INCOMING!

Summat to say? Send your comments, hints, tips, tales of woe and derring-don’t to: RCHQ@RealClassic.net

SCRAMBLED!

I confess to being puzzled by some maths in the test of the Scram 411 in relation to its range on a full tank. The tank capacity is given as 15 litres (approximately 3.3 gallons), giving a range of 280 miles at 40mpg. My maths gives a range of around 130 miles with those figures. Mileage would need to be around 85mpg to give that range, so perhaps the figure of 40 relates to mph rather than mpg?

John Faulkner, member 1111

I confess that the figures may have got a little scrambled in translation. Owners report fuel consumption as 65+ mpg and a tank range of c200miles … Frank W

PUBTALKING

I am always happy to get your mag every month, and PUB mentioned Tornax in RC220.

Tornax was founded in 1926 by the goldsmith Ernst Wewer in Wuppertal-Langerfeld in the middle of Nordrhein Westfalia. The chief engineer was Otto Karpe who handled the design.

The bikes were built from very good quality parts, starting with a 600cc JAP engine. Later they added 550 and 500cc JAP engines and included the 1000 V2 as the luxury version. For a short while they had good sales. Of course they got in trouble after the Wall Street crash and tried to sell the bikes cheaper -and the engines got smaller, using 200cc JAP engines, and later 2-strokes like Bark. They also employed different 350s. When the Nazis arrived, they were not allowed to use engines from foreign countries, so they installed Columbus engines from the Horex company in Bad Homburg.

In 1934 they tried to bring a car onto the market -abig mistake.

Then in 1936 they started to develop an engine with ILO in Pinneberg, near Hamburg. This was a 200cc 2-stroke, later versions were both 250 and 120cc. Then war started and anew 125 arrived, the only model they produced during hostilities. In March 1945 the factory was bombed. Fast forward: in 1948 they started to produce motorcycles of 125cc and later 175cc again.

Soon 200 and 250cc machines followed, with the well-known Black Josefine.