I was born in 1970, my Bullet is my first bike. I have nothing to compare it to.
Every time I talk to a old-timer and tell them my bike tops out at 70mph and I should keep it around 50mph, they ask me what I screwed up on it. Then they proceed to tell me how they used to race Triumphs, BSAs, and Enfield "back in the day" and my bike should easily be able to do 120mph. Then they get starry eyed and recount all the Bullets they have seen do 120 and if my 500cc cannot, I must have broken it and if they had my bike they could get it up to 150 likity-split! Daggg-nnabbittt!
So, why do all of these guys think these bikes are capable of so much more than they seem able to do? Could a Bullet made in 1955 do more than our modern Bullets?
Thanks,
-Rick
I think it's a bit of faded memory that seems nice to embellish for "old times sake".
There is some truth to some of it.
The old Bonneville got its name from doing 120mph at Bonneville in the 1960s. So, there were some bikes that could do 120mph, but not a whole lot of them, and very very few of them were 500 singles. Maybe a Norton Manx, or perhaps a Matchless G50, and maybe even a good Gold Star.
And it was a big deal to be able to "crack the ton"(100mph) back then. So, there's alot of hyperbole. Maybe the speedometers were all wacky.
However, the old Redditch Bullet was capable of doing a little bit more than the present-day India-made Bullets. The engines had different ports, were cammed differently, didn't have to meet emission-control regs, and had free-flowing exhaust systems. They had 25hp in stock form. And no, they weren't doing 120. Perhaps the Fury, or some racing Bullets could "crack the ton", but not by alot. Bullets could do about 80-85mph max maybe, as a general rule.
Heck, even the vaunted 750 Interceptor, which was one of the most powerful British Twins, could only manage about 106mph in actual testing, although they claimed 117mph top end.
Even the Triumph Bonnie didn't really do 120mph in street trim. Typically the 650s and 750s were good for about 105-110mph in those days. Yes, you could hop them up, and they'd do a bit more.
The Manx, G50, and Gold Star were racing singles, and they could do it, but they were geared for it, and had higher redlines than most stock bikes. And they were pigs on the road and around town, because they were only good at high rpms.
Any bike back then that could actually do 120mph for real, was a very fast bike. And not many actually did it, but there were a lot of "fish stories".
Even to this very day, the fastest Bullet that's ever been actually timed has done 119.6 mph. And that was a 612 in full-race trim, with high compression, and running on alcohol, and behind a full racing fairing.
But, in the 1970s, things began to change.
The introduction of the Honda 750 4-cylinder was the beginning of the end for the British bikes, and they had no problem doing 120 mph.
The Ducati and MV 750 bikes could do 120mph, and more.
The Triumph Trident, and later Bonnevilles could do it too.
But the Japanese were really just only getting started then, and soon the Japanese bikes were all just running away from the Brits and the Italians.
As I look back, I'd say that the turning point was the introduction of the Honda 750-4. That spelled the end for the Brits and Italians, but the Italians were able to still stay in the hunt at the races until about 1973, and then it was all Japanese after that, until the resurgence of Ducati in the 1990s.
Topic: "Back in the day, we used to..." (Read 4823 times)