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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126541
that its first owner. one I;ewis Nash ofChobham. later of Watford. was for· tunate enough to have alternative means of transporting his machine to and from speed events - perhaps a sidecar and float? It seems likely that the bike was raced in grass track events prewar before being retired to use as a road machine; probably, therefore, it would have been run at Brands Hatch, then the leading Southern grass track and not far from the owner's home. What more fitting venue for fhis test. therefore, than present·day Brands tarma.c version. though! When present owner Howard Place, who trustingly lent me the bike for this article. came upon it in 1978, it had not been taxed since 1961 and was in unbelievably scruffy. albeit complete, condition. Two years of loving attention by the entire Place family and an engine rebuild by Steve Cooper himself a posTwar Brands grass track star on a 250cc Rudge - resulted in the pristine bike I found awaiting my pleasure. Amazingly. Howard had only to fa· bricate a correct new oil tank to reo place the later unit fitted. though he also fitted the handsome period Brook· lands "cans" for road use as well as new valves, guides and springs obtained through the Rudge Club spares scheme. "An excellent club," is How· ard's verdict on them. "and a model to all other one·make owners clubs they couldn't have been more helpful'" The '!ll works Rudges were infamous as being "too fast for their frames" in the 500 and to a lesser extent the !l50cc classes, which gave riders even of the caliber of Wal Handley and Tyrell Smith some distinctly hairy moments on fast sweeping curves where the bikes would sit up in the corner and have to be wrestled back on to line. This high.speed steering problem was never entirely solved. but appears not to have been transposed to the pro· duction bikes. with their detuned motors. The frame is conventional. with a single downtube branching into a semi·cradle arrangement which. how· ever, is not continued down under the crankcase. It was likely the result· ant lack of rigidity which caused the handling problems. Rudge's own D· section front forks are fitted. with a central Bowden steering damper, actuated via a cable by a lever to the left of the speedo. No revcounter is fitted, and no provision is made for same. Another steering damper with large knurled knob lives on the left side of the upper fork link but appears to be purely decorative; torquing it down seemed to evoke no measurable response in handling terms. The celluloid·covered handlebars are of the sports rather than racing variety and are strangley enough brazed in place. How one repaired them in the likely event of taking a tumble at a grass track is a mystery. The rear end is rigid but bolted·up rather than welded. When purchased. the engine was found to ha,ve an undersize piston which was replaced by a standard size component and the barrel honed ac· cordingly. A single 1%" road Amal with Twin· float chambers replaces the TT unit which would have been fitted originally. Rudge were amongst the first to fit a four· speed gearbox -' as here - and even experimented with a five·speeder in 1929. A similarly advanced concept wa~ the coupled braking system, originat, ing from 1924 and achi~ed by means of a linking cable from the foot pedal. Fifty years later, Guzzi use the same system, though hydraulically actuated. on their !.oad machines. Interestingly, Rudge onginally transposed the brake (Conrinued to page 2J) ...-4 00 C') ...-4 23