Editorial

EDITORIAL

Going for bloke

AN OLD MOTORCYCLE JOKE:

Why do the British drink warm beer?

Because their refrigerators are made by Lucas.

If you aren’t familiar with the legacy of British motorcycles or automobiles, that joke could be meaningless. You probably wouldn’t know that the Lucas electrics once used on most British motor vehicles were shamefully unreliable, so much so that the company’s founder, Joseph Lucas, was often sarcastically referred to as “The Prince of Darkness.” As one motorcycle-industry executive, himself a Brit by birth, once quipped in the late Sixties: “Lucas should give a free bunch of carrots to everyone who buys one of its headlight bulbs.” Since it was almost guaranteed, he reasoned, that either the headlight would burn out prematurely or the electrical system would fail altogether, the improved night vision provided by the Vitamin A in the carrots would help the rider find his way home in the dark.

That’s what you might call “noncurrent” humor, in both a chronological and an electrical sense. In all fairness, Lucas has made tremendous advances since then and now manufactures some of the highest-quality electrical componentry available anywhere in the world. But at one time, even as recently as the Seventies, Lucas electrics were one of the prime reasons—although certainly not the only reason—why British bikes had earned such a widespread reputation for unreliability.

I bring up this long-dead subject only because in the past year or so it has started becoming relevant once again. Discouraged by the ever-increasing cost and complexity of new motorcycles, more and more riders are turning to used bikes as a practical alternative. And many of these people are choosing to buy older British machines—particularly the morepopular models of the Sixties and early Seventies—that are intact and in fairly good shape, then reconditioning them. Their intent is not to restore these machines to concours status, but simply to end up with clean, not-terribly-expensive bikes that are likely to hold their value while serving as simple, fun transportation.

Not surprisingly, most of the people caught up in this activity have at least some experience with British machinery. But there still are quite a few who do not. And once these firsttimers get their Britbikes refurbished and settle down to the day-to-day task of living with them, they often find that, in terms of upkeep needed to keep the things on the road, they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. Usually, their only motorcycling experience is with Japanese motorcycles, the unparalleled reliability of which leaves these new recruits illprepared for the virtual non-stop maintenance that British machinery requires.

In retrospect, we magazine editors may have unknowingly helped many unsuspecting riders get into this fix. In one way or another, what they’ve read in this magazine and others like it has shaped their opinions about British motorcycles. Hardly a month goes by without one over-40 magazine codger or another—myself included—waxing nostalgic about the wonderfulness of British bikes back in “the good old days.”

Truth is, a lot of things made those old days good, but the reliability of British motorcycles wasn’t one of them. With rare exception, nothing looked better than most of those Limey bikes, and when they were right, nothing performed better. And they were acknowledged as having the most advanced and innovative designs of their day. But somewhere between the design and the execution, a few things invariably would go haywire, and what came rolling off the assembly lines usually contained enough mechanical land-mines to keep the Mr. Goodwrenches of the sport working overtime.

I know whereof I speak. For nearly six years during the late Sixties, I spent at least some part of practically every day repairing British motorcycles. If I wasn’t working for free on my own British streetbikes, racebikes or trailbikes, I was working for pay on the British hardware sold by the dealerships in which I toiled during that period. And for every hour I would spend doing routine maintenancetune-ups, oil changes and the like—I would spend two hours either trying to prevent a Britbike from committing mechanical suicide, or repairing the damage after one had succeeded.

I won’t go into detail here about why British bikes were so self-destructive; that’s a subject more suitable for an entire book than for a magazine editorial. Let’s just say they had some engineering shortcomings that were aggravated by manufacturing inconsistencies and complicated by problems with outside suppliers—not the worst of which was Lucas. All of this resulted in motorcycles that had a propensity for leaking profusely, shaking themselves apart, constantly going out of adjustment, wearing out prematurely, and, sometimes, simply refusing to run. These were motorcycles that needed to be owned either by a decent mechanic, or by someone who could afford to pay for a lot of a decent mechanic’s time.

Today, the picture is a little rosier for those who ride British. Through selective use of some of the muchimproved equipment available in the aftermarket today—set-’em-and-forget-’em carburetors, zero-maintenance ignition systems, durable lighting components, space-age sealing materials—many of the mechanical gremlins inherent in Britbikes can be exorcised. Many, but not all.

Nevertheless, a British motorcycle still offers a particular kind of satisfaction that simply isn’t available anywhere else. And with the right sort of mechanical updates, it might even allow you to spend more time riding than fixing. But you should never forget Rule One: You don’t own a British motorcycle; it owns you. Paul Dean