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Progress
Technology may have advanced over the decades, but there’s not much difference between a red flag and a blue Kingswood, says GUIDO…
It was a simple enough plan: fire up Winston the Sunbeam and take it for a Sunday morning spin to Spannerman’s joint to return his box of pics. How hard can it be?
The inbuilt tragedy was I had to step over Ted the Daytona 1200 and get to Hannibal the Hayabusa, so I could roll him out of the way and release Winston the 1947 Sunbeam. Yep, it sounds like something out of The Castle – “Dad, can you move the Torana, so I can shuffle Mum’s Kingswood, and get my Monaro?”
So we did that. Winston started second or third kick and was humming nicely. The old dear has been a project for several months now – I bought it from Alf Wilson, who with partner Maija owns the Tintaldra Hotel (Myspace.com/tintaldrahotel) and don’t for a moment regret it.
It has nevertheless been filled with challenges. New tyres, fuel taps, assorted tuning and servicing, tracking down obscure oils, building a new air filter, finding the rare eggshell alloy filter cover, fitting the handgrips on weird reverse handlever handlebars, getting the electrics completely rebuilt, updating the exhaust to stainless steel connectors...
Each one has a story behind it, and none are regretted. That Alf let me have the thing was a great start – it’s one of the world’s most handsome bikes, an opinion backed up by the fact it has a page in the Guggenheim Museum’s seminal tome, The Art of the Motorcycle.
Something that continues to stun me is that Stewart Engineering in the UK has made a living out of these obscure twins, which ran from 1946-ish to 1956-ish. Dave, the current father figure, attends to his flock with unusual attention.
When I first emailed a parts order, he rang me, to say, “You don’t want that lot, son, here’s what you need.” His list was shorter than mine – and cost less money.
We’ve built up a relationship since then. I tried to order a part by email and was refused. Then I rang. Dave said, “Oh we might have one – hang on a minute – we did a run of them years ago.” Sure enough, (I could hear rustling and banging on the phone as he ratted through the shelves) he found the last remaining example, covered in dust: “It will cost you 50 quid, son,” he warned. It was the rare alloy eggshell air filter cover which, on eBay, would have cost more than double that.
And so we arrive at Sunday morning. The sun was out, Winston was running and your god was slumbering in his heaven. We were going okay until I started to get a stutter from the twin. Maybe it was imagined, I thought. Oh how wrong.
As luck would have it, I pulled up at the next set of lights and about 432 cars pulled up behind me. It was an uphill start, on a 60-year-old motorcycle. So no pressure.
The stuttering and rattling got bad – then I realised the carburetor top was winding off. If you’ve ridden a bike with an Amal carb more than once, you get to know these things. So I tried to screw it down, and cross threaded it. No probs, be calm, just…here’s the green light, touch the throttle and…”paff”. Paff? Thanks for sodding nothing. Now I’m scrambling off Winston and pushing the bastard uphill and on to the footpath.
So I try to kickstart it, but of course the plugs are fouled and I have no tools. Leech, Ed, did question me on this: “You took it out with no tools?!” 837 kicks later (I counted), it was time to give up and call for help.
Ms A junior (youngest unmarried) was called to the rescue, with the Kingswood and trailer. She was derisive and disrespectful, which is only fair, but came anyway. And it gave cause for thought.
How far have we come over all these years? Here I am, 60 years after the making of Winston and over 110 years after the first motor vehicle. When the rotten things were invented, laws in England famously required that any motorised transport must be preceded by a young man carrying a red flag. You would think that was a disadvantage.
But there I was, over a century later, realising that any further travel depended on being followed by a young woman with a blue Kingswood.
So much for progress…
You’re always welcome to get in touch (and send counsellors) via the palatial MT offices at locked bag 12, Oakleigh 3166; Or on the wire at guy.allen@traderclassifieds.com.au.
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