featherbed frame

Later non intergral fork heaters .





from Here . http://www.laverdaforum.com/forum/index ... c=89717.15

The icture of the ultra low racer 51 is Ray Flak's 7R if memory is correct about 1966,not too succesfull.
The Large oil tank down tube Manx with leading link forks is definetly a Ken Sprayson Reynolds product.the picture of the Arter raceris the short circuit bike as Peter Williams used pannier tanks for the TT,Dave Hughes was working on the Racer in his garage and took off the beautifull tank that you can see and placed it on a blanket on the trunk of his car,he went round the back of the house for something,when he walked back into the garage there was no car and to his horror the tank lay dented on the road he said he was nearly in tears.his wife was lucky not to be around.
The Hailwood Honda has Colin Lyster Disc brake conversion,

peter james owen said:

The icture of the ultra low racer 51 is Ray Flak's 7R if memory is correct about 1966,not too succesfull.
The Large oil tank down tube Manx with leading link forks is definetly a Ken Sprayson Reynolds product.the picture of the Arter raceris the short circuit bike as Peter Williams used pannier tanks for the TT,Dave Hughes was working on the Racer in his garage and took off the beautifull tank that you can see and placed it on a blanket on the trunk of his car,he went round the back of the house for something,when he walked back into the garage there was no car and to his horror the tank lay dented on the road he said he was nearly in tears.his wife was lucky not to be around.
The Hailwood Honda has Colin Lyster Disc brake conversion,

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Re; “The Large oil tank down tube Manx with leading link forks is definetly a Ken Sprayson Reynolds product”

A similar one is described in Ken Sprayson’s book “the frame man” on page 51 as Geoff Duke’s 350 Norton, except that this had round top frame tubes not square.

Ken Sprayson and his Reynold’s frame team built several types of oil in frame types over the years.

I'd never have known about the bowed frame tube to clear the outside flywheel. Interesting about the radius of the top tubes down to the pivot plates - that is the way to pick a replica these days - the manx frame had varying radius. - thanks for that.

The arter Special that pete Williams rode were made by Ken Sprayson at Reynolds tubes. It was commissioned by John Surtees, but he never used the bikes,Tom Arter fettled them and Pete Williams used fairly trick motors from the AMC factory(his father was head of the race shop)The factory was soon closed and all stock sold to Colin Seely this was around 1964-5,the Norton twin stuff was Sold to Paul Dunstall,the single Manx stuff went to colin Seely Then to John Tikle,most of the works Manx stuff went to Reg Dearden up in Manchester

e Norton 650 that Phill Read and Brian Setchell rode for Syd Lawton were a mess,the bikes were built specially for the production races,and were very late in arriving from the Bracebridge street factory,When Phill was running them in on an old airfield,he found the handling to be very poor,I mean very poor.Syd said "dont be silly these are a factory jobs"with that he jumped on the bike in just a jacket and trousers no helmet and shoes he then gunned it down the airfields taxi way,the next thing he had been spat off at high speed,when on being inspected the frames were out of alighnment with the wheels laced up out of true,so much for being a factory bike it looked as though the bike had been built from rejected parts.And Syd was very lucky to get away with cuts and abrassions.
They ran a factory 88ss in one 500 miler in about 1962,it was very quick,as fast as many of the big Enfield 700s',factory Amc,triumphs and bsa's. they told Syd not to let anybody near this engine,it later came out that the engine was the development Dommiracer,the one that came 3rd with Tom phillis on board.

peter james owen said:

e Norton 650 that Phill Read and Brian Setchell rode for Syd Lawton were a mess,the bikes were built specially for the production races,and were very late in arriving from the Bracebridge street factory,When Phill was running them in on an old airfield,he found the handling to be very poor,I mean very poor.Syd said "dont be silly these are a factory jobs"with that he jumped on the bike in just a jacket and trousers no helmet and shoes he then gunned it down the airfields taxi way,the next thing he had been spat off at high speed,when on being inspected the frames were out of alighnment with the wheels laced up out of true,so much for being a factory bike it looked as though the bike had been built from rejected parts.And Syd was very lucky to get away with cuts and abrassions.
They ran a factory 88ss in one 500 miler in about 1962,it was very quick,as fast as many of the big Enfield 700s',factory Amc,triumphs and bsa's. they told Syd not to let anybody near this engine,it later came out that the engine was the development Dommiracer,the one that came 3rd with Tom phillis on board.

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Re; "Syd not to let anybody near this engine,it later came out that the engine was the development Dommiracer,the one that came 3rd with Tom phillis on board.[/
Not surprised he said that –this clearly was a breach of the rules as the 500 miler was solely for road production bikes if he had been found out the bike would have been disqualified :!:

How do you stress relieve or anneal a frame which has been bronze welded without metallurgically altering the joints ? I can see real value in doing it to a steel welded frame while it is still in the jig - otherwise ?

Is this the race with the Norton with the domiracer engine ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2FWKO_81tQ

Thruxton production races were not well publicized in Australia, however a lot of us knew what a Thruxton Bonneville was. That race did have an impact on sales.

acotrel said:

How do you stress relieve or anneal a frame which has been bronze welded without metallurgically altering the joints ? I can see real value in doing it to a steel welded frame while it is still in the jig - otherwise ?

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I don't see how you could anneal a steel frame that is bronze welded. The annealing temperature for low carbon steels is around 1650 degrees F, and most bronze welding rods melt somewhere around 800 degrees F.

If you're talking about post weld stress relief, the usual soak temperature for steel sturctures is 1100 - 1250 degrees F, still way too high for bronze welded joints.

I've never heard of doing post weld stress relief on bronze welded structures, but there might be a process out there somewhere that works. I just can't figure out what it would be. I've seen a lot of talk online about stress relieving frames after fusion welding, but haven't found many people who've actually done it in a furnace with controlled temperature and time. I've done it with a torch and jig to correct warping in the odd welded piece, but that's about it. People might be confusing stress relief with heat treating to remove hydrogen embrittlement, which is done at a much lower temperature, somewhere around 450 degrees F, I think. In most of the frames I've seen built, stress relief is dealt with by the pattern of welding, picking the order of welding to minimize distortion.

Ken

The production Races were about 500 milers,at places like Thruxton near Andover,then at Castle coombe,when thruxton became too rough as the track had grass growing out of the concrete sections,there were a lot of pot holes too.
The factories were cheating from day one,Amc won one year on a 650 G12CSR how the hell did they manage that the cooking models were sh-t,crank breakers.they also won their class with a 250 G2 CSR,in about 1964,beating Hondas,Montessas,and quick ducatis.This bike was most defenetly trick,as the road versionwas lucky to do 80mph.
The Velocettes ran 531 tubed frames,on their " road going bikes"also trunion tubes crossing over on the frame tubes either side of the swing arm pivots.The Nortons had their engine and gearbox mounted over to the right to stop the alternators dragging on the floor.The Triumphs were braced in different places hidden under the tin work and their engines were really fast.
I had at one time in the late sixties a A Bennets pre unit 110 Ex proddie racer with a Bonnie head that handled better than it should have.Even the Ariel arrows that Peter Inchley and sammy miller rode were works bikes that were very fast but thirsty only 2 galls tanks and crap brakes let them down,and it took too long to change tyres.One year Hailwood won on a A65 in 1963 I think and he was passing every body down the straights,even Percy Tait who was on a works over bored 680cc Triumph.
One year the AMC factory used Matchless 750 G15CSR bikes that were very fast but their Handling was suspect,the rider line up was Pete Williams,Bill Ivy,and Bill Smith,they all sufferd Handling problems as their Tyres wore down very quickly.they used 18" Dunlop triangular tyres.
Cheating !! oh yes they all did even in Aussie castrol series,but no one were as bad as the yanks did in the early seventies,they were masters at it.

lcrken said:

I don't see how you could anneal a steel frame that is bronze welded. The annealing temperature for low carbon steels is around 1650 degrees F, and most bronze welding rods melt somewhere around 800 degrees F.

If you're talking about post weld stress relief, the usual soak temperature for steel sturctures is 1100 - 1250 degrees F, still way too high for bronze welded joints.

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While I'd wholly agree with these comments Ken, 800 F quoted as a melting point for bronze is way too low,
most require red heat which is well above that.
Copper melts a shade under 2000 F, and copper is the central ingredient of bronzes,
although the melting point of alloys obviously varies, and lowers, with the content.

Localised heating is often used to get various bits of frames pointing the right way.
I'd think that a featherbed heated as a whole to annealing temps would curl up, even if the bronze stayed intact,
I certainly wouldn't like to try that on anything I own. !!

You're quite right, Rohan. I'm not sure where I got that 800 F number. By definition, anything above 840 F is brazing, and anything below that is soldering, but that doesn't mean much for this discussion. The typical melting point for the usual bronze welding/brazing alloys is more like 1900 F. Mea culpa. I just got it wrong.

Ken

Okay, more temperature info. I just checked the melting temperature of some Hobart bronze welding rods (copper/tin alloy) I had in the shop, and they say it is 1630 F. So maybe the argument about not annealing still has merit. And maybe not. So I looked up the melting point of the sort of SIFbronze alloys that were probably what Reynolds used for the Manx frames, and they melt at something like 1600 -1625 F.

That's enough for me on the subject. I'm off for another can of Murphy's Stout and some more productive endeavor.

Ken

Wouldn't the problem be boiling off the tin and other low melting point metals with a prolonged heat soak in that sort of area? Melting point for Sn = 232Cish.
Overheating during making the joint is a naughty thing.
Since I converted to metric I don't remember F.

Metal alloys don't work like that.
(although you can burn them with too much flame for too long, like you say).

Tin-bronze melts at approx 1750 F, depending on the alloy % composition.
Assuming tin-bronze is even involved in featherbeds... ??

Metal elements in alloy do not evaporate till sun like plasma temperatures but instead liquify to move around and reorganize into better or worse grain structures once cooled again. The few old tube joints I've see done heated until the solder or bronze stick melted on joint contact to wick up inside the joint.

Rohan said:

Tin-bronze melts at approx 1750 F, depending on the alloy % composition.
Assuming tin-bronze is even involved in featherbeds... ??

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I also doubt if tin-bronze is involved in featherbeds. I only mentioned it because those were the only bronze welding rods I had in the shop that gave a melting point, 1630 F in this case.

I'm pretty sure all the Manx featherbeds were done with a silicon bronze filler, most likely from SIFbronze. Of course, I could be mistaken. I'm relying on memory for that, and it isn't what it used to be.

Ken

hobot said:

The few old tube joints I've see done heated until the solder or bronze stick melted on joint contact to wick up inside the joint.

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Be careful here Steve - brazing rods are actually BRASS, not bronze.
And brass will wick into spaces, like solder can.
Proper bronze welding can be built up into fillets, where brass cannot.