Bert Hopwood

Rohan:

I take your point. The industry was making all kinds of wild claims for power back then. The Commando was advertised fo a time as having 80 HP in "stage 3 tune". That was a test on a dyno with an engine without any accessories (even an external electric oil pump) that was "slammed" to full throttle and the numbers take at the peak of the accel.

Even the Star-maker 360 in the AJS M-X bikes was touted to be 35 HP. That 360 was actually only 345 ccs, so was strictly not in the "over 350" class, but it was raced for several years and nobody every found out.
 
I worked in an Australian industry in which we had the complete British system. It is now defunct. The only way I could see out of the conundrum was to completely adopt Deming's ideas on quality management and develop workplace teams with a reward system based on employee share ownership and productivity gain sharing. To move from the old system to the new would have taken a gigantic leap of faith and a lot of imagination. It was never going to happen. Engineers live in a black and white world and accountants are incapable of managing anything. The role I had was involved with materials, process and product development, quality assurance and testing. Scientists are rarely employed in Australian companies. Very frustrating to see what could be, however to have no way of implementing change.
A waste of time and effort :

http://www.angelfire.com/biz2/AcotrelDirectory/
 
Thank you for your advertising touting for business here Allan.
Unfortunately, we do not have a position for you at this time.
And we hope LAB will do his moderating thing here, and delete you.
 
frankdamp said:
The industry was making all kinds of wild claims for power back then.
Click to expand...

I think the point here Frank was that the Ariel flat 4 couldn't remotely or possibly have made anything like that sort of hp back then,
so we don't even know where those sort of wild claims could have come from.
DOUBLE the power of a touring Vincent 1000cc, (which was state of the art then) from a 'mere' 700cc would have been quite an achievement !!

The more recent BMW K75, with a 750cc flat triple engine, DOHC and fuel injection made a claimed 75 hp,
and that was with BMW's considerable engine development skills, 20 years more experience, and lots more revs...
Cheers.
 
Between 1961 and 1965 the much ridiculed 1.5 litre F1 engines produced between 150 b.h.p. and 225 b.h.p.. According to my calculations that's between 100 and 150 b.h.p. per litre. This would have represented the best of engine technology at the time. So for Ariel to aim for over 100 b.h.p. per litre from a touring roadbike seems somewhat unlikely.

The Ariel Leader/Arrow frame was a remarkable leap forward in it's time. Sadly it could be easily written off by gently (relatively speaking) riding the bike over a kerb, or anything similar. The frame could be irreparably kinked and therefore scrapped. What's more, there is a link to the Commando. Bob Trigg, co-designer of the Commando, worked at Ariels on the Leader/Arrow. Whilst at NV he pointed out an advert which featured him with some of the groovy dudes of the day.
cheers
wakeup
 
I wasn't even going to mention F1 engines, but good points.

BTW, 1500cc engines in F1 today, with a fair old level of turbocharging are producing approx 600 bhp.
And quite a deal more if they turn the wick up - which then exceeds their fuel use allowance.

But we digress...
 
Just to throw a little more fuel on the fire and digress a little further, the 1.5 litre V16 supercharged BRM raced between 1949/50 and 54 ended up producing 625bhp. Sadly it was horribly unreliable until the last couple of years, but it made a fantastic noise, just google "V16 BRM"................
cheers
wakeup
 
Not just supercharged, but compound supercharged. ?

Is that the one where Colin Chapman said on camera that it sounded fantastic, but all the power seemed to be going out the exhaust pipes.

The most superior engine (in several formats) for some years, and never won a race. !
Apparently other drivers had complained, officially ?, that they couldn't even hear their own engines when this thing was on the track with them.
There is a marvellous soundtrack recording of this thing, somewhere on the net...

But we diverge, muchly.
 
British creativity never ceases to amaze me. 'Necessity is the mother of invention'. However I think the BRM was 'a bridge too far'. Very hard to beat a Manx Norton for being an example of 'fit for purpose with obvious attention to detail'.
 
It was said somewhere that the designer of the BRM V16 would fuss incessantly over some tiny detail,
and completely lose sight of the goal to win races.

Manxes barely won anything in their last 10 years of production, when you start counting up....
At a serious level anyway.
 
Rohan said:
Manxes barely won anything in their last 10 years of production, when you start counting up....
At a serious level anyway.
Click to expand...

Perhaps at GP level, but at national level and for most riders, it was the Manx or a G50 or...?
And that continued for a while after production ceased.
First the over bored Aermacchi's and then the 2t's. The 351 TZ's swept all before them.
Interest moved to 750cc classes, which gave Brit/European/US bikes a breather
 
PJ was still placing in Grand Prix and winning national events on his, admittedly, very special, Arter G50 well into the 70s...............
cheers
wakeup
 
The Yamaha TD1C spelled the end of the manxes in Australia - about 1963. I'd been attending race meeting regularly since 1958. My friends had manxes - a piston cost about my week's earnings back then. I was horrified and it was the reason I never really got into spending money on bikes, even though I could ride very well. There was no return except for the adrenalin rush. My problem later was that I didn't like two strokes, and you really needed them to race successfully. I never kid myself about the commando, my 250 Suzuki would make one look very silly on any short circuit. I was sad to see the demise of the manxes - we should have continued by running separate classes for four strokes and two strokes, based on technology and capacity.
 
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