Jim Day's MOV Velocette "Thruxton".....

The title of this current post is a little perplexing....
A Velocette Thruxton MOV....
Of course its a special...but let me explain.
During 1966 I saw the first of two Velocette Thruxton models that were imported into Australia via the Victorian Velocette agent, Frank Mussett Motorcycles....
Yes I wanted one, so I sold my 1961 Venom and stumped up the deposit...AUD$360 from memory on the AUD$990 full price to the Sydney motorcycle agent, Burling and Simmonds of Auburn...the bike was due in January 1967 but subsequent delays saw me not get it until late February.
I lived with my father and sister in Maroubra, a suburb of Sydney and my next door neighbour was Jim Day, a Velocette rider and enthusiast and a lifelong friend.
Some time during the year Jim decided, with the increasing cost of the green slip insurance on motorcycles, which had risen sharply, that he needed a 250cc machine to get into the lower registration bracket. 
His father, Tom mentioned he had a 250cc MOV Velocette he'd sold a chap for 12 quid a few years back and that he'd never paid the full amount and really it was still his....
The hunt was on...
By some sleuthing we tracked the bike down and as it turned out it was finally found leaning against the wall of a lane awaiting rubbish removal in a suburb nearby.
Jim waited with the bike, I hot-footed it off to get a trailer and we had our 250.....
Stroke of luck eh.....
But we also had a spare RS Velocette swinging arm frame, so the idea was hatched by Jim to fit the 250 into it, model it on my new Thruxton with some engine work based on the 250 Royal Enfield crusader, an 8" BSA front brake- the cast iron drum lightened with holes bored in the back of the drum with large aluminium plugs and an effort made to convert it to 2LS operation...more of this later....
So all the "excess" lugs were removed from the frame for lightness ( sidecar etc), the oil tank moved back a la VMT and I'll let the photographs tell the story......
Left click on the images to enlarge.....

I can see by the date on the registration label these photographs were taken in 1968.

The engine as mentioned was modeled on the 250 RE...carb. spacer, GP Amal carbs were "a bit thin on the ground" in Australia around then, especially smaller bore ones and I'm unsure why we didn't use an Amal TT carb, so Jim settled on a 1 and 1/16" Amal 376 monobloc . Cams were of the M17/8 Venom timings, which later proved to be unsatisfactory as the bike sure revved but "wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding", well it was back to the M17/7 MSS style.
A piston was made by local Veloman and piston maker for most of the Australian racing fraternity, Sid Willis.
At the time it was of course in Y-alloy and as such you need fairly wide piston clearances to avoid seizures.
The cylinder head was from an alloy MAC Velo in an effort to get some oil tightness. 
Alloy pushrod tunnel, the 12- gearbox fitted, alloy wheel rims.
And in the end it went alright but the concensus was the frame setup was just too heavy for the 250....

I mentioned earlier the 8" BSA front brake, converted to 2LS operation which showed great potential on paper.
We suitably lightened it, but when used it was pretty hopeless as a "stopper".
We tried different linings, chamfers on the linings etc and in the end in desperation the actuating arm the cable pulled on was lengthened about and extra 1".
The brake then worked a treat....

The photo shows the brake prior to the lengthening of the brake arm....
Where is it now.....
Well a friend from NZ, Ernie Williams came over to ride in the historic race at the big Easter Motorcycle TT races at Bathurst around the early 1980's.
I removed the "un-necessaries" from the MOV and we had a racer for Ernie.....
Bad news was it dropped a valve with the ensuing damage to the piston and cylinder head combustion chamber surface.....
Off to Sid Willis for a piston and after waiting the requisite time...Sid was never rushed...probably 9 months....I returned to find Sid had repaired the combustion chamber and valve seats so the bike was ready to go back together.

The head and piston after I collected it....
Since I've set this post up I came across some more photos of the blown up head....

Come forward to earlier this year.....
Yes the MOV laid "waste", un-assembled all those years.....
Jim Day visited NZ in February and borrowed Ernie Williams 1956 MAC again to ride in a rally in the South Island of NZ....
You bet.... he dropped a valve in Ernie's engine...
JD is returning from NZ tonight after spending a week there repairing the engine and he took over the piston and cylinder head from the Thruxton MOV, so sadly I fear it will be no more.....
The frame setup wasn't completely "idle" all this time....we fitted a Mk.2 KSS engine in it for several years also a long time back, but no photographs appear to have survived, but as I write this, the setup now has a 500 Velo engine in it....
Jim calls it "his big MOV".....

A montage of photographs from some recently "re-discovered" negatives in the Velobanjogents archive...

It's a wet series of days here in Sydney and winter approaches so I forsook my shed and prowling around the "mess" I call my office, I spied some of my negative collection for the 1970's and scanned some in...
It became addictive...so let me share some of the scanned prints with you.
Again no particular theme, although many are from the Easter motorcycle races at the Mount Panorama circuit at Bathurst, NSW in 1978 where they had a classic machine race.
Thanks to Phil Hine for searching through his 1978 Bathurst program to supply some names to machines...
He emailed a pic of himself on a Petty Manx at Oran Park...

Left click on the images to enlarge them....

Kel Carruthers 1960/61 ex works Honda 250/4.

This IS NOT Bathurst!
It's a ripper of  a picture, from a negative I acquired somewhere...
comment on the covering envelope was...."German passenger at Monza for motorcycle Grand Prix, 10.09.1956, at rehearsal"...

Dennis Fry bought this 350 Manx Norton together with a 350 Mk.8 KTT engine fitted, from NZ...nice bit of kit....but this pic I now believe to be at Amaroo Park.

Elmer McCabe, an Ulsterman long resident in Sydney and an AMC racing man made up this road going 7R...he fitted racing numbers to it so he could ride in an historic parade at Bathurst in 1978.

The late Ross "splinta" Pentecost also an AMC man regularly rced this 500 Matchless, which from memory was a Shelsey Walsh model (??...correct me if I'm wrong...). Bathurst 1978.

Jack Rasmussen's Reynold's 1956 500 Inter Norton...Bathurst 1978.

Dennis Fry's 500 Manx Norton, Bathurst 1978.

My Smith framed, Carey engined MAC #55 ridden by Tony Hatton...well known Velo man Ron Kessing, someones youngster, Alan Burt speaking with who?, Bathurst 1978.

Allen Armour's 1948 350 AJS.....

AJS 7R...unsure whose...,Bathurst 1978.The program list #33 as a 1957 Triumph ridden by Des Searle..

Thought I'd finish off with this...photographer that I am...even I fell for the "double exposure" trick....the camera was a 2.25" x 2.25" Mamiya twin lens and unless you remembered to wind the film on you got a double exposure....
Interesting 1000 JAP featured...again at Bathurst 1978.


I've had an email from Michael Brudar who currently owns the big JAP in the above double exposure.
He says...
"..the double exposure is of my Hargreaves_JAP, built in Melbourne in the mid 30's - CS1 Norton frame, Coventry Eagle flying 8 side valve crankcases ..Dunelt heads and barrels.
The bike was used for all sorts of competition in Victoria including road racing, hill climbs and later grass track with a sidecar.
The photo below is at Ballarat road races, ridden by Dennis Skinner.

And the bike as it is today.....

More photos of early motorcycling involving The Velobanjogent.....

As I mentioned in the previous blog I did on my early motorcycling, I'm back from the USA where I Velocetted with friends but this year there was no banjo taken, something I quickly regretted. 

However as I was about to fly out of Sydney came the news of the death of Bin Laden and I felt sure airport security would have become more difficult than before and carrying a banjo adds to the complication....

This didn't prove to be the case.

Again this blog is one featuring some early pics of my motorcycling, in no particular date order and something I'd like just like to share with you...

Left click on the images to enlarge....

My first powered two wheeler , bought in November 1962, was a 150 LD Lambretta motor scooter, but no photo exists of it...below is a scanned image of the type...

I started motorcycling with a 1958 Velocette MSS and Murphy sidecar, quickly discarded after I discovered I'm not really a sidecar rider....

I joined a local motorcycle club...the Eastern Suburbs MCC and entered events at the local Oran Park road racing circuit on the southern outskirts of Sydney.

Emboldened, I entered the big Easter road race meeting at the Bathurst Mt. Panorama circuit in western NSW with that year being the NSW TT meeting.

I had no other means of transport so it meant I rode the bike up there and back, a 300 mile trip, removing the non essential items and glassware to race.

As well my sister, Judith, came up with me pillion, although the cold weather at the time and our primitive motorcycle clothing meant she transferred to a friends car who was following while I shivered on...

I had entered two events...the unlimited B & C grade and the unlimited production machine race.

I was graded a C grade rider due to my lack of race experience.

I'd "fiddled" a little with the engine by fitting a set of M17/8 cams from a Venom Velocette, discovering you had to alter the crown shape of the piston, despite it being flat in the MSS with 6.75:1 compression ratio, to avoid valve to piston contact. And I'd fitted a 19 tooth gearbox sprocket, up one from standard. My meagre engineering knowledge at the time and lack of funds decided all this.

I was well placed in the production machine race..4th when enthusiasm saw me crash out...luckily with little damage to myself and the bike.

The unlimited B & C grade had a field of 190 riders...you read it right..and saw me finish 9th, just one place out of the prize money and a timed speed of 99mph over the flying 1/8th mile timed section on the 1.25 mile straight.

I came away from the meeting feeling pretty good with myself...

The photos below, show me in the pits and chasing a Triuph rider in the U/L B & C event.

The Blue "bib" was the usual Eastern Suburbs MCC riding colours...

Shortly after Bathurst I heard of a 1961 Velocette Venom with 400 miles on it for sale at a town some 300 miles north of Sydney.

We travelled up to view it and eventually I purchased it via hire purchase..the so called financial "drip feed" via a motorcycle firm in Sydney who secured it for me.

My best friend, Jim Day and I rode out to far western NSW on holiday in January 1965...boy was it hot..115 degrees in one town....the roads were earth in many places an the inevitable falls occurred.

Jim suffered a nasty puncture.

Damage to the headlight nacelle of my Venom confirms I'd take a fall on the sandy road.....

In March 1966 Jim and I rode with a friend, BSA mounted John Corven, to Ballarat in Victoria, some 500 miles, to the Southern Cross Rally where we saw our first Velocette Thruxtons....I determined to buy one and stumped up the deposit by selling my Venom and took delivery in Feb. 1967...

The photo shows the lineup of the Velocettes present with my Venom to the far left.

The two Velocette Venom Thruxtons that we saw...

More on my early motorcycling in a following blog.....

"Motorcyclings" 1960 Sports-Pix album part 1....and DQs away for two weeks in the USA....

DQ's away to the USA Saturday 7th May to visit Velo friends, ride his Velocette KSS/Scrambler special and perhaps play some banjo.....
So there may not be another post from me until after 21st May......
But hope springs eternal and I'll take a laptop computer with me.....

So this blog is a book review of a little known booklet produced by Temple Press's "MotorCycling" and inserted into a copy of the magazine during November 1960.

Titled..."1960 Sports-Pix album" part 1, it shows a snapshot of motorcycle sport during 1960.....
Tricky now to obtain....can't say I've seen any on Ebay and whether any survive with the magazine they came out with is anybody's guess......
Enjoy and left click on the images to enlarge.....

I scanned a close-up of the tachometer and it is at the rest/zero position, so the motor has stopped.....

Now you'll know I'm a Velo man and real partial to the KTT model, so I couldn't resist scanning in that Mk.8 sprinter.....