Monitoring down a XS650, 35 years after we gave it away!

It’s an odd, and really vaguely miserable, factor that just about all of the bikes constructed for BSH competitions appear to simply vanish into skinny air the second they’re handed over to the fortunate winners of stated competitions. Most, however not all…

By Nik

This XS650 might look acquainted to long-term readers of the journal as a result of it was given away in points 31 and 32, again in 1988. It could even be acquainted to those that watch Henry Cole’s ‘Shed & Buried’ tv sequence on Quest because it appeared in an episode of the sequence earlier this yr when it was discovered within the care of a gentleman by the title of Taff, purchased by Henry, received going once more by the well-known Allen Millyard, after which, apparently, bought to the man who’d received it initially all these years in the past again in 1988.

The programme was aired again in June, and a few months later we have been approached by the present proprietor, Roy, who needed to know if we needed to, or knew anybody who may need to, purchase it. The mixed BSH coffers, sadly, contained about 13.5p and, anyway, I’ve two BSH bikes already, the Future Bike and the 45, and don’t have storage area for a 3rd. Roy’d determined to promote it ’cos it’s kick-only and, like loads of us today, he’s not nearly as good with kick-starts as he was once (it’s our age, y’know – kick-starting bikes when you’re the far facet of fifty isn’t as simple because it was once). I instantly requested if I might {photograph} it for our fortieth yr situation and, not too lengthy after, on a blissfully sunny day, made my means over to Oxfordshire to see a motorbike I’d solely ever seen earlier than in photos.

Contemplating 35 years’ve handed, the XS is in fairly rattling good situation – the chrome’s nonetheless good, and whereas there are some marks within the very sparkly purple paint they’re not instantly apparent and so don’t detract from its appears and, the truth is, add to its patina. The unimaginable Don Blockside engraving on the engine and forks continues to be as completely executed because it was all these years in the past (though one cam cap’s clearly gone walkies through the years, and been changed with a plain one) and, total, the entire air of the bike’s one which anybody’d proud to personal – it actually does, because the previous saying goes, look nearly as good now because it did then.

The place it’s been for the previous 30-plus years continues to be a little bit of a thriller (if solely bikes might discuss, eh?), and upon trying again to situation 31 the main points of the bike as reported then are greater than somewhat bit sketchy – it was constructed for BSH by the blokes at Customized Fasteners after they have been nonetheless in Redditch, earlier than they moved to Wales, and engraved by the legend who was, earlier than his passing, Don Blocksidge, so I received in contact with Steven Myatt, who commissioned the construct all these years in the past, and requested him about it.       

“Hello Nik. Sure, I bear in mind it effectively. Customized Fasteners have been nice supporters of BSH, and so they did all of the work. They have been primarily based in an industrial property in Redditch then (they moved to mid-Wales), and ran a really spectacular operation. Don (Blocksidge) lived not too distant additional up the M5 (in Wychbold, I believe, close to Bromsgrove). He was a stunning man, and so gifted. He did all his work freehand, within the shed in his backyard – he engraved loads of shotguns and navy stuff for officers’ uniforms (he made the massive badges for the members of the Order of the Garter), and from 1946 he was an apprentice with gunsmiths Webley & Scott, and that’s the place he discovered his craft. John Reed launched him to me in about ’81, and he did loads of work on the Kawa I inbuilt ’82, and we confirmed his work in Scootering in 1985, and he received loads of enterprise from that. Watching him work was great.

“We picked the winner of the competitors one morning simply earlier than Christmas. We have been shutting up for the festivities that lunchtime so everybody went to the pub however, after a pint or two, Alastair and I made a decision to play Santa and take it to the brand new proprietor. We phoned him, however he instructed us later that he thought it was a mate pulling his leg. We had a type of Ford Sierra P100 pickups (scarily skittish backend) so we put it on the again of that and set off. He was engaged on the constructing of the tunnel beneath the estuary at Conwy, and dwelling in a tiny stone cottage constructed into the Norman city partitions. He couldn’t imagine it once we turned up. Actually, he was weeping with delight. He rounded up some buddies, and some bottles of whisky, and Al and I had far an excessive amount of to drink earlier than heading again to Manchester.”