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Wiki Rolls Royce

Charles Rolls

Rolls Flying accident

Rolls records

Cycle Historic Club Sweden

Shaw USA

Shaw was built in England but the engine was from Shaw in Kansas. It was a 2½ ps. Normally the cycle was equipped with tubular petrol tank made of copper/brass.
This cycle is an American Shaw H super 3 hp model. Note the construction of the carburettor.

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Henderson/
Excelsior USA

Links

Henderson hall of fame

 

Henderson/Excelsior William Henderson was one of the brothers whose father was vice President in Winton Motor Car Company. William got his education here and became interested in motorcycles. His father was not pleased with this because he found that it was no long term money in motorcycles. Despite this William got money from his father to start his company Henderson & Co. Here he designed his 4 cylinder engine and it was mounted into a mc frame. His father continued with fire lorries. The production was modest and when his design became known he realized that he needed more money to get the production resources. Therefore he sold his motorcycle concept to Excelsior in Chicago.

Here William became chief engineer. In the end of 1918 the brothers got tired on Excelsior and instead started their own firm ACE in Philadelphia. Here he built a new four cylinder engine. This one was not allowed to have any part alike his old engine.  It was good success and the future looked good. At Henderson factory a Swede Helmer Pettersson. He should later be well known at Volvo in Sweden during the construction of Volvo PV444. Unfortunately William died in a motorcycle accident when a car hit him test driving a new cycle 1922. This was very badly timed when a new cycle was on the way to be launched. Now it was shown how important William was for the firm and it was declining.  At last there was nothing more to be done than to sell. Indian bought the ACE license 1926. The motorcycle was now built under the name of Indian up to 1942.

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Excelsior GB
Bayliss-Thomas

Links

Thomas Bayliss

Excelsior Motor Co

Excelsior motorcycles

Welbike

Models

 

Excelsior GB This brand, Excelsior, has been developed through the old known way that a business started 1874 producing bikes. This changed 1896 to assemble motorcycles. Excelsior was early involved in motor bike competitions and is also one of the oldest mc company in England. 1910 they changed their first name Bayliss to Excelsior Motor Company.

When export for Europe started English Excelsior had to change name because there were already producers in America, Germany and Belgium. The export name became Bayliss. 1935 they designed a very popular model named Manxman. This motorbike was offered with 250cc or 350cc engine. 1940 they designed a mini mc for paratroops. This one was very much discussed if it was of any use or only a troublemaker. The production of motorbikes ceased 1965 and after that a period of producing spare parts followed.

 

Bayliss Thomas 1919 - 1930, Cars were built 1922 - 1928 Excelsior 1896 - 1965 The company was established 1874 by John Thomas Bayliss. He merged early with Penny Farthing Bikes and changed name to Excelsior. This company now produced both cars and motorcycles. As this name already was on the market both in Belgium and Germany and also America they had to sell under the name Bayliss-Thomas.

1920 the company was bought by R Walker & Sons in Birmingham. They did not produce their own engines. Instead there were Blackburn, JAP or Villers. A cheaper model was sold under the name Monarch. During WWII they were involved in the small mc for parachute troops. It was named Welbike.

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Links

Scott TT

Scott Super

Scott Flying

Scott wikipedia

 

Scott The designer for the motor bike brand Scott was Alfred Angas Scott. He was an English inventor and owned several patents. The bike saw day light in the beginning of 1920 and was an odd construction at that time. The engine was a 2 cylinder 2 stroke which was water cooled and this circulated through the thermo siphon principle.

Anyway Alfred died already 1923 and the specific things with Scott disappeared quickly. The only competition success was 3rd place at TT 1914 Isle of Man. As the bike, compared with others, were very expensive Scott company was in money trouble and production ceased  at the outbreak of WWII. The rights was bought 1950 by Aerco which produced Scott up to 1956 in Birmingham.

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Archimedes Sweden

Links

Archimedes balance engine

 

The Bengt Strand's odds and ends deserve a much higher attention. He has spared lot of original parts. Most of them are not mentioned on internet and for this reason are very rare and original. This small cycle engine may be one of the planned products for Archimedes when they developed the boat engine as a copy from Evinrude 1911. This engine was called, because of it's construction, for a balance motor. By doing this way they got rid of much of the vibration a single cylinder had. The cause was the opposite working cylinders. As usual there were two brothers who both with genius and go-ahead spirit developed the motor. In order to put it on the market they established AB Archimedes Motor in Stockholm. 1907. Both came from a mansion in Sweden, Christineholms Mansion where their father was a black smith. Both moved to Stockholm where they soon got work at AB Separator and Palmcrantz gun factory. Both were soon working at AB Separator. Palmcrantz was the factory which produced Ljungströms bicycle equipped with free wheel hub. One of the brothers Carl Alrik Hult learned English and emigrated to America where he got better possibilities to develop his ideas. He got several patents for a new type of Cream separator. After their stay in America both brothers returned to Sweden and established several companies which were aimed to develop their inventions. For ex Archimedes 1907.

Their outboard motor was an updated Evinrude for using in a smaller type of boat. It was called balance motor. This engine was sold all over the world and through continuous improvements they succeeded to stay on the market. A hard economical period happened during WWI. Both brothers were as successful as the Ljungström brothers and started a company for each invention they made. The most important was the pump for De Laval Separator and later was sold for 10 millions Skr. This was a enormous sum of money at that time. They lived quite well on the production of the balance engine while all other time were used on their other inventions. This little help engine on picture, popular at this time, may be produced by a local black smith in order to be a product for selling. This construction except for the engine was maybe not so successful with the rubber wheel driving the rear rim. The engine put it's power direct from the main axle over a geared chain to the axle for driving rear wheel. Constructions from this time are hard to separate from local homebuilt products. This engine may not be a part made by Hult brothers. They can have taken a Johnson Motor Wheel. The big problem was that it didn't exist any clutch. The first balance motor was sold 1912 for use in a boat. All later production in Sweden of outboard engines can be connected to the Hult brother's ground concept with their balance motor.

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Victoria 1939

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Victoria

 

Victoria V99 Fix Victoria was a company in Nürnberg. Their products were motorcycles with engines from an outside producer like FN or Minerva. The production went on between 1901 to about 1966 when fusions took place and the mark was dropped.

The gold period was between 1920 and 1939. After WWII Victoria went over to produce mopeds and the engines for these. These small motors were very popular because they were strong and could easy be trimmed. Such a cycles were made for record breakings. See Rydaholms museum

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DKW

Links

DKW history

Alle modellen

 

DKW 1916- DKW was a name formed by the words "Dampf-Kraft-Wagen". It was founded 1916 by the Dane Jörgen Skafte Rasmussen who from 1920 built light 2-stroke bikes. During time between the wars DKW was the largest mc producer. After WWII the Zschopay factory was in the east zone and cycles from here were named MZ. Compare with the BMW situation. East Germany was not allowed to use the name DKW.

1949 production started in Ingolstadt in the west zone, using the name DKW. This town is main place for Auto Union to produce mc and cars. In the 50th DKW designed several models which were copied on the terms of war compensation claims and were sold almost identically. For ex. the RT 125 cc was copied by BSA to a new name Bantam. Several fusions took place on the market and when those have ended, DKW as a mark came to a halt. DKW is replaced by Auto-Union with parent VAG concern 1964. The last 2-stroke engine was made 1976.

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Thulin

Links

Enoch Thulin

Landskrona museum
 

 

Motorcycles. Main designer for the motorcycles was Thord Ångström. The design was ready 1919 and delivery 1920. 1923 the small 350 cc cycle was ready. Earlier cycles had 570 cc to 1000 cc.

When I visited this museum in Helsingborg this picture was hanging under the roof. It is an advertizing picture of a Thulin cycle. It is probably the same picture as in Gert Ekström's book of a MCIII with 7 hp. There is no surviving copies left.

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Matchless
 

Links

Matchless history

 

Matchless 1904- Many mc-owners become unbelievable market faithful. This is specially valid for Matchless (M), Ariel and AJS owners. These marks were joined in the end together to a company called AMC. It is obvious that in time between wars M had lots of money because they went in for expansion through buying other companies. Usually the result of this was that the originals mark kept their identity for some years. Every producer had some good constructions that M wanted to lay their hand on. Anyway M started with bicycle producing, support engines and a 3-wheeler 1904. The name Matchless was not official until 1926 after the founder H.H.Collier's dead. The first own engine came 1923. Till then they had used JAP, Blackburn and MAG engines. Most of them was twin types.

Time between wars was a good one for M and 1931 they bought AJS. 1935 the first G model came. This became a term M used together with a number. In the middle of WWII they got an order for a military model, something they didn't got earlier, 1939. M put up their old prepared military type G3 which they had offered already before war. At the end of war M had producer 80000 of this one. During the 50th new types likes G9, G45 competition, G11, G2, G12, G80. M bought Norton, James and Francis-Barnett. 1966 lack of money and a reconstruction made that the name changes to Norton-Villers. For some years M hybrids were sold before all production ceased. Later the names recovered on the nostalgia market.

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Links

Nimbus

MC Museet Sura

Nimbus 1920-1957 Denmark.
Fisker & Nielsen was the largest mc producer in Denmark ever. They had only one model made up of a frame from pressed plate profiles from spring steel. The parts were riveted together. Engine was a 4 cylinder top valve air cold and a engine block from Austin Seven.

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Harley Davidsson

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Harley History

 

Harley Davidsson 1903 - 1953 it was on the way to be a catastrophe for HD when Norton was the name on all lips at Daytona Show. HD could not accept this so the gave their test driver, Paul Goldsmith, order to bring back record from Norton, to drive again with a 37 hp bike and raised the record for highest speed with 42 km/h. HD was though created long before by the 2 mates William Harley and Artur Davidsson. They started to produce motorcycles in Milwaukee. The two men were a good combination and already after some years they had developed a V-twin, a layout that should remain till today. They understood that in order to sell they must have several resellers and they created that. Already 1912 they had over 200 in America. T

he models replace each other but engine type and layout were the same. To get the name known they joined all types of competitions in America. Like dirt track and hill Climb. At these types of tracks the English bikes could not compete. There only fighter was Indian, but this mark was ceased 1953. The main engine was designed 1926 and was still in production till 1972. American Machinery Foundry bought the company 1969 and it came into finance difficulties because of the US Tariff Commission. The company went down on number of employees and become in conflict with the labors. The quality fell drastically and the cycle got the nickname "Hardly able some". AMF sold 1981 and HD got its good reputation back. New models were developed and with background of nostalgia HD can sell cycles with a much higher price than the Japanese bikes and yet they have full time job.

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NSU

Links

Torsong MC Museum

 

In the 1930th NSU was the largest manufacturer of motor bikes in Europe. On the other hand this firm started 1900 in the city of Neckarsulm to produce knitting machines and their name was Neckarsulm Strickmachinen. The name of the bike became first Neckarsulm Fahrradwerke, but it was supposed to be a difficult name for a bike. Instead it was called NSU.  Compare with Yamaha which from the beginning was a company making music instruments and Suzuki which was a textile company. During the period between the wars they designed a motorcycle like a band wagon equipped with Opel engine. This small "motor bikeband car" helped the farmers after the war to save the growth of the year, when all tractors had been taken as war booty by the Russians. See Sinsheim military.

In the beginning NSU started to use Zedel v-twins, but thought they could make a better one themselves. In the 50th NSU was much involved in competitions and record driving. They built special models for this. They also produce a scooter of their own and had licenses for Vespa and Lambretta. In the 60th NSU bought a license to build Wankel engine, developed and produced mc:s and cars for this concept. This was very expensive and was the direct cause for NSU to run into economical problems. VW-Porsche bought the NSU company. Today the big factory locals, which was not so much damaged during the war, are rebuilt with a nice museum, locals for other companies and living apartments.

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AJS

Links
 

AJS History

A.J. Stevens

AJS Motorcycles

AJS Vintage

 

AJS 500 1928 The motorcycle which is shown here is made at the end of the original owner's production. It was the family Stevens 1931 A.J Stevens Motorcycle Ltd. Wolverhampton was in economical difficulties and had to sell their company to Colliers & Co in London. This form stood behind the mark Matchless cycles. But much had happened before this. Already 1874 Joseph Stevens had registered his firm Joseph Stevens & Co. This company was working with screws and other small details made of steel or brass. The qualifications were perfect for this company to take care of the petrol engine in order to produce some sort of vehicle. The Stevens family had 9 children and also in the former generation there were several heirs. One should also know that at this time a producer of screws had to know much of all sorts of special threads as the Whitford thread standard not official until 1841 and in common use about 1860. Different threads were very important in spinning mills during this time. The senior son Harry was the boy that should bring the firm working in the direction for vehicles. He bought an engine from America 1894. It was a Michel  one cylinder petrol engine. It was not a good construction when it didn't run well. This was not accepted by the severe engineer Harry Stevens. The result was that they had to make it better. This work was put in action and 1897 they were ready. The engine gave 1.75 hp. They understood with the help of such engines power could be transferred to working machines in a garage. Harry saw also the potential to mount them on bicycles and in this was earn money. The high wheels were on the way out and normal cycles were popular.  Now the brothers started Stevens Motor Manufacturing Co. In their old working place there were an old BSA cycle and in this the mounted the Mitchell engine in order to test their ideas. During the time the delivered the rebuilt engine to Wearwell Cycle Co. Before for this cycle producer they had delivered parts like spokes screws and nuts and other details for their production.

This firm was owned by William Clark and he understood on a more expensive product like a cycle with engine than simple cycles. Stevens Motor gott the contract to deliver engines after thet he had seen the BSA cycle. This new motor bike was called Wearwell-Stevens motor bicycle. It had a mechanical exhaust valve and an automatic inlet valve. From 1902 the engine was improved yearly and Steven wanted of course make one themselves. They also tried to produce a three wheeler 1903. During the down period in business about 1905 Stevens had to divide the motor company from the screw part just to save it from the up and downs in production. Anyway it went well with both till their largest custom had to be suspended because of improprieties with money. This was the reason for that Stevens created a new company A.J. Stevens Co Ltd. This became AJS. The production was now running good together with success on the racing tracks. In the end 1930 AJS held 114 world records with AJS cycles. The Stevens brothers decided to during the second part of 1920th to start with cars and busses. This continued up to 1931 when depression forced them to sell AJS and the motor company to Collier & Sons. Now AJS became a mark within Matchless Motor Cycles. Cars and busses went to Crossley Motors. Stevens Screw Co was still in the hands of Stevens bothers. At Colliers AJS became the second mark and was only used when racing cycles were merchandised. For this reason the AJS mark disappeared and became only a special cycle. Collier change it's name to AMC and later in the 70 th it became Norton Villers. The production changed to  Cross/Scrambler machines and the enthusiast Fluff Brown was their prime driver. His son has then re-created the name AJS in order to sell bothr touring and cross machines. How did the screw company manage in these hard times? The still living family members Jim and Joan decides 1991 to continue with their Screw Co in small scale and this will continue as far as they decide.

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BSA
Terrot ?

Links

BSA models

My BSA

 

BSA 1903-1990 Birmingham Small Arms produced  10000 rifles a week and 145000 machine guns before WWII. This was the result that William III in the end of 1600 century understood that he needed a war industry independent of foreign countries. Already 1903 the first bike was built, although it had an Belgian Minerva engines. These bikes were green which became the BSA color. Till WWII several different models were sold with increasing volumes. Names as Sloper, Blue Star and the M-Range. The last well known for it's use by AAA as support bike on the English roads. During WWII they delivered lots of model M20 for the defense.

BSA took as war booty over the MC design apartment but didn't used it. Instead Ariel got it in their hands. After the war BSA started with a cheap machine and sold ca 500000 till 1963. This was a copy of the DKW 2-stroke bike converted to inch and mirrored. Well known are all A-models like A10, A65, Gold Star, Rocket, Spitfire and so on. The declining production from BSA forced action together with Triumph and Norton. This turned out to be a failure when the employers wanted to decide themselves. Four years later all were fired and a national company NVT started to produce spare parts for these English bikes. Some new production were aimed but with foreign engines in the end of 1990.

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Royal Enfield

Links

Royal Enfield Story

Royal Bullet



 

 

Royal Enfield 1890- It took more than ten years for Royale Enfield to establish starting in the last tenth years of 18 hundred. All was ended in bankruptcy 1907. This is one way for other companies to procure something cheap which match the buyers own interests. This was also done by Alldays and Onions. This is a name that indicate an import company. 1910 Royal started to produce cycles with, as most did, an imported engine. In this case Motosacoche and later JAP-motors. WWI brought of course side car models with a Vickers machine gun mounted. See links. Time between wars was a consolidation period and several model were for sale. The time for

depression in the 30th showed of course a declining sale although Enfield hade reserves to handle this period. Just like BSA during the 50th Royal had a cheap 2-stroke 150 cc bike. But mostly they produced 350-500 cc bikes. For WWII Enfield produced a military machine and also a lightweight model which could follow the paratroopers in their gliders. After war shows both up and downs. The most known model was the Bullet. This bike was later sold to Indian army and in this way it was preserved to the motorcycle world as a retro machine. Today you can get a newly manufactured Royal Enfield to be bought all over the world. Note that it is named only Enfield because India could not accept the name Royal.

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Husqvarna

Links

Husqvarna factory museum

 

Huskvarna 1903 - Husqvarna 1000 cc almost identical to a Indian or HD, technically from the 30th. The company started to sell bicycles and later they put in a small engine. Already 1920 they had their own 550 motor and later a 1000cc. With this they went into competitions. It was a success mostly due to the brilliant designer Folke Mannerstedt. Huskvarna won several World Championships. During the 30th they brought in line with what people wanted. Cheap 2- stroke bikes were sold. With successful models of these types Huskvarna managed till end of 50th. With the help of world known drivers like Bill Nilsson, Håkan Carlqvist and Torsten Hallman Huskvarna became a Cross machine with a high reputation. The bad luck for Huskvarna was that they had an extremely wide production program and among these product they had freezers.

Eletrolux was also a freezer producer and had to invest overflow money. Huskvarna was bought and all products that didn't suit Electrolux were sold. The motorcycle part was bought by Cagiva in Italy 1986. Sorry to say all these kind of fusions are leading to that the mark disappears from market some time later. In this case Huskvarna, as a company, ended all production and lots of good engineers and workers went out of job. The end result of the fusion with Electrolux, became only a short time higher book-keeping finances for Electrolux. For some time Huskvarna only produced freezers and alike. The best ad at that time was "Do as Electrolux buy Huskvarna". Several of the designers and drivers started their own production. Husaberg! They had difficulties with money and had big problems to economically fight the Japanese dragoons. Today in the honorable workshops of Huskvarna city it is only a very nice museum. Pity, Sweden might have had a mc producer with a high standard.

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Rex




Links

Swedish Rex MC

Rex V Twin

Rex Acme
 

 

Rex single cylinder cycles. From 1929 equipped with 500 cc engines. Rex Acme was the English version. It was established by the brothers William and Harold Williamson. They produced first cars in Coventry but went over to MC:s 1904 and used engines from other producers for ex. JAP. Telescope spring was used already 1906. 1908 the cylinder was inclined forwards. As a curious thank you the board fired the brothers 1911 and started to mount their own produced engines. The company ceased production 1933.

For a while there was popular to mount two exhaust pipes from one valve. It was thought shown that this didn't gave the cycle any better qualities. Royal Enfield had also such a model. The owners closed this exhaust pipe and drove with only one muffler. The name Rex was produced in several European countries like Sweden, Germany, Italy and in England. Here it was called Rex Acme.

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Cleveland USA





Links

Cleveland

4 cylinder pics

 

Cleveland 1920 This motorcycle was built in Ohio America 1915- 1920. They started to produce 2-stroke engines which were very light. These had good selling mostly because of price and they were easy to lift up from the mud holes in the road of the time. Later the frame strengthened and the engine was updated to 270 cc. The cycle got light and the magnet was removed. Battery ignition was introduced.

A few trials with 4 cylinder cycles were done 1926-29. This types was very alike Hendersson and ACE. The last trial from Clevland was a 350 cc machine before the mark disappeared from the mark.

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Indian




Links

Indian history

Hall of Fame
 

 

Indian 1901-1953 There were three mates that came together. Hendee, Hedström and Henshaw. This was the necessary mix of persons to start with engine driven cycles. They wanted to see what such a thing was good for. They got together. Hendee wanted to build, Hedström designing and Henshaw was a helper. The three was happy with the design and started to take orders before it was on wheels. This happened in Springfield 1901. The selling went on good. Perhaps in America in those days everything were able to sell and specially motor vehicles. For a long time they ordered engines from Thor factory, but soon they realized that there were more money in manufacturing if they had their own engine.

This happened 1907 when the V-twin was announced. The development went on and soon the front wheel had a plate spring. The competition team pushed everything forward. Electric starter and also electric light came before WWII. Indian should become the only bike mark that could give Harley Davidsson a match as far as up to 1953. Despite many attempts, with joining of Royale Enfield, Vincent and Matchless, to start again there were not any continued existence. The Indian mark is so loved by people that production of parts has been started for all models. Buying an old Indian is no spare part problem.

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Unknown





 

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Supreme Sverige



Links

Rydaholms Museum





 

Supreme 172 cc 1928.

This small motorcycle is a try to start production in the middle of Sweden. Engine is bought and the frame is produced locally. Connection with OK/Supreme?

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Raleigh 1899 - 1970

Links

Raleigh
 

Sun 1911 - 1961


Raleigh  1899 - 1906, 1919 - 1933

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FN Nordstjernan





Links

FN History

FN History 2

FN Story 3

 

 

FN 1902-1965 FN was a company which was established just nearby Sarolea in the Belgian town of Herstal. Here they started to manufacture, what all other firms did, bicycles and motorcycles. The bicycle from FN had the curiosity to be driven by a prop shaft instead of a chain. This bicycle was on the market 1898. The first motorcycle came 1901. It had a 133 cc motor and was driven by a riveted leather strap for "chain".

The engine capacity was successively increased from 133, to 188, 300, 347 to a four cylinders engine with 748 cc. By this reason it was called Type 700. FN is known for its unusual front spring construction which came after the WWI. They had bought it from Switzerland. 1959 they produced their own mopeds with several different names. For ex. the sport model Rocket. Together with Sarolea they designed a type S. 1967 the last moped left the production line of FN.

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Eiber 1924 - 1938

 

 

Eiber Eiber factory designed 1926 a motorcycle with 250 cc with the engine of their own. It was Swedish Engine Industry in Örkelljunga. The cycle was nicknamed for Railing Fence because it was bolted together wit straight pipes.

1927 NV bought Eiber engine and sold it for NV motorcycles. This made that Eiber became bankruptcy because the engine selling was their main income. NV now bought even the motorcycle. The company was merged with Suecia which continued with bigger machines. The most well known Eiber MC can be seen at Sura MC museum or Mc museum Falköping. It is former Harry "Professorn" Lundberger's old competition mc:s.

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Suecia 1928 - 1940



Suecia paper

 

Suecia was a Swedish producer of motorcycles known for it's god competition characteristics. Normally equipped with JAP engines.