Free Santa suits...

The people at the factory screwing them together well in those days.Given
the tolerancing limitations of the technology of the day. They made up for
that a lot by matching components by hand prior to assembly.

The castings and forgings were superb. If you went to a sand casting
company these days, and asked them to cast close finned iron barrels for
an air cooled bike, they'd tell you to Halve the number and double the
thickness.

 

I think that's amazing from the point of tyre technology alone.

When were they first laping at +100mph then?

 

1957 the TT races were headlined when the late Bob McIntyre recorded the
first 100 mph (161 km/h) lap, riding his Italian Gilera.

http://isle-of-man-tt.wikiverse.org/

 

Muck wrote

I thought it showed how much better the riders were in those days,
compared to today's beardless yoofs.

 

Getting on 50 years ago, goes to show that riders make a bike fast
dunnit?

 

Well yes, and the engineers and pitcrew of course.

 

One of the prettiest cylinder heads in the business.

That a fontana 4ls front brake there Champ?

 

Nice.. Is that the one needing a rebuild every 50 hours[1]? Even got
cable drum brakes and what look like CG125 rear shocks.

[1]As I remember it, can't be arsed to google for it.

 

Well, yeh. Fast bikes don't run on 3.5 cylinders, the riders get rather
upset.

 

Well, I'd say that they had nerves of steel and balls of iron. I suppose
that modern day bikes just spend more of their time speeding up and
slowing down, where as the SOracingbikes just kept it up[1].

[1]Ohh err..

 

It may be 8 shoe, but can't be more than 4 leading edges being applied.

My bro has a Middleton Hall 8 leader, which has 4 levers each side.

Here's a fontana 4ls
http://www.manx.co.uk/images/hubs/f180f.jpg