Circulates throughout the world Established 1903

Chirpy, chirpy, cheap, cheap...

Steve McQueen has a lot to answer for. We know his achievements inspired the modern Bonneville special edition, but according to Steve Parry, that famous The Great Escape leap fired his thinking behind this Bantam Scrambler as well. It’s based on a D14/4 which left the production line in 1969, just when the factories were getting switched on to the concept of a street scrambler – not a trail bike, but a road bike with high pipes and a bit of attitude, as if it could head off-road if need be.

Steve (Parry, not McQueen) had a 1968 D14 Bantam at 16, and remembers his first trip to the TT. “I went with a mate, from Wigan, only 20 miles from the ferry, the furthest we had been on our bikes then. The Bantam was fine, but we must have looked a sight – we had baggy nylon coats, because they were cheap. I remember looking open mouthed at a group of Swedes, two men and two women, who turned up on Black Bomber Hondas, all of them in skin-tight black leathers.”

Anyway, the flywheel on Steve’s Bantam eventually flew apart and he discovered Hondas – possibly skin-tight leathers as well, but he hasn’t told me about that. Last year, the chance came up to buy a friend’s D14, cosmetically poor but with a rebuilt gearbox and solid engine. It looked like a straightforward job, but with so many restored D14s already around, Steve had other ideas.

“I wanted to create something that alluded to the Bantam’s past. My first thought was something in post office red with a chrome tank, as if it had just ridden the Giro d’Italia. But then I thought of this. I’ve always loved the street scrambler style, and The Great Escape, so I thought why not combine elements of both, with a bit of Bantam Sports as well?” That’s why this particular Bantam has a high pipe and mildly knobbly tyres, but military olive green paintwork rather than something from the flashier postwar era. By the late 1960s remember, even Bantams came in metallic flamboyant blue.

Not naff

“Flamboyant?” As bought, this Bantam was anything but. “It was a bit disappointing,” says Steve, with a hint of understatement. “I knew the engine and gearbox were okay, but the bike was running very erratically at low revs. I took the carb apart and found not only that the pilot jet was blocked, but that all the jets were to suit a D10, not a D14. With the right jets and a new slide, it worked fine. There isn’t a rice pudding left in Weston-super-Mare with its skin left on…”

The forks were knackered, so he rebuilt them with new bushes and chrome stanchions, while the wheel bearings and swinging arm bearings were replaced while everything was apart, as were the chain and sprockets.

The speedo was in a sorry state – it looked as if something had jammed at top speed, with the cable partially wrapped around the speedo drive in the rear wheel, and the needle having actually flown off. Steve sent the instrument off to a speedo specialist who said it would take three to four weeks to repair. Three months later, there was no sign of it, despite numerous phone calls, and the eventual answer was that it must have been ‘lost in the post’. Steve got his money back and located a 16,000-mile B175 speedo which worked.

But the real story is the in the look. One big incentive for going the military/street scrambler route was down to the wheels. The rims and spokes were sound but had lost most of their chrome. New stainless steel rims would have looked great on that Giro d’Italia replica, but were out of Steve’s budget. The most cost-effective solution was to have everything – frame, side panels, forks and rims, powder coated in one go. It cost £500, but was still cheaper than having parts painted. And as Steve points out, the original D1s had mist green rims in the late 1940s, so that’s another nod to the Bantam’s past.

This all added up to a lot of olive green, and he didn’t want to take the military look too far. The D14’s front mudguard was included in that batch of powder coating, “but it looked too military, a bit dour and naff”. He found a stainless steel mudguard from a Gilera 50 (which we mustn’t mention, though we just have) which had a bit more clearance. “It looks better this way. I wanted it to look more sporty, more off-road...” He pauses. “I’ve agonised over every detail of this bike.”

To be a credible street scrambler, the Bantam had to have a high pipe, and local dealer Bob Wright Motorcycles had a proper Bushman pipe in stock, along with the correct heat guard, while Armours of Bournemouth supplied a suitable downpipe.

To underline the Bantam Sports elements, the D14’s original battered headlight and nacelle were removed (though he’s kept them) and replaced with a B175 chrome headlight and D10 Sports shrouds.

Attention to detail turned this into a medium-term project. Italian levers and Renthal alloy bars cleaned up the handlebar area, and Steve fitted stainless steel nuts and bolts throughout. Not original, but he prefers it like that. Ditto the side panel dzu fasteners, replaced with proper bolts. “Those dzu fasteners drove me mad at 16, and they still did this time, so they had to go.”

The same fate befell the rubber pipe between air cleaner and carb, and for Steve the only proper solution was a chrome pan air filter (“That’s what we all wanted at the time, because the Bonneville had them.”) closing off the gap between the side panels with a D10 centre panel. This and some other bits came from Bantam John.

“Top bloke. He’s not cheap but he really knows his stuff, and keeps everything in stock.” With everything together, the Bantam still didn’t look quite right. It turned out that a previous owner had fitted a pattern seat, which had its brackets in the wrong place, leaving a big gap between seat and tank. Steve’s budget didn’t run to another new seat, but he modified the brackets to close up that gap a little.

Does it go?

So what have we got here? Well it’s clearly not an original Bantam, but Steve stresses that it’s not a replica Bushman either. That was a very different beast, built to do a job of work (see box). Instead, Steve Parry’s bike is a minestrone of influences from the Bantam – D1, Sports, Bushman – from the street scrambler craze, and from that other Steve, the King of Cool.

It rides well too, as I discovered on a quick spin around Weston. Like any Bantam, it’s supremely light, well balanced and easy to ride, and Steve’s work on the fuelling has made it well behaved at low throttle openings as well. Being a D14/4, it’s more revvy and peaky than the early three-speed Bantam, but maybe that fits with the more active image of this one. The Weston road fitted too, a little beauty which winds its way between woodland and the sea – squint a bit, and you could be Steve McQueen, caning his Triumph along the coastal fringe of the Big Sur.

Words and photography by Peter Henshaw