plymoutharrow wrote: ↑Sun Mar 19, 2017 1:10 pm
Watched Shed and Buried recently where Henry Cole and his friend bought a piece of British drag bike history. Dont know if it was an old programme. Would be interesting to find out who bought it. Any pictures/history on the bike would be great.
Hi, I'm a bit late noticing this forum and thread.
Ref: Quartermaster Drag Bike.
I owned this bike from 1979 - 1982 and raced it at various NSA sprints and NDRA meetings during those years.
The bike was built in the late 1960s by Norman Ashwood who lived in Kidderminster.
The NSA used to hold a Monday night club meeting (piss up) at the White Swan in Chaddesley Corbett and that's where I met Norman. He was no longer riding and wanted to sell Quartermaster. I bought it as a ready to race bike for £200.
The frame was fabricated by Norman and used BSA Bantam forks, a Honda rear hub, Triumph Tiger 100 engine and a Norton box. It ran an 1 1/4" SU carb feeding a Rolls Royce cabin blower (I was informed it was an experimental unit from a Spitfire). The bike ran on methanol with the occasional dose of 15 - 20% Nitro.
The bike was originally painted Hammerite silver, from when it was first built.
I did very little to the bike whilst I owned it apart from a couple of engine rebuilds.
Best times, from memory, were around the low 11s at around 118mph.
I sold the bike to Richard Evans, from Bromsgrove (also a Chaddesley Monday nighter) and he rode it for a couple of years after that.
Who he sold it to, I've no idea; although I did see it advertised some years later in the Old Bike Mart by a guy in Druids Heath, Birmingham. He was asking around £4500 for it!
I was quite gobsmacked when a mate of mine sent me a screen shot of the bike from Henry Cole's 'Motorcycle Show'.
It certainy brought back a lot of memories!
I sent Henry Cole a long EMail detailing the history of the bike a couple of years ago, via his production company, but never received a reply.
The bike recently appeared on another Henry Cole programme - 'Find It, Fix It, Drive It'.
Here's a picture of the bike in its' original livery, as raced by Norman and myself. Richard Evans changed the colour scheme shortly after he bought it.
I subsequently went on to race sidecars for 10 years and achieved my ambition of racing sidecars and solos in the Isle of Man.
Happy days!