I was riding home from work on Long Hill Road near Chatham, NJ today, and I just had to stop when I saw a small sign - "Motorcycle for Sale 0" - on the side of the road. The arrow on the sign directed me to someone's back shed, where an old, funny-looking bike sat gathering dust. Well, to make a long story short, I bought it for 0. It wasn't running, so I brought my Volvo wagon, a friend, and some tow chain, and he towed me home. Fortunately, the tires still held air. The bike is a Spagthorpe Clumber Spaniel WWII-era amphibious military motorcycle, the kind that Phyloe wrote about riding a few days ago. The front wheel is 10" in diameter, with a full pontoon fender that doubles as a rudder, suspended by an advanced torsion-bar reverse-Earles fork. Aft of the front wheel sits a 6-speed Wilson pre-select gearbox connected to a two-stroke inline-twin Diesel REO engine mounted behind it. Shifting looks like it is electric - there are two buttons marked "UP" and "DOWN" on the left handlebar, and the pedal on the left hand side of the bike, I assume, is the shift pedal (i.e. select the next gear using the buttons, and hit the pedal to shift). I'm not sure if the pedal doubles as a clutch for moving off from a stop, or if the bike has a torque converter. Drive to the rear wheel is by a three foot long shaft with rubber-spider type U-joints, coming from the rear of the gearbox, and an exposed bevel-type gearbox. The rear-wheel is 24" in diameter, with paddles for marine operation placed around its circumference. Rear suspension is by twin longitudinal left springs that double as the rear swing arms. Damping is by conventional car-type tube shocks, both front and rear. ! ! ! ! ********############ OOO ********J=======================JO O ********############ ^ ^ OOO ^ ^ | | ^ | | driveshaft | | gearbox engine | final drive gear unit u-joint Twin 10-gallon fuel tanks are part of the floats on both sides of the bike. A sticker on each tank states that "marine operation of this vehicle with more than 1 gal. of fuel in each tank is hazardous to the operator's life. Always wear a life preserver." Two small wheels are on the outboard side of each float - to park the bike, you can just settle it down on one set of wheels, and actuate the sprag-type pneumatic parking brake to prevent it from rolling. Unfortunately, this arrangement looks like it will limit the lean angle to a sedate 7.5 degrees, although the floats have some type of pneumatic rams attached to them. Does anyone know if they are supposed to retract when the bike is travelling as higher speeds on land? The exhaust system is interesting, consisting of a pipe with a bong-type arrangement on its end. Presumably, some sort of liquid is supposed to by poured into the muffler, which allows the exhaust to "bubble up" through the liquid, thus attenuating noise. Unfortunately, the muffler is pretty rusty, and I don't know what kind of liquid is supposed to by used. After I weld the pinholes, would a PCB-based transformer oil work (it's very heat-resistant)? The end of the muffler has an iron-cross-shaped plates mounted to the end of it - the plate can spin. The plate is labelled "Stuka." In the bike's tool kit, I found several other plates of that type, labelled "Leopard tank" and "BMW bike." Does mounting this plate on the end of the muffler "chop" the exhaust pulses to make the exhaust sound like another type of vehicle? Starting is via a cartridge starter, where burning gunpowder moves a piston, pushing a rack that in turn spins a gear that's connected to the engine via a one-way clutch. I tried to start the bike once, but didn't have any more black-powder cartridges left. Anyone know where I can get more cartridges, or should I just stick to push-starting until I scrape up the dough to convert the bike to an electric starter? Also, could the piston-return spring on the starting piston be broken, thus not allowing the starting piston to return from the end of it's travel? The engine appears to have some kind of primitive Peltier cooler instead of a water-cooling system. A thick cable goes from the generator to the radiator, then to the engine from the radiator. I assume that chassis ground comprises the third "leg" of the circuit, or maybe a cable is missing. Not surprising - the bike *is* 60 years old and has been sitting for the best part of 30 years. Lighting is electric, with a headlight, taillight, and blackout light, all powered by what looks to be a 277VDC generator driven by a bevelled shaft from the rear end of the engine's crankshaft. The horn is a simple squeeze-bulb device, but the rubber bulb is rotted, so I couldn't test it. A 2-way vacuum-tube radio is mounted where the fuel tank is normally situated on a bike. The antenna is mounted as the rear of the bike, and is a flattened 5-foot-long strip of metal with one sharpened edge. Perhaps it was designed to double as a sword if the going got really rough. The bike has full instrumentation, including 0-350VDC voltmeter, oil pressure gauge, air-pressure gauge, 80mph speedometer, compass, tach, nautical log, chronometer, and gear position indicators. Does anyone here have any idea of what this bike might be worth, fully restored? Are parts difficult to get, and can anyone recommend any sources, especially for rubber parts like the 10" front tire, u-joints, and engine seals? I'll post pictures of the bike as soon as it gets light out again - I have a cheap digital camera and it doesn't take good pictures at dusk. -Andrew
