Ariel Tricycle and Quadricycle 1898

This brochure / manual is a copy of a copy but is rare enough that it warrants reproducing here.

The leaflet is labelled as 1898 and I believe that Ariel Tricycles and Quadricycles were current from 1898 to 1902. 

Arbuthnot Trial 2022

The Arbuthnot has been on my events 'bucket list' for a good long while. I can remember spectating it as a young whippersnapper with my father when there was a section next to 'Zig Zag Hill' just up the road from home.

The Arbuthnot has always been a proper old school trial with emphasis on traditional non-tricked out and modernised trials bikes with a good turn out of rigid framed machines. There is a 'colonial' class for road biased bikes. I seem to remember that way back when the trial was only open to rigid framed bikes. Times have moved on however and now all pre-65 British machines are welcomed.

First run after WW1 as a reliability trial the original Arbuthnot carried on through to the late twenties. The event is named after local 1900s TT hero Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot and was revived by the Salisbury Motorcycle and Light Car Club in the eighties and runs a route of some 70 to 80 miles along the green lanes, droves and farmland south of Salisbury.

My entry came courtesy of my friend Matt who kindly volunteered to hitch his sidecar on to his Ariel HT5 which he had entered as a solo when he found out that I was free for the day.

We had a fantastic day of riding. The event truly lived up to expectations. It's fair to say that it was tough going with the sidecar. The Dorset green lanes tend to be heavily rutted  and easy going on a solo but when your third wheel is on a track that doesn't correspond to any of the ruts things can get uncomfortable. 

We did manage though to clear a few of the sections and only had one spectacular 'off' where we rolled it into a clump of bracken. A soft landing at least.

There were four outfits entered. Purely by dint of being the only finishers we went home with the class winners award. Only just mind as our progress was so lethargic that we barely made the last three sections in time, the marshals had just started to take down the flags not expecting anyone else to come through so late...

A thoroughly recommended event with a great sense of camaraderie and one that I will certainly return to. Might just go for a solo entry next time though.

Following a few photos and clips from the day. No captions, it's all pretty self explanatory.

Ariel Sloper

An unusual image and an unusual bike. From the surroundings and the bright sunlight this is fairly evidently not 1930s Britain, I believe the 'WBM' prefix number plate is from West Bengal.

And the bike? Obviously an Ariel, I believe an LB or MB either a 250 or 350 side-valve and most probably from 1931 or 32. Very rare bikes now, I've never seen one in the flesh. The first Ariel 'sloper' models had very radically canted forward engines before they move to a shallower angle as on this machine before up-righting the engines once more.

Ariel side-valve in 'British India'.

Torbay Trial 2021

UK motorsport has resumed and one of the first long distance trials off the mark was the Torbay Trial organised by the Torbay Motor Club. 

At the time of entry I didn't have a suitable bike to enter but my good friend Matt steeped in to the breech with a space in the chair of his Ariel VCH / Canterbury combo.

The day dawned with good weather forecast and off we set to the start point in Devon, just the other side of Exeter. With Covid-19 restrictions in place setting off on the trial was a cinch, just announce your name to the guy on the gate when you arrive and turn up at the start line on time, all paperwork having been filled in and checked in advance. With a 9am start, that bought another half an hour in bed on a Sunday morning, bonus. Hopefully trials organisation can continue this way after all the pandemic stuff is over.

The course of the trial was over some forty miles with 17 sections packed in. The event was very slickly organised and bikes were kept well separate from cars. When you ride an old clunker in a mixed old / new and cars / bikes trial you usually find yourself slipping further and further back as the trial goes on and getting stuck in queues of cars waiting to have a go at the sections. The sidecars were flagged off first, six of us, we the only vintage combo entered - the others soon lost us! 

There were only a handful of older bikes entered, the majority coped with the sections pretty well. There were no cleans at the end of the day in the sidecar class and the top scorers just dropped a few points so I guess that means that the sections were pitched about right. Predictably on the Ariel we had the worst score of all competitors, to be honest this is expected when you enter a trial mainly for more modern stuff on an unmodified, heavy and rigid-framed early fifties machine. We only cleared one section but at the end of the day that wasn't the point. We turned up for a day's riding, had fun and broke neither riders nor machine so all in, a success and proof of the pudding is that we'll probably be back next year.

Beautifully prepared Honda XL185 looks like it
received a lot of lockdown polishing!

This little unrestored rigid James Commando trials
was a gem and acquitted itself pretty well.

Villiers 2T twin engined Cotton is an unusual choice
for trialsing but a really pretty bike.

Triumph-Metisse aiming up for a section.

Matt on his Ariel VHA.

Checking out the next section. They
always look less steep in pictures...

Honda XL185 starts a section.

This contraption was eye-catching amongst the
four wheeled entrants.

Finally some slightly short clips shot in wobble vision... all fairly self explanatory.

The Ariel Pixie

 Another British motorcycle industry might have been, the Ariel Pixie.

The Pixie was Val Page's last design and envisaged to be a 75cc ohc machine, a direct competitor to the Honda 90 that had scared the captains of the British motorcycle industry so much. BSA top brass are nowadays derided for watering down Page's design to a 50cc ohv engine and that is held as the reason that the Pixie was a sales failure but the real reason is far wider than that. Honda succeeded because they had new state of the art machinery capable of pushing out C90s manufactured to very fine tolerances in their thousands. Not only this but Honda had a huge market in Asia right on their doorstep. BSA on the other hand were producing bikes on outdated machinery and selling to a limited market of the former Empire and the States. It didn't matter at all what fantastical world-beating design came off the drawing board the sad reality is that when it came off the BSA production line it was always going to be more expensive and less reliable than a Honda Cub. If Honda themselves had licensed BSA to produce the Cub on the BSA production line it would have probably leaked oil and had reliability issues.....

Disregarding the above the Pixie is a cute little machine and for my eyes the styling is right. They are now something of a rarity and the production run was short - 1963 to 1965. This particular brochure is dated 1962, presumably printed in time for the Earls Court Motorcycle Show held in November.

Mystery v twin a mystery no more

A big thanks to Geert from the Netherlands for getting in touch about the mystery flat tanker picture published a week or so back.

It is a MAG engined Ariel, a model that I was completely unaware of, and Geert sent the below picture to confirm.

Happy Valley Ariel

Recently I got hold of the photo album of a moto enthusiast who was stationed in Kenya back in the early post war era. I'll post up snippets from it over the next while. First up this page contains images of the protagonist with his '43 ex-WD Ariel in the Gilgil and Naivasha area.

Gilgil is a town in Kenya halfway between Nakuru and Naivasha and became infamous as one of the hubs of the 'Happy Valley set' of high living colonial aristocrats.

Broken down with a puncture on the 'short' Gilgil -
Naivasha road. Aug 1950.

Me and my 350cc 1943 Ariel.

Bill and I about to leave for a ride. Gilgil Aug '50.

Ariel Edwardian Ladies Model

Here's yet another Edwardian ladies bicycle that I parted with recently, this one an Ariel dating from shortly before the First World War.

A fine cycle in very original condition it is noteworthy for the 'figure of eight' tubing used on the forks and chainstays. Also fitted with a very wonderful saddle. A shame that the fabric chain guard is slightly torn and that the celluloid panels have rotted away on it but otherwise the Ariel should come up very nicely in its original livery for the new owner.

Suffragettes' delight. Edwardian Ariel cycle.

Canvas and celluloid chainguard.

Note unusual tube profile. Unusual to fine the original skirt
guard complete.

Wonderful. The Dunlop Tyre.

And those strangely profiled forks. Reminiscent of Humber
twin tube forks but made from one piece of metal.

Forks bottoms. Beautiful piece of craftsmanship
how the tube profile blends down in to a
regular oval type fork.

Ornately tooled saddle.

Such detail!

Not sure of the brand of saddle but here is a maker's mark.

And another mark t'other side.

Really a very fine saddle!

Ariel KH500 in the tropics

Here's a lass posing with a Val Page designed Ariel KH500 twin from around 1950. Never big sellers though by all accounts they seem to be fairly vice free pleasant motorcycles as you would expect a design from the pen of Val Page to be.

The backdrop is without doubt tropical, does the S prefix on the number plate perhaps denote Singapore or Sril Lanka? Perhaps someone out there knows?

Ariel KH 500 twin looking at home in the tropics.

Josephine the Ariel

This photo is noted to the reverse 'July 1948, Josephine'. Josephine would have been nearly new July 1948 and she is an Ariel twin port NH350.

Twin exhaust ports were all the rage pre-war but decidedly old hat post. The only two British manufacturers I can think of who made twin port machines after the war were Ariel and Royal Enfield with their J2.

Josephine is an Ariel NH350.

Black Ariel

A desirable 'black' Ariel 500cc ohv from circa 1929. The bikes of the Val Page era at the Ariel factory were nicknamed 'black' Ariels on account of the colour schemes available which took a leaf out of the Henry Ford book. The bike carries a Birmingham registration number. Really no idea what uniform that is that the two lads on board are wearing!

Bu the way the best resource I have found to check out UK registration numbers is provided by the Chiltern Vehicle Preservation Group and is found here. 

Early thirties club meet

A great photo dating from, by the looks of the bikes, the early thirties. The image is a professional one and quite sharp, for a bit of fun enlarge it and see how many of the bikes you can recognise in the line-up. Look closely and there is some quite tasty machinery in there.

It looks like the chaps were about to engage in something competitive from the attire and the number boards on the bikes. I say about to as the white coveralls some of the guys are wearing are still very clean! The bike on the far right seems to have Brooklands style streamlining fitted.

Modern British Motorcycles

This little album of collectors cards was published in 1953 by ROSPA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents). Obviously enough the aim of the album was to impart hints and tips for safe riding; it's a cute little publication though and gives a nice cross-section of the products of the British motorcycle industry at the time.

Click on each page to get a larger, better resolution image.