Arial Arrow

Just thought I'd post this link in case anyone hadn't seen it - it had me
belly laughing and brought back many memories.......

http://www.realclassic.co.uk/ariel03090500.html

 

Heh.
They were actually quite nice bikes in their day if properly fettled.
My bruvver had one, the only real problem was that the exhaust ports
and silencers needed regular decokeing.
A lot of the Arrows around today actually started like as Leaders
and lost their panels to rot and damage over the years.

 

Thus spake () unto the assembled multitudes:

My first 'proper' bike (after a Lambretta SX200) was a Leader, a 1959
ex-police bike, with a big hole in the false tank where the radio kit used to
be which was filled out with a chunk of foam with a loose lid on top. It had
long since lost its screen. It was pretty tatty and pig-ugly, but I had some
good times on it, and it never let me down (mechanically at least, but it
never pulled any birds . Handled pretty well for its time too, even
wearing Avon Skidmasters.

 

Point of order. I realise... now... that getting a bike as a teenager was
not a strategy destined to attract the fairer sex. At least not the ones
you wanted to notice.

 

Oh I dunno. I recall one day when out and about of my RD250 with it's
blue over gold metalflake fairing and me in my matching blue with gold
silk lining Rivetts leathers needing to stop and buy some snout and while
doing so was accosted, picked up, taken home, sucked in and blown out in
bubbles by a bird onna scoot and all because she was into blokes on bikes.

 

You are not wrong - I never pulled anything (not even the skin off a
rice pudding) with my BSA Dandy - another contender for lemon-i/n-the-eye.

In my defence, I wanted a nice little Excelsior Talisan Twin (£10), but
the ole man insisted i had the BA Damndy as 'that old bike will always
be breaking down'.

Dandy broke down first at 273 miles and needed a new stator plate.
Having got into the habit, it continued to break down until I gave up,
and not consulting the 'expert', bought (£5) a 1941 G3 Matchless, which
I took twice round the clock, chair on, chair off...

 

I remember a mate telling me how he seized both pistons and wrecked other
engine components in his simply by shutting off the throttle for much too
long on a lengthy stretch of steep, downhill road.

 

Wotcha.

As a friend of mine once said
"There's only one thing worse than a two stroke - and that's a British two
stroke"

 

I realised my mistake when I turned up one day in a new Ford Consul V6. the
change in interest was profound.
The fact that I was 17, with no car licence and the vehicle belonged to an
old neighbour (I didn't like) who was on holiday, restricted the
repeatability of the event.
I didn't trash it however and the **** never did realise.

 

I had a lovely, reliable, smelly lawn-mower powered by a Villiers 2/ engine.

My next-door neighbour gave it to me 'because it wouldn't go'.

He was curious to know how it was that minutes after I'd acquired the
thing I was cutting my lawn - well, the grass, anyway - with it.

I had to explain the significance of the rotaty slideything over the air
filter...

 

Thus spake Hog. () unto the assembled multitudes:

Absolutely! My Leader was replaced by an *extremely* nonstandard and almost
equally tatty BSA C15, which was probably even less attractive to the fairer
sex than the Leader, if that's possible. My luck changed however with my
full licence and my third bike, a Triumph Tiger 650...

 

*Superbly* done! Top bloody marks for having the front to do that!

JB

 

Yeah had I trashed his motor or had one of the teachers sussed my sudden
change in fortunes it may not have been cool.

 

I made the mistake of assuming the Arrow was a Leader without the panels
but I was put right by a Leader owner. There were quite a lot of
differences. I believe that when they were made standard 2-stroke mix
as sold at the pumps had more oil than was good for it which is why they
always went past leaving a blue haze behind them. Goes with de-coking
the silencer.