FILENAMES: jones1.jpg DESCRIPTION: This is a picture of a vintage home built motorcycle engine. Posted by John Stevenson . John provided the following description: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Also whilst on the subject of blown two strokes a small story. A retired friend of mine was an apprentice for Rolls Royce during WW2. Whilst his mates were making small model aircraft engines and other things Dennis decided he was going to build a motorcycle. Being a true perfectionist as he still is to this day it was no small moped type setup but the full spec. Four cylinders, horizontally opposed blown two stroke with pressure oiling to the crank, 2 BTH magneto's, rootes blower, 1 3/4" SU carb, 4 speed in line gearbox and shaft drive. Not a bad thing to cut your teeth on at 17. Anyway despite material shortages etc. due to wartime Dennis eventually gets this finished and registered for the road. [Incidently this machine has just been restored in the last couple of years so I have had a chance to hear this machine run again.] On his way to work one morning some time in early '44, late as usual, Dennis is giving it some big licks up London Road on his way to Rolls Royce. Gets to work and the place is deserted, everybody in in the air raid shelters due to the air raid sirens going off. They stay there for about 20 minuites and the all clear sounds but there hasn't been a raid. It suddenly strikes Dennis that what they heard was Dennis's bike hammering up London Road and it sounded just like a Junker JU88 bomber. He later went on to build all by himself including the patterns, Five 250cc twins with DOHC that could rev to 11,000 and that was in 1949, one across the frame 4 cylinder [ remade from 2 of the twins ] and the last bike he built in 1959 was a single 250cc DHC. He had a double sided twin leading shoe brake before any of the factory teams. In fact he lent it to Bill Lomas who was riding for Guzzie at the time. He later went on to invent the Jetski, holding world patents for quite a few years. I have posted a picture of the timing side of one of his 250 twins taken when I had this machine in the late 70's. It is called Jones1.jgp