Racing Line: British motorcycle racing in the golden age of the big single

Chapter 1

Regeneration

They came under starter’s orders again at noon on Good Friday, 19 April 1946. Cadwell Park’s narrow three-quarter-mile track of rough concrete had not much deteriorated since it was last used for racing in 1939, and proved good enough for George Brown (499 Vincent) and sidecar ace Eric Oliver (596 Norton) to put in record-breaking performances, winning their events and slicing a neat two seconds off the lap record to leave the mark at 50 seconds even.

Britain had come out of the most destructive war in history with its cities ravaged, much of its industry laid waste, its people exhausted; yet within the first year of peace, motorcycle racing was back and moving, if hesitantly to begin with, into a new era. And if Louth & District MCC led the way at Cadwell, others soon followed: the Irthlingborough club hatched plans to run events on a half-mile track at a private park in Kettering; Cambridge University Aero Club ran meetings at Gransden Lodge and North Weald aerodromes in aid of RAF charities. From farther afield came word of meetings, rich in plunder, planned in Belgium, Switzerland and Spain, and hints that the Ulster Grand Prix, run over the formidable 16.5-mile Clady Circuit with its notorious Seven Mile Straight, might soon be restored to the racing calendar. The improbable was already happening; the TT, however, might take a little longer.

Fergus Kenrick Anderson, freshly demobbed from the Royal Navy; soon to become a trailblazer among stars of the Continental Circus before the term was even coined, had already packed his KTT Velocette and brooked the prevailing trend by heading south across the English Channel, celebrating the first anniversary of peace in Europe by winning the Brussels International Grand Prix.

The calendar of events thickened quickly: a grand prix was planned for Switzerland (where Maurice Cann won the 500cc race for Moto Guzzi), and an international at Albi in France (the itinerant and articulate Anderson claiming the laurels in the 350cc event). Meanwhile the big names of racing continued gradually to reappear in civilian life, exchanging wartime serge for demob suits and two-piece leathers: Sergeant Freddie Frith, Wing Commander Jock West, Home Guardsman Harold Daniell – his eyesight, famously too poor for army despatch work, kept the Isle of Man lap record holder at home – and Flight Lieutenant Leslie Graham DFC, long familiar with the pilot’s seat of a Lancaster bomber, began the journey that would take him and AJS to the inaugural 500cc world championship.

The factories started making the switch to peacetime production. Norton had spent the war making close to 100,000 side-valve 16H singles and Big Four sidecar outfits for the armed forces. AMC’s Plumstead works had contributed 80,000 G3 and G3L 350cc singles for the Don Rs of a dozen armies (by way of comparison, Harley-Davidson had made 90,000 WLAs). Triumph rebuilt itself at Meriden after its Coventry factory had been pounded to destruction during a series of air raids early in the war. In November 1946 Norton struck an optimistic note by publishing a price list of its 1947 street and competition bikes, largely for export, and then thought it prudent to take advertising space in the specialist press to mollify frustrated British buyers for whom new road bikes weren’t available, much less racing hardware.

The recovery was under way, however slowly. At Norton, Joe Craig, aided a little later by the McCandless brothers, and later still by former Flight Lieutenant Leo Kuzmicki, was able for a time to restore the Manx Norton to the top step of the grand prix podium, while at AMC, Phil Walker and later Jack Williams plotted the development of the 7R AJS – the ‘boy racer.’

In sunnier southern climes, another of the prewar giants was awakening. In the last season before Hitler’s war, Dorino Serafini had won the European championship for Italy on Piero Remor’s water-cooled, supercharged four-cylinder 500cc Gilera, trading agility and even reliability for enough speed to see off challengers from BMW, Moto Guzzi and Norton. With supercharging banned by the FIM from late in 1946, Remor, aided by Ottavio Milani and Federico Vertemati, designed a new, air-cooled engine to supplant the prewar powerhouse. A spate of engine seizures, traced to inadequate pistons, did nothing to conceal the speed of the new bike – nor its wayward high-speed handling. But when, in 1949, Remor took his talents to MV, together with those of chief mechanic Arturo Magni, to design a similar and ultimately much more successful machine, it seemed likely indeed that Britain’s broke and broken factories would soon find the going tough in grand prix competition.

The way back

Austerity Britain was a harsh environment. The cost of war had taken the country to the brink of bankruptcy before 1941 was out, and it had since been heavily reliant on American aid through Lend Lease to sustain its people and its war. When Lend Lease ended abruptly in August 1945 with the cessation of hostilities, the immediate consequence for Britain was rationing tougher than at any time during the war, and the demand for exports on a massive scale to boost the nation’s ailing balance of payments. The needs of motorcycle racing counted for little in comparison.

The range and quality of supplies available to a burgeoning racing community so bore the threadbare cast of war; nothing exemplified the problem more clearly than the take-it-or-leave-it supply of ‘pool’ 72-octane petrol with which, said Joe Craig, Norton’s 500cc factory racers struggled to a peak compression ratio of 7.2:1, compared with 10.5:1 in 1938. But if speeds at the first postwar TT in 1947 were modest, the achievements of its competitors lacked nothing. Bob Foster hung out Velocette’s shingle to win the Junior race on a 1939 factory bike and lead his team-mates into second and third, while Daniell repeated his 1938 Senior win for Norton (with team-mate Artie Bell backing up), albeit at a pace markedly reduced from his searing prewar victory.

The privateer engineers and tuners were starting to reopen for business. Steve Lancefield (I am a racing engineer not a tuner, I do not tune pianos) and the stylish and patrician Francis Beart, late of Brooklands, had been scooped up by the aero industry during the war but now returned to their Manx Nortons, with Lancefield preparing bikes for Johnny Lockett while Beart looked after Dennis Parkinson and Cromie McCandless – with help from protégés Ray Petty and Phil Kettle. Back at their benches, all would coax performance from their engines that the factory had not exploited. Lancefield, notoriously secretive even to his sponsored riders, became a pioneer in the use of twin-plug heads and coil ignition. Bill Lacey, who prized reliability above all things, gained a particular reputation for fastidious preparation and getting the best from a stock engine. Later, he developed a massive flanged drive-side main bearing for the Manx Norton, to replace the highly stressed standard unit, and helped to develop a one-piece crankshaft running a plain big-end rod from a Jaguar. While Bill Stuart worked in the Norton race shop for a time, he would establish his own business in Warwickshire, fettling engines for talents as diverse as Geoff Duke and Dan Shorey and experimenting with coil valve springs for the Manx. Allen Dudley-Ward made his own one-piece Manx crank. Beart, closely associated with Norton’s factory racing programme as the Rex McCandless Featherbed chassis was being developed, and keenly aware that it was a little too heavy, became notorious for trimming weight from his bikes, drilling components for lightness and even hollowing bolts. A Beart Norton, meticulously prepared and turned out, would rarely be subjected to the indignity of trackside repair, but returned to Beart’s workshop for attention. The Surrey engineer’s bikes were distinctively finished in Ford Ludlow Green and he would ultimately prepare a broader range of machines than many of his contemporaries – though no longer at his well-known Brooklands shed, initially opening new premises behind a friend’s garage in Byfleet High Street.

Further north, Manchester Norton dealer Reg Dearden developed an early reputation on other marques, notably Velocette and Vincent, but became established as one of the leading Norton tuners, buying up much of the contents of the Norton race shop when the marque closed its Bracebridge Street, Birmingham premises at the end of 1962, and ultimately constructing his own short-stroke 500 Manx.

North of the border, and among the most innovative of the great names, was Glasgow tuner Joe Potts. Best known as sponsor of fellow Scots Bob McIntyre and Alistair King, Potts decided in the later 1950s to challenge the prevailing might of MV Agusta at grand prix level by building a Manx with desmodromic valve gear (independent of Norton’s factory effort), which is designed to offer better valve control than springs, and particularly so of the heavy inlet and exhaust valves typical to the period. That the enterprise ultimately failed through want of an adequate chassis was hardly the fault of Potts, whose bikes propelled McIntyre and King to scores of wins through the 1950s and 60s.

Assorted machinery, musty riding kit, pool petrol – but racing for all that. Bemsee members prepare to enjoy the pleasures of peace at a meeting in 1949. (Courtesy haddenhamairfieldhistory.co.uk)

By the opening of the 1949 season, with the Hutchinson 100 restored to the top of the domestic calendar and the first world championships just around the corner, the sport was regaining a kind of shabby normality. Tommy Wood, Dave Whitworth and George Brown were winning at home and Norton had announced a factory team (Daniell, Bell and Lockett) for the coming championships. Meanwhile, another former despatch rider had been released by the army to make headlines: G E Duke (490 Norton) of St Helens had won the Derbyshire Trial. There was even talk of raising the octane rating of fuel to prewar levels, from 72 to 80, through the magic of a chemical booster catchily named tetraethyl lead.

Have bike, will travel

There were problems, naturally, and some more intractable than others. To begin with, the sport was effectively homeless and had been since Brooklands and Donington were requisitioned for military use at the start of the war. True, its soul reposed where it had for 40 years and more, in the Isle of Man – but that wasn’t much use to an enterprising club in the midlands, or the south-east, that wanted access to a couple of miles of tarmac on a bank holiday to run a few races for its members. The root of the problem lay in the blanket ban on conducting motorsport over mainland roads, which had been in place since the late 1920s.

Britain cannot afford to remain trackless while Italy has Monza, France Montlhéry, Germany Avus and the Nürburgring, growled Arthur Bourne, editor of ‘the Blue ’un’ – The Motor Cycle – as early as January 1946. In December of that year, the Air Ministry said it was considering the question of racing on its rapidly rising total of disused airfields, but its anguish was plain and, concerned about adequate control, it ‘released’ a number of airfields, but turned over all further responsibility for their racing use to the RAC.

Such airfield circuits, often a combination of perimeter tracks and runways (sometimes of disorientating width), came and went, and by force of circumstance racing eased into a nomadic, make-do-and-mend kind of existence. Clubs loaded up their stop watches, tapes and straw bales – perhaps even a little bunting and a loudhailer or two – and held meetings here in May, there in June, somewhere else in August.

Tougher times yet lay in wait during the decade before Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told the nation, in 1957, that most of our people have never had it so good. Factories closed, racing budgets dried up, teams disbanded. By the middle years of the 1950s, Britain’s racing status had declined dramatically in almost every particular. Early in 1955, Norton announced its new team, comprising John Surtees, John Hartle and Jack Brett, but added that it would contest only selected events, and that these would not amount to a full world championship campaign. A week later, AMC said its racing efforts would thereafter be confined to developing its production racers (the 7R AJS for the 350cc class and the G45 Matchless for 500cc events), that it would halt development on the AJS Porcupine and 7R3, and that its riders for the year, Bill Lomas, Derek Ennett, John Clark and Peter Murphy would, like their opposite numbers in the Norton camp, largely be staying at home.

Italy, meanwhile, had gone from strength to strength. Gilera rider Umberto Masetti had won the 500cc World Championship in 1950 (winning two grands prix from six) and 1952 (winning two grands prix from eight) with its transverse air-cooled fours. These were still fast but wayward, and their uncertain handling made Craig’s factory Nortons a better overall proposition, even at world championship level, from the middle of 1950 with the advent of the Featherbed chassis created by Rex McCandless and Artie Bell.

The inevitable was postponed – but only until Gilera signed three-time world champion Geoff Duke, together with Reg Armstrong and Dickie Dale, to spearhead its 1953 title bid. The Italian bikes took the first three places in the 500cc championship, Duke leading the way on a bike he’d transformed, a bike that could win anywhere. He’d hit it off with Gilera racing manager Piero Taruffi, and the pair collaborated successfully to give their bikes the benefits of a lower centre of gravity, sturdier suspension and a stiffer frame, attributes he understood from long experience of the pounding endured by man and machine during seven-lap, 264-mile races over the Isle of Man TT course. In 1954 Duke won five grands prix for Gilera; Rhodesian Ray Amm, in a doughty rearguard action for Norton, just two.

In the 350 class the names were different but the outcome the same: by 1953 Moto Guzzi’s light, low and versatile singles had comprehensively seen off sometimes more powerful but invariably heftier British opposition. Norton again won two races that year, and in 1954 New Zealander Rod Coleman took the Junior TT for AJS – but these, in a wider context, were crumbs from the table; without major investment, British bikes would no longer be competitive at grand prix level. And the cash simply wasn’t there.

Staying local

If Britain’s position as a leading manufacturer of racing hardware was increasingly questionable, its status as a producer of quality riding talent was not. Between 1949 and 1960, British riders had dropped just four world championships in the major classes: in the 500cc class, three times to Gilera, with Masetti the winner in 1950 and 1952 and Libero Liberati in 1957; in the 350cc class the succession was unbroken, excepting – and to stretch a point – Australian Keith Campbell in 1957, who completed Moto Guzzi’s impressive run of five championships in the class. And the stars kept coming. By the middle 1950s the first great postwar generation of riders had finished their national service and were collecting an early shelfload of tinware: Bob McIntyre and Derek Minter led the way, forsaking the inevitable BSA Gold Stars for more potent machines, and progressively giving rein to their talents. Indeed, McIntyre became Geoff Duke’s anointed successor at Gilera and posted one impressive, if injury-marred, season before Gilera joined fellow Italian manufacturers Moto Guzzi and Mondial in pulling out of grand prix racing.

Last delivery: John Surtees during his final TT win, the 1960 Senior. At season’s end he went car racing, and Gary Hocking took his place at MV Agusta. (Courtesy FoTTofinder Bikesport Photo Archives)

The withdrawal of the Italian factories meant that in just four seasons the number of 350 and 500cc factory rides had dwindled from upwards of a dozen to the few within the gift of Count Domenico Agusta and a couple of smaller teams, and that’s the way it would stay, at least until small groups of men wearing red caps bearing the name Honda began to appear at race tracks a year or two later.

For the lucky few, which in 1958 effectively meant John Surtees and John Hartle at MV, world championship racing remained a practical, paying proposition. Others, lacking factory hardware, would load their faithful Norton, AJS or Matchless into vans and trucks of varying antiquity, and run away to join the Continental Circus, confident and enthusiastic, expecting to make a living and hoping to be noticed.

Most would stay at home, however. Much had changed since that meeting at Cadwell Park in April 1946: circuits had come and gone but a dozen had become a permanent part of life; a handful of big events had disappeared from the calendar while others had been restored and still more had been launched to become features of a packed domestic season that extended from March to October. Loading two bikes into an unheated van at five on a bleak Sunday morning in March to drive 200 miles to the first national of the season no doubt felt far removed from the glamour of the world championships or the prestige of the TT; but there was a living to be made, titles and trophies to be won.

The better engineers and tuners had plenty of regular customers with whom to develop their craft and were making headlines in their own right, with summaries appearing in the press at the beginning of each season explaining how many engines each was preparing for whom, whether for short circuit racing, grand prix use or the TT. Meanwhile the British racing single, the tool of aspiring champions for half a century, was nearing the peak of its factory development. The works teams might have gone, taking with them their light and low, experimental short-stroke, three-valve and twin-cylinder engines; but for the present, Norton and AMC continued to make and to tweak the stock Manx Norton, the 7R AJS, and the newcomer and AMC rival for the Manx in 500cc events, the G50 Matchless.

With MV Agusta supreme at grand prix level and Honda’s intervention just around the corner, the long, rich story of the British single as a race winner at international level was almost done, but it was a proven performer in national events, and would remain so for another decade – in some ways the most challenging in its history. In the years since World War II the air-cooled, overhead-cam thumper had developed into a fine instrument for settling domestic disputes.

Chapter 2

A Choice of Rivals

It began so well. By the end of 1949 Les Graham had become inaugural 500cc World Champion, taking the AJS E90 Porcupine to grand prix wins in Switzerland and Ulster, and to a crucial second place behind Nello Pagani’s Gilera in Holland. Meanwhile, a favourable reaction from dealers and buyers, together with a growing list of solid results on the track, was making AJS’s newly launched 350cc 7R ‘boy racer’ a success. AMC’s racing programme clearly held promise for the decade ahead. All that was needed was a catalogue 500cc racer to stand alongside the 7R in showrooms and paddocks across the land.

There were two ways to fill the gap: to use the 7R as a basis on which to develop a purpose-built 500cc single, so creating a simpler, lower-maintenance equivalent of the 30M Manx Norton; or to modify a catalogue road bike, as Triumph had done with its Tiger 100-inspired Grand Prix. From marketing and promotional standpoints it made good sense to develop a road bike, and AMC had just the thing – the new Matchless G9 Super Clubman.

Enter AMC’s chief development engineer, Ike Hatch, who went to work on the G9’s twin-cylinder OHV engine. By the time the prototype racer was entered for the 1951 Manx Grand Prix the 179kg, 29bhp G9 roadster, its road gear swapped for largely 7R-derived cycle parts, had become the 145kg, 48bhp G45.

Early signs were hopeful. Robin Sherry took the bike to fourth in the 1951 event, with Derek Farrant doing well to win the 1952 Manx GP on the production model. When the G45 went on sale in 1953 AMC found itself acquiring enthusiastic buyers ready to hand over the £390 necessary for the privilege of G45 ownership.

Meanwhile, in the 350cc class the 7R was proving its worth. While not consistently a threat to the factory Nortons, or particularly to Velocette’s KTT singles at world championship level, the boy racer continued to perform well at the Manx Grand Prix, and had taken a catalogue of wins in more modest competition.

At its launch the 7R offered simple, sturdy reliability and performance at a price comparable to the equivalent long-stroke garden-gate Manx Norton. Its heart was Philip Walker’s 74 × 81mm SOHC powerplant, which owed much to its prewar forebear, the R7. The engine was mated to an Amal 10TT carburettor, Burman four-speed gearbox and Lucas racing magneto. The newcomer boasted several advantages over its Bracebridge Street rival: a twin-cradle frame allied to swinging arm suspension. The Norton would be reliant on its plunger back end until the McCandless brothers came to the rescue with the Featherbed chassis. In its earliest form the 7R made 29bhp on the ubiquitous blight of the age, 72-octane pool petrol, which was enough to give it 100mph at 6600rpm.

Major changes began to appear from the 1950 model year. Modified valves, lightened flywheels and a sturdier conrod headed the list. Compression was boosted from 8.45:1 to 8.85:1, thanks to the newly available 80-octane petrol. Most important, perhaps, was the adoption of twin oil pumps, a system that delivered more oil to the cambox and reduced wear to cam and rocker pads. Externally, a new exhaust system broadened the engine’s powerband. Burman, meanwhile, supplied a new gearbox that was both stronger and lighter than its predecessor.

The changes kept coming: a new cam profile, with uprated oil feeds to the camshaft, and a new piston, boosting compression to 9.4:1, headlined internal changes for the 1951 model. Most memorably, perhaps, AMC replaced the leaky, undersprung Candlestick rear suspension units with its leaky, underdamped Jampots.

There was no doubt, however, that the 7R was a winner.

Spring-heel Rex

Rex McCandless won the last prewar race in the British Isles, the 1940 Dublin 100, and then spent Hitler’s war working in the Short Brothers aircraft factory in Belfast, a dozen miles from his native Hillsborough, in County Down. In the evenings he tinkered with his ideas on improving motorcycle chassis and rear suspension. Come the end of hostilities, McCandless, together with pal and collaborator Artie Bell, was ready to offer his ideas to the world.

McCandless’ ‘spring-heel’ rear end – a swinging arm pivoting from the frame to mount the back wheel, with suspension struts between the swinging arm and the bolted-on rear subframe – represented a mighty improvement over the sprung hubs and plunger rear ends then in common use elsewhere.

Jack Williams of AMC tightly grips his pipe while Vic Willoughby, technical scribe of The Motor Cycle, inspects the newcomer of the 1958 TT, the G50 Matchless. (Courtesy FoTTofinder Bikesport Photo Archives)

McCandless made the headlines with a successful rear-end conversion to Bill Nicholson’s scrambles mounts as early as 1946 and he soon began a thriving business converting rigid-framed motorcycles at £25 a pop. Bell, meanwhile, had joined the Norton racing team alongside Geoff Duke; while McCandless added increasing numbers of scrambles and trials bikes to his list of successful conversions, Bell spread the word at Bracebridge Street.

Soon, McCandless was offered work on a freelance basis by Norton factory boss Bill Mansell. At first he worked on the 500T trials iron, but quickly attracted attention by making the blunt suggestion that he could design a far better frame for the Manx than the ageing unit then in use, and so revitalise the factory’s faltering road racing programme. After their machines had taken a battering from AJS, Velocette and Gilera in the 1949 world championships, the good and the great at Bracebridge Street were ready to listen.

In just six months from autumn 1949, McCandless transformed the ailing Manx into a completely new proposition. Conceiving the chassis as a whole, he created a new duplex frame, cross-braced and gusseted at key points, which shifted more weight over the front wheel to sharpen the bike’s steering. He added his own swinging arm rear end, and vertically mounted spring/damper units, with remote reservoirs to help keep the damping fluid free of air.

During testing at Montlhéry and in Britain, the McCandless-framed Manx drew praise from Norton team boss Joe Craig, while development rider Harold Daniell said the bike was like riding a feather bed. The description stuck.

The new bike made its competition debut at Britain’s first mainland postwar international at Blandford in April 1950, a venue borrowed for the weekend from the army. Duke had the only Featherbed Norton at the meeting, a 500, and won from an entry laden with talent, and which included an E90 AJS Porcupine. Just a week later, Johnny Lockett backed up Duke’s victory by giving the 350cc version of the Featherbed a winning debut, in Ireland.

It was an encouraging start that gained real impetus at the Isle of Man a month later: Norton took all three podium places in both major events, Bell cleaning up in the 350cc race and Duke in the 500.

The Manx Norton was back in business. Duke would post another three grand prix wins during the 1950 season, but tyre delamination troubles forced him to wait until the following year to claim his first world championships, when he took the only 350/500cc title double of his career. Duke won the 350cc championship again in 1952, but the bigger class proved a tougher proposition. By now the Italians, led by Gilera, were beginning to find reliability and handling to match the raw power produced by their Remor-designed four-cylinder engines, and by late in the season were muscling aside the British singles and twins. Reg Armstrong took two GP wins for Norton in the premier class, at the TT and in Germany, while Umberto Masetti claimed a second 500cc world championship to add to the title he snatched from Duke by one point in 1950 – and Rex McCandless’ brother, Cromie, won the Ulster Grand Prix … on a Gilera.

Momentum

Development engineer Jack Williams joined AMC from Vincent, following the death of Ike Hatch in October 1954, to find a racing department losing momentum. Its resources were being channelled into the E95 Porcupine and the three-valve (one inlet, two exhaust) variant of the 7R, designed by Hatch; and while the production 7R had received some attention (the 1953 model was fitted with a stiffer crankshaft assembly, slimmer crankcases, sturdier main bearings, and a new cylinder head with bigger-diameter valves and a better-flowing inlet tract), the G45 Matchless had been largely neglected, its sales falling as customer complaints mounted.

At its best the G45 offered a brisk turn of speed and good handling tempered by vibration, oil leaks and a narrow powerband. But there was worse; much worse.

They were very quick in a straight line, a factory mechanic told writer Alan Cathcart many years later. But you couldn’t get them to stay together. The cam they used was much too vicious.

The writing, it seemed, was on the wall, and even after the official factory racing programme was shut down following the 1954 season, the G45 received little further development. Production finally stopped in 1957 after just four bikes of the year’s planned run of 25 had been built. The 30M Manx Norton was, for the moment, the only game in town in the 500cc class – which might have been a problem, had not AMC acquired Norton Motors in 1952.

The engine of a ’61 500 Manx in muscular profile. This is Adrian Sellars’, which features include a twin-plug head and coil valve springs. Inside the gearbox housing is a PGT five-speed cluster. (Courtesy Adrian Sellars)

Meanwhile the 7R’s status as AMC’s quiet achiever gained further currency. While New Zealander Rod Coleman won the 1954 Junior TT on the 7R3, Manxman Derek Ennett claimed the Junior Manx Grand Prix for the company on a stock 7R, highlighting the bike’s worth to privateers who wanted performance for their hard-earned racing budget.

When the factory bikes were wheeled quietly away following the closure of AMC’s works racing teams, Williams was able to interest himself exclusively in the production bikes, turning his attention first to the 7R and for 1956 giving the bike its first full overhaul since its release eight years before.

Williams adopted the 75.5mm × 78mm engine dimensions of the factory 7R3, giving a freer-revving engine – though his later work would be more concerned with improving breathing than with more revs in an engine that already had as much inertial load as it was likely to cope with.

The major changes to the bottom end in the 1956 rebuild were lightened flywheels and a double-row timing-side main bearing, while top-end modifications included new piston rings, a revised inlet port angle, reworked exhaust valve guide and range of valve adjustment.

Changes to the chassis included new handlebars, footpegs and pedals and a narrower oil tank. The frame was strengthened, the Jampot rear units were at last discarded in favour of Girlings, and the brakes were modified to improve airflow.

Power output crept up. For 1957 the 7R was rated at 37.5bhp; a year later, with a new camshaft, another inlet port and a larger carb, the figure had risen to 39bhp with compression boosted to 10.25:1 and peak power being delivered between 7600 and 7800rpm. And the bike was still winning the Manx Grand Prix, with newcomer Alan Shepherd getting home first in 1958 with a new lap record at 90.58mph.

AMC was selling as many 7Rs as it could make (totalling some 800 bikes in 14 years’ production). The AJS was easier to live with than the 40M Manx Norton through simpler maintenance; it was cleaner to run thanks to its enclosed valve gear, and was almost as fast and brisker in acceleration. The 7R had proven itself an inspired design that had improved with time; it was a pity it had no viable 500cc stablemate.

Short measures

The combination of Roadholder forks and Featherbed chassis had helped Joe Craig to maintain the Manx Norton’s competitive edge at grand prix level for a little longer, but the writing was on the wall well before the closure of the factory team. By 1953 Moto Guzzi’s lithe, lightweight singles were getting the better of Norton in the 350 class, particularly on fast tracks, while among the 500s Geoff Duke, now riding for Gilera, collected the Italian factory’s third Senior world title and the Lancastrian’s second, in his debut season on the Arcore multis.

Ray Amm, Norton’s replacement for Duke, performed prodigies of excellence on the Manx, taking a TT double in 1953 and winning the 500cc event again the following year – keeping ‘The Unapproachable Norton’ in the public eye. These were the races that mattered to the generations of privateer entrants and riders who were Norton’s principal customers, and who became the major beneficiaries of the advances made during the dying days of Norton’s factory racing programme.

For the 1954 season the Manx got its first major overhaul since the arrival of the Featherbed frame, for private buyers, in 1951. Gone were the old long-stroke engines: the new dimensions for the 40M were 76 × 76.85mm, for 348cc; the 30M, 86 × 85.62mm, for 499cc. Both high-revving engines had new conrods, revised finning, a new cambox design and new valve springs. Principal change to the chassis was a works-type twin-leading-shoe front brake, adapted to fit the standard Manx conical hub. Both models cost £418 16s.

Spartan accommodation: the cockpit of a 350 Manx. This is the Ray Petty reverse-head special, built in 1963