SIDEVALVE SUPREME

As a boy, Chris Reynolds was captivated by the golden era of Brooklands racers. ‘I visited Beaulieu and saw EJ Tubbs’ nickel-plated Brooklands track bike,’ remembers Chris. ‘I read the book ‘50 Years of Brooklands’ and was fascinated by the mention of LWE Hartley’s Zoomer 90mph sidevalve Ariel. My mum and dad had a BSA M21 /Watsonian combination, and sidevalve engines fascinated me. As the years wore on and I started riding, then earning, I fancied building a Brooklands racer.’ So that’s how Chris came to place a wanted advert in 1965 for a suitable sidevalve to convert into his dream racer. But what’s all this about Tubbs and Hartley and the Zoomer? Well, marque specialist Laurence (LWE) Hartley was involved with Ariel motorcycles for over four decades, while his son Peter BL literally wrote the book on the subject. And LWE’s story begins half a century earlier in his schoolboy days when he played truant to spectate at Brooklands.

Hartley became an engineering apprentice, and when hostilities ceased in 1919 he returned to Brooklands to tune bikes in his spare time. By 1921 he’d set up a business with a friend to produce alloy pistons for racebikes. The enterprise proved so successful that a financial partner arrived – generating the firm’s name of Carter and Hartley as seen on the notepaper hereabouts. Carter didn’t last long, however. Hartley bought him out and set up shop in Well Hall; yes, the same suburb in south-east London which we’ve mentioned in RC before, where later Dunstall