The "Walwin" BSA’s.
I thought that we should include the "Walwin" to our site. And I don’t know why I have not done this before... 2013... "Walwin" was the name of the engineering works started by the boys grandfather Walter and ran by father Ray until it closed in the late fifties.
08/01/2021... Ross Winwood at 75 years young now reunited after decades with his beloved "Walwin" BSA Bantam, that he and his father built all those years ago in the seventies... Well done Ross... _______ Bit of History about the family... Well the Winwood family were stalwarts of the Midland trials scene back in the Sixties. Not only building BSA engined trials bikes but also running and organizing trials too.
Father Ray Winwood..."The Captain", was the head of the family, but always had the boy’s mother Gwen helping him too, with preparation of the bikes at a trial, or observing on most occasions... She was also ACU Midland Centre treasurer from 1974 to 1980, and also ran the Kings Norton MCC trials as a family and later the Birmingham MCC...trials as well to keep the lady busy...
The Boy’s Mike, and Ross, if I can remember correctly, rode standard looking swan necked BSA C15 T’s for the start of their trials career. Well Ross did, when he was 16 in 1961... Mike had the first Trials "Walwin" built, a Ariel 350 engine in a duplex tubed Reynolds 531 frame, built in 1958 when Mike was 16 years old.
But then in 1962 the image of the bikes started to change, small modifications to engines, and the duplex down tubed Reynolds 531 frames were designed and built... The lightweight duplex steel frames used with some influence from Reynolds Tube I feel, and probably with advice from Ken Sprayson...
Has far as I can remember Ross got a job at BSA, as a Illustrator, (1967) and later may have had work in the Comp shop, But I will have to ask Pat Slinn for confirmation. Mike worked at BSA in the drawing office until they closed.
Ray was somehow involved with the aircraft industry, I thought, but my memory is hazy to what he did. In fact Ray Winwood a toolmaker and designer ran the family precision engineering company set up by his father Walter until the late fifties until it closed , and then we now know he worked from that time on as Development Garage Manager at Girling brakes. The Dural trials frames... Anyway, I remember Ray taking the first prototype Dural alloy frame parts from the boot of his car to show Ralph Venables, who I am sure would have had mixed feelings about the project, this must have been in 1967-8 The revolutionary"Walwin"alloy trials frames were however built, and surely could have gone a lot further with more industry backing, at the time. Just the old adage wrong place wrong time again when the British motorcycle industry was slipping away...Ross says that four of the alloy Dural trials frames were built the two for the BSA Bantam engines were readided for the 1969 SSDT... and the two for the BSA B25 engines in 1970 ready for the 1971 Scottish Six Days Trial... The two Bantam engines had some of the parts the same as the Works bikes like the wide ratio gears...etc... The alloy grass track frames were to come later. _______ 18/03/2017. Trevor White. I found your website while I was looking up Ross Winwood. We met at Birmingham College of Art in the 60’s while studying Technical Illustration. We met up again when I went to work for BSA. We were both illustrating for the BSA catalogues while his brother was in the drawing office there. Their father I eventually met when he was in charge of the Girling (Tyseley) garage (they had some impressive cars in there – including a Ford GT40 - so no ordinary garage).
I have no idea if any of that is of interest but it may fill a small gap in your pages. All the best, Trevor White Charlie,> Thank you Trevor for that information, that makes the history a bit clearer...
Back to the Reynolds 531 duplex downtubed trials frames.
Photo Courtesy Leamington Victory Mcc.. This is Eddie Freeman enjoying a Boxing-Day ride out on his steel Reynolds 531 framed "Walwin". At the Leamington Victory Clubs Ufton trial. _______ Ross Winwood said that there were two of these BSA C15 engined, steel Duplex Reynolds 531 framed bikes built every year from 1962 until 1967, so that he and Mike had a new bike for the Scottish Six Days Trial every year, but not all with new frames. In 1966 Mike had a second generation BSA C15T frame that he used in the Scottish and this could have had some works backing as Mike working for BSA was in the right place. Not only were the trials steel frames built but a batch of six scrambles frames were built to order for the BSA B44-50 engines and two for Velocette scrambles motors, this was before the grasstrack frames.
The steel framed bikes had an influence of Ken Sprayson about them, and I am sure that Ken had an hand in the design of these frames.
And here is Eddie Freeman again on the same machine but earlier . In the Sam Cooper Union Jack Trial of 1997. How time flies.
The Specials Class in the trial, was won by Mike Mills BSA "Legend"... 8 marks lost. Second, was Roy Trump BSA... 16 marks lost. And Third, Dave Paxton Triumph Twin... 25 marks lost.
Interesting snippet from Deryk, Will Hawkes rode the first half of the trial, without a passenger until John Perry's BSA outfit cried enough, and Andy Hay jumped into Will's empty chair...
Here you can see the "Walwin BSA", next to the "Brian Martin BSA" that Andy Paxton rode in the 2012 Scottish Pre65 Two Day trial, and next to that is another Ex works BSA C15T, and the owners of all three machines, Ted and Edd Freeman, talking to another Oxfordshire BSA Trials legend, and ex works rider, renowned for being the only chap that could get a tune out of the BSA B40 engined machine... Yes, Bill Faulkner...
Then the "Dural" aluminium Framed "Walwin"Machines.
One thing that must be realized is, that there were no laser or water jet cutting of aluminium then. So even if the sheets had been cut with a plasma jet cutter, the parts would have been finished by hand, ( cut with hand and band saw Ross says...) even pop rivets, were newish at this time, late sixties early seventies...
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To get the alloy to work in this situation, direction of forces need a great deal of attention to get it right...
And also a lot of annealing would be necessary, between, every bend or fold...
Not only was there an awful lot of work put into the development of the frame, but as you can see, another BSA/Triumph item, the four-stud front forks, were converted to leading axle, to keep it British, where the boys could have just used Betor or Marzocchi forks.
The forming of the Dural plate would have meant annealing the section after every bend to not only work the alloy, but to stop it from cracking. Not an easy task...Even today...
The tooling to press these sections in one, would have been far too expensive to warant the task for a small production run, and each frame would have needed to be slightly different for each type of engine anyway....
19/04/2016.
Mark Quinn today has sent me this brilliant shot of him riding the "Walwin" BSA Bantam.
He says he still rides it regularly in Northern trials. Nice one Mark, and thanks for the photos.
Photo Courtesy and Copyright."Trials Central",
I hope you don't mind me using it Andy?
This is the Bantam engined version of the "Walwin" bike and the only picture I had at the time, 2011 I think ...
Photo Courtesy Ross Winwood...
25/02/2020...
But now I have the photo from Ross Winwood of the bike above with the 1961(819DOE) registration plates on it from the BSA C15T engined bike of that year, before the Bantam was re-registered in 1969...(AUY23H)...Mikes bikes had the registration number (BAB6H)...
Ross is at the moment(2020) trying to buy back one of the "Walwins" for his family...
If you know the whereabouts of a bike that could be for sale... let me know and I can pass the information on to Ross...
08/01/2021...
Ross has now fulfilled his dream of once again owning one of the "Walwin"bikes he built...and his "Walwin" BSA Bantam that he used to ride.
Photo Courtesy Mark Quinn.
Here's a better photo of the "Walwin" Bantam for you.
Thank's Mark.
24/01/2023...
The other BSA Bantam engined "Walwin" is owned by Terry Maynard...
Terry said...
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Look after that little "Walwin" BSA Bantam Terry...
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I have, just found these images on my old computer, and with the eBay logo, means that they may have changed hands, but I did not keep any records at the time, just saved photographs of trials machines that I cared about... this is from 2007...
Although this photo is bad, it looks like this bike has had the motor swapped for a BSA C15, or BSA C15"G", type engine in place of the BSA B25 engine, that I think were in the two bikes when they were built.
Also note that the front forks are the standard Triumph-BSA "Four-Stud type without the added fork extensions to make them leading axle type, this would alter the wheel base of the machine and the fork trail too from the wheelbase length the "Walwin" frame was designed to be...
Photo Courtesy Offroad Review Deryk Wylde.
Here is a shot of Keith Quinn, Deryk said I can use...
Deryk Wylde said it is a section he found for the Frank Jones trial, named "Cwmcwefru", and the next section was better...
He said, you dropped into a rocky river bed, down a steep bank between two markers, took your own line, anywhere down the river trying to miss some of the worst rocks, and then exited up the river bank on the other side, between two more markers. Nice Old Style section Deryk.
Photo Courtesy Mark Quinn.
Here is a photo that Mark has sent me, of his father Keith's bike above
and you can see that the engine is now a BSA C15...
Photo Courtesy Mark Quinn.
I have distorted these two above photos slightly by making them too large, but it helps to show the Build of the bike better.
I will build on this page when I have done more research. 2011...
06/04/2016.
Philip Chapman has been in touch with me this morning, to sadly pass on the message that Martin Lampkin died at the week end.
Philip's, daughter is married to Ross Winwood's son, and they still live near Stratford upon Avon.
Philip who lives in Silsden, says that Ross sold up the post office store he ran for years to build a house, he then sold that, and he and his wife have been touring "The World" well Europe in their "motor-home", but are due home shortly.
I hope I can then again contact Ross like I did a few years back on Trials Central, to get more of the story about the "Walwin" trials bikes. Philip also told me that Mike Winwood is rather poorly at this time.
Keeping it in the family here is a photo of one of Philip's bikes.
Photo Courtesy Philip Chapman.
Well it would have to be a BSA would it not. A Very nice "Victor".
Phil says, he like me, has a job to kick start the bike at times though, so he has one with an electric start too, a Suzuki GT 550.
photo later
Now we have this other link to Ross we may get the full story about the "Walwin" trials bikes, and even the Grass trackers?
Photo Credited
This is an ex Ross Winwood "Walwin" grass bike that was fitted with a 440 BSA engine originally, but has been updated ?
with this Jawa motor, the bike is up for sale I am told.
30/08/2018.
From Bob Cottsway.
Hi.
I have just been looking at your "Walwin" site.
The bike shown is the final form Ross raced the bike after the B44 ceased to be competitive.
I rebuilt it from a rolling chassis purchased at Auto Jumble. Had to sell through lack of space.
I have his Alloy Framed 350cc, which I have also rebuilt.
See attached Photos.
If you would like more info please contact me.
Bob.
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Photo Courtesy Bob Cottsway,
This shows off the "Walwin" construction method at its best. Superb bike Bob.
Photo Courtesy Bob Cottsway.
Here Is Ross Winwood with the final Jawa grass bike.
Better photo later.
24/09/2016.
"Walwin" Replica. built by Steven Pritchett.
Skipping through eBay as you do and I came across this machine for sale, well you know what they say about flattery. Well this is a good example and I do mean Good.
And here is what the owner builder has to say, Now I know that Mark Seward has something to do with this machine... Because of the rear shocks, the machining and the Badge on the tank.
Well the owner has now contacted me, his name Steven Pritchett, and I have asked Steven if he would mind giving us the story of the bike, and he said he would give us any information on the build, Good hey.
Steven's description of the machine.
This is my C15 "Walwin" replica that I built as a bit of an engineer's play thing!!
Whenever I saw pictures of the "Walwin" framed BSA's I knew I wanted one, and as a builder of custom bikes the seed for this project was born.
The frame is entirely bolted together like a "Walwin" and consists of two lasered side plates CAD drawn to modern bike geometry (Beta Rev3).
The head stock and separate parts of the oil tank which runs sandwiched up the spine plus the swing-arm pivot/ rear engine mount are from T6061 aircraft spec aluminium.
Much work was done with the swing-arm to get it the right length, and the geometry of the shock absorbers, and the bike runs with good front to rear balance, lifting the front easily whilst still finding grip on the slippery stuff.
The shocks themselves are purpose built YSS with preload and damping adjustment and are quite brilliant.
The forks are 38mm Paoli's (not elegible for Pre65) in Sherco yokes chosen as I was struggling to get a decent set of 35mm's at the time.
The hubs are both made by myself, the rear is a BSA Bantam replica and the front a conical type running Yamaha TY shoes.
The brake plates 'float' on their spacers allowing the shoes to self centre in the hubs.
The engine has had much work with all metric bearings being installed.
A new big end is fitted with readily available needle rollers.
Timing side conversion has also been done, along with end fed oil feed.
The timing side bearing is a combined needle roller and ball race thrust bearing, in fact many of the bearings are over specified for the job.
Its had new valves and guides, and utilises a Triumph T100 piston.
New gears have been installed for 1st gear to close the ratio's between 1st and 2nd.
It also means that the bike has a new ratchet for the pawl so there's none of that kickstart slip!
The oil feed to the head is a positive type system taken off the end of the crank, and regulated by use of carburettor main jets to maintain pressure. She does leak a bit...... despite several attempts I still haven't got it 100% oil tight.
A separate spin on filter is fitted...
Please look at the pictures!! (they form part of the description) and please come and view to satisfy yourselves the bike as described. No guarantees are offered or implied. Test rides are possible. Woods and banks available! (Cornwall).
Cash on collection only please!!
I have just uploaded a photograph of the primary drive showing the PVL ignition, and also the one off aluminium clutch basket. This also feature a one off aluminium centre allowing full Yamaha clutch plate set to be used. On the outside you can see where I initially used a belt primary drive but this was changed back to chain for reliability and performance.
The bike is still currently for sale on eBay if you want to take a look. 2016.
One last picture for now.
Well we got the full story of the "Walwin" Replica build and a lot of work went into that machine... Thank's Steven...
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Photo Courtesy Steven Pritchett...
Steven aboard his "Walwin" replica BSA C15...
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More of an update to the "Walwin" Story when I talk to Ross..
Updat2024...12...
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