Part of the Family

 

Father and son discover a shared passion for restoring pre-WWII motorcycles in the Welsh Valleys.

 

Crepuscular rays, or sunbeams if you prefer, filter through the elaborate iron gates that swing open to admit me to Bargoed Park, near Blackwood, in the South Wales Valleys. It’s a long way from Wolverhampton, where pre-war Sunbeam motorcycles were manufactured, yet it is an historically appropriate setting for an encounter with two generations of Sunbeam enthusiasts.

The park was acquired from descendants of the Hanbury family, who pioneered the application of a high-gloss baked finish to metalware in a process known as japanning, three coats of which produced a durable black lacquer similar to enamel paint. The japanning process was also employed in Birmingham, one of the first families to perfect the ‘secret varnish’ being the Marstons of Wolverhampton, which led the manufacturing firm of John Marston Ltd, founded in 1859, to claim that it had been ‘established in 1790’. Aside from this historical oversight, John Marston was a perfectionist who insisted that all his products boasted a high quality of finish. In particular, his firm’s two-wheelers, both bicycles and motorcycles produced under ‘The Sunbeam’ trademark, won renown for their excellent paintwork as well as their engineering details.

The old-school importance of fine workmanship has been a lifelong code for local Blackwood resident Alan Headington. Alan, 60, began riding as a boy and represented Wales at motocross, competing against the top experts in the mid-1970s on a wild 440cc Maico. However, his road bike preference was always for British marques until family commitments overtook his enthusiasm during the 1980s.
“It made me sad because I knew I was neglecting my bikes,” says Alan. “I never lost interest completely, because it’s in my blood, but I knew that too much time spent in the garage would mean neglecting my family.” Blood ties eventually came to the rescue with the new millennium when son Scott, who had recently left school, ventured out to the garage to see what his old man was up to.
“He said to me, ‘dad, let’s work on one together’,” recalls Alan. “So we sat down and discussed which model would be best for us to tackle. Scott wasn’t riding then and I did wonder whether he would take to it of his own accord. We chose a 1932 Model 18 Norton to tidy up as our first job together and daily progress soon became part of our everyday conversation. I taught Scott my technique of using combination spanners or sockets rather than open-jaw tools wherever possible and how to understand the way that components fit together.”The quietly spoken Scott learned quickly. “At first, I picked things up from watching dad work,” he says. “It was all new to me, this world of engine flywheels and bearings, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process of working on an old machine and found that I wanted to know more.”
This shared enthusiasm soon led to a more ambitious restoration. Scott saw a Sunbeam advertised for sale by auction in The Classic MotorCycle that seemed to offer potential for a true nut-and-bolt project. He gained an appreciation of the manufacturer’s respectable pedigree from reading about its history and thus a trip to the auction at Buxton, Derbyshire made father and son the proud joint owners of a 1936 Model 9. Or so they hoped. Photographs taken at the time show a basket case acquisition. What the numerous boxes actually contained and the relationship of those components to each other was still open to question.

“It was all a bit daunting to be honest,” admits Scott, “especially as it was my idea. But we took a chance that the main pieces were all there and the first thing that we did, when we got home, was to try to make everything fit together in a dry build.”
Thereafter, the duo tackled each separate sub-assembly as a team, beginning with the engine. Finding the cylinder bore and rings in nearly perfect condition, they vapour-blasted the outer cases on home equipment and rebuilt the engine. The gearbox also proved to be in perfect order – in fact, there seemed to be little evident wear on any part of the machine. Even the brake pedal cross-hatching was unworn, prompting speculation that the bike had been rebuilt previously with new components.

Questions about the bike’s history punctuated family discussions until Alan began the process of tracking down a registration document. An original buff logbook should have been supplied with the boxes of parts, but all that materialised was a piece of paper with the vendor’s details and telephone number. A call to the former owner’s daughter provided the answers. She explained that her late father had bought the Sunbeam new in 1936 and had ridden it occasionally (including visits to a couple of TTs) until 1947, when the bike was sold to a friend who promptly crashed it. Her father had then bought it back and stored it until the early 1980s, when he began to refurbish it. Problems with the newly computerised DVLA database meant that he never succeeded in retrieving the original registration number and sadly passed away before the bike could be made road legal.

Fortunately, this resourceful lady managed to find the missing logbook, which provided provenance in a successful application to retain the Birmingham-area registration number, BOX 790. It also explained how the front mudguard, headlamp, exhaust pipe and speedometer had come to be damaged, and confirmed that the bike had not been ridden for over 50 years, having covered only 4000 miles in the hands of its original purchaser.
The Sunbeam’s unique history simply added to its allure and motivated Alan and Scott to make it roadworthy as soon as possible. The pair scoured autojumbles for missing parts, locating a speedometer at Kempton Park and a silencer in Bristol. However, it took three years of searching to find a suitable front mudguard. The vendor in the autojumble at Stanford Hall didn’t know its application, but Alan recognised it at once and bought it for £70. It’s exactly the right type to replace the one damaged in the 1947 accident.
Z-EX Exhausts in Cardiff (02920 455265) remanufactured a two-inch diameter exhaust pipe from the damaged original and some photocopied period advertisements from The Motor Cycle. The new pipe has a less gentle curvature than the original, although it matches the angle of the front downtube in a manner that lends a racy air.
Alan and Scott made further reference to photocopies in determining how the frame tubes bolted together. Once they’d worked it out, they checked each tube for straightness before sending them off with the other cycle parts to Bristol Motorcycle Powder Coating (01179 412870). The lockable leather tool pouch that fits so neatly into the offside side panel is the original item that came with the bike.

• End of online article. The full item is only found in The Classic MotorCycle magazine

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