Barn Job

[Graham Smith]

Short video clip of America's greatest Vincent drag racer running his "Barn Job" bike. It did 9 seconds and 150 mph on the quarter mile in the early '60s running on nitro probably straight from the can.

This is the early version of Clem's 1700+cc Vincent, later it got a telescopic fork replacing his home-built one, and ultimately a supercharger. Here he was on 42mm Dellorto carburetors. This setup probably produced 300 horsepower from 100 cubic inches or so. One note about his whole history which covered many years, is that he finished with the same pair of original Vincent cylinder heads with which he started. Clem was a wizard machinist and welder and if anything happened, he fixed it like a traditional hot-rodder who doesn't want to waste money. With the blown fuel ultimate setup, he did have the head lifting on the cylinder and "torching". But he would just weld up and re-machine the damage, and keep right on. All this says something about the strength and integrity built into the original heads and crankcase of the 45 horsepower 1946 Vincent 1000cc Twin designed by Phil Vincent and Phil Irving.

 

[vibrac]

Back in 1960 we did not hear much about the USA sport but occasionally I would get a copy of Cycle World I remember reading a colorfull worded article about the Barn job I am sure it did a lot to get me interested in a bike that had been out of production for five years and were easily available for not a lot of cash. That sort of reporting and pictures had little to do with the staid prose of the 'blue un' and the 'green un' rolling out the latest road tests of the big complacent UK companies offerings which was all the UK motorcycle press seemed to cover.