Manky Monkey Motors

The Brooklands Section of the VMCC holds an annual autojumble. Its part jumble, part social and is a good excuse for a number of folk to turn up on some really old interesting bikes.

First pic is a flat-tank, side-valve, hand-change, girder-forked BSA bobber

This is a super rare Austin 7 powered Brough Superior with sidecar from the early 1930's.

The machine has a double back-wheel arrangement (I'm not aware of any other road motorcycle with this arrangement). There's a reverse gear too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brough_Superior_Austin_Four

The chap who owns it bought it in the 60's when it cost pretty much the same as any other old bike, but the values of Broughs have risen to extremes! (just do an internet search, we're talking the value of a house!!)

The Brough from the rear

A lovely sounding twin-port AJS

An original oily-rag 1926 AJS flat tanker.

This bike had a lot of folk drooling over it as it was soooo original. It sounded good too.

With today's driver aids (in cars), you know, where it'll park itself, turn on the wipers for you, tell you which lane to be in, switch the lights on for you, it nice to find a machine where it makes the person driving it be involved and make decisions.

Check out the number of levers on the rider's LHS handlebar.........

There's the clutch, but this bike also has a foot-operated lever so the rider can choos which to use

There's the de-compressor, to assist in starting the engine as also for stopping the engine

Then there's a lever for the second oil feed.
The main oil feed is mechanical from the engine and is fine for normal riding conditions, but when extra load is demanded from say a steep hill, extra oiling is required (which the mechanical pump can't supply), so the lever basically raises a metal syringe plunger which then drops under gravity to supply that extra bit of oil.
Many bike of this era had a similar arrangement, some are hand operated and can be seen mounted on the 'fuel' tank. (The 'fuel-tank' was often two tanks in one, fuel one side, oil the other)

Riding really was a skill back then wasn't it. Nice.

Still is if you ever ride one of these nowadays.......  ;D  Gives you a real sense of achievement - varying the air-mix by hand and timing by hand to suit the load/road conditions - trying to carry out smooth gear changing when the left hand is operating the clutch and the right hand is adjusting the throttle & then letting go of the handlebar to reach the gear change lever.


The VMCC have days where motorcyclists can have lessons on this era of machine at a location that's closed off,  - did this a few years ago, really good!

Its open to non-members too and costs £60 (£45 for VMCC members)
http://www.vmcc.net/ourevents/vmcc_vintage_training_day.aspx