My brother Peter, first started racing a 350 Manx back in 1970. After his first season on th Manx he wanted something faster and bought an Oulton. It was first sold to a racer in Ireland before it came to England. At this stage in it's life the only change from the standard specification were the 'Gordon Blair' expansion chambers. All the deficiencies of the standard Oulton were present, so soon we were were regular customers at 23A, Moor Street, Spondon. This was the shed behind the butchers shop were Bob Stevenson and Stuart Tiller had the fledgling Spondon Engineering. Bob at this time had the fastest Oulton in land, which was tuned by Brian Woolley. By the end of 1971 our Irish Oulton looked like this;
You can see the Spondon swinging arm with the eccentric chain adjustment and the Spondon forks and brake, which was originally a Fahron design. The GP carb is now fed through a dell 'Orto float chamber and sparks are from a battery and coil rather than the Stefa flywheel magneto. The Albion clutch had been replaced by the Griffon unit. The standard Greeves head has been replaced by the radial fin head which was to be used on the 500cc Greeves powered SELVA. The tank was the standard Oulton unit with the top 3 inches sliced off. Not very elegant, but it did help to keep the head down below the screen of the fairing.
You can see the Spondon swinging arm with the eccentric chain adjustment and the Spondon forks and brake, which was originally a Fahron design. The GP carb is now fed through a dell 'Orto float chamber and sparks are from a battery and coil rather than the Stefa flywheel magneto. The Albion clutch had been replaced by the Griffon unit. The standard Greeves head has been replaced by the radial fin head which was to be used on the 500cc Greeves powered SELVA. The tank was the standard Oulton unit with the top 3 inches sliced off. Not very elegant, but it did help to keep the head down below the screen of the fairing.
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