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The Hansen
Dam 2006 BSA Motorcycle Rally
Another day in Paradise...Sunday morning at Hansen Dam
taking pictures of classic motorcycles. The event today?
The annual BSA
Rally.
All photos on this page were created using a Sony Mavica
CD400.
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| Here's what the rally was all
about....BSA motorcycles.
Birmingham Small Arms was Great Britain's
major motorcycle company for many decades. BSA also manufactured
small arms (get it?...Birmingham Small Arms?). The company's earlier
logo (seen here on this single-cylinder BSA's pushrod cover) was a set of
stacked rifles. |
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Here's a closeup of the BSA
logo on a tank emblem (see the stacked rifles?).
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And here's a close-cropped
shot of the logo on the pushrod cover mentioned above. |
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| This is a late 1960's BSA, which
was definitely a hot ticket in those days. This is the twin carb
model, which was a direct competitor to the other British superbike of its
era, the Triumph Bonneville. Both machines used 650cc, pushrod,
twin-carb engines. The BSA was a tiny bit heavier, but both machines
were at the apex of motorcycle performance for most of that decade. |
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Here's a much earlier model BSA.
This specimen is probably from the mid 1950s. |
| BSA's major competitor back in
the day...Triumph. This is a late-60's 650 Triumph Trophy (which was
the single-carb model). Triumphs always sold a little better here in
the US, and the hot ticket in the Triumph line was the Bonneville (the
twin-carb version of the Trophy). I've owned and ridden both, and
from a performance perspective, it was hard to tell them apart. The
Trophy was a sweet-running bike, and it was probably a bit less
temperamental than the Bonneville.
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The 750 Honda Four. It may
not look like much now, but this is the machine that pretty much
single-handedly killed the British motorcycle industry. Up to 1968,
500cc and larger motorcycles were considered big bikes, and the big bike
market was dominated by Triumph, BSA, and Harley-Davidson. The
Japanese made small bikes, and were not considered serious threats to the
big British vertical twins or the Harleys.
That changed in 1969, with the advent of
the 750 Honda Four. It had an overhead cam (everyone else used
pushrods), four cylinders (the other guys had twins), four carbs, electric
start (the other guys mostly had kick starters), and a hydraulic disk
brake up front. The 750 Four was just a couple of hundred bucks more
than either the Triumph or the BSA 650 twins, and it was actually about
$300 less expensive than the Harley Sportster. And, the thing
was fast...it sounded like a Ferrari and it could walk away from any
Triumph Bonneville, BSA Rocket, or Harley Sportster.
Harley barely survived (they later thrived
with a significantly-modified manufacturing and marketing approach), but
the British motorcycle industry would be on life support for the next
decade, and dead after that. And it was all due to the Honda 750
Four. |
| Kawasaki saw what Honda
accomplished with a large-displacement performance bike, and they came out
with the Kawasaki 500cc two-stroke Triple. That bike handled
terribly, but it was very fast. I had a friend who had one (I had a
1970 750 Honda), and in a drag race, even with the Honda's 50% larger
displacement, it was a dead-even draw. The Kawasaki was not
comfortable (it felt like sitting on a two-by-four), but it was
fast.
Kawasaki later increased their 500cc Triple
to 750cc. Here's a beautiful one at the BSA Rally.
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| A few unusual sidecars showed
up, too. Here's a later-model four-cylinder Honda decked out in a
pretty cool paint scheme. |
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Triumphs and BSAs were cool, but
the Norton (another British motorcycle manufacturer) reputedly had the
best-handling bike in the world. A few guys put Triumph engines in
Norton frames, thereby creating the "Triton." |
| Wow, talk about your fishtail
mufflers!
This is the business end of a Velocette
muffler. The Velocette was a 500cc, single-cylinder British
sportsbike.
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This is about a 1971 or 1972
Honda SL175. I used to have an SL90 Honda (it was a single-cylinder, 90cc
bike), and it was a lot of fun. Honda also made a 350 twin in their
SL series. I've been looking for one of those for a long time. |
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John Bloor bought the rights to
the Triumph name in the 1980s after the original Triumph company went
belly up. Today's Triumphs draw heavily on the Triumph heritage
(nostalgia sells well...it's one of the things that saved Harley), but
today's Triumph company is a completely different company than the old
Triumph.
This is one of Triumph's new bikes...the
2200cc (gasp!) three-cylinder Rocket. I've ridden one of
these...it's fast and it handles pretty well. But it is huge.
Enormous. Gigantic. Did I mention huge? |
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Here's the other end of the
current Triumph spectrum...their newest 675cc three-cylinder sportsbike.
It's the latest Daytona. All the magazines love it, it's fast, and
it's supposed to handle really well. It looks really small,
especially compared to the Rocket shown above. But, it still is
pysically bigger and heavier than the 650 Triumphs from the 1960s. |
| A closeup of the tire on the
back of that new Daytona shown above. That thing must have really
been cooking! |
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Some things go full circle.
Here's the late-model Kawasaki W650, which is a modern Japanese copy of
the British parallel twin concept. The bike was not commercially
successful for Kawasaki, and they killed it after a couple of years of
production. |
| The new Triumph motorcycle
company introduced a modern Bonneville model, which has crept up in
displacement to nearly 900cc. The modern Triumph Bonneville does
well...it is Triumph's best selling motorcycle. Matt Capri, who owns
South Coast Triumph, has amazing customized and hot-rodded Bonnevilles.
Here's a really beautiful example.
How'd you like to do a few hundred miles on
that seat, though? |
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| Here's Matt explaining some of
the features on one of his re-engineered modern Bonnevilles. |
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I think the guy's name was
Rollie Free. Maybe I'm wrong. The story was that he wanted to
eke out a few extra miles per hour during a motorcycle land speed record
attempt in the 1930s. So, he stripped down to a bathing suit and
hung off the back of the bike. Someone caught the whole thing on
film. Someone recreated it as tank art on this bike. It was
really cool looking. |
Here's an input from one of the
site's viewers:
The
tank painting of Rollie Free is probably the most famous picture in
motorcycling. September 13, 1948 Rollie tore his leathers making
run on the Bonneville Salt Flats, and for his heroic final attempt
discarded all of his protective gear, put on a bathing suit, shower cap,
and sneakers. He rode a Vincent HRD Black Lightning 150.13 miles
per hour, a record that dethroned Harley Davidson and that stood as the
US record for a long time. It made Vincent motorcycles legendary.
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| This older R100RT Beemer seemed
to draw a few people every few minutes who absolutely studied the
bike. Marty called me over to look at it. The detailing was
awesome...check out the next few photos... |
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Look at the engraving on these
cylinder heads. This is high class (and expensive) work, easily
rivaling anything I've seen on custom guns. |
| And how about the valve caps? |
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Even the oil cooler, tucked up
under the fairing, had a nice detail added... |
| Marty and I were getting ready
to leave when a guy pulled up on a 1931 Henderson four-cylinder
motorcycle. It was not a restoration...it just looked like a
well-maintained 75-year-old motorcycle. I had no idea who this
was...until he took off his helmet... |
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Yep, Jay Leno. The guy is
amazing.
"Hey, I just bought this off a
92-year-old guy who was getting a divorce..." Jay deadpanned. |
| A straight four air-cooled
engine, in line with the frame. |
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It took me awhile to realize
that this was the speedometer drive. Talk about solid
construction! |
| Jay said the bike would do 70
mph. And look at that...a tell-tale on the speedometer! Even
though I shot this photo, I missed the tell-tale until my friend Dave
pointed it out. |
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And look at the carburetor fuel
settings! All mechanical, all the time! Today, all of this
stuff would be done with injectors and microprocessors. But not in
1931. This is the real deal. Stuff you can look at and
understand. |
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Jay talking bikes with other
people at the Hansen Dam BSA Rally. Jay shows up at a lot of these
events. He is a completely unassuming and approachable person...a
regular guy. |
| After the BSA Rally, my friend
Marty and I rode up Angeles Crest Highway for a late breakfast at
Newcomb's Ranch, and then back down around the San Gabriels and along
their northern range. We stopped at the Valyermo Post Office to
shoot a few pictures. Perfect weather, great roads, great old
British, German, and Japanese motorcycles...it was a super day and a super
ride. |
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