barr and stroud cotton project

[JFerg]

PV were fairly typical Barr and Stroud customers. 
In total they bought roughly:
17 qty 350cc
15 qty 500cc
3 qty 1,000cc twins.

If you can share any engine numbers with me, I can probably give you the original order details for it.

JFerg

[P.V. Motorcycles]

Wow - that's a bit more info than I expected!

No Barr & Stroud models survive to my knowledge, so I can't supply any numbers.
My limited knowledge of them comes from the catalogues and press photos of the time.

The first press mention that they fitted them is November 1922 (show-time), and the company lasted until a bankruptcy sale in November 1924.

I do have a copy of a letter from June 1922, advising on a delay in obtaining an engine for a machine ordered. The number quoted is 340, which would be very low for one of the longer-established engine manufacturers that they used at the time (Villiers or JAP).

Fascinated to hear more, if you have any.

Nick

[JFerg]

Nick,  I have heaps.

Engine 340 was shipped to PV on 25 May 1922, with another engine.  Shipment of two.

Email me off-line; johnferguson<at>iinet.net.au

JFerg.

[cardan]

If he emails you offline, I'll have NOTHING to amuse me!!!! What could be more interesting than when B&S meets PV. The Lock Ness Monster pales in insignificance...

Leon

[33d6]

Hi Leon,
Is it true the Loch Ness Monster was head designer for Douglas?
Cheers,

[cardan]

No.

[P.V. Motorcycles]

Many thanks JFerg - email duly sent.

Leon - someone had to be responsible for the fairly 'individual' carburettor designs in the veteran era - my brother's 1911 Model D had slides which you lifted against the springs to close - so if a cable failed, you were on full throttle!

Nick

[cardan]

Makes perfect sense to me: too much of this idling stuff! And let's face it, full throttle on a 1911 Douglas isn't likely to hurt anyone.

Seriously, the veteran and vintage eras have something to offer that isn't often available in later times: a sense of experimentation. There's something joyous about the attempts to do something better than it had been done before, even if it turned out, with the benefit of hindsight, to be a slightly goofy idea.

The RA Douglas is named after the Research Association brake it uses front and rear. This has a disk of Ferodo-type braking material, onto which a grooved aluminium shoe presses. Not exactly a disk brake, but along those lines. The connecting rods are forked at the little ends, so the pistons have just one central web through which the gudgeon pin passes. It revved to 6,000 rpm, won the TT in 1923, and gave us Dirt Track racing out here in Australia. It's light, fast and unusual. And it's different.

Better or worse than a B&S-v-twin-engined Perry Vale? Neither; it's the same. Together with the Douglas with the spring-open throttle, they have that certain something that appeals.

Leon

[33d6]

That's a little sweetie. What's the story?

Cheers,

[cardan]

My friend Jack (who you know 33d6) had a collection of British racing bikes from the 1920s - Rudges, Nortons and Douglases. Of these, the Douglases are his favourites. Unfortunately time has caught up with him and at 90 he's in failing health in care. The "RA" Douglas was one of his favourites, but he never managed to get it all together. I've spent the last couple of years tidying his rather large shed, some fraction of which was a treasure trove of racing Douglas stuff - several restored bikes, several project bikes, and a large collection of parts. Thanks to the Douglas Forum I've become somewhat of an expert on racing Douglases of the 1920s, in particular the RA variety.

There are a couple of running RA Douglases in the world, a couple of pretty good ones that are in collections but not running, and a few which people are restoring or trying to restore. Information is sparse, but it turns out that Jack's RA was even rarer than first thought: it started life as a 2 3/4 h.p. (350) Model TW/24. So rare is this model that no-one had ever seen a photo of one, or even mention of the model in a catalogue or advertisement. It seems that all went to Australia.

I managed to find enough parts in the shed to do a loose build of a (494cc) motor and gearbox, then with a small number of extra parts from around the place I built up the bike. I took the bike into show Jack in his care facility a couple of months ago, and of course the promise was to return with the bike running! I've now got all (??) the parts to build the bike up in its original 350cc form, so it should be a little ripper: the only surviving 2 3/4 h.p. Isle of Man Model Douglas. I'm doing the final build on the motor at the moment.

It's a bit modern for me, but the challenge, technical interest, and, in particular, the personal link make it a very special machine. Fun is where you find it!

Cheers

Leon

[33d6]

Hi Leon,
I'm not at all surprised when various bits of early motoring exotica(I include cars here) turn up in Australia. All those overseas factories seemed to find a lot of willing buyers out here for all sorts of fun stuff. Think of the supercharged ohc vee twin AJS Worlds fastest contender, the Blitzen Benz, "Samson" Napier, the factory racing DKW, and so on. With those surfacing already I'm not at all surprised at a genuine IoM TT Douglas surfacing as well.
You and I know they were never really lost, the ardent enthusiast always knew of them. We just didn't appreciate how really exotic they were. (I didn't anyway).
This has all wandered away from Barr & Stroud but it's still all glorious fun isn't it.
Cheers, 

[cardan]

Also in the shed was a pile of Rudge parts. Jack was rebuilding a bike from amongst this stuff that was thought to be an early 1930s Rudge "TT Replica" - an over-the-counter racer which was catalogued.

In trying to get this bike together, it has emerged that the motor in the bike is not a "TT Replica" at all, but instead one of the four 500cc bikes built at the Works in April 1932 for the Rudge team in the Isle of Man Senior TT that year. The frame, subtly different from most other road-going and Replica Rudges, was located in the pile (we should have recognised it from its fetching blue silver-frost paint, along with about 90% of the original parts of the Works bike. Unlike the TW/24 Douglas and the TT Replica Rudges, which were racers produced for sale to special customers, this bike is a real Works Racing Rudge, verified from its engine and frame numbers and many unusual features of other parts of the bike. The gearbox, for example, is stamped STT/CR, presumably Special TT Close Ratio or similar, and contains a full set of close-ratio gears and shafts made from Vibrac, a particularly durable steel. The crankcases are made from a Rolls Royce special alloy RR50 and are stamped accordingly.

So this Rudge has actually circulated on the Island in a TT, in the hands of one of the Works riders. Still researching that part...

And yet most of my bikes, from which I get so much pleasure, are not capable of more than 60kmh. Yes it is glorious fun! I think Nick may be able to supply a photo of a PV-Villiers, a bike I'd be more than happy to own and ride!!

Cheers

Leon

[JFerg]

Fear not, Leon,  ALL of the B&S stuff will hit the public domain fairly soon.  It's in the final stages of polishing now.

JFerg

[cardan]

Fantastic - I look forward to it.

Leon

[33d6]

I remember Vibrac from my apprenticeship days. I hated the stuff.

As the junior apprentice I was on the most ancient and worn out lathe and any job involving Vibrac was a misery. What wiith me being pretty useless and the lathe equally so between us we could ruin any piece of tool steel and knock the tip off as many carbide tools as you'd like to give us. Eventually the foreman conceded it wasn't all me when he couldn't cut a thread on the old lathe either. Things improved a little after that.

Still, all these years later I still wince when I see Vibrac mentioned.

Cheers,