Karlsson Matchless
We’ve all jumped on a bike belonging to someone else and thought: “Ooh, I couldn’t ride this with the ’bars set there,” or “Those footrests feel like my feet are up around my ears…” and if the bike was ours we’d have to alter it so it felt better to us. In the old days, when trials bikes were basically a maker’s roadster with a few heavy bits replaced with light bits, there was much more need to alter a machine to make it more suitable for the job in hand. Once the Spanish industry got going and its products proved to be brilliant straight from the crate, the need to alter and develop a bike sort of faded into the background and it was enough for most people to change handlebars or levers rather than rework the whole machine.
Sometimes though there is a need to do something different, something away from the norm… why is there this need? No idea, maybe it’s to face a challenge, prove a point or just to see if it could be done. Someone somewhere will likely have had a research grant to study the phenomenon but we’re too busy doing it to worry about the why.
Just such a situation popped up when Stig Karlsson decided he’d like to ride a Matchless in the Scottish Six Days Trial. No problem there, Matchless and its stablemate AJS has an excellent record in the Six Days, racking up 10 wins between them since 1947. Only thing was, Stig decided he’d ride in the 1985 SSDT, which is long after the heyday of the traditional engine four-stroke single.
The question is: just how can a traditional non-unit construction motorcycle be prepared for an
