My A7ss was a goodie (Reg 708 KAR -anyone got it?), twin carbs, swept backs, clip-ons, etc. I rebuilt the motor mid 1967, fitting A10 valves raising the compression marginally turned it into a pretty good street racer. The thing back then, was when you were going over the Cellar at Windsor, to be able to take the bridge, a fairly sharp left hander at 70 mph. I’m sure other readers will recall the residents of Windsor standing on the pavement, waving their arms about frantically to make the leather boys slow it down on a Sunday.
I took part in many a “chicken run” from the cellar, looking back now, it’s amazing more of us weren’t killed. To ride from the Cellar over to Maidenhead or Camberley, not at erratic speeds, but to decide a speed before you left and to the best of your ability, keep the needle near enough “on the button”, was one of my favourite pastimes.
I recall winding the throttle on during one of these trips going out of Windsor towards Datchet, my future wife on the back, overtaking a car, and knowing full well the car coming towards us would make us want to “breath in”. The widest part of the bike at the rear end were the pillion footrests and as I overtook that car doing something like 85 mph (watchful of the other vehicle coming towards us) I would have bet the footrest was going to snag on his bumper, it was that close, but there for the Lord go I; we made it that day and continued on our way. I remember sitting up on the Western avenue/Uxbridge roundabout with the motor running and in gear waiting for a sports car to race down to the Denham roundabout most Sunday mornings, back then. If a tyre had gone at those speeds it would have been bye-bye world.
Another like minded chap at the time was John Velo; a group of us on the way back from the 59 to the Ace on the North Circular one night were caught by a red traffic light. This was it, the adrenalin, the sheer excitement that in the next few seconds I was gonna blow John’s Velo away when the amber light showed (sod the green one!) I glanced at the Velo thumping at the lights that night, rearing to go. In a split second I saw a rear tyre covered in oil and directly in front of the rear wheel, oil was being pumped onto the road at an alarming rate. The lights were about to change, John gave me his knowing smile, as he clicked into gear. Thankfully our eyes met, he saw the horror in my eyes, the violent shaking of my head and what could have been another North Circular Ton-Up boy’s death was averted that night.