And then came the only new bike I've ever had, a 1960 250cc Ariel Arrow. It cost £167 and was bought from Moto's of Catford owned by Gordon Colquhoun who owned the Moto Vincent sprint machine ridden by Charlie Rouse. Three years hire purchase and just as I paid for it I put a con rod through the crank case.
Me on my Arrow with upturned Ace bars and me brother cleaning his 1936 Austin ruby.
At this time I also had one of these
Bought for £30, nobody wanted them and sold the engine for £30 some while later and dumped the rest. Those were the days.
I broke the bridge off a throttle slide and went down the hill to the local Triumph shop and low and behold he had a couple of slides. He mentioned that he got them for his Vinnie and in a reverie said the old CJN didn't half go. I completed the registration number and he then told me all about it and how fast he had made it go. I was green and didn't quite know what to make of it all.
I didn't know it at the time but he was the top man when it came to balancing Triumph crankshafts.
His name was Freddie Cooper the sprinter who had a twin engine Triumph called Cyclotron and had a go at world records at Bonneville. He ended up working on race cars and was so well thought of in the race world that his funeral car was allowed to do a lap of Brands Hatch.
We had loads of fun on that Vincent going to Johnson's café on the A20. Three up and ninety up the mad mile.
