Category Archives: Stories

Colin Heaths racing barrels

I emailed Colin a couple of days ago to ask him whether he knew of anyone who had cut the bridges out of the transfer successfully and he sent me this. Thanks Colin.

“Just a little more about the pictures. These are the barrels used by Martin Heath in that one glorious season when he won 12 events, including his first win. This was at Cadwell when he was left on the grid as the compression was so high the rear wheel just slid instead of turning the engine over, on the old downhill start by the timing/ commentary box. He managed to start it eventually by vaulting on from the greatest possible height and it fired up. The field were disappearing into Charlies by now, but he caught and passed them all to win. Proper Boys Own Paper stuff.

However, the point is that the barrel, as we had no other, was reclaimed by boring out the broken skirt from a damaged set and pressing in a flanged liner from the top. ( It sat in a machined recess). The machining had broken through into the jacket so good old Loctite sealed it all up and provided what I think is called a ‘wet liner’. We could not bring ourselves to put dividing bars back in the ports so made them elliptical as you see and relieved them to give the rings a softer time. You will also see that we needed to use a ‘detachable’ steel ring for the lower seal – and this located on a small step machined on the liner o/d.

Another simultaneous experiment was to make the liner full length down to the very bottom of the crankwell to see whether preventing any piston ‘rock’ would help. You can see the remains of this in the pics after it was later cut off. The rods had to be scalloped to clear the base of the liner, but we still use them to this day with no trouble.

The heads are a type you are familiar with and the drilled/tapped holes onder the dome on the exhaust side were so that we could use a head steady onto a frame cross tube. ( This was our super lightweight T45 frame, it was more of a frame steady than an engine steady. It was so light it sang like a tuning fork even after the engine was cut).”

I also sent him the pictures of my piston for his interest and to get his thoughts.

“As for the fuel pattern on the piston crown, by using a close profile high compression arrangement I expected that any ‘clean’ area on the side was trapped fuel ‘end gasses’ that got rudely pushed/ sucked out of the way before they had a chance to detonate.”

and of the photo of Martin:

I think it was taken at Mallory but expect Martin will correct me if necessary. Incidentally the silencer shown was our first effort after introduction of silencing regulations. This one is designed on the principle of ‘silencing by controlled leakage’ whereby multiple small outlets are provided under the crankcase all carefully pointed in different directions. From memory this set up has five intentional outlets including the official one. The theory is that one noise meter will have difficulty covering all directions at once. It worked well enough, for we would have been excluded on open pipes, and to my surprise the machine seemed, subjectively, to go just a little better than before.

Recollections of the Silk Scott by Colin Heath

I was intrigued that former Scott racer, Colin Heath’s name had come up as a subsequent owner for both the ‘prototype’ racing Silk Scott

Silk Scott prototype
Silk Scott prototype
and ‘FNT’, the Silk Scott racer owned by John Farrar and co-developed with Alan Noakes and Barry Tin(g)ley. See Alan’s memories here.
I wondered whether this could be true.. did he really own both of these machines and what was the story?
Alan Noakes with FNT Silk Scott (1971/2)
Alan Noakes with FNT Silk Scott (1971/2)

Colin came to visit me a few months ago, as his daughter lives in the same town as I do, and upon seeing the picture of the white Silk Scott prototype on my wall noted that he’d owned it, having bought it from George Silk himself.
Only this week, Dave Whiteside contacted me to say that he’d bought it from Colin and that it was now in Sweden.

I thought I’d email Colin to ask about FNT, and he sent me a piece that he’d written for ‘Yowl’, the journal of the Scott Owners Club in 2005 but never sent to be published.

See the PDF 18. The Missing Silk Copy.

A wonderful insight into the work that people were putting into Scott engines at the time and the results!

Colin also sent me a couple of photos too, one of FNT’s engine and one of Alan Noakes taking off.

FNT engine
FNT engine
Alan Noakes opening FNT up!
Alan Noakes opening FNT up!

many thanks Colin.

November 2014-Moss/Silk Scott racer progress

As with all good projects, you need a certain amount of momentum to get over the tricky bits. The first tricky bit for the Moss/Silk Scott racer is to rebuild the frame so that its strong and aligned.
I cut the front downtubes out about ten years ago, as we had intended to make the bike work as a test bed for engines we were rebuilding. The problem was that you couldn’t get the blinking engine out without having to partially strip it, or that’s what I remember anyway. Maybe others (Yuri Gellar?) would have had better luck. Paul Dobbs, who raced Roger’s bike at the time, agreed with my suggestion that we could have a detachable cradle… so I cut the front tubes out. I’ve often regretted it, mostly because of the extra effort required to get the thing back together. With some intelligent work though, it could be a really useful modification and it’s time that I pushed to get it sorted out.
As Roger is snowed under with engine work (and welding and brazing were never his thing anyway) I’ve been talking to Alan Noakes, an engineer and a Scott enthusiast, about the best way to approach this. Alan has considerable experience with welding and brazing and also has a frame jig for the duplex Scott frame which may just work with the Spondon frame.

Another reason that it’s great to be working on this with Alan is the fact that he has his own history with the Silk Scott. He sent me a wonderfully atmospheric photograph of him with a Silk Scott set up for racing when I first contacted him and after some encouragement he gave me some of the background.

The Spondon Silk (see below) you have pictured on your website could be Georges prototype but it does not have the double sided Fahron front brake which I would have expected as the first one was raced in the Manx GP by Stuart Hicken 2 years running either 71/72 or 72/73, by the way I believe Stuart Hicken is MD of Mallory Park now, I did meet him at a vintage meeting at Crystal Palace after his ride in the MGP and he said he was aquiring Scott parts to build a vintage racer with Georges (George Silk) help but I don`t recall ever seeing him racing after that.
The story of the Silk Racer in the photo is this, during the 1960s I met a local Scott owner by the name of John Farrar, we were both intent on tuning our Scotts to make them faster we also used to bother George Silk at race meetings hanging round his camp asking stupid questions etc. at some stage John had his crankcase fitted with Silk cranks and we carried on experimenting with different mods and sharing information with George, I did the engineering John paid for it. When George and Bob Stephenson shared a stand at a race bike show in London could have been 71/72 george had his racer and the first road bike on display, John had decided to order a racing chassis complete with gearbox but minus engine as he would use his existing engine and placed his order at the show this is the bike you see in the photo, on the day the photo was taken you can see that the bike was not finished no exhausts etc. we just wanted to make sure that the gearbox and clutch worked I had modified a Jawa speedway clutch to fit. The letters FNT on the bike stood for Farrar Noakes Tingley, Barry Tingley was a Local rider quite good had been given rides by Stan Shenton from Boyers of Bromley who later ran team Kawasaki. Our first race with this bike was at a Big international formula 750 meeting at Brands with the likes of Sheene Grant etc. we finished well down the field the following week saw us drawing up a completely uprated engine with reed valves flat top pistons alloy cylinder and heads etc. I did actually start making some bits for this engine but a change of job put a stop to progress and by that time John had decided that Georges new Silk engine would be a better option for the bike. John eventually sold the bike to Colin Heath.

Alan Noakes with FNT Silk Scott (1971/2)
Alan Noakes with FNT Silk Scott (1971/2)
FNT Silk Scott racer with Alan Noakes. (1971/2)
FNT Silk Scott racer with Alan Noakes. (1971/2)
Silk Scott prototype
Silk Scott prototype

The evolution of the Super Squirrel racer

I’m doing things backwards here. I realise that I need to give some more of the the original history of the Super squirrel and how Roger’s Flying Squirrel racer came about. As I said in the previous post, the Super Squirrel racer is really only just returning to having the potential of competitiveness that it did in the early 1970s.

Super Squirrel racer, prior to frame modifications (around 1971/2). Note Roger's Laverda SF750 production racer with race kit. An unusual racing stable.
Super Squirrel racer, prior to frame modifications (around 1971/2). Note Roger’s Laverda SF750 production racer with race kit. An unusual racing stable.
Roger on the Scott Super Squirrel racer (around 1971/2) racing at the New Brighton circuit on the Wirral.
Roger on the Scott Super Squirrel racer (around 1971/2) racing at the New Brighton circuit on the Wirral.
My dad, Roger, having found that the Scott was fast and competitive in racing was very much committed to finding the solutions to the bike’s shortcomings, namely in handling, gearbox and engine reliability.

The single down-tube frame of the Super Squirrel had broken once before at the seat post and had been re-inforced substantially. Tie bars had been created to give some tension to the lower engine and undertray (carries the gearbox on a Scott) mounts as the original lower frame ‘rails’ have to be removed to be able to race. Left in, they will dig into the track and have you off.

Later shot of Super Squirrel racer around 1973/4. Note lower rails removed , replaced by tensioned 'tie bars'
Later shot of Super Squirrel racer around 1973/4. Note lower rails removed , replaced by tensioned ‘tie bars’ and no silencing!
This did leave things a bit more flexible in this frame and he resolved that therein lay some of the problem. He was sure a stiffer frame would be a great improvement.
He addressed the handling issue by having a duplex frame made by Bob Stevenson of Spondon to a similar design and geometry to the Flying Squirrel, only using lighter tubing. To be honest, he’s always said that the duplex frame he had made didn’t actually improve the handling, but it did allow a bigger carb (because you didn’t have the single down-tube in the way) and it was quite a bit lighter as it was a welded construction and not lugged.
Years later it was Paul Dobbs, the talented Kiwi rider who suggested that he thought the handling could be improved by moving the riders weight forward.
Paul Dobbs in inimitable action over the mountain on the Scott at Cadwell park, 2005
Paul Dobbs in inimitable action over the mountain on the Scott at Cadwell park, 2005
My dad did this, moving the seat forward, and a big improvement was felt. In about 2010 he had the tank shortened to allow this to be more neatly contrived.
I also moved the saddle forward on the Super Squirrel when I re-built it, and swapped the ‘Brooklands’ style bars that my father favours with a set of wide straights that force your hands wider and make your body weight shift forward. The handling is far better for this, and actually I much prefer the extra leverage too.

The gearbox story is well explained in his story of the affair, here, and the pursuit of power and reliability were definitely linked, as the inevitable longstroke crank breakages inevitably took it’s toll on successive crankcases, prompting a decision to re-cast cases with better material and extra strength. Cases were redesigned to have larger transfer apertures and inlet port areas and cranks were re-designed to use the crankcase doors as an outer main bearing support to overcome the design flaw and material shortcomings of the original overhung crank.

The development of the Super Squirrel racer into the Flying Squirrel was not instantaneous though and it was largely about a substantial focus on re-engineering. In truth, that has consistently been the focus of his very successful Scott racing development work. In the process, he has developed his Scott to the point where some people even dispute that it is one. To me however, the Scott was Alfred Scott’s creation and he was a man of vision and ingenuity. He left the company that bore his name in 1915 and died in 1923. It’s impossible to look at the balance and finesse of those early shortstroke machines and imagine that he would allowed the bikes to have developed as they did, in both weight and fragility, had he stayed with the company.
To me the very spirit of the Scott is strongest in those machines where people have employed their skill and imagination to take the unique qualities of the Scott and develop them.
It is in the DNA of the marque and though I understand of course that there are those who have great enjoyment of their original machines, to me there is no Scott more a Scott than one that has been intelligently modified, and there is no Scott that can lay claim to having been been developed with more ingenuity, determination, focus and success according to its remit, than Roger Moss’s Flying Squirrel racer.

Waiting for the call...
Waiting for the call…

Blue Rollers

by Titch Allen around 2006

My Father, Roger, had known Titch Allen for many years. Titch had been a founder of the Vintage Motorcycle Club and was a great fan of racing, modifying and using the bikes.
He lived a very long and interesting life and was a mine of great stories.

He used to visit us quite regularly when I worked with Roger, and one day I made arrangements to make a recording of a story.
This is his blue rollers story.

Colin Bradshaw’s Scott Sprint Special

Some years ago, when the Scott Owners Club rally was still held at Stanford Hall I found myself stooping over one particular machine. There were lovely details to various modifications and I was very impressed. I think I spoke to the owner, whose name was Colin Bradshaw, and also his son.

Some time later, we appealed for stories through the Moss Engineering website and Colin’s son sent us a piece that he’d done about his father’s life with Scotts and specifically this particular machine.

Colin Bradshaw’s Scott Sprint Special