When I started riding bikes in my days as an impoverished student everything had to be done on the cheap. How we longed for the nice shiny Suzuki GT250s and Honda 250G5s we saw people whizzing around on, while we had to make do with tatty old BSAs and Triumphs. My first bike was a very tired D7 Bantam which managed to get me to college for only three weeks before terminally expiring with main bearing failure. The replacement was a Honda CD175 which, although it worked, failed to really hold my interest. For by that time I'd been admitted as a fledgling member of the Enfield Boys, a loose collaboration of skint tinkerers and bodgers with a lock-up full of Bullet bits, and I was saving hard to raise the £60 I needed to buy the eighth hand Triumph 3TA I'd set my heart on.

Those days are long gone now and the world has changed, but my introduction to the world of motorcycling left me with a fond admiration for the real bikers who, instead of popping down to the local franchised dealership and taking out a three year loan for a new bike, would get involved with their old British hacks, bodging, borrowing, and learning to make the bits they needed to keep the bikes on the road. Inevitably this culture would breed the odd individual who really understood what they were doing, and each town would have a small network of biking gurus who really could fix things properly.

Talking to Frank Jones, the owner of this Ariel Red Hunter, takes me right back to those days. For Frank has been so deeply involved with this bike for so long that he knows its workings with a rare intimacy which only comes through years of experience, skinned knuckles not withstanding.

Frank first bought the bike some years back from a mate in Ingleton after bumbling around on an old 16H Norton. The Ariel was well known in those parts, and young Frank had a few run-ins with the local bobbies after being spotted charging around on it without L plates or a license. Eventually he fitted the sidecar he'd originally bought for the 16H and made himself legal, after which he'd ride past the local nick with two fingers in the air. It turned out the sidecar had originally been fitted to the Ariel, and Frank had unknowingly re-united them. The exact date of purchase is now lost in the mists of time, but the last recorded change of owner on the logbook was 1984. Frank reckons there may have been a slight delay in notifying Swansea of his purchase, to give time for the paperwork to catch up to full legal requirements.

Once bought the Ariel stayed, becoming a cornerstone of Franks growing family. "I've brought up two lads with that bike" he told me, "I've carried sidecars full of coal about and moved house with it, had a three piece suite piled high on the chair once". So loaded the Ariel once more attracted the attentions of the local copper, who held Frank at the side of the road while he tried to think of a suitable offence to book him with. "There was a setee and two chairs on it at the time. I said look, nothing's falling off, everything's strapped on properly and there's bugger all you can do about it. And I just rode off".

Despite being briefly tempted into three wheels with the inevitable Reliant Robin, Frank never really took to cars and the Ariel has been in more or less constant use since he bought it. Of course it has been rebuilt several times over the years and Frank has slowly accumulated a huge stack of spares and parts to keep it running, but this is primarily a working bike and has never been intended to win concours events. The frame originally left the Selly Oak factory back in 1935 as a girder forked OHV Red Hunter. The current engine is based on a slightly later specification, mainly as Frank has a sensible aversion to exposed valve gear. However most of the internals have been re-worked, and the bike currently runs a genuine +030 low compression piston in a barrel re-sleeved with a liner originally intended for a tractor diesel engine. Frank is keen to use genuine pistons, and talks about aluminium alloys and expansion rates in a way which suggests he knows a thing or two about the pitfalls of using pattern parts. "I had a high compression +020 piston in it for years, but last time I re-bored it I had to find a +030 low-comp piston. I aim to make the most of this liner! I have a high compression +040 piston in the shed which will go in eventually". Unusually the timing cover is marked "RH", presumably designating "Red Hunter", though all the literature I've seen refers to these bikes as either VH or NH models. Frank is aware of the rarity of the timing cover, and would be interested to know how many bikes left the factory with this designation.

The big end has proved a little more difficult to source, the original caged Hoffman rollers being replaced with an Alpha bearing which Frank says is "under test". "A mate had an Alpha in it a few years back, and it went bang when he was hill climbing it. Everyone said it was the bearing at fault but I reckon the end float hadn't been shimmed up properly". The replacement seems healthy enough, possibly due to Franks approach to crank building. "Everyone reckons you need special jigs and vee-blocks to build these cranks, but I used the engine as a jig. The drive side has two main bearings, which means you can mount the crank in the casing and true the flywheel up using the crankcase as a reference". Simple and effective. Frank uses the same technique for building and trueing wheels, using the bikes own frame as a jig.

The original girder forks gave way to more modern, and more practical, teles many years ago but some of the other changes to the bike are a little more subtle. After many years of vibrating against the top frame tube and splitting, Frank finally took the angle grinder to the fifty year old fuel tank, cut a section out of the front of it and welded in a new front tunnel to give it proper clearance. "I just got sick of carrying a bar of soap everywhere" he says. The modification has been so expertly carried out I couldn't see where it had been changed even when Frank pointed it out to me. He also hand stitched the saddle and made the stainless tank top panel, covering holes which would have once housed the Chronometric speedo and Smiths clock. His one concession to buying new bits was when his youngest son Gavin wanted to ride on the back of the Ariel, and the pillion seat was bought new for £25 from Tonkins Restorations. "While I was there, just out of curiosity, I asked about a new tank. He got straight on the phone and told me I could have one for £600". That would have been finished in the original chrome and enamelled colour scheme of course, "but I said there's no way I'm paying that much, and I don't care if it's red rusty as long as it's solid metal".

Franks approach to paint, unsurprisingly, is utilitarian. "I just want something durable that will stop it rusting" he says. Over the years the bike has been painted in everything from Woolworths Gloss to Hammerite, though for the latest rebuild he took the plunge and shelled out for some tough black enamel originally destined for a lorry. He sprayed the bike himself, and considers the deep, lustrous black finish an acceptable result. The tank took two goes to get right, as it fell in the dirt and had to be cleaned back to bare metal while the first colour coat was curing.

The other one off bits which just have to receive a mention are the exhaust system and pushrod tubes. Both made by mates, the exhaust is a copy of an old original made from industrial stainless steel pipe welded up from four sections and then polished to a shimmer by Frank. And take a good look at those pushrod tubes, made from plumbers copper tubing, then polished and laquered to keep their shine. Frank also made up the stainless oil lines after rejecting some donated braided stainless oil hose. "It chafed against everything and had lots of sharp bits, so it went in the bin".

Frank's wife Carol sadly passed away three years ago, leaving him with sons David (20) and Gavin (10). Frank rebuilt the Ariel to help him get through the tough times after Carols death, and was thrilled to take trophies for "Best Classic"and "Best British" in its first outing at the Sewer Rats MCC rally last year, a feat it had just repeated when I photographed it. The bike is a real piece of family history, and both boys want to keep it in the family, so Frank thinks another bike may have to join it in the shed to stop rivalries developing. When I last spoke to Frank he was about to look at a BSA project bike for Gavin to start building. The lad couldn't have a better mentor to learn from than his dad, a real hands-on biker of the old school.

Dr.Rod.