On the move: Vincent Black Shadow

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On the move: Vincent Black Shadow
Nakamura

On the move: Vincent Black Shadow

The last of its kind

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In 2007 the last Black Shadow of the Series C went under the hammer at the Classic Bike Show in Stafford. MOTORRAD CLASSIC employee Alan Cathcart talks about her life; and she’s damn alive.


Nakamura

Vincent Black Shadow.

Few other motorcycles in the world are as undisputed legends as the Vincent Black Shadow; The fastest thing that money could buy 50 years ago and was legally on the road: With an officially top speed of 122 miles per hour, the 1000 series outperformed all other production motorcycles. Vincent’s numerous successes in races and speed records were based on the immense power of the V2 engine with a 50 degree cylinder angle. High camshafts and short bumpers were responsible for the valve train. In the racing version Black Lightning, this engine released an incredible 70 hp and was thus vastly superior to all other large-volume motorcycle engines: After the Second World War, attempts to introduce a Clubman TT for 1000 cc on the Isle of Man resulted in three dominant Vincent victories. In the last edition in 1950, only Vincents competed.

The ultimate Vincent street motorcycle is typically called the Black Shadow. Just 1507 copies of this dream on two wheels left the factory in Stevenage near London between late 1948 and 1955 when Vincent had to close. In its last year, 1955, in addition to the C-series, there was a D-version with a disguise typical of the time; During the first few months of this year, however, the much more popular C-models continued to emerge. The documents from the works archive are now in the possession of the busy Vincent Owners Club in Orpington, Kent / GB (www.voc.uk.com), and they say that the very last of the 287 C-Black Shadows produced in 1955 – with identical chassis and engine number – the one that Bonhams auctioned on October 21, 2007 at the Stafford Motor Show.

The meter shows 28,000 miles in the famous five-inch 150-mph speedometer when its owner at the time, Nigel Brown, rolls it out of the garage a few days before the show. One day I am allowed to enjoy myself in Hertfordshire, where this very last Black Shadow – near the Vincent factory in Stevenage – has spent the last ten years. A few decades ago I was the owner of a Vincent Rapide, the weaker parallel model of the Black Shadow. Although it was in much worse condition than Nigel’s fine specimen, I was still always enthusiastic about its performance. Sold
I have it because I was deeply frustrated by its starting behavior: It jumped on the first step once, on the very day I introduced it to its next owner. She was probably signaling to me how much she wanted to get rid of me. And given the new Ducati 750 SS, I didn’t really miss them in return.

But today I have to admit that I probably never gave my Rapide a real chance. As soon as I see Nigel’s Shadow, I am filled with deep admiration and lively anticipation. For almost ten years it has been pampered in the wonderful condition in which it has also been restored over several years. She pays it back with great reliability and wonderful driving pleasure. Bearing in mind bad experiences, I let Nigel do the cold start and count anxiously up to the sixth step, but it also comes warm to me on the first.

The comparatively precise and crisp shiftable gearbox gives me the opportunity to practice: idling is difficult to find when the vehicle is stationary, and because the clutch snaps shut in a flash, I accidentally choke the V-Twin at a traffic light. Until the next green phase, I hasten to raise the right footrest and unfold the kickstarter, use the deco lever on the left end of the handlebar to find the top dead center of the correct cylinder and – more in deep hope than in optimistic expectation – to kick.

The Black Shadow finds its way into life with surprising ease, so that I am already looking for a gear before I have folded the footrest again. Not a good idea, but the older taxi driver behind me keeps calm and doesn’t sound the horn. Perhaps he, like so many of us, dreamed of the rare Vincents in his childhood.

At least that’s what Nigel Brown’s father Dan did, and eventually he bought a Series C Rapide in the early 1950s, which he kept in a garage near Forest Hill in London. At the time, many motorcyclists shared garages and worked on their motorcycles together at the weekend. One of the reasons Dans Rapide is doing a little better than most of the others, and certainly better than mine, is because he lets Cliff Brown, brother of Vincent speed guru George Brown, get her in shape. Its Vincent-fired projectiles dominated the English dragstrips for a quarter of a century; they were tuned by Cliff Brown.

Driving impression

Annoyed that his garage buddy Dan Brown constantly blows him with his well-groomed Rapide, a certain Frank Stanyon orders a Black Shadow; the local Vincent dealer delivers them in February 1955. His name is Jack Surtees, he was the most successful English trailer driver at that time on Vincent and has a son named John, who learned from Vincent, and started racing on the factory prototype Gray Flash and for a short time
later rose to MV Agusta star.

But back to Nigel’s Shadow. As with Dan’s Rapide, he really wants wider instead of the shortened, less practical Shadow fenders. They are the same ones that are still installed today, 52 years later. Stanyon drives his Vincent until late 1956, then sells it to John Carmalt, third in the garage gang, who decelerates most of the 28,000 miles on the odometer. His sister offered the motorcycle to Dan Brown in 1994 as the only survivor of the clique. It has been dismantled in parts since 1969 because a minor accident prompted a restoration. Probably everyone knows such projects, right??

"Dad had already restored a Rapide to its new condition, he knew all the important Vincent specialists in England from this project and was certainly the right man to restore the PYE 714 to its original splendor", says Nigel Brown. "Whenever I visited him over the next few years, I could see how it took shape and how my father enjoyed it. Unfortunately, he died in 1999 before the restoration was complete. I then completed it in his mind, and since then it has been going as well as it was in 1955."

One can only agree with that. As I swing my leg over the two-up bench, I discover how low and narrow the Vincent is. Much smaller than you’d expect from a 120-mph motorcycle from the 1950s. Nevertheless, the seating position appears relaxed, feels just right, and all controls are where they should be according to contemporary ideas.

The one-piece handlebars are flat and narrow, but with upwardly cranked ends, which allow you to easily eat miles and allow good guidance in tight bends. At low speeds, the Vincent behaves rather stubbornly, following its trapeze fork in an inclined position in rather sluggish arcs. The feeling that the fork legs are just about to fold up doesn’t want to give way. Of course, this never happens, instead the driving behavior continues to improve with increasing speed and then achieves greater precision than one of the then quite primitive telescopic forks would have allowed. No wonder that John Britten and Claude Fior, two far-sighted technicians who are unfortunately no longer with us, experimented with further developments of the Vincent fork three decades later. In any case, the handling of the Vincent is excellent compared to the standards of the time, especially the rear suspension works excellently. Two spring struts under the seat support the triangular swing arm against the frame. Yamaha brought this principle later than "Cantilever suspension" back into play.

But ultimately the high-torque, wonderful sounding 998 cm³ V2 is the real star of this motorcycle. With a bore of 84 millimeters and a stroke of 90 millimeters, it has a discreetly long-stroke design, it produces 55 hp at 5700 rpm and lets each of these horses run, offers performance that can still be more than satisfactory today – and 50 years ago must have been simply incredible. The Vincent accelerates powerfully, even if you need some time to learn to deal with the suddenly gripping clutch and to shift harmoniously. But with the wonderful sound of the 2-in-1 system in the ear, it becomes a real experience to open the throttle slide with the smooth throttle cable and watch the needle, which likes to go on a round trip in the huge speedometer housing.

There’s no tachometer, but there’s no real reason to miss it either: the engine delivers so much punch and reacts so directly that the driver simply shifts up when he sees fit. Soon you are happily surfing the last of four gears on the torque wave that inspires Phil Irving‘s masterpiece. No wonder that this engine left its opponents far behind on the racetrack for many years – when they did.

Accelerating is one thing, braking is another; and from today’s perspective, this is the only weak point of the Vincent package. Because it is completely original, Nigel Brown’s Black Shadow also has two seven-inch simplex drum brakes at the front and rear. Even under the toughest pull, all four together develop at best acceptable braking power. If you take it hard several times in a row, you will also reap fading. Although these brakes were a very hot tip in the 50s, in today’s traffic a far-sighted driving style is an absolute must, and panic braking should be avoided at all costs. Especially when it comes to a motorcycle that’s going to be auctioned for at least $ 80,000.

Technical specifications


Nakamura

Vincent Black Shadow, Series C

Engine: Air-cooled two-cylinder four-stroke 50-degree V-engine, one high-lying, gear-driven camshaft, two valves per cylinder operated by rocker arms, bumpers and rocker arms, bore 84 mm, stroke 90 mm, displacement 998 cm³, compression 8.5: 1, 55 hp at 5500 rpm, 2 Amal TT carburettors, 1 1/8", Ø 28.6 mm

Electrical system: Kickstarter, Lucas magneto

Power transmission: Two-disc drum servo clutch, claw-shift four-speed gearbox, primary drive: chain Secondary drive: roller chain

Landing gear: Backbone frame with integrated oil tank, load-bearing motor, front Girder parallelogram fork, hydraulically damped, rear triangular swing arm, two suspension struts, wire-spoke wheels, tires front 3.00-19, rear 3.50-18, front and rear double simplex brakes, Ø 178 mm

Mass and weight: Wheelbase 1435 mm, weight 208 kg, tank capacity 16 liters

Driving performance: Top speed 195 km / h (factory specification)

Price: about 5000 marks (1954)

Manufacturer: Vincent H.R.D. Co. Ltd., Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England

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