a posting in 2009 and this discusses the principle of operation of the A.T instrument and is useful to assist....
Finally, Smiths made hand held industrial tachometers to measure rotating shaft speeds etc and these of the A.T principle.....
They often had multiple scales altered by a knob on the case....





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The Velocette Venom Thruxton...a photographic history of my old Velocette Thruxton, engine number VMT458, bought new in Feb.1967......

December 7, 2014, 2:05 am
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The Velocette Venom Thuxton...when announced in the motorcycle press in late 1964 and introduced in the 1965 season I was interested. Then when with two friends we rode to the Kangaroo Rally held in Burrumbeet Park, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia in early 1966 I first viewed two of these new model from Velocette...a naked and a faired model.

I owned a 1961 Venom at the time and later in the year sold it to finance a new VMT, with a A$360 deposit to a Sydney motorcycle business, Burling and Simmons in Auburn...known as "Burglar and Simmons"....
Due in mid January 1967, it was 23rd February 1967, a Friday from memory when I went to "burglars" to collect it..arriving early, no one had ridden it and so I rode it to the nearby Dept. of Motor Transport and it  became street legal... The total cost was A$990 plus the registration.
Norm "Burglar Norm" Simmons came over and suggested I pay them an addition A$50 for the tachometer which was "an extra"....I produced a catalogue and without a word he turned on his heel and strode off....
Nice try.....
In my rear year at 28 Astoria Circuit....
October 1967 in the Snowy Mountains area of NSW at our regular motorcycle meeting at Dalgety...

Sometime in 1968 having been invited to a friends wedding in New Zealand, we shipped VMT458 to Wellington and flew in, my then girlfriend, later wife, Judy and I with friend Jim Day and his 1956 MSS.
Pictured in the south Island of NZ at the start of the Homer Tunnel.
 Large handlebars and saddle bags were fitted in anticipation of the dirt/loose metal roads in NZ.......
 
Early in January 1969 Jim and I decided to ride across Australia to Perth and back for our annual Holidays....
Strange as the attraction to Western Australia has seen VMT458 "settle there" from sometime in the later 1980s and it is still there having passed through several owners...
 There was some 1400 km of earth/gravel/clay road in the 4500 km to get there at that time and in a tropical downpour on the clay section progress forward became impossible and I had to remove the front mudguard....
Come 1970, Willoughby DMCC introduced the Castrol 6 Hour Race for production motorcycles and in 1971 I decided to enter VMT458 in the 500cc class....
During the several days practice period before the race....
At the start....
 #34 still on the line. The noise was tremendous and it was hard to know if the engine had started...of course later I thought "why didn't I look at the tachometer"...
 I rode the first 2 hours and we were mid field in the 500 class when I handed over to Dennis Fry....
Dennis Fry had ridden for 4 years in the IOM TT on Manx Nortons and his lap times came quickly down and he was lapping a second a lap faster than me..I had hopes for a higher finishing position....
Then in the 4th hour Dennis crashed out and the bike was wrecked, end over ending several times, collapsing the back wheel and silencer and we subsequently found a bent frame...Dennis was carted off to hospital...
For some reason I have no photos of this time and on until having straightened the frame, enamelled most items but not assembled it I succombed to an offer of A$2000 from Tony Keene.
I only have the bent silencer as a reminder....
 Tony completed the restoration/repair and it appeared at the 1982 Australian Velocette OC National Rally at Bundanoon, NSW where I was re-united with it and went for a ride....
Tony at the 1986 Australian Velocette OC National Rally on VMT458...
Shortly after it was sold on to Perth Western Australia, possible Sid East buying it or at least he was an owner soon after...
Pictured in Perth with the bike that came in the crate with it to Burlo's...VMT457, shown in the foreground, which has been owned by John Jennings from the mid 1970's...
 VMT458 was in WA until 2012 when it came across to Bundanoon for the Australian Velocette OC Annual Rally, the 30th rally held since the first..."the back to Bundanoon Rally".. with current owner Richard Blackman.....
During one evening we had a re acquaintance of VMT458 with myself and Dennis Fry in an interview with John Jennings before all the Rally entrants...
As well four of the five owners of VMT458 were present....
 At Easter 2014 at the Motorcycling Australia circuit at Broadford in Victoria the theme was the Castrol 6 Hour Race...
Unfortunately VMT458 wasn't available to be at the event, so speaking with John Jennings he agreed to make up his partner VMT...VMT457 to look somewhat like VMT458 in its race guise....
John Jennings did the honours on the circuit , myself having long ago "hung up my leathers"....photo credit SD pics website

 And finally in October 2014 at the Australian Velocette OC National Rally in Wirrina Cove, South Australia, Richard Blackman again brought VMT458 to the Rally...currently it has 54567 miles on the speedometer...from memory I sold it to Tony Keene with some 30000 odd miles on the clock...
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Christmas 2014....The Velobanjogent is off playing banjo for a week at the 69th Australian Jazz Convention...

December 20, 2014, 5:49 pm
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This time of the year, between Christmas and the New Year sees the Australian Jazz Convention held in a different city/town across Australia...this is the 69th, having started just after WW2 in 1945 in Melbourne Victoria....
Its in Swan Hill on the Murray River, the border of NSW and Victoria....
I'm taking several 4 string plectrum type banjos, Vegavoxes and an unusual 4 string plectrum guitar utilising a Vegavox banjo neck....
With 1 bands to play in I'll be busy...
 All plectrum banjos....DQ...The Velobanjogent, centre with Peter Allen, left both on Vegavoxes and Paul Baker, right on a D'Oole vox style resonator banjo.
So...thanks for stopping by to look at my site throughout the past year, a Merry Christmas to yourself and family and a Happy New Year for 2015 when I hope to have you drop by to see some of my motorcycle, especially Velocette, offerings.....
                               DQ on a Velocette/Vincent Rally in NSW, 2013....

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Alan Burt,a motorcyclist all his life...never married, some said he was wed to Velocette and AJS..... A racers racer was an apt description....passed away in January 2009. I found a small box with some more of his racing photos from the IOM and Europe....likely 1955

January 22, 2015, 4:44 pm
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I'd like to share some more of Alan Burt's life with you... with some words and with some of his photographs....I've done several posts on him previously and a search using his name on my site will bring them up.
He was a motorcyclist all his life...never married, some said he was wed to Velocette and AJS.....
A racers racer was an apt description....
Recently I came across a small box of photos with his stuff that somehow I'd overlooked.
I feel they were taken in either 1955 or 1956, perhaps 1956 as he crashed badly in the IOM at TT practice with leg breaks that saw him hospitalised there and in rehabilitation until February 1956 when his great mate Bob Brown collected him and on crutches he was Bob's mechanic for the 1956 racing season.
The photos are unlabeled so I'll post them as they are, with a valid comment if I know it...
There are photos of various locations around the IOM TT course and I guess it was on a learning lap of the circuit...thanks to Bill Snelling of Foto Finders in the IOM for assistance in identifying the corners...
poss 1955, Balacraine Hotel, IOM TT course
 poss 1955, Douglas Rd corner, Kirk Michael, IOM TT course
 poss 1955, Glen Helen Hotel, IOM TT course
 poss 1955, Original Halfway House Hotel, IOM TT course
 The "MotorCycling" sign on the circuit overbridge indicates its a UK race meeting.
Loading bike transporters and their "caravans"....
L to R...Bob Brown, unsure, unsure, Eric Hinton
Bob and Alan outside the NSU works near Stuttgart...
Looks like "road-side repairs" somewhere in Europe...Bob into the engine...
More repairs by Bob.....
Unsure where...picket fence...IOM TT?..Keith and Gwen Bryen and Bob Brown..unsure of the other chap.
Easier transport in the UK...Bob Brown with car and trailer and AMC raceware...

More photos in a future post......
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The Jones mechanical Tachometer...one of the last maximum hand tachometers still around.....all the service and calibration info from the factory....part 1.

March 4, 2015, 5:29 am
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As some of you will have realised, perusing my weblog, The Velobanjogent was in the automotive, more specifically the motorcycle instrument business for over 30 years and during this time worked on just about all the various speedometers and tachometers that were used on vehicles.
I've done numerous posts on them from my personal memory and large archive of literature and photographs of automotive instruments....
I can't take them with me "when I leave this mortal coil" so I get great pleasure in sharing as much as I can....
What have I this time...?
The Jones Instrument Corporation in Stamford, Connecticut,USA were making speedometers from the start of the 20th century....
Pretty poor condition 1910 Jones speedometer....
Advert from the English "The Motorcycle" magazine, November 1908...

In 1986 I made a visit to Jones Corpn. in Stamford, CT after struggling with the repair and calibration of the racing tachometers I occasionally had pass through my instrument shop....so I was unsure what to expect when I went there, flying across the Pacific and the USA to visit them...they were more than helpful, no speedometer parts left and not prepared to sell parts for the maximum hand racing tachometers they still made, but quite happy to provide me with catalogues and the service/calibration sheets for these tachos....
Lets look for a start at a some catalogues from around the late 1960s
and 1980s....
Because of the number of pages in the repair/calibration manual I'll feature it in my next blog which as I'm off to Europe for 18days from the 21st March on another Velocette historical/archival foray will be mid April.....
The Velobanjogent is meeting up with some Velo friends in Germany and Holland and Dai Gibbison in the UK....
Pictured is myself with the guys with Gert Boll's rare mk.6 KTT Velocette in August 2013...
Gert, Carl,DQ,Heinz.....
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The Jones mechanical Tachometer...one of the last maximum hand tachometers still around...part 2, calibration info from the factory....

April 27, 2015, 6:11 pm
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As mentioned in the previous post on Jones  tachometers this second post contains the calibration instruction for the Jones centrifugal mechanical tachometerand completes the information I have on them.
They differ from the Smiths centrifugal speedometer and tachometer in the method of calibration and is more precise as a result. The Smiths instrument had a dial scale which was not linear whereas the Jones is linear. This meant the Smiths instrument had a series of different dial scales available as part of the calibration method, some seven different dial for their 60mph speedo for example...I will do a post on the Smiths centrifugal/governor speedometer in a future post...
Service Instructions for the Jones Motrola 5100-5200 series speedometer and tachometer..




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Jack Emmott's Book of Engines, The AJS 7R, Matchless G50 & G45.....

May 10, 2015, 10:30 pm
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Back in 1964 Jack Emmott ran a business in the UK that serviced racing motorcycle engines, especially the AJS 7R, Matchless G45 and G50 and he published a little blue cover book on the servicing of them....
I've scanned it for you and feel free to download all or part of it....
The sectioned photos above are from "MotorCycle" or"MotorCycling"...

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The dynamometers at Velocette......

June 29, 2015, 5:03 am
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The dynamometers at Veloce Ltd. 
With thanks to Hedley Cox and Dai Gibberson.


Over the years I've researched the dynamometers used at Veloce for the testing of their Velocette engines. 
They never had a rolling road type dyno so power at the rear wheel was never tested. 
Much of the information we have for certain comes from after 1938 when Velocette built a new test house. 
It is pictured, below when opened by Stanley Woods the factories then senior contracted road racer.. 


Pictured is Stanley woods, with wife Mildred by his side and the giant key for publicity. In the white lab. coat is Harold Willis the race team chief and development engineer, sadly to die a year later. The managing director, Percy Goodman's head is just visible over Stanley's shoulder.
 Following the opening of the new test house, the camera moved inside for a pic of Stanley "operating" the throttle of the dynamometer with a factory 350cc SOHC race engine on test. Harold Willis and Percy Goodman look on.
I've formed the opinion that there was only one dynamometer at Veloce before the new test house which when opened contained three. This early Hennan and Froude dyno had a calibration factor of 5500. The comment below is from 1930 and is by Phil Irving in his autobiography, p.160.



 Phil Irving's Autobiography is a mine of information on what happened at Veloce 1930-1943.... regretably the costs of his out of print book today on Amazon and others is in the $1000 range...perhaps a good library may have one to peruse...
The other two dynos installed  in 1938 were new Heenan and Froude DPX2 dynamometers with a calibration factor of 4500.
What does this calibration factor mean?
These Heenan and Froude dynos were called “water brakes” and utilised hydraulic principles with the power developed by an engine on test being measured in the pull on a spring gauge of pounds (lbs).
So the dyno operator..at Veloce, Tommy Mutton, Frank Panes, Hedley Cox,Freddie Owen, Jack Passant etc…would record pull of the dyno in lbs at a given engine rpm and record the barometric pressure and temperature in the room, which was assumed to be the induction air temperature.
This was recorded in a small notebook and occasionally it would show the uncorrected bhp, that is, not corrected for the air temp. and barometric pressure of the day.
The formula was….

uncorrected bhp = rpm x pull in lbs
                                                dyno constant

 As mentioned, early on 5500 then from 1938 on the new dynos, 4500.
an example for say 1939 at Veloce for a factory 500 is....
uncorrected bhp =6250 x 34.6
                                                   4500
                                         =48bhp
Sectioned 1939 Heenan and Froude DPX2 dynamometer


When Heenan and Froude introduced the DPX2 dyno and Veloce bought two for the new test house, the constant was 4500. The new dynos were called the “centre bench” and it was used for the testing of the works racers and the model KTT, the other was specially setup for the new Roarer engine under construction and pictured elsewhere in this post. The old 5500 dyno was called the “end bench”.

Following WW2 in 1949 the “end bench” was replaced by a new DPX2 dyno by Hedley Cox and the old “end bench” scrapped. 
Up to then following the war the “end bench” had been used for running in new mk.8 KTT engines.

During WW2 Phil Irving used this bench to test special MAC and MSS engines for military use.
 The Roarer engine on the test bench during 1939.
The Roarer engine on the way to the test house during early 1939.
Final construction of the Roarer in time to send over to the 1939 IOM TT where it only completed one lap in practice and was replaced by the normal factory 495cc SOHC  racer. Pictured is, left Percy Goodman, Tommy Mutton on the bike and either Harry Thorne or Chris Lomas.
Tommy Mutton about to start a test of a mk.8 KTT engine on the centre bench  in 1939. The mk.8 KTT engines started at engine nos. KTT801


Tests conducted by Phil Irving in 1940 on 495cc MSS engines for coming  military trials, using the older end bench with the 5500 constant.Details from PEI's notebooks of the time.

Following WW2, racing recommenced in 1946 and Velocette re-introduced their prewar factory racers and continued with the mk.8 KTT, which commence with engine number KTT901
Tommy Mutton continued as the senior race mechanic until around 1948 when following disagreements with Charles Udall, then the development engineer he asked to be transferred to another section of the factory. 
He is pictured below in 1947 with Chas. Udall and a factory SOHC 350 on test on the centre bench.
In 1948 Hedley Cox joined Velocette as a race mechanic and details from his lastest book "A Guide to Motorcycle Racing" published in June 2015, p.19,20 the setup in the Test House at that time....
During 1949 the old end bench which Hedley described as worn out and which had only been used to run in mk.8 KTT engines assembled by himself, Frank Panes and Freddie Owen was dismantled by Hedley and replaced by a new Heenan and Froude DPX2 dynamometer...
Very similar to the prewar design....pictured is a 1960 version.

Following Frank Panes leaving Veloce for New Zealand and Hedley Cox's sacking by Bertie Goodman in 1952, Freddie Owens and a new man, Jack Passant were responsible for the last gasps of the Velocette race effort and the cessation of production of the mk.8 KTT.
Jack Owens went on to become the Development engineer up to the factories liquidation and closure in February 1971.
During this time he further developed the MSS and the Venom and was responsible for the  Venom Thruxton engine.
 Veloce supplied several to teams in the 1967 IOM TT 500cc Production machine race, won by Neil Kelly on a machine entered by the London dealers L.J. Stevens.
A Venom on the centre bench starting a test...
Jack Passant with a Venom Thruxton engine on test
The special VMT engine returned to Velocette after its win in the 1967 500cc class of the production machine race...Jack had it on the test bench....Unsure why there is no reading for 6200rpm, but the uncorrected bhp at 6000rpm is 40bhp.
Neil Kelly winning the 1967 500cc class of the IOM production TT...photo courtesy of Bill Snelling, TT fotofinders.


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Photos from the past...Jim Day's been a close friend of mine since the mid 1950's, a great Velocette man, so lets have a look at an early photo album of his...

August 11, 2013, 3:38 am
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Jim Day has been a close friend of mine since around 1956 when his family moved to a house next to where I lived in Maroubra, NSW- he's what I call my closest friend after my wife Judy.....





And he is the typical motorcyclist and well a super enthusiast for motorcycling.... no matter where he rides if another motorcyclist passes in the opposite direction, Jim gives an acknowledging wave.....
Six years older than me, we've ridden many miles together.... he survived a couple of horrendous crashes but there is a lot of time and miles between them...
The last and from which he is still recovering, saw him helicoptered to a hospital when he spent 5 weeks recovering...
But this post, likely one of several on Jim is related to his beginning days of motorcycling...via photos from one of his personal albums....
 Jim's first bike in around 1956....then "he saw the light" as he mentioned and bought a 1948 Velocette MSS...rego number, NSW...ZZ-84
He joined Bankstown-Wiley Park MCC and weekend rides with other Club members followed and longer trip on his annual vacations....


On a Club rune...."derbying with the boys"....
In Feb.1958 he and a friend rode south to Melbourne and shipped their bikes over to Tasmania for their annual work holidays...no roll-on-rool off ferries then, the bikes were craned on in slings...




 Photo below  is titled..."at the end of the earth"...Corinna, Tasmania.


In 1958 he bought a 1956 Velocette MSS from a South Australian truck driver and it was registered in NSW as AX-400....and Jim still has the bike and it has now over 140,000 miles on the speedo....

 
He seemed a bit prone to rear wheel punctures ....
 Lets slip forward to 1966, this is one of my pics....mid summer in Australia, far west NSW, earth road for hundreds of miles and Jim punctured the rear tyre of AX-400 again... pretty hot 115oF in the shade that day....

 Back to Jim's pics...


Jim Abbott from Arizona, USA commented below on his admiration for Jim as a motorcyclist and was resigned to be unable to attach a pic of Jim from the 2012 Velocette OC of North America's Annual Rally and Ride...
But help is at hand....
Emailing me the pic, I've included it below...
 
Jim titled it...
"Jim Day, as good as it gets....."
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W.F. Omodei Pty Ltd, the motorcycle accessory business in Sydney that I featured items previously from their counter data books , lets follow some other motorcycle brands items in those books..... Triumph, Royal Enfield, Panther,AJS....

September 6, 2013, 7:06 pm
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I previously mentioned in the earlier posts, that I've most of the trade catalogues and literature items from W.F.Omodei Pty.,Ltd, a Sydney Motorcycle accessory house from the 1920's up until the 1990's, including the fascinating made up data books for the counter staff to ascertain products in stock for the major motorcycle brands from the 1930's...
  We've featured Velocette, Norton, Ariel  and some accessory stuff...
This time it is some other brands.
I notice that Reg Hardy who was the manager of Omodeis for such a long time up until its closure had cut up catalogues for 1938, 1939 to add to his data book....



 A "Greeneco"petrol pipe catalogue with details for Velocette.....
 
The flyleaf to the counter book......
 


AJS Motorcycles.....

Panther.....

Royal Enfield......
Triumph 500 Speed Twin....

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