The legend of Brough Superior is built on it being "The Rolls Royce of motorcycles," a statement George Brough was always careful to attribute to anyone but him. Kevin Cameron and Mark Hoyer dive into the origin of the company and make some surprising discoveries about its innovation during research for the podcast.
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00The Cycle World podcast returns with Kevin Cameron, our technical editor, and I'm Mark
00:00:04Hoyer, the editor-in-chief.
00:00:06We are talking about Brough Superior this week.
00:00:09Brough is such an interesting case.
00:00:12People are paying a lot of money for them now.
00:00:14They are beautiful.
00:00:15They were once very carefully called the Rolls Royce of motorcycles at a time when Rolls
00:00:21Royce truly, truly meant something, and not that it doesn't mean something now.
00:00:25It truly means something now, but something different.
00:00:29Rolls at the time was the remarkable engineering standard of the world.
00:00:37It's very British and all that, but there was Brough assembling motorcycles from bits.
00:00:41I was just talking to Kevin about what's the modern version of Brough, and I think we'll
00:00:47support this through our conversation, but I was thinking of someone like Arch Motorcycles
00:00:52that Keanu Reeves runs, owns, and they buy in parts.
00:00:59They pay a huge amount of attention to fit and finish, and they take a Harley engine,
00:01:06and they tend to try to build a pretty nice frame around it and use good brakes and nice
00:01:11suspension and, again, focus on fit and finish.
00:01:15Brough.
00:01:16Take it away, Kevin.
00:01:17What do you think of that?
00:01:21I hadn't paid a lot of attention to Brough Superior, frankly, until I had the job of
00:01:29preparing for this podcast, but my attitude used to be, oh, it's one of those outfits
00:01:35that buys in everything from outside, engines, forks, wheels, brakes, and then files all
00:01:44the joints to meet and generally gives it a nice look.
00:01:50Oh, Gilroy Indian did that.
00:01:54Charges a lot of money for it, but what I found upon looking into it is that William
00:02:04Brough, George's father, also made motorcycles from 1908, and his son did not agree with
00:02:14them.
00:02:15Have you ever heard of such a thing?
00:02:17I've never.
00:02:18I'm going to take the castle by storm, Dad.
00:02:22I want to give you the keys to the castle, son.
00:02:23I'm going to take the castle by storm.
00:02:28The old man made flat twins that were oriented front to rear, so the rear cylinder couldn't
00:02:36possibly be cooled.
00:02:38Oh, Aaron Douglas, right?
00:02:40Yeah.
00:02:41Going like, how do we solve this problem?
00:02:43As soon as World War I ended, the younger man was putting together motorcycles using
00:02:54JAP engines.
00:02:55Now, JAP was a huge supplier.
00:02:58At one time, they sent 35,000 engines a year to Germany, so they were making large numbers
00:03:06of engines that were being sold to motorcycle manufacturers all over the place.
00:03:13Of course, they had a 500, which was used not only as a production bike, but as a power
00:03:20plant for other manufacturers' TT racers, so JAP did serious development work, especially
00:03:28in the early days.
00:03:32George Brough took JAP 50-degree V-twins and made 1,000cc powered bikes from about 1920.
00:03:51He himself was a skilled rider and racer.
00:03:56Between 1922 and 1923, on his bike now called Old Bill, which used to be called Spit and
00:04:08Polish because of its high finish, he won one out of 52 starts.
00:04:19In the last one, his front tire burst.
00:04:27He was a serious competitor, and he also supported the efforts of famous record-setters and racers
00:04:37like Bert Levesque, such that Brough Superior Motorcycles were constantly in the limelight
00:04:49at Brooklands.
00:04:50They didn't really need, in a sense, the tremendous promotional ability of George Brough,
00:04:58who used every opportunity.
00:05:01When he would take his new products to the annual Olympia Show, often abbreviated as
00:05:07the Oly Show, he would have wonderful, fascinating new features and gimmicks, and would push
00:05:19them down your throat.
00:05:23He was famous as a promoter, such that some people saw him as only that.
00:05:29In fact, we find, and this is what so delighted me as I pored over these pictures, I laid
00:05:36out a whole table full of books that had Brough Superior, references and photos in them.
00:05:41What did I find?
00:05:44Spit and Polish, a.k.a. Old Bill, shows up with four stays to the rear axle.
00:05:55Then the next chronological order photo that I see shows extra stays coming from the rear
00:06:03axle out around the engine, and to lateral extensions of the forging or casting that
00:06:13joins the single down tube to the front engine mount.
00:06:17These are like cantilever struts sticking out with tubes coming from the rear axle.
00:06:24This meant there was trouble with handling, and they were going to try to fix it.
00:06:31I never saw that bike, that stage of that bike again, but in the next photo, the rear
00:06:41end has six stays, and they're no longer running them around the engine.
00:06:47This is the wonderful stuff that we love.
00:06:50This is cut and try.
00:06:52We're going to overcome this problem.
00:06:54We're going to go fast, and we're not going to wobble ourselves off the track.
00:07:02They originally showed up with Brampton girder forks.
00:07:06A girder fork has four little levers up on the steering head that turn with the bars.
00:07:12They carry the girder, which is one piece that goes up and down with the front wheel.
00:07:18Essentially, the fork is on a four-bar linkage that's connected to the steering head.
00:07:29You'd better be sure the joints in those little links are precisely fitted, because if they're
00:07:35the least bit loose, you're going to feel it every time you move the bars.
00:07:40There was much debate about that in the Velocette Club, about how to set your bushings just
00:07:45so.
00:07:46One guy's like, no, I use green Loctite, and I take it, then I assemble it, and I cycle
00:07:50it through.
00:07:51Then they're perfectly straight, and then they're held in there forever, and yep, no
00:07:55slop.
00:07:56I don't want a slop there.
00:08:01The next thing that comes about is the Brampton fork disappears and is replaced by the Castle
00:08:07fork.
00:08:08Well, I knew that the Castle fork was the British name for something that looked an
00:08:15awful lot like a Harley Springer.
00:08:18The Harley Springer has a pair of tubes that come down from which short leading links project.
00:08:27Both ends of the axle, front axle, are connected by a big hoop that goes up and over the tire
00:08:33and down to the other so that the front wheel cannot tilt from side to side.
00:08:38This is the crucial thing.
00:08:42That loop over the front wheel has a pin that goes through a guide so that that is firmly
00:08:53locked in place.
00:08:56What in fact had happened was that Georgia's chief engineer, Harold Carslake, and he went
00:09:05over the Harley fork and decided on certain improvements that would entitle them to a
00:09:11British patent.
00:09:14Then they put this thing into production, or they had it made by Montgomery or whoever.
00:09:21If you go through the literature of 1920s British racing, particularly for speed records,
00:09:28because this is where a 1,000 cc V-twin differs from, say, a 500 street bike or a 500 TT racer,
00:09:39it has double the displacement, so it has a lot of acceleration.
00:09:45It's pulling on the rear sprocket really hard with the chain because it's basically got
00:09:50two engines, two cylinders.
00:09:54I found it fascinating that all these handling improvements were pushed through very quickly
00:10:06in the early to mid-1920s.
00:10:07Also, JAP was supplying updated engines.
00:10:16They started out with one that they called the 830.
00:10:19Eight referred to the legal horsepower, which was some British formula.
00:10:25Yeah, crazy.
00:10:26Yeah.
00:10:27The 30 referred to something like the actual horsepower.
00:10:33The early days, 1921, 22, 23, the 830 was 1,000 cc, well, actually 986.
00:10:46It got tuned only to the level of making 30 horsepower.
00:10:50As higher states of tune arrived from JAP, they were incorporated in subsequent bikes.
00:10:56There was also a triangulated rear end that was added around 1927 on option that looked
00:11:08an awful lot like the Vincent rear suspension.
00:11:11It was triangulated.
00:11:13The springs were located under the seat.
00:11:18Innovation was constant.
00:11:21The insistence on fine fit and finish, one commentator said that suppliers found that
00:11:29it was very much in their interest to cooperate with Georgia's desire for the best because
00:11:37the fact that their product was in use when a certain record was set was big stuff.
00:11:44There were people who made money on contingency in the 1920s, serious money for that time.
00:11:52This was all real stuff.
00:11:58It blew all those old cobwebs out of my mind, oh, Brough was just a bought-in.
00:12:03They bought engines, they bought forks and so forth.
00:12:06No.
00:12:08They were working on the specific problems of their large, fast motorcycle.
00:12:13They needed that fork to prevent weave and wobble.
00:12:19They needed that stiffening of the rear frame to prevent, you could call it power steering.
00:12:28When you applied the power, the chain pull would yank the rear of the motorcycle around.
00:12:35That's why there were so many big bikes built with six stays to the rear axle.
00:12:42I'm delighted with all this.
00:12:44This is the thing that happens.
00:12:47If you're in a position to put forth information about something to others whose opinion you
00:12:54value and you go looking to flesh out what little you know, you're likely to discover
00:13:04something completely different.
00:13:05That's why I'm delighted with what I've found about Brough Superior.
00:13:11Reading, who knew?
00:13:12Yeah.
00:13:13It was delightful.
00:13:14Or listening to a podcast, at least we can process all of that.
00:13:17That's why we cherish your work, Kevin.
00:13:23I was curious, in the 20s, Valentine Page, was that J.A.P.?
00:13:30Oh, yeah.
00:13:31And Val Page, he went everywhere.
00:13:34He designed remarkable triumphs and he was with BSA, Ariel.
00:13:40I think he went back to Ariel later in his career.
00:13:46What was he working on at J.A.P. during this era?
00:13:50He did get involved in a double overhead cam race engine that I think was never followed
00:13:59through on.
00:14:01But the thing was that in the early to mid-1920s, side valve engines were still being produced.
00:14:11Brough Superiors with side valves were produced in some numbers.
00:14:17People valued side valves because of their low-end pulling power, which was a result
00:14:22of their having ... It's easy to make squish in a side valve.
00:14:27That means you can run the compression up, which means that you've got real thump, thump,
00:14:33thump power from low RPM.
00:14:35A lot of people valued that.
00:14:37I mean, arguably, it would be hard to make high RPM power out of a side valve, ultimately.
00:14:44You've got to make it work where it would work.
00:14:47Harley's side valve comeback in the Daytona 200 in 68 and 69, that was quite an achievement,
00:14:55which we've already talked about.
00:14:57Anyway-
00:14:58We have a podcast on that.
00:14:59Pretty soon, we're going to have a podcast on everything, folks.
00:15:02We're going to keep going.
00:15:05Anyway, there was this mad rush to convert to overhead valve, and AJS just couldn't make
00:15:14up their minds.
00:15:16They went overhead cam, overhead valve.
00:15:19They went back and forth.
00:15:20They tried different things on their way forward.
00:15:24JAP were doing the same sort of thing.
00:15:28When Vellisette decided to give up on their two-strokes and build a four-stroke...
00:15:34They built a single overhead cam four-stroke, because that was the way the wind was blowing.
00:15:39See, the thing we have to remember is that at this time in England...
00:15:45Brooklands down in Weybridge, a short train ride from London...
00:15:51Everybody was there who was anything in motorcycling, including competition.
00:15:59Motor cars, lots of car racers were at Brooklands, and people who would later rise to high position
00:16:07in industry, plus aviation.
00:16:12The Bluebird Cafe at Brooklands, to be a fly upon the wall would have been a great
00:16:22privilege because all those great names were there.
00:16:27That's where Vellisette decided to leap over pushrods and rockers straight to overhead
00:16:36cam.
00:16:37Norton Works, pulling their whiskers over this question.
00:16:43They finally hired somebody to make the Model 16, was it?
00:16:46To make it win the TT.
00:16:50They were able to pep it up quite a bit, but eventually they went to overhead cam.
00:16:55CS1, right?
00:16:56Camshaft 1.
00:16:57Camshaft 1.
00:16:59So J&P was producing large numbers of engines as commodities.
00:17:08They weren't developing...
00:17:10They weren't trying to win the TT themselves, they were trying to win it at second hand,
00:17:14so to speak.
00:17:18They never really went all the way to double overhead camshaft like Norton did.
00:17:26So it's, well, business is business.
00:17:31You'd love to have the ultimate features like the Cyclone, which had a single overhead cam
00:17:36so many years ago in the US, but it was not backed by an organization with enough R&D
00:17:45and enough funding to achieve much.
00:17:49But we look back upon it and think, oh, what an advanced creation in the midst of mediocrity.
00:17:58But what was going on was that in the car world, overhead camshaft had been ho-hum since
00:18:06about 1910, and these people were not information deprived.
00:18:17People tend to think now, oh, well, they didn't have phones, so they didn't know anything.
00:18:21Everyone was working on his own.
00:18:23Not true, because what happened was that there were a lot of magazines, there were people
00:18:31in correspondence constantly writing to one another about their work, and there were also
00:18:37the big international expos.
00:18:40You would go there and you would be able to walk along the displays and talk to the top
00:18:45guy.
00:18:46So this was a very fertile period of R&D, as I discovered with respect to Brough-Superior
00:18:58and the specific handling problems of big, very fast motorcycles.
00:19:04And of course, we have the additional promotional oomph that the magazine, The Motorcycle, when
00:19:18it reviewed the first of the Brough-Superiors, they said that it was the Rolls-Royce of motorcycles,
00:19:27because they were so impressed with the fit and finish.
00:19:31George Brough was careful never to use that phrase as if it were his idea.
00:19:40He wanted people to know that if it was the Rolls-Royce of motorcycles, it was because
00:19:45it was obvious to others that it was.
00:19:49No dunce, our George.
00:19:50Third party verification has always been valuable.
00:19:53Yes, third party.
00:19:57And then, of course, we have T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, who owned seven of these
00:20:05things and had an eighth one on order when he swerved to avoid a small child and ended
00:20:12up being killed.
00:20:16So and of course, if you read, what is it, seven pillars or however many pillars of wisdom,
00:20:26somewhere in his writings, he waxes poetic about riding a big, fast motorcycle.
00:20:33And it's worth having a look, because although he was probably a weirdo and a strange dreamer,
00:20:46he had a way with words.
00:20:47Bring it on.
00:20:48Let's hang out, man.
00:20:49This sounds interesting.
00:20:50I mean, come on.
00:20:51Yeah.
00:20:53Well, what I like about the Brough story is, you know, going from something that's in the
00:20:5930 to 40 horsepower range as a big V-twin motorcycle and just never stopping and continually,
00:21:07as you're saying, like developing and compensating for this increase in power and then overhead
00:21:12valves.
00:21:13So SS100.
00:21:15And then there's later on that, you know, they got real big.
00:21:17I think it was, was it the Alpine sports that got a little bit larger displacement
00:21:21and...
00:21:22Well, they made a sidecar, a sidecar puller with, it was 1150 displacement.
00:21:30So and usually, you know, like when you put a big bore kit in a Z1, you're pulling, you're
00:21:36sucking harder on the same size valves.
00:21:40What that gets you is a strong mid-range and not a great increase in top speed.
00:21:46But where on English roads could you go 123 miles an hour?
00:21:54And these people, these people who went so fast at Brooklyn's were real heroes because
00:22:02that racetrack was made out of concrete castings on a bed of sand and they moved.
00:22:11So there were tremendous whams when you went from one concrete lump to the next, plus there
00:22:18was wind.
00:22:20So and of course, being England, there was also rain.
00:22:25So people who set those tremendous records, 24 hours, eight hours, 12 hours, they were
00:22:33real pain lovers.
00:22:34They were having to overcome serious stuff.
00:22:39And those big bumps would, if your motorcycle had a tendency to wobble and weave, those
00:22:45bumps would set it going.
00:22:49So we have to, we have to respect those characters and every weekend there were people running
00:22:57at Brooklyn's and there were people testing and there were people who maintained shops
00:23:02there and sold their tuning services to likely lads from good, good families and good incomes
00:23:12in London.
00:23:13Let's go down and have a lot of fun with motorbikes.
00:23:16And you see these people with goggles and helmet?
00:23:22What helmet?
00:23:24It was...
00:23:25There's a great picture of Vivian Prestwich and Viv's standing next to a JAP powered something
00:23:35and he's wearing a hard knit sweater, which is what a lot of those folks were riding in
00:23:42because the hard knit sweater, like a hard knit sweater is more like rope.
00:23:46It doesn't stretch and it's more, it's just a more durable thing to wear.
00:23:51And it's like, it's this gorgeous sweater V-neck with some stripes and stuff.
00:23:54And I saw that photo, I'm like, I got to get a hard knit sweater.
00:23:57But the problem is, is like a vintage hard knit sweater.
00:24:00The problem is, is that I'm a gorilla, I have a 46 inch chest and no one, I can't see anyone
00:24:08in England who was my size.
00:24:10So there is no, there is no hard knit sweater in my future.
00:24:15So they were what, 30, 45 horsepower and then through the thirties, as they were overhead
00:24:22valve, there's a quote of 74 horsepower, which is...
00:24:26Yeah, that was, that was right at the end.
00:24:29Because, you know, I mean, as good as you make a chassis, as you can make a chassis
00:24:33at that time, you know, brakes are largely notional, I feel, during this period.
00:24:42George Ruff would have loved that line in the Grand Prix of Gibraltar in which Commendatore
00:24:51Fanfani says, any fool can make a machine go slow, but it takes a genius to make it
00:25:00go fast.
00:25:04And I think that's why they had six or seven inch little drum scraper brakes, front and
00:25:11back, certainly nothing to write home about, probably a good idea to cast your eyes toward
00:25:16the horizon, to anticipate a need to go more slowly.
00:25:21Kevin's reference to the Grand Prix of Gibraltar was a famous record, audio recording by Peter
00:25:28Ustinov and it's, it is hilarious, it's, I'm sure there's a place to find it on the YouTubes.
00:25:35Oh, you can order the CDs, yeah.
00:25:38Yeah, you can get this somewhere, somehow, so check it out because it's, it's funny.
00:25:43He was, he was a Formula One fan and knew a lot of those people, so, well, England's
00:25:51a smaller place than, than we're accustomed to.
00:25:57So Brough's were really developing toward, what do you, what would you call it, the coalescence
00:26:03of modern features?
00:26:08Well, they were discovering the problems that every motorcycle that was designed to go at
00:26:15these speeds, at least in potential, would encounter.
00:26:21They weren't going to win any circuit races because they had a 59 inch wheelbase and they
00:26:28weighed, you know, 400 and something.
00:26:33Even though one of the sources I consulted said that they won the 1932 Senior TT, which
00:26:40was actually won by Stan Woods, but that is our new information age.
00:26:46The number of people, the truth of a statement is determined by the number of people who
00:26:51believe it.
00:26:52That's the modern way.
00:26:55Well, what I was meaning by the coalescence of the modern motorcycle during this period
00:27:02is that if you look at Brough, they started with, I think, a two-speed gearbox.
00:27:06They sure did, yeah, Sturmey Archer.
00:27:10Sturmey Archer two-speed gearbox, which was hand-shifted.
00:27:13Yes, sir.
00:27:16And so by the thirties, Velocet had invented the positive stop gearbox, which was pretty
00:27:26darn clever.
00:27:27Works great.
00:27:28It works so well, it's still in use.
00:27:31I mean, in different forms, it was a shift plate, not a shift drum, et cetera.
00:27:38So you got a positive stop gearbox, you got more speeds and really progression to kind
00:27:49of the norm of what we have now, where we've got a hand clutch and a brake on the right
00:27:54and the shifting was opposite at this time.
00:27:59The bikes had two levers for throttle control, and they converted to a twist grip at a point.
00:28:08There were a lot of riders, TT specialists, who didn't like the twist grip, but today
00:28:14it's universal.
00:28:18Snowmobiles have a thumb throttle, so it's up to what conditions require.
00:28:26Yeah, I've ridden a TT bike with a lever throttle and manual ignition operation and the sweetest
00:28:36little watch band of a front brake, but a good running bike and you sort of get used
00:28:46to operating the lever to get her going, but we're really used to a twist grip at this
00:28:52point, aren't we?
00:28:53Makes a lot of sense to us because we've used it so much.
00:28:59In the early 1920s, a good many motorcycles had their ignition, the Magneto, in front
00:29:07of the engine where the front tire could throw water onto it, and Rough Superior continued
00:29:15with the forward mounted Magneto driven by a chain from the timing case.
00:29:21So that's a distinctive feature, and later on they switched to, in some cases, a dual
00:29:34Magneto setup driven by bevel gears, again, from the timing case.
00:29:39I bet you had to bring shims to that party.
00:29:42Oh, the British had British and shims and bevel gears.
00:29:48It's magnificent, but I swear there's something going on.
00:29:51They hate themselves or they feel, I don't know, is it something about having to pay
00:29:56to play?
00:29:57I don't know.
00:29:59Well, any organization that greatly values tradition, such as military forces, is vulnerable
00:30:12to being left behind by the flow of events.
00:30:16Well, we've always done it this way.
00:30:18Oh, yes, sir, or pardon me, sir, yes, sir.
00:30:25So it's always an education in itself.
00:30:29It's easy to fall into a right answer mode rather than let's discuss this and see what
00:30:37makes sense.
00:30:39In the case of engineering, if you're running at Brooklands, it's going to rub your face
00:30:47in any problem that you have.
00:30:51But rear suspension was long in coming because at first it wasn't stiff enough.
00:30:58The damping systems were dry friction.
00:31:04Those scissors things at the apex, at the pivot was a stack of little clutch plates
00:31:10and there was a wing nut on there.
00:31:12You wanted more damping, you tighten the wing nut.
00:31:17Around town you'd slack it off.
00:31:20And these were not devices of the sensitivity to encourage much experimentation.
00:31:31And they hung on until the 1950s, dry friction dampers.
00:31:37But I think that with what they had and coming from the traditions that they were handed
00:31:43by their forefathers, well, the 1920s and 30s were a tremendously fast period of fast
00:31:55technical advance and British singles were the most studied internal combustion engines
00:32:05really in the world at that time.
00:32:08Which is why when Britain turned to Formula One in auto racing, that the van wall was
00:32:20given Norton Manx cylinder head design as the starting point because they had worked
00:32:26out the shapes for best flow, the intake length, header pipe length, megaphone length.
00:32:35They had all of that information down and it was as a result of that 20-year period
00:32:42of intensive development between the wars.
00:32:46And of course, that was also interrupted by the terrible depression of 1929 through
00:32:52what, 1935.
00:32:55So it marched on though and I think those British singles were an outstanding product.
00:33:05Meanwhile the Italians were working on, they picked up the ball that the Germans had to
00:33:11drop because nobody wanted a motorcycle in Germany after 1955.
00:33:17The Germans at NSU had pushed high RPM and the Italians, mostly paying attention to the
00:33:28125, 250, and the national class 175 Italian championship, refining the airflow and tuning
00:33:42lengths and so forth was one thing, but the easy way to horsepower is if you can keep
00:33:46the breathing going, let it rev up, perform the power producing cycle more times per minute
00:33:55and you get more power.
00:33:58But England stuck with big cylinders, moderate RPM, and very refined intake, exhaust, and
00:34:07combustion.
00:34:08Well, there was a pre-war, like a 1923 maybe, Jalera 4.
00:34:16Oh, that was, it wasn't Jalera yet, but it would become the Jalera 4 when Senior Jalera
00:34:23said, let's see you succeed with this thing, maybe I'll buy it.
00:34:27Perfect.
00:34:28Thank God for patronage, geez.
00:34:32Yeah.
00:34:331923 was when Carlo Giannini and Piero Remore, recent engineering graduates, decided to build
00:34:45a transverse inline four.
00:34:49And it went through several implementations and eventually it ended up as a supercharged
00:34:58engine and became very fast.
00:35:01And I think it was associated with the writer Torino Serafini.
00:35:10But again, this is a further example of the gain in technology that was occurring between
00:35:17the wars.
00:35:19No doubt we could say on the negative side that technology was applied to making humans
00:35:27dead, but that's a separate issue.
00:35:30Well, yeah, I was just looking up a little information, 1934, Count Bon Martini regained
00:35:42interest in motorcycles and a completely redesigned version of the 504 was readied.
00:35:48Fully water-cooled, supercharged, double overhead cam, gear-driven, inclined cylinders, four-speed
00:35:53positive stop foot change gearbox, and 86 horsepower at 9,000 RPM in 1934.
00:36:02Good one.
00:36:03The modern sport bike, folks, this is from Cycle World 1965, a story by Carlo Pirelli.
00:36:08Ah, yeah.
00:36:10Amazing.
00:36:11Anyway, it's a little ways from Brough, but it was something else happening.
00:36:16And yeah, the British single, I mean, the Manx became the kind of blueprint for all
00:36:21of it.
00:36:22You were talking about chain-driven magnetos at the front of the engine on the Brough,
00:36:26and I had a 1937 Velocette KSS, which was the road-going overhead cam model.
00:36:34Mine was enclosed valve gear and all that.
00:36:39Its magneto was, as I recall, behind the cylinder.
00:36:43Haven't worked on that one in a while, but behind the cylinder, what I always found fascinating
00:36:48about that motorcycle, it was a bevel shaft driven, so 45-degree gears down at the crank
00:36:53and a straight shaft that goes up next to the cylinder, and then another set of 90-degree
00:36:57gears, which, by the way, required shimming, as we discussed many years ago.
00:37:04You said, well, Mark, you need to commit to doing that job at least three times.
00:37:09You'll make an estimate, and you'll put it together, and it's going to be too tight or
00:37:13too loose, and then you're going to make some changes with the shims, and then you're going
00:37:16to be too tight or too loose, just the opposite of what you had before, and then hopefully
00:37:20the third time you can get it, but you need to commit to at least three times.
00:37:25And I said, great, I'll do that.
00:37:28That's the British way.
00:37:29Just do the job three times at least.
00:37:33So a very precise overhead cam drive, and then you take that magneto, and you run a
00:37:37chain that's this long, and then you set the tension by moving the magneto on a sloped,
00:37:46as I recall it was a sloped plinth, basically, with slots, and you'd move the magneto up
00:37:52to tension the chain slightly within the case, and if it was too far, then you put a new
00:37:57chain on.
00:37:58And so chain, we're running this thing that's got flopping around, and there's no tensioner.
00:38:04You just...
00:38:05That's wonderful.
00:38:06And you have to set it just so, because you want the least amount of slop, but then there's
00:38:09this...
00:38:10You have to have a scatter on the spark, right?
00:38:11Like you can't...
00:38:12It's unavoidable.
00:38:13Yeah.
00:38:14Unavoidable.
00:38:15This is one of the important reasons why there were what you might call artisan tuners associated
00:38:25with Brooklands and with the TT, people who understood racing and who would hire themselves
00:38:32out to manufacturers who wanted to pep up their image, because graduate engineers have
00:38:40not been to Brooklands or the Isle of Man.
00:38:44They understand bearings and drives and crankshaft torsional vibration and all those things,
00:38:51but all the little stuff, if you don't have it with you at the races, can really bite
00:38:56you where it would hurt.
00:39:00You learn about that from experience, and these experienced men filled that role.
00:39:07And in our time, Kel Carruthers managed Yamaha's...
00:39:13The technical side of Yamaha's Grand Prix team, because he knew all the little quirks
00:39:24of making motorcycles work best on all those European circuits.
00:39:32And...
00:39:33He himself, starting his career racing AMX, not starting, but I used to work for his son
00:39:40Paul and I picked up a 1958 Thames 400E van, which was an overhead valve, independent
00:39:49front suspension, three-quarter ton British van made by an English Ford, a 1703 console
00:39:55engine.
00:39:56And that van at that time was incredibly high performance compared to the flathead stuff
00:40:02that was coming before.
00:40:04And it was really picked up by a lot of the Continental racers, and Paul Carruthers remembers
00:40:11running around in the back of one of those with a Norton...
00:40:14This is a quote with a Norton Manx drooling on my leg, but they were running around.
00:40:18He was racing a Manx and the family was in the van and running around making a living.
00:40:24And then...
00:40:25That's how it was in those days, yes.
00:40:27There was a photograph that I think it was Paul who shared it with me, or I shared it
00:40:33with him, I can't remember, and I just got it off the internet.
00:40:37But it was a picture of those vans towing caravans, like a travel trailer as well.
00:40:44And I can't...
00:40:45A little honeymoon trailer, yes.
00:40:46I can't even imagine putting a trailer behind this thing.
00:40:49It's like, I can't even imagine.
00:40:52The engine in mine is very good running, but it's still a, well, let's say the combination
00:41:00of the engine and the chassis, 65 is, it feels like top speed.
00:41:05It's not, but you're just like, no, I don't think, I'm not interested in any more, no,
00:41:10I don't like the...
00:41:11I drove one that had wobble.
00:41:16When you got to about 45 miles an hour, the front would just start...
00:41:21And you just had to hold the pedal down and wait, and eventually it would kind of die
00:41:27out and you'd emerge into the sunny uplands of 65 miles per hour.
00:41:32If you make your own pin in bushes and you use Delrin, you put Delrin in the lathe and
00:41:41you cut it to size, you bore it, and then put your suspension links together, you can
00:41:47avoid that.
00:41:48Yeah.
00:41:49Well, actually it was worn out.
00:41:50That's why it wobbled, but it was an experience.
00:41:57Toward the end with Brough, they got away from JAP engines.
00:42:03What do you know about that?
00:42:05Well, I read Phil Irving's autobiography.
00:42:11Phil Irving was Phil Vincent's sort of undeclared chief engineer.
00:42:20I think they parted company once over a matter of 20 shillings.
00:42:26So the class system was still strong.
00:42:33But they noticed that the JAP engines that they were using in their bikes were declining
00:42:42in quality.
00:42:47George Brough also was noticing a decline in quality.
00:42:51So at one point they decided to offer matchless V-twins in place of the JAP.
00:43:03There were some other engines, such as a bar and stroud sleeve valve, very quiet, no clicking.
00:43:14The normal JAP V-twins were known for the loudness of their valve gear.
00:43:20And of course, they had foot-long pushrods and dainty little rocker arms up.
00:43:27You could see the moving part of the rocker arm sticking out of the casting.
00:43:32And the adjuster was sitting there on the end of the rocker arm.
00:43:35So it all looked impossibly flexible.
00:43:37And I could imagine those long pushrods just going like a bowstring.
00:43:44Give us an hour or two on sleeve valves, Kevin.
00:43:48Any time.
00:43:49I mean, I think, yeah, I think it would be good to paint a picture for people.
00:43:54There was the Griffin, plenty of aircraft engines that were making lots of power were
00:44:00using sleeve valves.
00:44:01The Sabre, the Hercules, the Centaurus, yeah.
00:44:06And by the way, the designer of the Sabre that powered some Tempest fighters was designed
00:44:18by a man who raced regularly at Brooklyn's between the wars.
00:44:26These people were not degreed engineers who were put on the fast track to the top floor.
00:44:34These were people who were out there breaking parts.
00:44:40I value that.
00:44:41I do too.
00:44:42I think it's good.
00:44:43Break some today.
00:44:47There was the Napier Sabre.
00:44:49It was an H-24 aircraft engine, liquid cooled sleeve valve.
00:44:56So the way the sleeve valve works is it's a sleeve, it's a metal sleeve, and it has
00:45:00these really interesting shapes cut into it.
00:45:02And then it has a mechanism.
00:45:04It's the intake and the exhaust valves, basically, and it has a mechanism that times it and slides
00:45:10it.
00:45:11It rotates and slides in a wonderful way.
00:45:17And you may have seen photos of the front of a radial engine that is all gears.
00:45:22Those gears are there to drive the sleeves.
00:45:25Insanity.
00:45:26It is just, if we'd known we were going to talk about this, I would have found one to
00:45:31put up.
00:45:32Well, I've got a sleeve in the next room, so sometime we'll put it up here.
00:45:39I think the day is coming when we're going to have to be able to show parts on this show.
00:45:44Yeah, I agree.
00:45:47But that requires...
00:45:48We get the requests for photography, but it requires production.
00:45:51Yes, it does.
00:45:53Well, they talked about video years ago, and then they looked it up.
00:46:00You mean we can't do it all with our phones?
00:46:03Well, forget that.
00:46:05Anyway, here we are today.
00:46:07And now.
00:46:08Yes.
00:46:09So, there was a barn stroud on offer at one point, and then, of course, the war came,
00:46:22and the Brough Superior premises in Nottingham, of Robin Hood fame, were devoted to finish
00:46:38machining Merlin V-12 crankshafts.
00:46:44And when the war ended, all the little suppliers that had made the bought-in parts of which
00:46:53Broughs were made, had turned to other, more profitable manufacturers.
00:47:00And so, George just decided, well, we can't do things the way we did them, and so we won't
00:47:09do them.
00:47:10Well, and then, I mean, really, Vincent kind of picked up the man's work.
00:47:15Vincent did.
00:47:16Vincent became the Brough of the new era, because they went racing.
00:47:22They had a big, powerful, fast, 1,000cc bicycle.
00:47:28Which they made the engine for.
00:47:30They made the engines.
00:47:31They made their own engines.
00:47:33And when you look at a post-war Vincent, you will see the organic shapes that John
00:47:41Britton admired so much, because he basically said, if the roots of a tree are the product
00:47:50of one billion years of trial and error, we should pay attention to their shape.
00:47:59And so, we should.
00:48:02But, of course, nobody looks up from their screen anymore.
00:48:06And if you need an ideal shape, there's a program to devise it for you.
00:48:10And soon, there'll be an AI device that will do away with you, so that you can turn your
00:48:18interest to family affairs, leisure time reading, and other pursuits.
00:48:24I'll be in the machine shop.
00:48:26Yes.
00:48:27Good place.
00:48:28To be.
00:48:29I'll be in the machine shop.
00:48:33But there were maybe 3,000 Rough Superiors made.
00:48:38The estimates vary.
00:48:42And of the especially valued SS80 and SS100, what did they say, 670 or so?
00:48:54The later tank shape became very, dare I say, iconic.
00:49:00But it became a trademark of the motorcycle.
00:49:03This is a wonderful element.
00:49:08Lawrence of Arabia had one of those gas tanks that looks like an ice cream cone.
00:49:14It's a hemisphere on the front.
00:49:17And it tapers like an ice cream cone, made of stainless steel.
00:49:23Stainless steel was pretty new stuff in the 1920s.
00:49:28He put that tank on all of his bikes.
00:49:31Now, it turns out that George Brough is the person who started the trend toward the saddle
00:49:40tank.
00:49:42In previous times, tanks were soldered out of flat sheet metal.
00:49:49Soldered, so that they could crack and leak.
00:49:53Let's solder it.
00:49:54Oh, there's gasoline in there.
00:49:56Oh, good point.
00:50:00It completely changed the shape of motorcycles.
00:50:03And the saddle tank, with its bulbous curves, was made possible by automotive advances in
00:50:11pressing sheet metal.
00:50:14So it turns out that a group of executives from Harley-Davidson was touring England in
00:50:211924, I think.
00:50:23And they must have seen those early saddle tanks, because look at any Harley today, and
00:50:31it has a bulbous saddle tank.
00:50:35This is the past speaking.
00:50:37They saw it.
00:50:38They liked it.
00:50:39They made them themselves.
00:50:41It was a change that marked your motorcycle as part of the future, not part of the past.
00:50:47Yeah, the past was flat tank Nortons.
00:50:50You know, beautiful.
00:50:51And they would have sometimes two pieces of the frame going, and then there'd be this
00:50:55flat soldered together thing, flat sides, flat top.
00:50:59Between.
00:51:00Between.
00:51:01And it would sort of, you know, slope down at the rear to make room for the rider.
00:51:05It had everything in it a lot of times, where it'd be the oil tanks up here, and the gasolines
00:51:09over here, et cetera.
00:51:11And flat tank Nortons, they have a look.
00:51:13You know, they're beautiful.
00:51:14I'd love a flat tank Norton.
00:51:15Long and spindly.
00:51:17Yep.
00:51:18But at that time, what you say is true, man.
00:51:20No, no.
00:51:21That's old garbage.
00:51:22You don't.
00:51:23It was not coveted.
00:51:24It was not the future.
00:51:25And the saddle tank came, and what that is, you got your backbone and the, you know, the
00:51:30gas tank hangs over it.
00:51:31Partly, the saddle tank was a way of accommodating the greater height of a overhead valve engine.
00:51:41Howard R. Davies, the HRD of Vincent HRD, Howard R. Davies manufactured his own brand
00:51:51of motorcycles, the HRD, for a couple of years.
00:51:54And he also went through the process of adding stays to the rear, carrying the bottom stays
00:52:04forward under the engine to join the down tube, thus preventing rear wheel auto steering.
00:52:15And his motorcycles were quite short in wheelbase and tall, because the bottom of the OHV engines
00:52:23had to be far away from the ground when you're leaned over in a corner, and yet it had to
00:52:28fit under the frame.
00:52:30So there was a lot of criticism of HRDs.
00:52:35People didn't like the look of them.
00:52:37Then they won races, and they became beautiful.
00:52:40Hi, Abusa.
00:52:43We just didn't know what a 186 mile an hour, 200, 198, 100, 194, that's what we got on
00:52:52radar on our test site.
00:52:53We just didn't know that that was what it was supposed to look like.
00:52:56And then now, what's a Hayabusa?
00:52:58We know what a Hayabusa is.
00:52:59It is its own thing.
00:53:02It made me, what you said about fitting the engines under the frame, having flat heads
00:53:06and then doing overhead valves and making room for it.
00:53:09Incidentally, I was at a press launch for the 1900 Yamaha V-Twin, that's a pushrod V-Twin.
00:53:18They had one of the engine engineers there when they were spending a lot more money flying
00:53:22engineers around for press launches and stuff.
00:53:24They had the engine guy there, and he was explaining that they used pushrods because
00:53:29they wanted to reduce the height of the engine and get that look for the cruiser.
00:53:35It was a cruiser engine.
00:53:38I just tongue-in-cheek asked him when they might be looking at a flathead, and he had
00:53:43a good laugh, but I was glad.
00:53:45It's always a risk.
00:53:46Yes, absolutely.
00:53:47There's two things.
00:53:48Sorry, go ahead.
00:53:49Yeah.
00:53:50No, while you've got it in mind, what is it?
00:53:54There's two things that I should wish to see.
00:53:59One is someone with modern sealing technology and so forth to make a sleeve valve engine.
00:54:07We make it actually work, because I think we'd have a lot of oil control problems is
00:54:10ultimately what we'd end up with.
00:54:14Could we make sleeve valve work, and what would the result be?
00:54:20I guess we already do see modern flatheads, because we're still building Ford flatheads.
00:54:25You can buy every part, and there's a bazillion head designs available for them.
00:54:30I guess we already do have a modern flathead, so I won't ask for a modern flathead.
00:54:36There were other builders of big V-twin powered road burners, such as McAvoy.
00:54:45McAvoy was an engineer at Rolls-Royce, and he built a few bikes, and soon he quit his
00:54:50job at Rolls and was a motorcycle manufacturer, at least for a period.
00:54:55Zenith, Coventry Eagle.
00:54:58Coventry Eagle could be seen at Brooklands, but they didn't have George Brough's promotional
00:55:05abilities, and they did not have, evidently, the connections that he had with top rider
00:55:16tuners.
00:55:20The result was that Brough's always looked good.
00:55:27Coventry Eagle had started out making little tiddlers and eventually got into bigger motorcycles,
00:55:34and they did some racing, but Brough Superior was so good at playing its tune on its own
00:55:46horn that it comes down to us today as something uniquely valuable, and there's more to it
00:55:55than PR, as I discovered when I prepared for this conversation.
00:56:03And I'm glad.
00:56:04Our long-time contributor, Paul D'Orleans, as we might say also, rode one across country,
00:56:15and I think it was an SS80, and just rode it, it just went.
00:56:21Lots of positive feedback.
00:56:23It's a motorcycle ride that's avoided me.
00:56:25I did sit on a Brough, and I did coast on a Brough.
00:56:31When I worked at Cycle News back in 1994, 1995, the founder, Charles Clayton, the late
00:56:40Charles Clayton at that time, we had a shed we used to call Brayton, because it was on
00:56:44the street called Brayton, and it was not a shed, it was a storage unit or like a warehouse
00:56:48where we kept a lot of related materials, but it's where a lot of Chuck Clayton's bikes
00:56:55were still.
00:56:56He was a smoker, big smoker, and he had a CB750 automatic with a cigarette lighter and
00:57:02an ashtray.
00:57:06But he also had a Brough, and we were helping empty that out.
00:57:09And at the time, that Brough, I didn't know enough, I was a modern motorcycle person,
00:57:15because at that time, motorcycles were purely an athletic pursuit for me.
00:57:19All I wanted to do was go faster.
00:57:21I was not riding vintage.
00:57:23I was riding old.
00:57:24I had an RD400 Daytona Special, because it was the fastest thing I could afford, and
00:57:30it was old.
00:57:31Well, that's so often the case.
00:57:33Yep.
00:57:34But the Brough, there it was, and it's like, oh, it's got some gearbox problems.
00:57:37And I was like, oh gosh, how would you fix a Brough gearbox?
00:57:40I don't even know.
00:57:41I look at it now, and it's like, well, it's like one bearing, three bushings, two shafts,
00:57:47and it's really nothing, because it would have been a Sturmey Archer, I'm guessing.
00:57:51Yes, the Sturmey Archer was their gearbox manufacturer.
00:57:56So it had gearbox problems, but it was all complete, and I coasted it down the hill.
00:57:59We pumped the tires up, because it was being sold.
00:58:02And I was asking Mrs. Clayton what she might be asking for it, and she said, it's selling
00:58:09for $28,000.
00:58:10I mean, man, at the time, that would have been, 1994, that could have been $280,000.
00:58:20It would have been irrelevant to me at that time.
00:58:24So, oh, well.
00:58:26I got my chance.
00:58:27I have a picture of me sitting on it, young.
00:58:29Well, times change.
00:58:31People pay fantastic amounts for a P-51 Mustang, or other so-called war birds.
00:58:42But there's this wonderful photo that shows 20-hour P-38s sitting at Clark Field, Philippines,
00:58:50being crushed by a bulldozer for a landfill.
00:58:56So when the war ended, there was fantastic amounts of equipment everywhere, and they
00:59:02tried hard to sell the stuff in the U.S.
00:59:05And some people bought engines just for the silver in the rod bearing, and for the platinum
00:59:15on the spark plug tips, and the rest was scrap.
00:59:19So when you have such tremendous plenty, it really distorts perspective.
00:59:28All those auction ads of that period, you know, 1948, 1950, when you could buy P-51s
00:59:36for several thousand dollars.
00:59:39Often with the tanks full.
00:59:40Amazing.
00:59:41All right, folks, well, that was Breath Superior.
00:59:45We've ended on other things, as often is the case.
00:59:49All related, of course.
00:59:50Everything's related.
00:59:51Or as Kevin likes to say, when you get to a certain age, everything reminds you of something
00:59:54else.
00:59:58We appreciate you listening, and check us up in the comments.
01:00:03We have a few topics coming up soon that will have come from the comments.
01:00:09A while back, on the first podcast we did a year ago, was the Suzuki Hayabusa, and we've
01:00:16been asking for comments and direction ever since, and somebody said, hey, why not the
01:00:20California Hot Rod, as built and campaigned by Phil Schilling and Cook Nelson of Cycle
01:00:26Magazine, of course.
01:00:27With a little help from their friends.
01:00:31Yeah.
01:00:32Such an interesting period, and really put Ducati on the map in the United States, and
01:00:37the world, really.
01:00:39It was an extension and blooming of the Paul Smart win of 1972 at the Imola 200, which
01:00:46put the flag in the ground that said, we are a big motorcycle maker for Ducati, and then
01:00:51this was a sporting evolution into the super bike era.
01:00:55It is a cool story.
01:00:57It is, very much so, yes.
01:00:59We'll hit that, and you guys have all been enjoying two strokes, so we're going to hit
01:01:06the Kawasaki H2 here pretty soon.
01:01:09The most bang for the buck.
01:01:13We got 50 plus of these in the back catalog, if you haven't caught those, check them out,
01:01:17and share them with your friends.
01:01:19If you think you know somebody who might enjoy it, kick it out there, and bring them to the
01:01:23party.
01:01:24We'd love to talk to them, and see what they want to hear too.
01:01:27Yeah.
01:01:28Thanks, Kevin.
01:01:29We'll catch you next time.