When I left the army I acquired my first “own” vehicle. What a monster. This was a Ford WOA2 V8 ex-WD staff car. The unladen weight was in the region of two tons, and it was equipped with mechanical brakes! Stopping required advance notification and this fact, combined with 3.6 litres and 85 B.H.P. under the bonnet, made driving this machine an unnerving experience! I think I’d had it about six months, when the cost of feeding the brute and the reputation that it and I had acquired in the neighbourhood, persuaded me that it should go!
My Ford WOA2 V8 outside our house at Robin Hood Green, Orpington, summer 1956. My sister Gladys and her daughter, Jean, wandered into the shot just as I pressed the shutter release! Close inspection of the left-hand picture will reveal another WOA2 above the bonnet of mine. This was a scruffy example, hand-painted in light and dark green.
It therefore made way for my first motorbike, a 1947 Triumph Speed Twin with a Swallow Jet 80 Single seat sports sidecar. This was great fun, so much so that I covered seven hundred miles in the first week! Riding a motorcycle combination definitely numbers among the black arts. An experienced solo rider, on getting astride a “combo” for the first time, will very probably go straight up the kerb or into the hedge. He will emerge claiming that “it doesn’t steer”!
The fact is that, to make a solo go round a bend you simply lean, almost imperceptibly in the required direction and the front wheel will turn slightly into the bend. Not so with a “chair” attached! It is necessary to use the handlebars somewhat as a tiller, in order to turn the steering and negotiate the corner. It is also desirable to shift one’s weight towards the inside of the bend, to counteract the tendency of the outfit to lift either the sidecar wheel or the bike’s rear wheel. Most people will have seen the passenger doing this on racing outfits. I used to have a friend, a couple of years younger than myself, who loved to hang out of the chair on left hand bends. I went in a bit closer than usual one day and combed his hair on a hawthorn hedge! He was strangely reluctant to do it after that!
After I had thrashed the life out of the Speed Twin I moved up to a Triumph 650cc “Tiger 110” which had a Watsonian Saloon sidecar attached. This machine was never intended to haul a sidecar and it showed its displeasure at every opportunity! The first problem that reared its head was breaking of spokes in the front wheel, due to the lateral forces applied. The Tiger 110 was a sports machine, which delivered its power in a quite unsuitable form for use with a sidecar. Then it started to break gudgeon pins, which, to the uninitiated, secure the pistons to the connecting rods in the engine. It was possible in those times, late 50s, to buy five-star petrol which was of such a high octane rating that “pinking” did not occur however far one advanced the ignition timing.
I did not realise it at the time, but I was advancing the ignition right up after start up and then just driving as hard as I could! The extra load of the sidecar and the power available with five-star was just too much for the internals and something had to give! Step forward gudgeon pins!
After this, for financial reasons I was reduced to a procession of ancient machines such as a B.S.A. M20, a 1932 B.S.A. 650cc “Sloper” and an A.J.S. 500, all of which pulled various sidecars. The final ignominy was when I was reduced to riding a Lambretta scooter! To top this off I went back to a car, if such it could be called! This was in the form of a Ford “Prefect” 100E of 1955 vintage. I have no excuse, other than stupidity, for wasting even the smallest sum on such a disastrous “Dagenham Donkey”. When I acquired this thing it had covered 32,000 miles, and it was totally “shot”! The first morning after I bought it, the engine would not start and I found it had no compressions anywhere. I removed the engine and dismantled it, to discover the following: All the piston rings were broken or were entirely absent! The top rings had worked their way up through the lands and pieces of piston ring were embedded in the aluminium of the piston crowns! The exhaust valves were burnt almost away.
I botched this lot by fitting Hepolite “Pep” pistons, which were engineered slightly oversize, fitted with Cord style oil control rings, both above and below the gudgeon pin and additionally the upper of the two compression rings was a “ridge-dodger”.
This “fix” made the car usable for a while, but in winter it had the usual Ford failing of those times. It just refused to start in the mornings and I had to get to work whatever way I could. Arriving home in the evening, with the weather slightly warmer, the bloody thing would start!
I used to park overnight, off the road alongside two other cars, which belonged to neighbours. Morning after morning I would be trying to start this Ford and a neighbour, Eric would be having the same struggle with his Rover 90, which was also a pig on a cold morning. George would then come out, late for work and go to his ancient, battered VW bus. The engine would turn over slowly, with the starter appearing to be not really up to the job. Then the air-cooled flat-four roared into life and he would be away down the road. I must say it took me a while, but eventually the penny dropped! Soon the Prefect broke a rear spring and I gave it to the scrapman!