Anyone Seen One of These?

davidd

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I do know what this is and I won't keep anyone is suspense for long, but I thought it was a very nice design:

Outside:


Inside:


It is an engine associated part.

David
 

BigEd

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VOC Forum Moderator
Dear David,
If this is the start of you Christmas picture quiz you are making them too easy.;-)
John got the answer and replied in 16 minutes. A canny Scot.

Compliments of the season to you and all our posters in the U.S.A.
 

john998

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Hello Eddy, though I have been fortunate to live in Scotland fo 35 years I am a proud Yorkshire man.
Once strong in the arm, still thick in the head.
Regards John.
 

BigEd

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VOC Forum Moderator
Dear John,
Not too thick to know one end of a Vincent from another methinks.:)

Forty odd years ago I was fortunate to work for a few months in a Yorkshire brewery with some really sound old time fitters. Salt of the earth right from their cloth caps down to the leather, wood soled clogs that some of them wore. (Not sure how Health and Safety would view that sort of work wear these days.;-))

Hello Eddy, though I have been fortunate to live in Scotland for 35 years I am a proud Yorkshire man.
Once strong in the arm, still thick in the head.
Regards John.
 

john998

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VOC Member
A real yorkshire fitter.

Hello, Hopefully attached is a Photo of Frank Shillitoe, one time seller and repairer of Vincents.
He was a sea going merchant navy engineer in the war, and lived at Newmiller dam near Barnsley.
My solo is set up for camping by the look of it.
 

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timetraveller

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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.
 
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