Douglas T35
THE STORY OF HOW , IN 1946, TRIUMPH TURNED a Lancaster bomber generator engine into a Manx GP winning racer is often told, and the Triumph Grand Prix is justly famous. There was, however, another manufacturer that raided their wartime stores for a motor. And, unlike the Triumph, which was essentially a prewar twin with a lightweight alloy barrel and head, the Douglas “Mark” series not only had a new engine, but a radical new frame and suspension system too. Douglas had mostly built inline flat twins prewar, with the exception of a shaft-drive transverse flat twin, named the Endeavour and a more conventional lightweight two-stroke.
During the war they stopped making motorcycles despite having built 25,000 for the military during the First World War, and made other things for the war effort between 1939-45.
Towards the end of the war, they took a 350cc powerplant that had been produced to power a portable generator and put it in a frame with a patented torsion bar suspension system. This bike, the T35, was the UK’s first all-new production motorcycle postwar, launched in July 1945.
THE T35: TORSION BARS AND SWINGING LINKS
The suspension at the rear was provided by a pair of torsion bars, hidden inside the straight tubes of the engine cradle. At the rear of the frame tube there was a lever that linked to the swing arm fork to provide the springing, with the lever mounted on splines so the rider could adjust it to suit the load.
Up front at first glance the forks are telescopic, until it is realised there do not appear to be any sliders. On the prototypes torsion bars ran up the length of
