This time we look at 5 of Britain's 350cc class motorcycles. before the dawn of the 1960s this had been one of the most important categories in the UK bike industry.
As a 53 year old American I have heard of almost all of these bikes but never seen them. I read all of the magazines from 1980-2010 and they always talked about old Britbikes but never showed them (it was all about the new stuff I guess). Every writer seemed to have the perfect one in a state of restoration and once running got bit by something. Seeing them here makes them real. They are all beautiful and interesting bikes! Thanks for doing these. As an aircraft mechanic in GA, these are my forte' of mechanics. Old school. Kevin Cameron of Cycle World taught me more about aircraft engines than almost anybody except a few departed souls. One last Friday. RIP William Hale! God speed, brother.
I enjoyed the show. I had a 350 Matchless in the early1970's. I had a '54 MAC as well and swapped the Matchless for a '54MSS. I still have the MAC and MSS 50 years later and the remain one year younger than me. Easy bikes to fall in love with.
Wanted a Royal Enfield since I was 15yo, am 72 now. Just got a beautiful Bullet 500 w/ only 5000 miles. Babied it for 500 wonderful miles before the transmission took a crap in my driveway. Now I have to drive 100 miles to find a mechanic who wants to charge like it's a Lamborghini. If I was in India, could get a new transmission delivered to my house for a bag of rice.
It was nice to see a Velocette 350 here. I know my late father had one which he wrote off just before I was born in 1956. My guess is that it was probably the type you showed as I wouldn't have thought he was able to afford a fairly new Viper at the time.
Almost certainly would have been exactly like that Most people didn’t bother with sporting models back then They were more about transport and less of a leisure toy back then
I bought a rough Triumph Twenty One exactly the same colour as the one in the video in 1973 for the princely sum of £20 as the owner thought the main bearings had gone. I knew it was actually just a loose alternator rotor on the end of the crankshaft and once tightened up, it ran OK and I used it for a while over a winter before selling it at a profit of £5.......all that use and a profit at the end of it - how things have changed!
Thank you for yet again another brilliant video on a range of bikes that were mostly overlooked back in the day. Once you passed your test on a 250 it was straight to a 500 or 650 completely bypassing the 350 range. Thanks for a great insight into a range of bikes I have little knowledge of👍
Well no they weren’t really because in their day there was no 250 learner law 350 class was extremely popular up until the beginning of the 60s and the 250 law
It’s brilliant. Really good in heavy traffic and saves the clutch from getting hot Works every time too They can keep the TFT screen it’s far more useful
The viper gave me one of the biggest shocks I’ve had in biking. I parked up my then ultra modern cb250 k4 Honda outside a friend of a friends house . He had a very scruffy viper on the drive which he described as nippy bike and offered me a go . I thought this should be a laugh I bet it’ll hardly pull away . I couldn’t believe it, not only was it decidedly “ nippy “ I knew it would take my Honda even though the bhp was the same ,or claimed . The triumph 21 (had one and rode another) was the most asthmatic motorcycle I have ever ridden .my mates Enfield 250 crusader would have destroyed it in every department ( possibly excepting reliability.)
Well of course the viper made good torque and velocette are rather more honest about their bike’s performance than some of the later Japanese companies
I like the video and look forward to the A.M.C. video on AJS and Matchless . I have a '65 AJS 16 restored professionally . Robert Smith , moto-journalist , wrote about it in the American publication "Motorcycle Classics" a few years ago .
I agree , after thinking about your answer for a bit , here in southern B.C. Canada , both AJS and Matchless are rare brands to see , and rarer to own . When the AJ found me , i could hardly believe my eyes . It had not ran in years , so i took it to the only English bike shop in B.C. that i could i find . I enjoy riding it , on sunny warm Sunday mornings , and my son will inherit it , in the near future .@@bikerdood1100
At 14 years old (early 70's) I learned to ride on a stripped Red Hunter 350 on fields. My dad had restored a Tiger 90 which I'd secretly (I think) ride too when he was at work. The Tiger seemed so fast at the time.
There is something about them Originally called the Brooklands can because. As the track was next to houses races were obligated to fit them to compete there A real style icon
Well that was the very last models and definitely not the case in the model shown here Hard to understand why BSA bothered because the market for 350 singles was shrinking by 59 It was produced with an alternator not by 59 but only in 59 incidentally
As a boy I saw all of these all over the place, a neighbour had a B31 identical to the one in the video. The 350s tend to get overlooked, which is a shame. They were good practical machines that didn't break the bank.
In reality it’s what most people actually brought Everyone fantasies about Bonnies but a lot em never actually owned one The 350 was the two wheeled family cat of the 50s
My old man has a B31 in the early 70s and while he was always knocking if my YDS7 i was left to ride he’s B31 but i came to enjoy that bike a lot it had a lot of character and was extremely comfortable shame about the brakes 😊
Well given how awful rads were in the 40s and 50s and the wooden tyres Powerful breaks would not have been such a great thing Bikes like these prove that it ain’t all about how fast it goes
I bought a 1954 B31 and it came with a box containing a 500 barrel, head and flywheels. Easy conversion to 500 and all new bearings, rebuilt crank, valves springs etc. I then hitched it to a Watsonion single seat sidecar. It says much for the frame and forks that it was a superb chariot assisted maybe by me having 16 inch alloy rims laced to the hubs. Although I renewed the clutch plates the gearbox was never touched apart from fresh oil now and then. For three years it was my everyday transport and only an expanding family forced me into the world of Reliants and cars. Ah! if only I had had the space to store it for a few years.
I had an m33 for 30 years from 1990 to 2013. Would have taken the head off and I had four original head bolts but the ones in it just twisted a bit( torque wind up) and sprung back. So I never tried too hard as I thought if I don’t need to, why bother? I’d only end up with studs snapping in the head and spark erosion required etc etc. never let me down had a light chair on it for a few years and enjoyed an outfit. Big end knocked a little but never got worse. 1948 it was and I regretted getting rid of it so much I bought a 49 m33 last week. Perfect restoration but the bloke hadn’t ridden in the ten years he’d had it. That’s gonna change! Beautiful bikes
@@brockett it did Dave. And yess it was a rigid. Basically an m20 with a stronger motor ,never changed a sprocket and it may have been on chair gearing as it wasn’t long legged but solo would leave me average in his car well behind at lights. Paid five hundred quid for it and it was sort of chopped with six in overs on it and lots of chrome bits, pri case engine plates yokes toolbox etc. bought off a woman in south west London. She described it as a “ good birds bike” lo seat height and not too massive.
I started with a ´57 BSA B31, a great bike. Ariel Hubs were a good addition and I fitted a Triumph clutch which was much better. Norton Roadholder fork stanchions stiffened up the front end, and I uprated it to 12 volts with a regulator from a tractor, and a coil from a Morris 1000. I added an oil filter and fitted a Goldie "Touring" cam. Yes, a great "original" bike. Sold it to a Swiss guy who was going to turn it into a Gold Star. Fame at last ...
Back in '63 I borrowed a mate's BSA B31 for my 150-mile weekend commute, with a view to buying it from him. I found that it was little, if anything, improved on my Jawa 250, so the deal didn't happen. Later, in '65/6 I use to borrow a 3TA from a local in Borneo; whilst ok on the road, it was a real handful on jungle tracks!
I really love the old British, German, and Italian bikes. But they always sound like they desperately need a valve adjust. Guess that's my OCD kicking in. 😄 I love the content on this channel. Look forward to new videos being posted. Thanks for sharing. Cheers
When I bought my Triumph Trident T160 after years of owning japanese bikes, it took me weeks to get used to the sound of the pushrods and valves. They were so noisy 😂
I bought a 68 tiger in the 80s for very cheep. Nice lil bike. I had a 1955 Harley Davidson 45inch flathead I was building. As a friend of the dirt bike Enduro yes!!!! So I took her up in the woods got used to the weight it's size in a day o was flying around like I owned the place. I took her out on the trials trails muddy rocky let's say she did very well I mean I could not believe how well this bike did in the woods. If I had a few bucks I wood make a scrambler out of a tiger.
I have to say I find your channel infinity more engaging and informative than the pretty awful 'classic motorcycle' channel. You clearly take the time to research and assemble an entertaining video. I wish you and the channel all the best for the future.
Oooooh my gawd 😍 all so beautiful . Not one ugly girl at this party . You brought up a neutral finder . Be aware I don't know much about what I'm about to say . I don't know which company or bike actually implemented the 1 down 4 up that is now used on almost all bikes today ? I think that neutral was always at the bottom in the past yet someone found that concept dangerous because if you were stopped and a car was coming up too fast behind you it was quicker to kick the shifter down than it was to shift up . So the industry went to the 1 down and 4 up pattern for safety reasons . It would be interesting to see the bikes with neutral at the bottom and then a presentation of the very first 1 down 4 up bike . Like I said , I don't know much about what I was saying. I would enjoy seeing a history lesson regarding shift patterns . The bikes in this video are absolutely amazing. They stole my heart ❤
It was never at the very bottom on British bikes, that would the r the Japanese machines of the 60s and 70s GP bikes are still that way round incidentally so you can change up well cranked over, and Triumph were always up for up I switch between the two all the time and you get used to it very quickly
AJS and Matchless 350 badging clones were enormously popular in the fifties in NZ. Were they somewhat less so in their home country of origin? Were they the budget working man's choice possibly? Seem to remember they were rated at 16hp, and the 500 versions at 22hp. They were famed in the mid-fifties for their rear 'jampots' and, for a pressed metal primary chain-case and cover that could never be effectively sealed by a clamped enormous rubber band provided in apparent hope by the manufacturer, because properly machined faces to seal together were just not present. Topping up the oil level in the primary chain-case was a daily maintenance necessity, however sufficient oil would fly backwards in service to keep the secondary chain permanently fully lubricated as a presumably unintended consequence. 1955 saw a magneto automatic advance/retard feature making starting slightly easier. The ball race bottom ends of these bikes with heavy dual pressed flywheels were enormously strong and were never known to break. They were substantial bikes presenting quite stable smooth handling. I had three of them all up, the last one a 1950 G80 500 requiring a carefully de-compressed TDC power stroke for starting with. The 350's could just be kicked over, still with quite some effort, without de-compression. The 350's were a tad easier to live with by comparison as everyday rides, they were a little lighter, and a little more agile, so one could say the 1955 G3LS 350 was my favourite bike for those days.
I intend to put them in another collection, I did do a video on them talking about how they essentially failed because they remained in production way to long and lost a tonne of money. Very good bikes though
A good selection of 350s although a little disappointing that you didn't include AJS/Matchless. I owned a 3TA many years ago, without the bathtub, it ran very smoothly at speeds up to 55mph and it handled very well.
Now your asking AMC went to a alternator As a low volume producer they switched manufacturers in 62 and were able to burn through stock on the shelf BSA & AMC built in too big a numbers To carry on
Yep, lack of foresight, lack of planning, lack of funding. They though they could sit on their laurels and keep churning out the same old guff. Then the Japanese arrived and wiped the floor with them!
