I was just browsing on the British eBay site and came across a 63 Ariel Leader. The blurb indicated that the owner had done a restoration on it 20 years ago and had never ridden it since. It looked good in the pics. Initial price was £1800. When I bought my 62 model in 64, I only paid £90 and it was a daily rider for the guy I bought it from! That's some rate of inflation. It hadn't attracted any bids by its cut-off time.

Saw it the red and cream one, i had a arrow in 1971...think it was a staggering 30 quid!

Apparently these were designed for the square four engine or something like that, Velocette had the Vogue and Ariel had the Leader both ceased trading shortly after.

not-ron wrote:Apparently these were designed for the square four engine or something like that, Velocette had the Vogue and Ariel had the Leader both ceased trading shortly after.

The Leader was always intended to be powered by the two stroke twin engine as far as I'm aware.

http://sump-publishing.co.uk/ariel%20leader.htm

There was a prototype with an 700cc inline four cylinder four stroke engine but that came later than the original design.

http://www.nationalmotorcyclemuseum.co. ... ader-4/41/

That 4-cylinder Leader "Stretch" was the last gasp for Ariel. It was mentioned in the technical press just about the time I left N-V. It was a flat four, either 600 or 700 ccs, with dohc and shaft drive, usning a stretched Leader chassis. I understand there were two bikes made up waiting for the engines, but the fist bench runs of the engine showed that, instead of the expected 60 horsepower, it only put out around 22 hp.

The entire development budget remaining wasn't enough to re-design the engine and Ariel went out of business. Having had a Leader, I was skeptical that the bigger, heavier and supposedly more powerful machine would have been very dangerous if the cycle parts hadn't been beefed up. The 6" SLS front brake on the Leader was pathetic. I had two events where I thumped the back of a car in traffic because of it.

Other than its prodigious smoke generating capability and the crappy front brake, the Leader was quite a good bike. It could blow off the Sprites and Spitfires of the time, though TR4s and MGB's were more of a challenge.

Originally, the gas/oil ratio was defined as 16:1. The original owner of the one I had christened it as "Old Smokey". I contacted Ariel Customer Support to ask about using a lye (caustic soda to you Brits) to clear the oil build-up out of the exhaust system. I was worried that there may have been aluminum bits in there.

The reply was "No there are no aluminium bits in there, so a Lye solution would be fine. By the way, we have found, through endurasnce tests that the oil/petrol ratio can be reduced from 1:16 to 1:48 without detriment to the engine. By using Bardahl two-stroke lubricant, the ratio cvan be extended to 1:56". What a difference it made to the smoke.

Until we came to Seattle, I hadn't realised that Ole Bardahl was a Seattle legend, big into unlimited hydroplane racing and a multi-millionaire based on his prorietary lubricants.

On another eBay UK search, I found four of them!