WARTIME WORKHORSE

Back in 1973 my mate Dave bought a very nice 1947 Harley WLD which attracted a lot of attention. Spurred on by this machine and fanciful thoughts about being the next Peter Fonda, I started looking around. After some haggling I bought my first Harley-Davidson in 1974 for £325, a rather secondhand WLC (Canadian Army) 750 sidevalve V-twin. I quickly discovered it had endured a hard life and needed some work, and the suicide foot clutch fitted was not normal.

With the mechanicals in better order and a nice Electric Blue paint job I thought I was the bee’s knees. I had several adventures with this machine, like five weeks of commuting in London on a three-speed hand-change, footclutch bike with virtually no brakes. My last big trip on the WLC to the Isle of Man for the 1975 International Six Day Trial proved to be real a challenge. I lost second gear on the way to the IoM and the generator started to fail later in the week. I still have flashbacks of trying to keep up with my mates riding along Marine Drive, on sidelights, one wet and windy night! Stupidly I sold the machine shortly after my return from the loM when somebody made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Fast forward to 1992; I heard through the grapevine that a local character had acquired some wartime Harley-Davidsons. Always regretting the sale of my first machine, I hot-footed around to his place, whereupon he whisked me away to his secret storage shed. The story emerged that he had been working in Saudi Arabia and came across a scrapyard full of relatively new vehicles. Tucked away in one corner was a stash of dilapidated old motorcycles, including two knucklehead and seven WL 45 Harley-Davidsons in civilian trim. He was told they were a group of