The Roarer re-created...Dan Smith in Vancouver, B.C.,Canada builds a second Velocette Roarer from scratch and The Velobanjogent called in for a "photographic look"...

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.

The Vincent speedometer.....

Throughout my various earlier blogs there are references to chronometric speedometers and tachometers and of course I have showcased Phil Irving's involvement with The Vincent Motorcycle.
So perhaps this is the time to post some data of the Smith's instruments and ancillaries used on the Vincent motorcycle.
All the Vincent speedometers used on the 500cc and 1000cc models were Smith's chronometric instruments, including the tachometer on the Black Lightning and Grey Flash racers.
Prewar the cable fitting attached to the speedo via what is called in the instrument trade "a Jaeger fitting". The threaded fitting came during WW2 and used a 12mm x 1mm thread.
Interesting the use of metric threads...but the chronometric is a French Jaeger instrument and thus totally metric.
Left click on the images to enlarge.

In the 1930's most of the chronometric speedometers supplied to the motorcycle trade were 80mm ( 3") diameter 85mph often Non trip, but otherwise trip and 140kph for metric areas of the world. But some did use 120mph, such as the Rudge Ulster, the BSA Gold Star, Brough Superior and the Vincent "A" twin . I don't have evidence for the single 500cc Meteor, but would be inclined to think it used the 85mph/140kph speedo.

After WW2 the trend for 85mph speedos continued up until around 1949 with many manufacturers, but Vincent-HRD, then just Vincent used the 120mph trip chronometric with side exit trip as the speedo was mounted in the open.
Note above the Smiths logo...we call this the shield logo and it was used up until the mid 1946, when the circular "MA" was removed and the text became SmithS with the "S" at either end in capitals.
From the mid 1950's, but more likely 1959 on, the logo was SMITHS...

Following WW2 the Vincent-HRD company used the following for the series B and series C Comet and Rapide.

With the imminent introduction of the Black Shadow, PEI recalls on p.365 of his autobiography the need for a 150mph speedo with a 5 inch dial.

This is one of the available photos that show the prototype speedometer, published in the Australian motorcycle magazine "Motorcycling in Australia"
I do not know how many of this "lashup" of a speedometer were made.

But the cast aluminium version, stove enameled black is a nice looking speedo.
The following are photos of the reproduction of the original I still make.

The speedometers were available as 150mph, but in metric areas, a 250kph version was offered.

Around the same time a racing version , the Black Lightning, made in very limited numbers was supplied with an 8000rpm 4-1 ratio anti-clockwise cable rotation chronometric tachometer with yellow lettering and some had speedometers...a 18omph  80mm (3") dia. chronometric or a 280kph 80mm (3") chronometric for the minuscule number available for metric areas. Again yellow lettering.

A racing version of the 500cc Vincent Comet, called the Grey Flash was also supplied with an 8000rpm 4-1 anticlockwise Smiths chronometric tachometer and was offered with a 125mph or 180kph speedometer with white numerals.

Both the Black Lightning and the Grey Flash used a Smiths bronze casting tachometer drive type 70549 of 2-1 ratio and reversing format.

The reason for the special anticlockwise tachometer was that the majority of British motorcycles drove tachometers off their magneto and when you looked at the shaft which the drive gear attached to, it rotated anticlockwise.
Smiths only offered the bronze type 70549 tachometer drives in 1-1 reversing and 2-1 reversing.
So with the Vincent having a clockwise rotating magneto, the use of the 2-1 reversing tachometer drive gave the 4-1 anti-clockwise tachometer requirement.
When the fully enclosed models arrived in the mid 1950's...the Victor, Black Knight, Black Prince the speedometers were all 80mm ( 3") dia. but as they were in a dashboard, they had flanged bezels and and extended reset shaft. The Victor and Knight has 125mph/180kph dials and the Prince 150mph/240kph dials. 

The speedometers had a small angle drive on their back of the same type as the earlier Black Shadow, but with a keyplate and two 4BA screws to secure it to the case.

Finally the drive to all the speedometers was from the pre WW2 type front wheel diecast speedometer drive gearbox in the brake plate with the driver gear bolted inside the front hub.
These small diecast drives are 1.5-1 ratio. The large gear was 41 teeth ( same as a Velocette KSS and MSS) . The small driven gear was 13 teeth ( again same as Velocette KSS and MSS) both 12 D.P. tooth form.
The front wheel "nominally" turns 750 times in a mile. 
This is calculated as follows....
21" wheel with 3.00 tyre, gives a diameter wheel/tyre diameter of 27".
C=pie x d...3.142 x 27 = 84.8" rolling circumference.
1 mile = 63,360 ". 
So 63360/84.8 = approx 750 wheel turns per mile.
The two gears give a 41/13 = 3.15 ratio and the 1.5:1 reduction in  the drive gives a total ratio of 2.1:1.
So 2.1 x 750 = 1575 cable turns per mile calibration factor. 
Most of the speedometers were available as 1550 to 1600 TPM.

Now I may come back and amend this blog, as it is after midnight as I post it...
The Black Shadow never had a 5" Smiths chronometric tachometer as standard, but some time after the Vincent company went into liquidation and closed after 1955.....5" diameter  8000rpm tachometers in the cast speedometer case became available in limited quantities.
I have have also made them and illustrated below is one , with the bronze type 70549 drive for a customer.

Following are some Smiths Equipment Schedules for Vincent which give instrument, drive and cable information as supplied to the Vincent Company.


Speedometer cable lengths to 1948.