DIRT TALK
A snapshot in time
Following our chat at Kendal scramble, I dug out photos of my Rickman Metisse Mk.3 which is as I bought it 42 years ago, having been in storage, unused, most of that time.
I bought the bike from Ron Barnes, who lived on a farm near me, on January 29, 1976. He’d bought the Rickman kit new from Ken Heanes Motorcycles on February 15, 1966 (frame no 795); I’ve enclosed a copy of the original receipt. Originally he built it with a 500cc Triumph twin engine but after a couple of blow-ups fitted a 650 engine.
The gearbox is BSA, front forks are Norton, Norton 8in front brake, BSA QD hub and brake/sprocket, Royal Enfield primary chaincase, a Norton clutch fitted on an earlier splined main shaft in the BSA gearbox. All commonly fitted at that time on the Rickman machines.
Other interesting period fittings are a Lucas Wader competition with magneto manual advance/retard, the ones with the green label. I believe one of the differences, besides a degree of waterproofing, was that the end of the armature was in
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