Auto bike

When we first published a wartime photograph of Corporal Norbert Sandy on a “mystery machine, we had a trickle of feedback.It was suggested that Corporal Sandy, who was an airman in charge of the auto bike fixer station at Nedge Hill, Stirchley, was riding a Cyclemaster, which was essentially a conversion putting a little engine on the back wheel of a push bike.That really stirred things up, sparking memories largely bad ones for many readers of machines of yesteryear called autocycles. Uncool even in their day, they were a sort of feeble early moped of the auto the Cyclemaster did not appear until the And while there has been a lot of deliberation about the exact model of Corporal Sandy’s mount, the most confident assertions are in favour of the Excelsior Autobyk.Barry Jasper of The Sheet, Ludlow, sent in a photo of himself on his Autobyk Bought second-hand from a relative, it had a Villiers engine,” he said.As a farmworker I was allowed a petrol ration of one gallon per week miles. It had no gears and to start it you pedalled like mad and let the clutch in.One gallon of petrol and a quarter of a pint of oil to run the two-stroke engine cost two shillings Very expensive!On holiday recently, my partner suffered a heart attack and was rushed to hospital in Middlesbrough, miles away. I accompanied him in the ambulance. My son in law came up from Birmingham and the following day drove my partner's car home. Four days later my niece drove us both back to Birmingham.I have a Lloyds TSB gold account which includes free travel insurance. I inquired about making a claim but was initially told I couldn't claim for UK holidays. I phoned again and spoke to a different person who said I could claim but only for myself. I had to pay for my own accommodation in Middlesbrough, three nights for my niece and one for my son-in-law. I also gave my niece £50 for petrol. I made a third phone call to Lloyds, obtained a claim number, but was told that while they would have paid for a taxi back to Birmingham, they would not pay for the petrol. GR, Birmingham

Different members of staff have given you conflicting information. To put the record straight: Lloyds' free travel insurance covers incidents in the UK for three nights or more of pre-booked accommodation and extra expenditure paid by you and your partner but not any costs by or on behalf of anyone else.So Lloyds is, quite rightly, paying for what is covered by the travel insurance for your extra three nights' accommodation, for your partner's one unused night in the hotel and half the cost of petrol because only you and your partner, not your niece, are covered by the policy. But on this occasion, the bank is going a step further. It has agreed to increase the payment to include another for your niece's hotel bill, for your son in law's stay, and the other half of the petrol bill. After paying the excess, you will receive a cheque for
Email Margaret Dibben at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Margaret Dibben, Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, York Way, London and include a telephone number. Do not enclose SAEs or original documents. Letters are selected for publication and we cannot give personal replies. The newspaper accepts no legal responsibility for advice.I was forced to abandon it in a foot snowdrift and it was never the same again when I recovered it several weeks later. Happy days!Don Sheppard of Ketley Grange said: “When we were children a long time ago in Dudley we used to play on one of these machines. It was just after the war and there were a lot of surplus old motorcycles lying about. Things like that were chucked out. If we saw one we would jump on it. The pedals still went round, although we had no petrol.”Chapter and verse came in a contribution from A. H. Minton, of Abbeyfield, Bridgnorth, who wrote: “The machine that Corporal Sandy is shown riding is almost certainly an autocycle, a primitive light motor-assisted bicycle of which many thousands were made in the The bicycle frame was a heavy-duty device like a delivery bike and it carried a two-stroke engine of originally later uprated to The engine drove the back wheel in one gear only to give a top speed of about A set of pedals was also fitted, driving the rear wheel, thereby providing a means of turning the engine to start it and also a means of giving ‘light pedal assistance’ on gradientsAs the autobike was much heavier than even a robust proper bike, the problem of getting up a hill was appalling. I doubt if anyone ever climbed Harley Hill with such a vehicle.Nearly all the engines were made by Villiers of Wolverhampton. The design was a grand example of everything the Japanese could do better, but it could be maintained by a complete amateur and every part could be bought off the shelf at the Dawley cycle shop, which was just as well as most bits needed replacement at some time.Lighting and ignition were both provided by a flywheel generator. The permanent magnets in this used to get weak, giving rise to mysterious poor performance. This was a little understood fault Nevertheless these distinctly uncool machines were reasonably cheap to buy and achieved 90 to 100 miles per gallon from the petrol of about octane. My very first machine was an autobike and many old men of my era will admit the same. At one of my Army postings I was amazed to see the adjutant arriving to work on an autobike.I believe a well-kept autocycle will command a surprisingly high price at a vintage bike sale.”According to Al Ussher of Church Stretton, autocycles were a favourite of nurses, and inMeanwhile the very mention of the Cyclemaster seems to have made Bill Picklescott, of Church Stretton, shudder.These contraptions were awful, as they hardly ever ran properly, and were so underpowered as to be nearly useless, except when brand new,” he said.I know, because I owned several of these ‘abortions,’ as they were called. With names like Cyclaid, Winged Wheel, Mini Motor, Power Pac, Cyclemaster, Adpower, and so on, very few people persisted with them, and got cars instead.The bike in your photo could be an autocycle made by Scott, a machine much stronger than the ad-ons, which had a 98cc motor and more robust frame, dating from Regarding the driving test course around the Abbey Church in Shrewsbury, I failed mine on a Raleigh moped, another wretched unreliable motorised bike, which let me down halfway through the test!