Frank had a very interesting way of checking the tuning of Rapides, which originally had rather ‘soft’ motors. He would build and time the engine, start it and let it run for a few minutes until it was warm, adjust the carburettors until it was ticking over nicley. He would then stand alongside the bike, engage first gear and then slowly, and fully, release the clutch. You will see from the photograph that Frank was not the tallest or most slender of chaps but his criterion for a well-tuned engine was that it was acceptable once he could walk along side it. Not many bikes are that flexible, even with another fifty years of developments.
He was also a very ingenious chap. His lathe was not large enough to turn a cylinder head so when he was reclaiming exhaust port threads he would mount the freshly welded head on the tool post and then put the boring/cutting tool into a four jawed chuck and progressively cut a new thread.
His workshop was a large ex-army shed and not the warmest of places in winter. Having learned that some of the larger garages were using used engine oil in their heating systems he set too and developed from scratch a system that used his old oil, dripped it onto a lump of scrap iron which got hot and had a coiled tube, in the flame, with water passing through it which injected steam into the flame. This turned the smoky oil flame into a really clean flame that would get the metal chimney of his old stove red hot all the way to the roof. Clever man.