SMALL HEATH SURVIVOR
The regular reader will recall the story of my friend Brian’s cammy Velocettes in RC186, which made more than passing reference to Brian’s old A7. Having hopefully piqued your interest, it seemed only polite to go back and get the fuller story. As always, Brian tells his own tales better than I ever could, so in his own words…
The story of ‘the old A7’ has quite a connection to the tale of two Velos. After being given the Velo crankcases, I struck up a friendship with the lad who gave them to me, whose name was Owen. Together with his brother he was having a go at sand racing at Wallasey on the Wirral coast. I’d not seen sand racing before, but I sort of tagged along and started helping when required.
Needless to say it didn’t take long before I got interested myself. As a young lad I’d done a bit of cycle speedway; virtually unheard of these days but it was good fun, and it meant I was already used to drifting – we used a left-hand pedal crank from a child’s bike so we could still apply power (well pedal...) while laid into the turns. I fancied a bit of competition again, and to be honest, none of them looked that fast really, so I started looking for a suitable bike. A mate loaned me his Sunbeam high-cam and that got me started and it’s very easy to get hooked.
My first attempts
