A Guide to Motorcycle Racing

By Hedley J. Cox

United States motorcycle enthusiasts can learn a lot by looking to their peers in Europe, which has as rich a history as they do.

Hedley J. Cox was living in England when he became involved in racing in the early 1950s. An engineer of the first order, he raced and designed machines and traveled with a team to International Grand Prix meetings in Europe.

In this behind-the-scenes look at the world of motorcycle racing, youll learn the answers to questions such as:

How does management politics affect racing? Why did British motorcycle manufacturers lose the spirit of adventure that is so necessary in racing? What happened when that sense of adventure was lost?

He also examines the state of racing in the Canada, where he raced for a big manufacturer after moving to the United States. At every turn and curve, he encouraged others to embrace new ideas to beat competitors.

Join the author on a fascinating journey that spans thousands of miles with three different manufacturers with A Guide to Motorcycle Racing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: May 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781480816152

Hedley J. Cox

The author has always been fascinated by motorcycles. When young he was a racing mechanic for a famous firm, then, took up racing himself. When his firm folded, he came to America, and entered the same Industry there. He was frustrated at its inability to enlarge its perceptions, so entered academia, which enabled him to solve problems that had baffled his former employers.

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Copyright © 2015 Hedley J. Cox.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-1614-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1615-2 (e)

Archway Publishing rev. date: 5/13/2015

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Contents

1   The Start

2   A Short History of Veloce Ltd

3   My Start at Veloce Ltd

4   Inside Veloce Ltd

5   Politics at Veloce Ltd

6   The New Racing Game

7   The Veloce Race Shop

8   The KTT Advantages

9   The 1948 TT in the Isle of Man

10. The Advent of the Velocette DOHC

11   The 1949 Racing Season

12   The 1950 Races

13   Motor Troubles, 1950

14   My Entry into Racing

15   My First Race

16   Short Circuiting

17   An Imaginary Peep into the Boardroom

18   A Return to the Shops

19   The Covel

20   The 1951 Veloce Works Racing Program

21   The 1951 Manx Grand Prix

22   Calamity

23   Another Imaginary Boardroom Visit

24   The Prodigal Returns

25   Farewell, Veloce Ltd

26   Action at Home

27   Back to the Drawing Board

28   Experiences at Harley Davidson

29   An Interlude - Racing in Canada

30   The Oriental Invasion

31   Into Education, Texas and the Ranger Corp

32   The New Covel

33   Sleeve Valves

34   Notes from Texas

35   A Look Back

36   The Future - A Jump into Fantasy Land But Will It Come?

37   Addendum – Balance & Steering, for the Technically Inclined

38   Steering Calculations (For those interested in checking their own bike)

39   The Telescopic Fork

40   Girder Fork

41   Hub Steering

References

To Peter Darrell

Ralph and Gary

A GUIDE TO MOTORCYCLE RACING

by Hedley J. Cox

M otorcycle racing seems, to the average person, who sees it occasionally on TV, a wild and dangerous sport. Riders hurl their machines around a track that is like a switchback, full of high jumps, which cause rider and machine to leave the ground, and sail wildly through the air, landing heavily a few yards further on, just in time to tackle the next jump. The surface of the track may be tightly-packed sand. At the end of a straight section there is quick curve, which the riders slide around, feet down, often dangerously close to each other. To the normal viewer, this is a crazy sport for those with suicidal tendencies.

However, that is only one branch of racing, and it draws crowds mainly because it looks so wild and hairy. It’s like football in that respect. Spectators are drawn by the thrill of what seems like death-defying action. Actually, very few participants are ever hurt.

But there are other forms of motor cycle racing that are not as spectacular, and are much faster. Road racing is one of them. It is more popular in Europe than in the USA, but it is gaining attention and riders here, too.

Let us read of the experiences of one man who worked at three motorcycle factories, both as a mechanic, a designer and a racing activist. His intimate knowledge of the internal activities, and ‘behind the scenes’ politics at his employers’ factories may shed new light on just how motorcycles are conceived and made, and how the manufacturers of such machines conduct their affairs behind closed doors, out of sight of the light of day, which will later bring out into the open the often nefarious activities of management, as their products hit the market, and explain just why many such mysterious moves by the manufacturers take place. It will delve into closed-door sessions of these makers, and reveal some of their thought processes.

It will also explain some of the basics of machine behavior, which may be new to many But, overall, it will be shown that one can have fun with motorcycles, which is what this story is all about. Let us go to a racing circuit, with a description of what the rider experiences in a road race..

Imagine yourself astride a motorcycle, a racing motorcycle, on a normal road. You crouch down, trying to evade the rushing air stream that tries to slow you down, and tear you from your seat. Your chin presses down on the rubber pad fastened to the tank top. Your leather-covered arms stretch out above your shoulders, grasping tightly the ends of the handlebars. Your right-hand holds the twist-grip back against the stop, in the flat- out position. Your eyes are glued to the needle of the tachometer, willing it to rise to the seven thousand rpm mark, which is your peak speed, and to the road ahead. There is some vibration from the engine under you, but you ignore it. You’re not a sissy. This is the thrill of all thrills. Nothing else can remotely touch or exceed it. You are really on top of the world. Your aim is get around this circuit more quickly than anyone else can.

As you ride, you guide the motorcycle on the proper line that will take you into the next corner, to take it at the maximum possible speed. You see the hedges, the fields, the spectators flash past you at over a hundred miles per hour. You have ridden this circuit many times in practice, building your confidence, your expertise, your handling of the machine that snarls ferociously under you. In you there is the supreme feeling that you are in charge, that you can do it, you can ride this course better than anyone else ever has. No one can ever have felt more like a soaring eagle in flight than you.

As you tear round the corner, your wheels close to the edge of the road, you peer through your goggles, and set yourself and the bike in line for the coming corner. You know the precise point at which you must shift to a lower gear, apply your brakes, and how far over you must lean to get through this corner as quickly as possible. Yet there is another rider going into the bend. He is blocking your approach. You must get by him there, without losing speed. It’s not easy. He has almost your velocity, but he’s slightly off the line you have chosen, that you know is the best one. It’s a second gear corner. You pull in your clutch with your left hand, and tap the gear shift pedal twice with you right foot. You slow enough, and aim into the bend, applying your front brake just a touch until you are just slightly off your best line, not too much, but just enough so that you can get by him.

You have to be careful, as the road has an adverse amber here. He somehow hasn’t quite the best line, so is slower than you. You sweep by him, close, but not dangerously so. You experience the thrill of victory at high speed riding as you get into the lead, with your throttle wide open. But, because you have deviated slightly from your best line on this corner, you are just slightly off from where you need to be to take the following curve at the right speed. However, you realize this in time, and make the necessary correction quickly, a little touch of the brake, a slackening of the throttle. There! It was close, but you managed it. Wide open throttle now. Just as the rev counter needle touches the seven thousand rpm point, you change into third gear by clicking down on the gear shift pedal, without using the clutch. The motor responds willingly, and you rocket forward. Now you are set for the straight ahead, and you shift into fourth, top gear, as the rev counter touches 7,000 in third. Before long you are in top gear, possibly going over 7,000 rpm.

This describes, in shortened form, what it was like, in the early ‘fifties, to race a motorcycle round the TT course in the Isle of Man, the world’s premier road racing circuit. Thirty-seven and three quarter miles to a lap, six or seven laps to the race (six in the Manx G.P., seven in the TT), with many slow and fast corners, a climb up the Snaefel mountain, hairpin bends, and jumps off the road surface in places. At that time, in the early fifties, a good winning lap speed for the faster Senior motorcycles was at an average of about 85 mph. Now, sixty-five years later, that figure has climbed to over one hundred and thirty mph. But the machines ridden have developed out of all proportion. In the ‘fifties the bikes had drum brakes, single cylinder engines, no streamlining, indifferent suspension systems, gearboxes with only four or five ratios, narrow tires and a maximum speed of around 125 mph.

Nowadays the bikes have disc brakes, multi-cylinder engines, efficient streamlining, wonderful suspensions, six, seven, eight or more ratio boxes, and large section tires, that allow safe banking until the rider’s inside knee scrapes the ground. His maximum speed may be over 170 mph. Not only these changes, but now the rider can be in constant electronic communication with his pit, so can be informed of his progress, letting him ease off a little if he is way ahead. Back then, the only signals he received were from his pit when he came in to refuel, and from a word or number scrawled on a white card held by a friend at a known spot around the circuit. He was out of touch with the real, overall situation. Also, the course has been improved. Many jumps have been eliminated, corners straightened out and banked, and threatening stone walls set further back. It is debatable how quickly today’s riders could lap if mounted on the machines and course of yesteryear.

It is a dangerous course, especially for newcomers. They must study everything – the bends, the straightaways, the jumps and bumps, and figure out the quickest way around each section, and blend the sections together. This information they have to fix in their memories. In practice they have to put all this knowledge into use. The lap times are posted for each practice lap and, on study, one can see how one is improving, or not, on each outing. Massed starts, as in short circuit racing, and Continental Grands Prix, are not used here. The competitors would be too bunched for the narrow roads. They are sent off at ten second intervals, so riders are racing the clock, and careful time-keeping by officials is essential to determine the winners and places. The weather will often greatly affect matters, too.

There are casualties, of course, every year, but most of them are relatively minor, just running off the road into a grass bank, for instance. Usually a few bruises, but sometimes a broken arm or leg. In some of the most horrendous crashes, the riders can often walk away, maybe with just a slight gravel rash, or sprained wrist. Now and then one will have to enter hospital but he will be back to race again before long. Racing gets in the blood, and few will ever give it up until age forces retirement.

The TT is a very wearying race. Riders tire by the fourth or fifth lap – over 200 miles at high speed, and some misjudgement of speed, braking points or line can bring about a mishap. And there is always the chance of a part failure. The machines are highly stressed for hours. But all competitors are young men, keen and full of the joy of life and derring-do. It is useless to try and persuade them not to race. Young men, and women, fly planes, drive speed boats, ice skate, climb mountains, go up in rockets, court disasters in every form possible, sure that they will succeed, and come out ahead. They just have to do it, and motorcycle racing is the ultimate sport, ahead of all others.

However, there is an untold story here. How was it that the British racing motorcycle factories, which were supreme in International Grands Prix races for several years after the second World War, succumbed so absolutely to the foreigners? For a very long time they had been proclaiming that they were the absolute champions on the European circuits. Their pre- and post-war records proved this. True, they had been beaten in 1939, but they had persuaded the ruling bodies of the sport that this was only because the opposition makers used superchargers on their machines, which weren’t a bit like their commercial road-going motor cycles, and that this wasn’t fair. So the FICM, the governing body, introduced a rule change that banned forced induction, and, once more, the British makes climbed to the top of the tree. However, this lasted only a few years. How was it that they once again fell behind, and began losing races? Didn’t their racing directors see what was coming? They had plenty of time to keep their supremacy intact, yet somehow they lost their supremacy, and fell behind.

This true story reveals how one racing factory coped with the challenge to its leadership, and how the other British makers held out a little longer, but were finally engulfed. It is told by a racer of those days, who was also employed by the factories mentioned here, and whose activities were affected by them.

Chapter 1

The Start

H ere goes. I am that person mentioned above, and what I have to say is the absolute truth, although it will not be liked by some, - by the manufacturers of motor cycles from the three factories which employed me. But I will strive to present a balanced, objective picture of what I experienced. It is all past history, starting in the middle of the last century, and moving up nearly to the present day (2015). I had great times in this field, and I hope you will enjoy what I write, and that you will share some of my experiences and feelings.

I was born in 1928 in Manchester, England. My family moved to London, England in 1932. The early thirties were convulsed by revolutions in Europe, the rise of dictatorships, and threats of war, one of which took place in Spain. The peace-loving democracies strove to avert these threats, but Hitler, dictator of Germany, believed he could rule the world, and set out to do so. Poland was invaded and swiftly conquered by his forces in 1939. Britain and France saw he had to be halted, and declared war on his nation, Germany, on September 3rd of that year.

There was great fear, in the democracies, of savage, relentless bombing of their cities by the powerful German Luftwaffe, which had been built up in the thirties, breaking all treaties that forbade such work. The bombings by German ‘volunteers’ in Spain reinforced these fears. Many people in the larger cities, especially the children, were evacuated to smaller towns, or to Canada. My family lived in London, which was sure to be one of the main bomb targets. My Father was an accountant, and his job entailed him traveling around various small villages in the country, to check on their books. He moved my Mother, brother Alan, and me out to one of those places, named Wyboston, in the County of Bedfordshire, about one hundred miles north of London. Alan and I used to catch the bus to go to school in Bedford, which was about twelve miles away.

We didn’t see much of the war, thank goodness, being so remote. But we followed its progress avidly, from what we read in newspapers and heard on the BBC radio. The war went very badly for Britain at first. Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France were conquered, and we were left alone, although Canada, Australia, India and New Zealand rendered valuable assistance. Invasion was a constant threat, and German bombers flew over almost every night. We would hear the sound of their engines as they passed over. In 1940 we would go out to the back of our house, and could see a red glow in the sky to the south. This was London, burning from the savage attacks by the Luftwaffe. Civilian casualties ran into the thousands.

There were many large greenhouses near us, and it is probable that from the sky above they looked like the glass roofs of factories, reflecting the light of the moon. So we suffered a few bombs nearby. My Mother, Alan and I crouched under a stout oak table in the living room, as the bombs fell. Luckily there was a ploughed field next to us, and the bombs that fell just missed us, and only raised showers of earth. My Father was out on Home Guard duty, watching for German parachutists.

One night, in bed, we heard a thunderous roar, as a German plane swooped lower and lower. We thought it would hit the house, but it crashed in a field a couple of miles away. It was a Junkers 88, brought down by anti-aircraft fire. Next day everyone in the village set out to the crash site. When the authorities let us in, we all poked around the smashed up aircraft for souvenirs. There were many bloody bits of Luftwaffe airmen scattered around the field, which drew jesting comments from the locals. Later in the war, a Dornier 215 was brought down in daylight by Spitfires a few miles away. It was badly smashed up. Once again, crowds of locals visited the site looking for souvenirs.

One day, in about 1943, a group of us were walking to school in Bedford, when a Messerschmitt ME 110 dived out of the clouds to release bombs on the Midland railway station, about half a mile away. The Germans had lost control of the sky by this time in the war, and turned to sudden hit-and-run tactics like this. We dodged into an alley, as plate glass windows around us shattered. I saw a long length of rail go hurtling up into the sky as the plane vanished into the clouds.

That was the extent of the war for me. We saw a lot of foreign soldiers and airmen, mainly American, in the later years of the war. The German V1 pilotless planes came over in 1945, and we could hear the stuttering noise of their engines. As long as you could hear this noise, you were safe, but if it cut out, it meant that the V1 was about to dive with its large bomb load, so look out. Fortunately, none fell near us. The V2, the rocket bomb, only fell on the larger cities, and did much damage.

Anyway, the war came to an end, with victory for our side. It had looked pretty bad for Britain early on, but then Hitler attacked Russia, and almost beat that nation early on. He also declared war on America. But the Germans, Italians and Japanese found they had bitten off more than they could chew. They couldn’t handle the allied nations, and were beaten. They surrendered in 1945.

My Father, at this time, had bought for Alan and me three old, broken down motorcycles from a garage, and gave them to us to fix. That was my introduction to motorcycles, which I hadn’t thought about before. They were two old BSA’s and a Royal Enfield two-stroke. We worked hard on them, scraping off the rust and dirt, stripping, painting and reassembling them, and learning how they worked. We got the two BSA’s running, but the Enfield was too much for us.

The first motorcycle I owned was bought for me by my Father in 1944. I had just left school, Bedford Modern School. The bike was a 98 cc Coventry Eagle, of pre-war vintage, with a two-stroke engine made by Villiers, which used oil in the petrol for lubrication, so it emitted some blue smoke when running, and was rather noisy, like most Villiers engines of that time. After school I obtained a job as a student at an engineering firm, W. H. Allen, Sons and Company Limited in Bedford. At first I obtained digs in Bedford with a Mrs Barrick, and rode the little bike home to Wyboston at weekends, a distance of twelve miles. I rode a bicycle from my apartment to work. Later, my Father traded in the Coventry Eagle for a 250 cc side valve BSA, and I started riding that to work from home every day. Unfortunately, he died soon after, so I was left to make my own decisions for my future prospects. I was only a seventeen year old boy, but was full of optimism.

W.H. Allen made diesel engines and electrical equipment for ships. Students had to circulate around every department, from pattern shop, foundry, welding, machine and fitting shops and test bays, finishing up in the drawing offices, to acquire a good basic knowledge of engineering in all its aspects, which would serve them well in their future careers. Many students didn’t stay with the company after completing their education there, but most firms in England carried out similar apprenticeships, so the loss to one firm was usually balanced by its gain of trained young men from other establishments. I have heard that W.H.A was taken over by a Swedish firm in the later years of the twentieth century.

The two motor cycle magazines were almost unobtainable at this time, but I had joined the Bedford Eagles Motor Cycle Club, and usually one member could get a copy, so I managed to get a look, and keep up to date on the news in them. The road racing interested me particularly, and we would discuss the racing activities that were just starting up again after the war. The club often held trials over rough ground at weekends. I competed in some of them, but I can’t say I was greatly thrilled. A point was assessed against a competitor whenever he put a foot down for balance,