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In late March this year during a rather lightning visit to the USA to interview Hedley Cox the last remaining member of the post war Velocette racing team... he was a race mechanic...and this story is for a future post, shortly.....I was in Canada visiting my son-in-laws family and good friends, The Muehlings who live in Surrey on the outskirts of Vancouver. Win Muehling suggested we call in briefly to see Dan Smith the recreater of amongst other things a prewar Vincent series A twin and an prototype AJS V4 cylinder prewar machine....his latest effort is to recreate the one off Velocette Roarer 499cc twin racer of 1939. Initially it was the engine which was displayed at a motorcycle show in Vancouver a little while back but which is now the complete machine as you'll see by my photos...
But first a look at the Roarer made at Veloce in 1938/39, a creation of Charles Udall a then designer at Velocette.
At Veloce, just before the 1939 IOM TT, Percy Goodman, Tommy Mutton and Harry Thorne work on assembling the Roarer...
The finished machine was taken to the 1939 IOM TT races but despite one lap at a relatively slow speed it was never raced and WW2 finished racing for some 6 years and following the resumption in the later 1940's the FIM ban on supercharging meant the Roarer was mothballed.
Veloce must have been confident as they had entered it in the 1939 Senior IOM TT race....it was a listed as a 499cc Velocette, whereas the normal single cylinder 500 racers were 495cc...see the program..
It languished at Velocette for years before being cleaned up and the internals removed to lighten the machine for moving around and appeared at motorcycle shows in 1956. The internals of the engine were stored under a bench in the race shop in a cardboard box and unknowingly a family or mice or rats made their home in it and the urine from them rusted the parts beyond further use....
Following Veloce's demise in early 1971, the Roarer was exchanged in a deal with John Griffith who ran Stanford Hall and on his tragic death in a high speed car accident ( not his fault) on the M1 in the early 1970's, passed into the hands of Vintage MCC luminary "Titch" Allen.
Prior to "Titch's" death Ivan Rhodes acquired the bike and started the long restoration, made more difficult by the loss of all the engine internals which were made from scratch by Ivan's son Graham.
The finished machine is a credit to the Rhodes family and has been displayed as far away as New Zealand and Australia.
The partially completed Roarer in the race shop in 1939.
The Roarer engine on the way to the test house for running in or power testing on the special dynomometer installed for it.
Tommy Mutton centre.
Stanley Woods on the Roarer at the 1939 IOM TT...
The Dutch Velocette Owners Club Committee visited the UK in 2008 for the UK Velo Club's AGM and then later visited Ivan Rhodes at "Fellside Cottage"....President Carl Drees is pictured with the Roarer as it was then...the photo below shows other members of the Dutch VOC with the bike....
But now on to DQs visit to Dan Smith's workshop for a look at his latest project and the finished Roarer engine...built from drawings made by Dan from photographs, exploded views in motorcycle magazines and help from Ivan Rhodes....Dan had all but finished the frame and wheels for his completed machine and as I write this I wonder how long before the engine fires up and he rides the bike...?
What an effort and a great job...congratulation's Dan....
Finally a photo of Ivan Rhodes with his 1939 original, taken in Australia when the roarer was part of the NZ Classic meeting at Pukekohe in the 1990's, featuring the three major supercharged machines of the era.... The Velocette Roarer, The John surtees owned ex. Schorsh Meier 1939 TT winning BMW and Sammy Miller's AJS V4.
And a Leyden cartoon of the 1939 era depicting the politicised situation in Europe at the time with WW2 imminent.
