Viscount

Peter Holmes

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I thought it was a real shame to see the West London Sections Peter Ross's Viscount for sale in the forthcoming Bonhams Autumn Sale, I think Viscounts have their place in Vincent history along with Eglis and Parkins, I believe when it was purchased relatively recently it was pretty much true to how Viscounts were built, I have no idea whether there are any more kicking around as Tom Somerton built them, It would be a real loss if that was the last one, and was sacrificed to build a fairly non descript salt flat bike, I wonder if the original parts still exist to put it back to how it was.
 

roy the mechanic

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The current owner had it on the road to start with. It must have been not to his liking. As for nondescript, it is a genuine world land speed record holder! If you are that concerned, put your money where your mouth is-buy it and restore it.
 

vibrac

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Ah that used to be a magic name Somerton
Any one know anything about Somerton cams? I used to lust after some when I started racing the twin in the 60' s they were supposed to be the bees knees
 

timetraveller

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They were in my bike when it did 140 mph at the end of a half mile sprint at Long Marston. If you want copies of them then that could be done but you would have to have the followers to go with them. They are approximately Picador cams but the story I got was that when they were copied someone used a different diameter wheel for the copying to the grinding. Whatever, I have measured them up and produced velocity and acceleration curves and they are ok.
 

Bill Thomas

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On my Followers, The are a half round lump welded onto a standard follower.
Always worried that it would be wiped OFF, But been on mine since 1980, Not a lot of miles !.
Cheers Bill.
 

Peter Holmes

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The current owner had it on the road to start with. It must have been not to his liking. As for nondescript, it is a genuine world land speed record holder! If you are that concerned, put your money where your mouth is-buy it and restore it.
I am not in anyway intending to demean Eric's achievement, on a personal level it must have been great fun to do and to get a world record, but isn't the Bonneville Salt Flats supposed to be fastest place on earth, isn't that why everyone goes there? A standard Black Shadow apparently could achieve 125mph, a Black Lightning a lot more, both Bill and Norman have achieved 140+mph on tuned Vincents. I think these days Bonneville creates many records for all comers, the heady days of Bert, Marty and Rollie are long gone, I could compare it to heavyweight championship boxing, if you can't beat the current champion just create another championship and win that instead. With regard to "putting my money where my mouth is" I would have absolutely no intention of doing so, I would view it as trying to turn a frog back into a tadpole, whist spending £60k (estimate) for the privilege of doing so, to much has been changed, for me anyway, but I would have loved to have owned an unmolested Somerton, I do regret not being aware that it was for sale in its original state, but I have no idea what it sold for then.
 
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Bill Thomas

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I would also liked to have owned it.
But I knew it would be too much money,
For me.
I took Peter and Bike to Caldwell in the 70s,
Along with mine. Cheers Bill.
 

timetraveller

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My follower were the same 40 -50 years ago. I got someone to weld some stellite onto standard followers and then hand ground them between two turned 1.5" diameter discs of steel
 

vibrac

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Well perhaps these are Somerton cams I must have picked up the item I wanted in my youth and never even knew! Comes of buying job lots of Vincent parts in the days when bits were being thrown out because no one wanted the old crap we were the last line before the scrap bin
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