Thursday, September 8, 2011

Motorcycle saddles from the early 1950's back.....

Recently I had an email from a looker of my blog and there are a lot of you out there...thanks for stopping by.
I hope what I post continues to interest you......
He asked about early Lycett saddles for a Brough Superior.
Now I'm not even sure they used the Lycett brand...but a look through my archive came across catalogues of a few other brands, so I decided to share these with you.....
Who knows it may just be the photo you were looking for to take to a swap meeting/autojumble...
Left click on the images to enlarge...
We talked of Lycett, so lets look at an early 1950's catalogue...I believe it to be so, as it has a dual seat illustrated in it.....








A 1931 Dunlop catalogue.....




A 1930 Brooks catalogue....






A 1935 Brooks catalogue...














Moseley made air cushions for the pillion on motorcycles....


The Velocette KTT Mk.7 and prewar Mk.8 used a Moseley air cushion...
The photo shows C.Moore on his Mk.7 KTT at the IOM TT races in June 1938. He finished 14th in the Junior TT.
The illustration of the dual seat in the Lycett catalogue can't go uncommented....
Velocette patented the dual seat, later selling the patent to Feridax...
The photo below shows their use of it on one of the works racers, called by Harold Willis with one of his "Willicisms"...The Loch Ness Monster Seat...
The photo shows the 1936 TT DOHC Junior Velocette, KTT483/
s, with frame SF1...the first swinging arm frame made by Velocette......
Interestingly the engine S483/S was allotted to Stanley Woods but in frame SF2, while KTT481/S was allotted to Ernie Thomas in frame SF1.
Now the photo was taken in the IOM and obviously either the engines have been changed..could be because Stanley perceived Thomas's engine was quicker in practice...or the frames were changed, again because Stanley disliked the handling of his machine...
We'll never know....
What we do know is Stanley's engine broke an oldham coupling forcing him to retire on the first lap , whereas Ernie Thomas was in second place  when he fell off on lap 6...remounted and finished 4th behind the other DOHC Velocette, ridden by Ted Mellors who came 3rd....

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