A few years ago, this weekend in 1965, I crashed one of these by running into the back of a parked van in nasty wet weather...
I was only a few yards from home, and my goggles were very misty from the rain, and I just didn't see the van until it was too late! I got chucked over the handlebars, and finished up on the other side of the road, very much unconscious, and as a chum who lived opposite exclaimed later, looked a bit 'deadish'!
In fact, it was only a spell of concussion, plus bashed up knees, which funnily enough only tore a tiny bit of trouser on one side, but it turned out that the kneecap had chipped, and a few stitches later in St Helen's Hospital in Hastings, I settled in for the statutory ten days recovery!
What was odd, was that with a chum we had been right across Belgium only a few weeks before, and the only mishap then, was going over a pothole near Brussels, and the handlebar cover shot up in the air, breaking the screw which held it all together!
The scooter was a write off, but dad persuaded the engineers at the farms where he worked to straighten it all up, and with a new frame (£5.0.0), I rebuilt the whole thing, and used it for ages! It used to go like the clappers, and was a great little scooter, but like all things, it had to go, and was last seen dumped in a hedge not far away...
6 comments:
Scrobs the 'face'.
I loved that little scooter - 307FKR, Thud!
It hade been my sister's and I still owe her £30.0.0 for it...
The torsion bar rear suspension broke one summer while driving over the local rec, and we had to get a new one! When I rebuilt the chap from scratch, as above, the only way I could get the tension racked up, was to bang three nails in the garage roof, and literally hang the whole issue from the rafters via a strong rope! I found the damper several years later...
But it worked, and even though the coolong ducts were broken as I'd cracked them with a hammer, a very special wedge from an old bit of wood tightened that whole assembly for several years!
I want that number back...
I remember driving my secondhand Lambretta to a long straight bit of country road to see how fast it would go. Crouched over the handlebars I managed to wind it up to a disappointing 50mph but it felt more like 80. Happy days even though one of the side panels was liable to fall off.
Fascinating, Scrobs.
Yes, they did that, didn't they, AK!
The sort of wing nut at the rear usually clicked into place, but after a bump on a road or a track, they could shake loose!
50mph wasn't bad at all, I think that's what I eventually got up to on occasions!
Thanks James, I still have the dents in each knee to prove it all...
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