Circulates throughout the world Established 1903

The right decision: Velocette Venom

Dougal Burns is a happy product of the four corners of the United Kingdom. Born on St Patrick’s Day in England to Scottish parents, he has spent the past quarter of a century living in Wales. His love of British motorcycles predates university study during the mid-1960s, a period that culminated in an old Triumph twin, which followed him around in several boxes for the next 30 years. With the arrival of the new millennium and his own half-century, he decided to acquire a running machine rather than try to remember how the Triumph fitted together.

Dougal’s motorcycle of choice was a Velocette, a machine he had never owned or particularly desired. He explains, “Even when I was a student, I thought that these were old-fashioned and quite honestly, I didn’t like their looks, which is why I bought a Triumph twin like everybody else! But over the years, I came to see that being different can have its advantages and so I wanted to try one for myself.” He arrived at this decision without taking advice or even a test ride, which might seem an odd approach for a graduate working in the research and development field, but he had his reasons. “My brother and my best friend were both classic enthusiasts, and I feared that they might try to talk me out of it, into something I didn’t really want,” he reveals.

So, it had to be a Velocette and moreover a Venom, a model that was part of a growing ‘family tree’ of finely engineered singles when it was launched in the mid-1950s. Veloce Ltd was Birmingham’s third-largest motorcycle manufacturer, with a sporting reputation founded on its inter-war overhead-cam K-series range. However, from 1933 a new M-series of high-cam machines, conceived by Velocette’s co-founder Eugene Goodman and developed by chief designer Charles Udall, offered comparable performance and reliability at lower manufacturing cost. The heavyweight in the range was the 495cc MSS tourer of 1935, production of which resumed after a five-year hiatus in 1954, though the model was now re-engineered with square internal dimensions of 499cc and hydraulic suspension front and rear. A tuned prototype was tested using a scrambles-specification motor during the following summer, in response to demand by road riders for more performance, and this entered production in November 1955 as the Venom.

The initial colour scheme for the Venom was dove grey, with chromed sides to the fuel tank. The Motor Cycle promptly entered one in the Thruxton nine-hour endurance race, initiating a period of increasing participation in production racing and record attempts that would culminate in the success of the Clubman and Thruxton variants. Most notably, a lightly modified Clubman with full fairing achieved a 24-hour average speed of 100.05mph in 1961, a record that still stands for its capacity class. Glass fibre part-enclosure of the engine became an option for 1959, though this was arguably an economy measure at the factory to avoid polishing the alloy timing chest and gearbox end casing. Around 5750 Venoms were manufactured in various guises, the final batches being dealer-assembled from parts acquired by entrepreneur Matt Holder in Birmingham, after the Hall Green factory sold off its stock and tools to pay creditors from February 1971.

Dougal found his Velo in an advertisement in The Classic MotorCycle and bought it unseen, apart from some photographs he requested. The trade vendor, Andy Tiernan, had (and has) a good reputation, but Dougal’s attitude was entirely pragmatic. “I took the attitude that, if there’s something wrong with it, I’ll fix it,” he says. “I didn’t want to buy something absolutely immaculate, since the idea was I could actually work on it, just as I had done many years previously.”

Originality was nevertheless important, and Dougal was pleased the Venom seemed correct in most aspects when it arrived on a trailer. It ran too, though its engine had a tired feel that made it hard to start, and so its new owner set to work with spanners and a screwdriver, tinkering contentedly in his spare time.

Things might have continued thus, was it not for the fact the improvements Dougal made over the course of a couple of years began to highlight the desirability of a complete rebuild. Having already replaced the Amal Concentric carburettor with the correct Monobloc unit and fitted a new clutch bearing, he called a temporary halt to his home maintenance programme in the autumn of 2002 and entrusted Velocette specialists RF Seymour (01844 212277) of Thame, Oxfordshire with the bulk of the required work.

Once again, he had good reasons for his decision, since a high degree of precision was necessary in the engine bottom-end assembly. Once the flywheel had been press-fitted onto the shallow-taper crankpin and trued to within one thou, shims had to be added behind the taper-roller main bearings to create a four thou gap to the crankcase inner walls under preload. As Dougal observes, “It’s not the sort of stuff I would attempt by trial and error with a rubber mallet!”

The frame construction is conventional full-cradle with a single front downtube, made from Reynolds 531 manganese-molybdenum alloy steel tubing with brazed lugs that include sidecar mountings. Its design and geometry are similar to that of the Junior TT-winning MkVIII KTT road racer, which by 1939 was already fitted with a rear swinging arm. The swinging arm fork consists of two separate, tapered arms that clamp to a hollow spindle. These require careful alignment before tightening against their pivot bushes, and Seymours took care of this after powder-coating the rest of the frame.

Dave Lindsley (01706 365838) refurbished the dynamo and magneto, and supplied a solid-state JG voltage regulator to replace the Miller cartridge-type original. With the fuel tank rechromed and repainted by Precision Motorcycle Paintwork (01234 391002) near Milton Keynes, the Venom now looked as good as it ran.

During its running-in period, it collected the post war concours trophy at the VMCC Vale of Glamorgan Road Trial and the best bike award at the Ponthir MCC Classic Show. Seven years and some 2000 miles later, with the engine nicely bedded in, Dougal admits that, while he still enjoys tinkering in the garage at home, he would rather not unroll his spanners by the roadside. He has evidently gained his brother’s approval for his choice of machine, too, recalling; “When he came round for Sunday lunch one day, my wife Carol said, ‘We’ve got something to tell you.’ My brother went, ‘No – you’re not...’ and she replied, ‘No, but we do have an addition to the family.’ When he peered in through the garage door and saw the fishtail silencer, he knew at once that it was a Velocette and whistled his approval.”

Besides its distinctive silencer, the Venom shares other visual pointers with the smaller 349cc Viper model that ran concurrently up to 1968. The offside of the engine is characterised by a rounded ‘map of Africa’ timing case, which sends drive through helical-cut gears and short pushrods to hairpin valve springs, which are fully enclosed atop the cylinder head. On the nearside, an all-encompassing tin primary cover hides an unusual transmission design, where the clutch occupies space between the gearbox and the gearbox sprocket. It is of conventional alternating plain/friction material construction and engages by tilting its outer pressure plate, which causes the clutch plates to peel apart rather than separate uniformly. A Miller dynamo sits forward of the narrow crankcase and Dougal has replaced its V-belt drive with a toothed belt from the Velocette Owners' Club.

Dougal has warned me that I am liable to get a sore right knee when the oil is thick and heavy, so I’m grateful to find the engine is already warm when I arrive to ride the Velocette. The starting ritual is complicated by a short kickstarter with low gearing, so I compensate by easing up to compression, operating the valve lifter until the kickstart is at the bottom of its travel, releasing it and then taking a hard swing. The engine starts first kick, the high-cam valve drive remaining quiet in operation as it reaches normal operating temperature. The clutch has a light, if slightly two-stage, feel, though I am reluctant to disengage it for long periods to test its integrity. Velocette designed its own constant-mesh gearbox, and this engages positively in a one-up and three-down pattern, well-spaced ratios taking me up to 30mph in first, 50 in second, 65 in third and 80 in fourth without harsh vibration or undue effort from the single-cylinder motor. Vibration is minimal throughout the range, thanks in part to a thin flywheel design that is evidently in perfect alignment on this example.

The single-damped hydraulic front forks, which are of Velocette’s own design and manufacture with an offset front wheel spindle, feel comfortably soft but correctly damped for road use. Dougal has fitted period-looking shrouded Hagon shocks at the rear and these are adjustable for spring preload, though the Woodhead-Monroe originals would have relied for adjustment on relocation of their top mounts within ‘arcuate’ slots on the rear subframe. The full-width single-leading shoe front brake is so unimpressive that I wonder whether it has been correctly shimmed, but engine braking suffices for most situations as I plod around the narrow lanes that skirt the National History Museum. The Venom shows an enthusiasm for revs when I get clear of St Fagans village and out into the countryside, west of Cardiff city centre. Its race-bred chassis has a low centre of gravity, which confers predictable handling to such a degree that there is great satisfaction in not slowing down at all for most corners, while steady progress is encouraged by the regular beat of that deep-booming fishtail silencer.

The Venom does everything you’d expect of it, but has a sparkle to its performance that marks it out as a real rider’s machine. The chromed fuel tank sides reflect a sparkle of their own as I return to meet Dougal outside the museum gates, where an appreciative observer remarks that, “If it’s got straight handlebars, a round headlight and a flat seat, then the chances are that you are looking at a British bike.” To the classic buff, however, anything with that perforated chrome fishtail and alloy-faced rear suspension slots could only be a post-WWII Velocette single. “It’s the biggest buzz, when people say it’s a nice bike,” says Dougal. “Personally, I like its distinctive features and the fact it looks original, in spite of modern upgrades such as solid-state electrics. I guess it makes a lot more sense to have a reliable bike that’s running instead of one that accompanies me in boxes, and I still get to tinker with it at weekends too.”

Words and photography by Mike Lewis