Copyright (c) 2008 GoodMotorcycles.com
You don't see many Ariels on the roads, these days. You see even fewer Ariel Arrows, the sporting version of the Ariel Leader. A weird and wonderful two stroke twin that if you stretched a point and viewed things with a big squint, could be thought of as an early LC. Mine, a 1961 model, has been in the family for ages, passed down from generation to generation until it finally, poor thing, came into my hands.
Because of the 125 law I could not use it to learn on, so father's C90 was put into use for a few months until I passed the tests. This did not stop me riding the Ariel illegally many times down the nearby back roads. We had managed to keep the machine in reasonable order as some time in the past father had the forethought to buy three used engines when they were available for just a few notes. What parts we did not have could be made up on the small lathe in our garage or could be robbed from a different machine and persuaded to fit the Arrow.
For its time, the Ariel was quite advanced. A welded box section style beam frame from which the small and compact engine was hung endowed the chassis with surprising stiffness. 16" wheels and a trailing link fork combined with less than 300lbs in mass meant it was very flickable, but prone to slight weaving when ridden flat out. The rear shocks were not heavy duty items, quickly sagging when they were not trying to turn the back end into a pogo stick. Replacement with Girling shocks was the easy answer.
The age of the machine is evident from its massive mudguards, the front absurdly mounted a few inches off the wheel and liable to snatch up low flying birds. It was useful when the machine was taken on off road excursions, though. The fuel tank is hidden within the beam frame as are the electrics. The whole front end looks bizarre at best, in the styling excess of those huge Yank cars of the fifties.
The brakes are also period pieces, full width SLS drums for which shoes are difficult to find. Engine braking from the two stroke engine is minimal and fade endemic to the braking system. They can't even be praised for working gradually in the wet as they can become easily water logged, although family history has it that they were not so prone when new and 67000 miles younger!
The front brake became dangerous when the front fork linkages became worn a few thousand miles ago. The lurching front end kept throwing the machine into a real wobble, but we made up some bushes and played around with the linkages. The temptation to replace the forks with something more modern, and telescopic in nature, is high, but we have grown to love the weirdness of its looks.
The engine has had two new cast iron cylinders and pistons sets (off the spare engines) but the three bearing crankshaft is still on its original ball bearings, much to everyone's amazement. The engine is fed by an inaccessible single Amal Monobloc and a complex array of intake tubing and filters. Starting is easy enough, using the two position choke but the large clouds of blue smoke from the petroil mix (25:1) make the machine very unpopular with our ecology conscious neighbours.
Performance is better than restricted 125s, with an indicated 80mph possible under favourable conditions, although uphill or against a head wind it's hard pressed to hold 70mph. The engine is tractable at lower revs and takes off in a vaguely spirited way once the throttle is past the halfway mark. A half dead LC would eat it for breakfast, naturally.
Spirited back road riding is rather fun, what with the gentle yowl out of the ultra long silencers and the general chuckability of the chassis. Ever since I discovered it was possible to fit modern Michelins to the 16" wheels I have found fantastic angles of lean on the Arrow, although pivoting the bike around on the centrestand prong is not conducive to a long and happy life.
It will suffer motorway work but the lack of brakes and top end acceleration make it a bit dangerous. Similarly, riding at night with the 6 volt electrics is not recommended. The bike was never fitted with indicators the original 50 watt Lucas alternator would probably throw a fit if I dared to fit them. Vibes are sufficient to blow the rear bulb from time to time, but don't really create much of a nuisance for the rider.
Age has had a marked effect on the transmission. The puny half inch primary chain stretches at a quite frightening rate, these days. Probably down to the poor quality of chain available in the idiosyncratic pitch Ariel deemed necessary. The clutch is very unpredictable (god knows how many plates it's gone through), sometimes it slips, other times it drags - it's even been know to combine the two on some days.
The four speed gearbox is still on many of its original components. Its action has become very heavy over the years but once booted into gear it generally stays there - to the extent that there's no way to find neutral at a standstill. The drive chain resides in its own CD style chain enclosure and receives a modicum of oiling from the primary chaincase, so lasts 15 to 20,000 miles depending on use and quality of chain.
There's quite a large gap between first and second, with obvious consequences on acceleration. Top gear is rather tall, only really of use when the engine is in good fettle. Acceleration in third is much more interesting and the bike can get down to 20mph in this gear, still able to power away, after a fashion, up to 70mph, although judging by the vibes that run through the footrests at that level it's pushing the mechanical limits of the old dear.
Failures on the road have been rare, mostly down to a spate of electrical faults caused by the ancient wiring rotting away or falling out of its connections. As father likes fettling the bike, the garage is his private refuge from the world, the bike receives meticulous servicing every few hundred miles, one reason why it's lasted so long.
Fuel consumption averages around 55mpg, which is on a par with most Japanese four stroke twins. In its early days it was able to do as much as 80mpg when ridden moderately but even a new carb failed to improve consumption to better than 60mpg. A hard thrash will get it down to about 50mpg, so you can pretty well ride it as you want and not worry too much over economy. The tank gives a range of about a 100 miles before it's necessary to find a petrol station.
Things to watch are the state of the spark plugs as they foul up after an excess of town riding, the points as they have been known to fall apart and wheel bearings which don't usually last more than 10,000 miles. It has to be pointed out that the Arrow is a bit of a family pet, well looked after and given a lot of tender loving care.
A lot of them were thrashed, just like LCs are these days, after 20,000 miles they were reduced to scrap and dumped, the rider moving on to better and bigger things. I've seen two Leaders (a sort of two stroke CD175) but no Arrows in the past ten years. I suppose there must still be a few tucked away that come out for the shows, but I never bother going so I wouldn't know. I expect to be able to hand the Ariel on to my son when he comes of an age to ride it.
Phillip Swaine
Ariel were one of the more innovative British companies, coming up with such delights as the Square Four and, of course, the Leader. They also made singles and twins but they were always in the shadow of the then big three, Norton, Triumph and BSA. The radical Leader was brought to market in 1958, the year of my birth, a fact celebrated by the old man with purchase of one of the first Leaders to reach the showroom. He kept it for ten years and I had some fond memories of cleaning its bodywork and being taken for ever so brief rides.
I'd seen one around the town a couple of times. A terrible shade of lime green, that I assumed wasn't original. I saw it coughing asthmatically up the road with an RD style smokescreen. The ancient owner wore a trench coat and pudding basin helmet; it seemed a pretty strange way to relive one's youth.
A year ago I saw an advert in the paper. It had to be him. There couldn't be two Ariel Leaders in our town. He only wanted £450, so I thought I might as well take a look. The old guy reckoned he'd owned the Ariel for 20 years and had two crates full of bits that were part of the deal. He'd retired and didn't need to commute any more. He wanted an easy life in his garden not mucking about with the Ariel.
The bike was in reasonable nick, started quickly, ran nicely around the block and didn't make any strange noises. I agreed to buy the bike, gave him a £50 deposit with the promise to come back the next day with the rest of the dosh. As I was leaving, some cunt in a Roller turned up. He was most aggrieved when he learnt I'd bought the bike, tried to bully the old guy into accepting a larger offer but we saw him off.
A friend with a removal van agreed to pick up the bike and the crates, which turned out to be huge, taking the three of us to manoeuvre them into the van. Back home we pushed the crates off the back of the van, causing them to explode into splintered wood as they bounced on to the road. It was a long walk to my garage, no way we could shift the whole mass of the crates. It was much easier to carry the Ariel bits.
I seemed to have enough parts to make about three Ariels. There were even a couple of crankshafts, still wrapped in greasy paper. Not everything was in such good shape, two white-walled tyres had perished, fell apart as we bounced them down the road. Petrol tanks, mudguards, seats, exhausts, body panels, forks but no frames or wheels. I decided I'd sell most of it off, just keep the engine parts as they might come in handy. Over six months I picked up £750, as some of the bits I'd acquired were very rare. It was a pretty good crack.
The Leader is a very weird motorcycle to look at. In the design of its bodywork practicality won over style. The engine was totally enclosed, little could be seen of the back wheel and the huge front mudguard looked like it'd been pinched off a vintage Harley. The trailing link forks looked incredibly ugly.
The Ariel looks like it should weigh 600lbs but the reality is a mere 360lbs, which shows the cleverness of its design. A lot of that lack of mass is down to a compact 250cc two stroke twin, featuring a single carb, coil ignition and a four speed gearbox.
I went over the chassis looking for signs of looseness but in line with the new MOT certificate there was no discernible movement. The suspension felt on the soft side but on my initial excursions she tracked accurately. The front forks rattled over potholes and made the SLS front brake feel rather remote and wooden. Not that there was an excess of braking power, pathetic by the standards of a modern 125.
The four speed gearbox was the one weak spot in an engine that was, after all, 35 years old. It needed a hefty foot action and would often fly past the required ratio into a false neutral. There was also some jumping out of gear, especially when the bike was revved out. At 70mph in top gear the gearbox could suddenly leap into neutral, sending the revs soaring; just as well there weren't any valves to tangle. Revving the engine hard produced some grinding vibes, all the bodywork thrumming away and my feet doing a frenzied shuffle on the pegs. It was doubtless a quick way to ruin the engine and backing off to 60mph was much more relaxed.
Once into top gear it was very smooth running between 15 and 60mph, helped by the well oiled, fully enclosed chain. However, using the engine mildly around town would cause a very dense cloud of smoke. After about a quarter of an hour of this abuse, the motor would start cutting out as the plugs began to foul up. Usually, I could whip down the box and play on the throttle. The spark plugs would clear as a heavy dose of pollutants spewed out of the exhausts. Sometimes even abuse of the throttle wouldn't clear the engine. It'd cough, cough, cough and then finally fail. The only way to get the motor going was by taking off the bodywork and fitting new spark plugs. Not a five minute job.
As the clogging up could happen every day it soon became a bit tiresome. I had to run along in second gear, using the throttle to keep the engine higher up the rev band. This was at odds with the mild nature of the bike and its great age. To be absolutely honest, a C90 would've been faster, easier to ride and much cheaper to run as the Leader was turning in a pathetic 40mpg.
But I could be a stubborn bugger, having bought the bike I was determined to get some use out of it. I found some new brake shoes amongst the parts and fitted them at each end. These old drums were marginal when new, so it was important to keep them in good shape. The first fifty miles with the new shoes was frightening as the glaze had to be worn off before they worked. Even when bedded in there was a long delay until they started to take off the bike's momentum.
The Leader was quite manoeuvrable, several times I had to swing it around cars when I was unable to pull up in time. The legshields gave me a feeling of security as my kneecaps were no longer hanging out in the wind. The protection from the rain and cold was a revelation after most Japanese bikes which seem to have mudguards and fairings designed to direct water on to the rider at town speeds.
I didn't ride the Ariel over the winter. I took my car to work, the auto actually had better fuel economy but took about five times as long to make its path through the clogged traffic. Despite the weather protection the coldness seeped into my bones and I was frozen solid by the time I got to work on the bike; it just wasn't worth the effort. The rather remote ride also meant that iced up roads were a major hassle with the Avon tyres sliding away without the slightest warning.
No, the Ariel was much happier in the garage where I decided it was time to do something about the lime green paint. As I had some tins of black paint and an electric spray gun things took their natural course. I decided to take everything off the chassis and make a proper job of it. That was how I found that there was a lot of rust around the back section of the frame. I knocked the metal out with my screwdriver. The frame was a steel pressing with the fuel tank hidden within it beams. I used my welding tackle and some steel sheet to repair the rusted out hole. Luckily it wasn't on one of the structural parts of the frame, so I felt fairly happy about the repair. The bike was painted in deep black all over with just a slight hint of pinstriping. It was a major improvement over the lime green and I could pretend that it was a new bike.
I also whipped the heads and cylinders off as I had some new spares I could fit, effectively putting a brand new top end on the engine. The old bore and pistons looked well worn out, explaining, I hoped, the excess of smoke. Lubrication was a fairly basic 25:1 petrol/oil mixture with separate oil in the chaincase and gearbox.
Once the weather warmed up a bit the venerable stroker was pulled out of the garage and kicked into life. If anything, the smokescreen was even more dense than before. Obviously needed the bores bedding in, I thought. I took it easy for a couple of weeks then turned up the wick. One time I was revving the engine in front of the house when two fire engines came screaming down the road. I looked up, saw a huge cloud of dense smoke billowing up into the sky. The firemen reckoned I could be prosecuted for wasting their time but I heard no more about it.
The engine obviously needed some harder use to bed in the rings. A five mile blast down my favourite roads didn't help one bit. Fuel was being swallowed at the rate of 30mpg and the smokescreen followed me across the countryside. I decided that a 30:1 petroil mix would help but it made no discernible difference.
By the time I was halfway home the clouds of pollutants had become very embarrassing. There was a strange clanging noise from the engine which a little later revealed itself as the primary chain about to snap. We rolled to a halt when it finally went, about three miles from home. There seemed nothing for it but to push the Leader all the way home. I had become too attached to the machine to want to dump it in the nearest ditch. I was completely exhausted by the time the house was finally reached.
The primary chaincase was completely devoid of any oil. It dawned on me then that the smokescreen wasn't coming from the pistons but from a blown crankshaft seal. The period of storage in my garage had allowed the seal to dry out, resulting in rapid wear when I started up the engine. It could've been a disaster as I doubt if anyone is rebuilding Leader cranks, these days, but with the spares in my pile of parts there was just the problem of doing a complete engine strip.
I had an old manual to hand, the strip and rebuild went quite well but took about two weeks to complete as I had to make some gaskets. I soaked the crank and thus the seals in oil before I tried to start the engine. No point taking any chances, I only had one more spare crankshaft. The engine came into life after about ten kicks, spewed out a pile of oil then settled down to a regular tickover with just the slightest haze of smoke. Well, transmission apart, it had a practically new engine.
I carefully ran the bike in over the next 1000 miles. Maintenance on these engines is pretty minimal, just give the points a tweak every 500 miles and kick the tyres. Even though there were some heavy vibes at times nothing came undone or fell off, which in my experience is pretty amazing for a British bike.
Some hard use followed in the next four months as a new job meant some long distance commuting was in order. I bought myself a huge trench coat, pudding basin helmet and bright yellow waders just to get in sync with the nature of the Leader. The general populace looked upon me as if I was some kind of mental patient suddenly let loose on to the streets by a decaying NHS. Young children burst into tears at their first sight of me but I was quite happy with my lot in life. As strange as it might seem the siren song of the now well sorted Ariel had got to me.
God knows where I would've ended up if the motor, after a mere 5000 miles of abuse, hadn't decided it was time to intrude upon my rude happiness. Vibes went wild and the engine made terminal noises. The one thing I hadn't replaced were the gudgeon pins as there weren't any in the pile of spares. One had seized, the other was traumatized. I caught them before they had a chance to break up but the small-ends looked wrecked and one of the big-ends was loose. The pistons were also deeply worn around their skirts and the rings looked egg shape.
I ended up putting in the last crank and the old set of rings and pistons. A pair of gudgeon pins took a month to come from some mail order supplier who needed half a dozen phone calls to wake him up. Whilst I was waiting for the bits I spied a Royal Enfield 250 GT single for sale, at £500 it had to be a snip. I handed over the dosh and rode home. The Enfield was fast, flash and economical, miles better than the Leader. Once the Ariel was back in working order I sold it off for £1500, not in the least bit sad to see it go.
Using an old British bike as a daily means of transport in the nineties is a weird trip and not one I'd recommend if you don't have a vehicle as back up. Recently, it's been possible to buy bikes at a reasonable price, use 'em for a year and flog them off at a nice profit. The GT will go the same way next year. In the meantime I'll have rather a lot of fun!
Harry Taylor
I'd seen this weird looking Ariel parked up in Soho for a long time. I'd even caught it howling into life a few times. Smog and rattles. An ugly old thing without doubt and I began to wonder about the owner, some old dude in a dirty mac. My day job was selling hardcore pornography to such types. Sure enough he turned up in the shop, demanding my most perverted stuff.
We got talking about motorcycles. He'd owned the Ariel Arrow from new and had a couple of spare bikes. Up close he had a disconcerting resemblance to one of the journo's on the glossies. He was probably wearing woman's clothes under his mac. Did I want to exchange my C90 for his Ariel, plus cash. How much would he give me? Er, no, he wanted the C90 plus £600.
One thing led to another. I ended up at his house, poking through the spare bikes after having a brief blast on the Ariel. Well, it was definitely faster than the C90. As I'm six foot two (my night job's as a bouncer at a famous London club), I looked a lot less ridiculous on the Arrow than I did on the Honda! I flexed my muscles at the guy, got the price down to the C90 plus £450.
It was a 1961 model. A 249cc two stroke twin with a bore and stroke of 54x54mm. 20hp was developed but in a mild way that was in no way redolent of devices like the RD250. The main sign of its age, apart from the appearance, was the need to mix petrol and oil at a ratio of 25:1. Hence the omnipresent smog, especially when starting up the motor.
Actually, so little force was needed on the kickstart that I could start her up using hand pressure. Came alive first kick but needed a minute or two to settle down and clear out the worst of the pollutants. It was always amusing to tweak the throttle whilst in the gutter at traffic lights and see the ped's cringe away from the blue clouds.
As far as I could see it was as it came out of the factory. Not immaculate, looked like it had last been cleaned in 1970 (a thought which went for the owner as well; definitely a case of standing down wind). Faded and corroded. I got the T-Cut, Gunk and Autosol out, had a real work-out cleaning the mess off. It took a couple of weeks even though I'd pull the bike into the shop to work on it during lulls in business. A lot of the old codgers who came in looking for inspiration reckoned they'd owned one just like it in their youth!
Amazingly, once all the gunge was removed she polished up very nicely. Not quite immaculate but gave the passing impression of being well looked after. The appearance in no way reflected the riding experience which was weird. Very weird! Even in comparison to the C90.
They shared Noddy-like front suspension. The pressed steel trailing-link forks and pigeon catcher massive front guard looked like someone had gone out of their way to make the front seem ugly. I really couldn't suss the front suspension. Braking made it patter, pot-holes made it bounce up and down like a yo-yo and smooth roads just made the bars twitch unless I put in a lot of muscle. Something worn, twisted or out of line? Probably. It's surprising how quickly you can become use to naffness.
The rear shocks were flimsy looking Armstrong units which had long ago lost their damping and were best described as softly sprung pogo-sticks. The units from the spare bikes were too rusted to contemplate. The frame was a massive pressed steel construction that held the steering head and swinging arm rigidly in line.
Mass was under 300lbs, the wheelbase a mere 51 inches and the wheels were 16 inchers. That all added up to a bike that, at best, felt a bit flighty and one that on rough roads would turn wobbly. Underneath all this was a cycle that could be flipped around with some elan and occasionally surprised me with the ferocity with which it would attack the bends... compared to a C90 it was close to sublime, compared to anything modern it was a pile of shit! I could, though, see that when new it was probably a lovely little thing. There, that should stop the Ariel Owners' Club from descending on Soho with rope in hand!
As to the engine, that was a mixed bag as well. The clock read 79000 miles, a bit silly to expect perfection. The owner reckoned he did a rebuild every 17-18,000 miles and I had about 8000 miles left before it'd require serious attention. He was most adamant that the spark plugs were changed every 500 miles. Otherwise the engine coked up, refused to start and generally performed like a Raleigh Runabout.
The top end and silencers needed a decoke every 1500 miles, easy enough to do as the alloy head and cast iron cylinders were quickly removed...their studs could strip their threads if too much force was applied. I had plenty of spare pistons and rings and one extra crankshaft. Quite an impressive assembly with three main ball bearings and roller bearing big-ends.
The only area where the engine showed its age was the primary chain, though the relatively smooth power pulses of the stroker twin gave it an easy time. The unit construction four speed gearbox had a reasonably slick change but a need to engage a false neutral between second and third gears.
The bike would scoot around London without any problems, easily able to keep ahead of the cages and quite willing to give most Jap bikes a run for their money. Being both narrow and short it could be twisted between the ensnared cages with a similar ease to a step-thru without having to worry about being pushed into the gutter by the odd, fast moving taxi. In fact, the vintage appearance made cagers gawp, not look where they were going and end up ramming other vehicles. Brilliant!
I quite often saw 65 to 70mph down those narrow strips of tarmac left between the stalled cars. Quite dangerous as the six inch SLS drum brakes would have disgraced the Honda. It wasn't just their lack of power, also the way the suspension turned the bike into some large kind of nodding horse.
Emergency braking often coincided with the bike going sideways, scraping off the side of some cage. Luckily, the bike never twitched to the extent that I was thrown out of the saddle and we could scream off between the cars rather than get into a shouting match with the enraged cager. After a while I took a particular delight in deliberately taking off the paint on the more expensive cages.
Out of town, the little Ariel would buzz along at 70mph but seemed reluctant to go any faster. Once, with a howling gale to my rear and an open road to my front, I pushed the bike up to a record 83mph. The Arrow felt like a big blancmange but reacted well to a desperate grip on the bars. I always had the impression that a sportier bike was trying to escape from the grasp of its dull looks and outlandish suspension. It certainly ran better after a bit of hard riding, needing maximum revs to clean out some of the accumulated crud in the combustion chambers.
I did 4500 miles in seven months. Then another customer turned out to be an Ariel fanatic. A big bearded chappie who had a taste for bondage. You get the weirdest kind of impressions where I work. He offered me £1500 for the Arrow plus spares and I let him have it for £1600, threw in a box of porno mags.
I was quietly impressed with the Arrow, though there's obviously loads that can go wrong with such an aged bike. The replacement was an AJS 350 thumper. That's another story.
Alan Byratt
'Hell boy, you don't look like much. You from that limey Classic Bike?'
'Er, Used Motorcycle Guide, actually.'
'Same thing, huh?'
'More or less.'
'You going to put my bike on the cover, son?'
'Anything's possible.'
'Now you're not going to thrash it are you? No more than 60mph, right?'
'No problem. I own a British bike myself, know how to treat them.'
'Because you break my bike, I'm going to break you. Right? It's like the love of my life, son.'
'Right.'
'Well, if you can start it you can have it for the afternoon.'
The way I recalled the drunken evening the night before the Yank had more or less demanded to be featured in the "UK's leading used bike magazine." Well, you know what drink does and the UMG ain't on sale in the States, so you can get away with murder.
The Ariel Square Four has a unique engine layout. Imagine two twins back to back, their cranks geared together. Not only do you get the narrowness of a twin but also better smoothness than a straight four. At least in theory, in practice the vagaries of British engineering mean there's a bit of lash in the gears which will give a very slight out of balance effect. Whatever, it's a damn sight smoother than my A10 or a Bonnie or even an Isolastic Commando.
Starting wasn't a problem. One hefty kick and she was chugging away happily. Nice sound, too, better than a straight four. This from one of the later, much improved versions of the motor, a 1956 job identified by its four pipe head. The early twin pipe head jobs had a determined tendency to overheat and even broke up the geared cranks!
The best solution to the overheating of the rear valves was done on the very rare Healey version by incorporating an oil cooler into the lubrication system. On the Mark 2 maximum power was a miserly (laughable for a 997cc four) 45 horses at a heady 5500rpm. Limited by both the poor induction routing for the single carb and worries about the motor exploding if high revs were ever employed.
It was almost immediately evident that the best way to ride the Ariel was by getting it into fourth gear as soon as possible. The excess of torque meant there was little need to play games on the gearbox. If there had been I would soon have taken a hammer to the engine. Either the gearbox or the driveline lash, or perhaps a combination of the two, caused terrible noises every time I hit on the gearchange lever and clutch. The latter was worthy of an ex-Commando owner and liable to render Jap owning wimps rather broken wristed!
The Ariel's a bit notorious for wrecking its primary drive and, indeed, its final drive chain. Definitely a bike in desperate need of a primary belt drive conversion. No doubt the plunger rear end had a lot to do with the way the chain needed constant adjustment - after a 200 mile blast it was left dragging along the ground. This invention of the devil was afflicted on many old Brit bikes before they had the sense to do the decent thing, fit a proper swinging arm.
The Square Four weighed in at 470lbs. Not heavy by today's standards but one of the heaviest buses on the road back in the fifties. Modern bikes get away with excess weight on the back of high tech if short-lived tyres. The Ariel was fitted with old Dunlops on its nineteen inch front and eighteen inch rear wheels. True, the bike had a much lower centre of gravity and better distribution of weight than modern fours, but this wasn't sufficient to hold it on line during speed testing in the Texan badlands. Basically desert, and if you fall off you've had it!
I didn't bother working the bike through its gears, just got her into fourth and wound the throttle open on this perfectly straight piece of road. Acceleration was never hard or heady in the way of a good Bonnie, but she slowly wound herself up. 90mph didn't require much effort. 100mph was a long time coming. Then each extra mph seemed to take a few seconds before it clicked up. 110mph on the clock and I gave up in disgust.
Disgusted, that is, by the way the bike had turned into a big piece of blancmange, defining the whole ethos of the machine, despite its excessive capacity and number of cylinders, as a big softy. By the time I was flat out, the two (wide) lanes of the road were taken up by the weaving, wallowing piece of shit motorcycle - just look at the frame to see what was wrong with it. Held together with cast lugs straight out of a pushbike foundry. I pulled over feeling like I ought to put a match in the petrol tank.
This feeling didn't go away when a loud tapping noise came from the back of the cylinder head. Oops! I turned the motor off, gave it a chance to lose some of heat that was boiling off the cases, not that much chance in the desert temperatures, though. After half an hour the oil had stopped bubbling in the tank and she started second kick. The noise had gone away.
Softly, softly, all the way back. It was a bit like a Harley without the vibration. Fat and soft, slothful was the best description, but also quite invigorating in the way you could sit in the saddle and play with the throttle between 30 and 70mph. Very relaxing if you're a bit brain dead and not far off your bus pass.
Cornering wasn't relaxing. A total lack of ground clearance allowed the exhaust to dig in on the mildest of bends. If there was a bump the suspension bottomed out, the crankcases threatening to dig a huge furrow in the tarmac. Bends weren't too common so I had no great trouble in avoiding returning the bike as a pile of bent bits.
My overall disenchantment with one of the most unique bikes in British history must've communicated itself to the machine because the seat suddenly went loose, almost throwing me off. I held on, stomped on the largely useless brakes and rolled her to the side of the road. A bracket had broken, probably down to my speed testing efforts and the vicious shaking the chassis had gone into at the ton-ten.
There was another stay holding on the rack which looked like it would fit. So I unfurled my toolkit (you didn't think I was mad enough to test a British bike without a back-pack full of essential items, did you?), took the bracket off and hammered it into shape. I took that moment to tighten up several nuts and bolts that had come undone and stuffed a rag where the oil tank cap had fallen off!
There wasn't much oil left in there, so the first gas station I came to I bunged in a litre of 20/50. Just as well because the tapping had started to come back. It went away once the fresh oil had a chance to circulate.
I found the bike quite tiring to ride. The suspension, though soft, let minor bumps rumble through the machine, whilst the bars were too high (Yank Easy Rider junk) to afford comfort for any speeds above 50mph. The lack of brakes was also a touch worrying with odd half mile long truck wallowing all over the road on occasion and myself forgetting which side of the road I was supposed to be riding.
I was pretty relieved to get back to the owner in one piece...
'Hell, boy, what the f..k you done to my beauty?'
'It's only a bit of road dust, mate, soon clean up.'
There followed a long list of expletives that don't bear repeating. I was forced to spend the next hour cleaning and polishing the bike to its previous mirror shine. It was lucky he had a spare bracket and oil tank cap, otherwise I would have been for it. God knows what would've happened if the motor had started tapping like it had after the speed test. Don't think they'll ever give me a job on Classic Bike, though.
Johnny Malone
Ronnie was one of those old hippies (aren't we all?) who going on fifty still had hair halfway down his back and an air of not quite being all there. It was amazing that he'd survived at all, given the amount of substance abuse and the way he used to speed on Jap fours, but there you go - it's a strange old world. Ronnie had always seemed to be there, popping up in unlikely places with even more unlikely tales. We knew each other because we both liked British bikes...
When he had his head together and needed some dosh, he worked as a bike mechanic. When he told me he'd built up an Ariel 350 from scrap, I had every reason to believe it was probably going to be okay. Ronnie suffers from colour blindness, though, the purple and pink contraption that he wheeled out would have every Ariel enthusiast in the country frothing at the mouth.
This visual affront started up straight off with a merely languid kick. Ronnie's ideas of safe motorcycling include a straight through exhaust - a reminder of the time one blind cager had broken both his legs. If they didn't see him coming they couldn't ignore the sonic boom of the 350cc thumper - not if they wanted to keep on living. Ronnie had a thing about Viking helmets and extra large tyre irons, to keep the cagers in line.
He gave me the thumbs up as I knocked her into the first, the front brake held on to avoid the almost inevitable clutch drag and the possible indignity of a stalled motor. With all the exhaust racket there was no way we could hear each other speak.
The clutch went home with a squeal, the bike shot forward on the throttle and just to let Ronnie know I hadn't gone all square on the deal, I revved the motor until the valves floated. Some people will try and tell you that old British bikes don't vibrate - and it's maybe even true if you never use serious revs - but an old 350 gets going like a buzz-saw when used in anger.
It's then all a matter of what you can take. Fingers and feet go numb first, then vision becomes a little strained, then teeth start falling out and bits of motorcycle are spat off. On the Ariel all that seemed to happen at once, within the first few moments of caning the throttle to the stop. I thought maybe Ronnie was going senile, had forgotten the tenuous art of successfully rebuilding old British engines.
But then I backed off the throttle, hooked up to second, and gave my eardrums some relief by only taking the throttle halfway round. By contrast the engine felt sublimely smooth, although in reality it still thrummed away beneath my knees as if it was some turbocharged monster rather than having trouble knocking out more than 20 horses.
Ronnie had muttered something about a high compression piston and wild camshaft lobes, which knowing him meant he'd fitted stuff meant for an entirely different mill - a concoction of parts that worked miraculously well together given their disparage sourcing.
This was borne out when I finally attained top gear. From 50 to 90mph the bike catapulted forward like no standard Ariel 350 could ever hope to emulate. It was all blood and guts, of course, absolutely no finesse to the production of power. On the overrun the engine backfired with a staccato beat and loudness that would have battle-hardened veterans looking for the armoured division.
If acceleration was massive fun, finding a constant cruising speed was a different matter. The engine just wasn't happy at steady revs, hunting and surging at the same time. Whilst the thrill of acceleration submerged much of the maddening vibration, holding a constant velocity emphasized the primitive nature of the OHV thumper - and judging by the way the motor revved, the flywheel had been lightened, no doubt altering the balance factor to an extent that would've had the factory's designer gnawing his knuckles.
In days of yore, the only way that the vibration was subdued on thumpers and twins, was by careful matching of engine dynamics to chassis characteristics, and good old Ronnie had further complicated things by welding a hefty rear mudguard to a cut-down rear frame that would have the bosses at Harley screaming at their copyright lawyers. Ronnie's excuse was that anything not welded to the frame tended to fall off!
Suspension wasn't Ariel's finest, either. It was sixties Norton at the front, a fine set of rebuilt Roadholder forks that were more or less up to modern roads - they were a bit too lightly sprung for my tastes but then ganja (and god knows what else) had kept old Ronnie as thin as rake and he could probably have got away with something off a moped. Girling rear shocks, similarly, had probably been sourced off a 125 or something (so if you came out to find your motorcycle sitting on the rear tyre, sans shocks, you know exactly where to look).
I'd guess the much modded Ariel weighed in at around 350lbs, and with an absolute maximum velocity of the ton, which even I couldn't hold for more than a few seconds, the chassis was never going to be exactly stressed and apart from a little looseness down to the lack of springing, I never really had any dangerous moments.
I have, in fact, ridden a lot of more recent Jap stuff that felt less well securely planted on the road and a lot more edgy when the tarmac turned a bit dodgy. However much you might want to laugh at some of the engineering in old British bikes, they did at least know, by trial and error, about ergonomics and how to make the rider feel part of the machine - and even Ronnie's machinations with the welding torch couldn't completely destroy that!
The front brake looked like a late Norton TLS drum, reputed to be one of the best in the business but this particular example revelled in grabbiness without any compensatory power. My guess is that the shoes were either off something else or well past their sell-by date. The rear drum was standard Ariel fare and not half bad, whilst slamming the throttle shut was like hitting a brick wall. I didn't even bother asking Ronnie about the front brake, I knew what the reply would be: 'Brake? What ya wanta brake for, mate?'
Above and beyond all this, the Ariel had a solid feel to it, built as it was from alloy and steel with none of this plastic rubbish. Its rush of acceleration, baying silencer and strong handling gave the impression that it would cut right through cars if they didn't get out of the damn way and that in any accident the bike might, just might, end up with a few scratches whilst the cage would turn out to be a complete write-off. This was just an impression, mind, I didn't really want to leave a trail of ruined cars in my wake. Perhaps it was just because the bike was an intimate part of Mad Ronnie's life and he'd left his indelible stamp deep in the machine's heart.
After an afternoon aboard the Ariel I had somewhat mixed feelings. As a practical tool it was limited by its excessive vibration and unwillingness to cruise at a sustained velocity - neither problem afflicts stock Ariel 350's when used mildly, I hasten to add (you can put that rope away now, lads...). The problem with a stock 350 ridden mildly is that it's a touch boring, which couldn't be said about the way this machine punches out its power, nor the way it can generally be flung about. As a quick fling it was good fun, as a long term proposition I think not...
Perhaps the machine knew how I was feeling as it conked out on me. It felt like the sparks going down. I tried the kickstart a couple of times. When a fireball blew back out of the carb a curious ped leapt about a yard in the air, clutched his heart and stumbled away from the potential fire hazard. Ah, thought I, the timing's slipped. Sure enough the points were far too wide. I guessed the setting (experience, son, experience) and got away with it. Ronnie didn't seem surprised, was already going over the bike with his spanners, tightening down all the loose bolts. Maybe you can take things a step too far in modifying these old Brits. Maybe not...
Johnny Malone