The English rain was falling in a slow, consistent drizzle as the lad put the kettle on and nipped out back to wash the tea mugs. He was already damp from legging it up the lane for a box of milk, as Nick, his buddy Mike and I discussed the bank of 32 mm Delorttos sitting on the workbench. Nick’s RGS was running rich on the right cylinder, and the problem was eluding him. So the heads were off, and the barrels had been lifted to see if there was an obvious problem. With everything looking just as it should, the carbs were now under scrutiny, and with a scalding hot cup of tea in my hand, time seemed to slide to a halt as theories were raised, debated and eliminated on a wet English afternoon.
Outside the small, dimly lit garage, the rain was really hammering down now, and I interrupted the conversation to ask if the Harleyton should be brought inside. “There’s 6,000 miles on the clock since I rebuilt ’er. She’s a daily driver,” said Nick, as we moved on to the float levels. Gazing out at the rust on the front disc, the black exhaust soot on the right foot peg, and the road grime on the engine and wheels, I had to remind myself who owns this bike. Never one to baby or pamper his machines, Nick Roskelley has been building and thrashing interesting European motorcycles around the English lanes since I was a pimply teenager.
During that period in my formative motorcycle years, Nick was riding a Norton 850 Commando with a distinctly American flavour. High bars, King and Queen seat, and a metal-flake paint job made sure it wasn’t what the purists were riding. And on his workbench, he was building a beast – a beast of a Laverda 1200 that I eventually talked him into selling, and a beast I still own. Looking back through those grimy windows of time into his cave-like shop at the end of Winner Street nearly 30 years ago, I realized, peering at the Harleyton more closely, that some things never change.
Just the thought of a 1942 WLC 45-cubic-inch Harley motor in a 1960 Norton Wideline Featherbed frame is enough to cause havoc in vintage motorcycle circles on both sides of the pond. And Nick is very aware of the chaos and commotion he causes when he rides the Harleyton to his local bike night on Paignton seafront. Like Moses parting the Red Sea, few people are anywhere but on the “love it or hate it” fence, and this makes him very happy. He also thrives on the fact that he hand-cut and polished all the fabulous stainless steel brackets, mounts and housings with material that came out of the scrap bin. The bike was purchased for £1200 (just over $1800 CAD), right before the owner was about to turn it into a chopper, and the princely sum of around £800 (about $1200 CAD) has been spent to bring the bike to the condition you see now.
The gas tank is from a Dominator 99 and was originally silver. Nick’s friend Nick Lovell made the Harleyton 45 decal, which is based on an original design by artist and sign-painter Dave Stevens. A local biker from my youth, I wouldn’t recognize Stevens now, but I’ll never forget his immaculate custom “Indyville” that he used to ride around our hometown. Talking to Nick about the Harleyton with the smell of grease and oil in the air opened a floodgate of motorcycle memories. The tank itself was hand-painted in Nick’s workshop with Two-Pac black paint and lacquer, and a piece of discarded stainless steel was beaten pretty to fit on top.
Look closely at the gas tank and you will see a period 1960s metal bicycle pump under the right-hand side. No prizes for guessing where Nick found it, and in his own words, “it was bent like a banana and thrown in a bin.” Coming with a free price tag, it was in Nick’s price range, so home it went. After numerous meetings with the rubber hammer and the polishing wheel, it now looks as good as new.
While we are on the subject of beating metal, Nick told me he enjoyed the comedy series “Orange County Choppers” that’s on the tube in North America now. “I even made my own pipes,” he told me, laughing out loud, “just like OCC.” Starting life as pieces of flat scrap metal, he had originally started making fishtails before trying to fit some original Norton reverse cone megas. With the former looking wrong and the latter too large, Nick decided to make his own version, and I think the result is fantastic. Having found the head pipes in another bin somewhere along the way, he made the scaled-down silencers with two axle stands and a Norton fork leg, after building a set of mock-ups out of cardboard. Welded in the workshop, they were polished at slow speed on his lathe at home in the garden. If you look closely, there is a tidy kick plate on the lower pipe, as the first ride with the new system produced a melted boot and a nasty mess on the pipe.
The frame, just like all the machines before it to roll out of the Roskelley workshop, has been baked-enamel black. It wears Alf Hagon gas shocks in the rear and a set of forks from a ’70 Commando up front. This gives the bike great road-holding and decent brakes, according to Nick. Utilizing a master cylinder from a ’70s Suzuki T500 means a smaller piston than the stock Norton item, and gives Nick more strength and feel at the lever. He also improved things further by adding a Goodridge hose and NVT pads. You have to remember: the Harleyton was built to ride.
Attaching to the standard “Senior Ace” bars, I am amused to see the same Suzuki-style left-hand switch gear as used on my old Mirage, with no provision for an indicator switch. Looking over to the other side, there is nothing but the housing for the throttle cable and the brake mounting. Right at that moment, Nick flashed me a big grin and said, “watch this.” Directing my eyes to a row of small holes in the hand-cut dashboard – yes, found in the trash and made beautiful – he popped the key in the ignition and turned it on. He shielded the holes from the light, and my jaw dropped a few inches as I noticed them light up. He used LEDs for the charge rate and ignition warning lights! I couldn’t believe, after all the photos I took, that I hadn’t noticed them.
Grinning from ear to ear, Nick rattled off that the oil pressure switch was found on eBay for a few dollars, the Smiths Chronometric Speedometer was a gift from a dear friend, “Scree,” and the clock was found somewhere amongst his possessions. The shorty headlight brackets found on eBay tidy up the front end, and the replica Vincent taillight was picked up for about $20. I was falling in love with the Harleyton by the minute, as I realized that every single piece of this motorcycle has its own unique story. The bike is just such a rebel, like its owner, and stands as a true testament to the ingenuity and resourcefulness that personifies the British bike scene of my youth. Quite the contrast to many of the perfect trailer queens out there, built with a large, fat chequebook.
With the weather clearing, I had to take off for family duty, so I arranged to meet with Nick on the seafront the following day for more photos, weather permitting. This prompted me to wonder if British people would stop talking altogether if someone found a way of importing perfect weather, and I strolled off down Seaway Lane and along the beach. It had been two years since I first saw the Harleyton at Nick’s shop when it was painted silver, and it was a far cry then from the bike you see today.
“The engine sat too low in the frame, rendering the primary and rear chains so far out of line it was hard to believe it ran. I rode it about 200–300 miles. It was horrible,” Nick mused the following morning. But ride it he did, learning all sorts of nasty secrets that he vowed to put right. There was an old Lucas alternator rigged in a “Heath Robinson” manner, mounted with handmade plates that basically just didn’t work. The bike would barely shift gears, and the handling was very wrong, so off to the shop it went.
With the bike stripped to the frame, the first order of operations was making the engine sit correctly in the frame. “If I had a dollar for every time I lifted the engine in and out, I’d be able to buy a new bike,” Nick said in a long, continuous laugh. Hand-cutting, welding and polishing his old pieces of aluminum into the bits of sculpture you see today took around 70–80 hours of intense labour. Leaving the engine sitting an inch and a half higher, and about an inch further back, the chains now line up perfectly. Not before an enormous amount of machine work was done on the primary case, taking the power from the Harley engine to the Norton gearbox. “An old guy in the Kickstart Club told me it’s off a BSA B33, but whatever it’s from, it doesn’t leak.” Nick also told me it took some subtle machining, some modern seals, and a half-inch cork gasket to achieve this, and the chain now spins happily in automatic transmission fluid. Talking about the four-speed gearbox brings a painful moment as Nick requested a minute’s silence for the Quaiff five-speed gearbox he had installed in his Norton back in the early ’80s. The bike was sold as his commercial diving career took off, and the new owner ran it without oil for a few weeks till it blew up.
Grieving over, I asked Nick if he had done anything to the engine. Apart from bronze-welding some exhaust stubs into the exhaust outlet ports and sorting the points, it’s basically untouched. “There was a piece missing in the points, so I made a new one out of an old O ring. It looks like there is still something missing, but it’s done six thousand miles without a problem, so I’m not worried.”
Engine back in the frame, a larger Amal carburetor was sourced for better performance, and a longer manifold adaptor built. Armed with a book about engine performance from Harley-Davidson, Nick learned that this was the secret to more power. The new manifold was chromed before it was installed. The oil tank, swingarm, and primary chain cover were bake-enameled with the frame and were bolted into place next. Rebuilt stainless rims were fitted with modern Avon rubber, and things were beginning to shape up.
With a slim possibility of sunshine, Nick and I met along the seafront on a breezy morning. The exact site of my childhood summers, it felt extra special to be photographing my longtime friend’s motorcycle in this cherished location. Of course, the bike stopped people every few minutes, and this just added to the fun as Nick told them what it was. Looking down my 400 mm lens at the foot pegs, the clouds began to clear from the deep, dark space between my ears. I couldn’t remember where I’d seen them before, but then thoughts of a friend’s Kawasaki 750 H1 fitted with Raask rear sets popped into the void. Nick couldn’t confirm my suspicion. He couldn’t deny it either, but it did give him the chance to tell me that the brake rod was some titanium he found and machined into action.
With just the bike in focus in my viewfinder, I kept coming back to how right the Harleyton looks. Sure it’s a bitza of the highest degree, but everything seems to flow, even though so much of it is nowhere near “stock” anything. The seat rail was made by packing a piece of straight tubular metal full of sand, welding the ends shut, and bending. The modern mirrors were found at a local motorcycle shop. Nick also machined new pistons for the old brake caliper, sourced a German 12-volt dynamo to sort the electrics, and spent many long nights on the lathe making all-new engine and wheel spacers.
Later that night over tea at Nick’s place, we went over all the details one more time. Our sons were playing electronic games together as we talked, and it was hard to comprehend that thirty years have passed since we first met. But some things will never change. We are both still furiously passionate about motorcycles, and Nick Roskelley has just built one of the most fascinating classic motorcycles blasting around the roads and lanes of southern England – again.
