Triple Knockers

It would seem that vintage motorcycles are indeed a bit like London buses. You wait for ages for one to appear…and then three materialised, all at once. Odgie explores one man’s adventures with a trio of cammy singles.

No matter how long we’ve been knocking around with old bikes, we never know everything. You investigate just one new thing and another whole world opens up… as a recent visit to my mate Brian revealed. There’s never an ‘ordinary’ visit to Brian’s. It was my turn to be showing off and I’d bobbed round to let him see the new race bike I’d just finished. I pulled it out the van and we poked and prodded and made all the right sort of noises between us.

Then Brian says, in his usual conspiratorial way, ‘Here. I’ve got something to show you.’ We retire to his barn, and there sits a rather resplendent Velocette he’s just acquired. A 1929 KNS to be precise. I know very little about Velocettes, but I know enough to know I’ve not heard of a KNS before. So we’re looking at the bike and Brian starts explaining it to me, and then he compares it to his KSS from the same era.

‘Oh, which one’s that?’ I ask, and he leads me over into one of the darker recesses, squeezing past the side-valve Triumph twin sidecar outfit (I kid you not), and there the KSS sits, propped against the barn wall, quietly emanating ancient charm and calm. Then, of course, it being Brian’s bike, there’s a tale. It unfolds beautifully and I realize very quickly that there is another Tale That Must Be Told In RC. I love old bikes.

THE OLD KSS

‘It wasn’t long after we were married,’ explained Brian, ‘in 1963 on the day of the famous Henry Cooper / Cassius Clay fight.

I saw a chap trying to bump-start a bike in his driveway. I stopped, just interested to see what it was, and it was a Velo and the chap was pushing and pushing and the bike was doing nothing, apart from the occasional very loud bang from the exhaust.