RealClassic

IN THE Swing

Back in the 1970s my old mate Tuck had an old grain barn in the village of Holt in Wiltshire that attracted motorcyclists from far and wide. Tuck's barn was a cornucopia of British motorcycles and parts, with a number of interesting machines and rolling chassis tucked away in the dark recesses under the floor. As one of Tuck's minions, I spent some time under that floor moving machines around. I was always intrigued by what looked like an Ariel Huntmaster but with a bent top tube, and parts of the front down tubes missing. It turned out to be a Huntmaster frame modified to take an Ariel Square Four motor and gearbox. I helped Tuck move his collection, six HGVs' worth, to Devon in the late 1980s and remember wheeling the Ariel rolling chassis under a bench in his new shed, where it remained for the next three decades.

Some 30 years later I'd moved to New Zealand and was pondering my next project. I was looking for a larger machine that was useable, not too demanding to ride, but sufficiently different to make it stand out. My thoughts turned to Tuck's modified Huntmaster rolling chassis, concluding it shouldn't be that difficult to get a Square Four engine and gearbox. How naïve I was. Separating surplus Square Four engines and gearboxes from their owners is like trying to peel super-glued limpets off the bottom of a ship. I was looking for the late Mk2 engine with the better cylinder head and four pipes and later gearbox. After some very frustrating false starts I had to settle for a rather expensive, partly dismantled two-pipe Mk1 and an earlier gearbox.

Visiting the UK in 2016, I tried to buy the rolling chassis from Tuck. He refused to negotiate and just gave it to me, another act

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