Increasing Size.. 45 to 74 ?

I think the real answer to the tug-of-war question would be an "AMA solution" ie you just keep moving the goalposts around until they end up over the 750cc sv Harley... The AMC clutch fitted to Matchless machines is the same one fitted to Nortons, used extensively for racing machines up to 750cc Norton sidecar motocross outfits and supercharged Triumph twins on grasstracks and sprinters, so I would say from experience of both that it's every bit as strong as the H-D unit, with the caveat that it doesn't have the sheer mass and won't stand sustained slipping in the way the H-D one will, partly because it's designed to run in an oilbath chaincase.

Do I know about 45s? A little... I've had several over the years and they are a lot of fun. That said, the cycle parts are hugely overweight and the gearbox is dreadful. When I started my current project I didn't look at those parts of the machine, just the engine. I've had a bike like this before and I know how much of an improvement axing 100lb or so and providing 4 speeds will make. It's a great shame the bike wasn't designed that way in the first place, as it so easily could have been.

45Brit, I knew you'd see the light eventually thanks for the chuckle. I think we have the goal post properly planted now.
I figured the clutch would be similar to the later Norton, but I recalled BSA's practice to use the same basket, etc but fewer plates for the smaller engines. Any place to save a buck, er, £, shilling, pence, whatever.
DD

[Pa]

Doc.... It is true the smooth bore was used extensively by uniformed troops of chess game battle mindsets and the British were well equiped with soldiers and supplies. Thus Valley Forge was so Damaging upon the Colonial Army. The British won most of the major battles during the war. I apparently was not clear enough when I brought the rifle up. I was refering to non trained fighting personal. In other words the settlers who stood their ground during the French and Indian war on behalf of the British Crown, were the turning point of the war. The Pennsylvania long rifle did the actual damage to the enemy forces via longer range capabilities and the strategy of picking off the enemy like turkeys. No longer was war waged in lines of dominos. Non trained farmers and woodsman won that war. Not uniformed school cadets. The British Army was far superior in numbers but they would not trade a gentlemans means of battle for a win by all means attitude. Gorilla fighting was now the weapon of superiority. I am quite lucky to live where such folks walked the earth. George Washington himself surveyed this area as a British hired surveyor. And as a British officer, he fought off waring Indians for the Crown of England. Up until just shy of the Revolution, he surveyed even more of the Ohio Valley on foot and via canoe. George actually canoed to the Mississippi River and walked the Ohio River all the way back to what was known as Fort Pitt [now Pittsburgh, PA], taking notes in a diary of each and every day of his venture. The purpose of this walk...which he did in the month of November of 1770, was to decide on what acreage he intended to purchase as his own. George never got to purchase the lands he wished to purchase. The war came about and ruined his chances of ownership. George did get to build one mill on the, what is now the Ohio / Pennsylvania border. That diary can be found in the Library Of Congress. Daniel Boone also had interests in the land surrounding the staked out lands that George set a claim on. Though never a politician, Daniel holds much history in Ohio, not just Kentucky, which borders Ohio. Daniel is another awesome history lesson not taught in schools.

My understanding of the matchless is its speed capabilities. Well know for its range of speeds throughout the gear box. High speeds mean less low end pull. Right ?

really the whole issue of the American colonial wars is a study in an early form of assymetric warfare. The colonists didn't have to win, all they had to do was not lose for long enough for the British to conclude that they could not win a meaningful victory by purely military means. The British, like every other European power, understood that a military occupation of a virtually unlimited area, several thousand miles from their political centre of gravity, was simply not feasible.

leaving out Mel Gibson-style posturing about "fighting like gentlemen", the orthodoxy of the day dictated that a government could not effectively function without a dominant military force in being. Hence the British victories of the Seven Years War, by which 'Er Maj ( Gawd bless 'Er ) still appears on Canadian postage stamps ( you know, those ones with hockey players on... ) or the British conquest of India, achieved in large part by selective defeat in detail of the armies of the local princes and potentates and the consequent political realignments.

Likewise it's no use hiding behind a tree picking off individuals, when you are faced with thousands of enemy troops in massed formation.

come to that, the British understood perfectly well that the war could be won by systematic destruction of the colonials' means of subsistence. This was no different to the approach demonstrated by Sherman in the subsequent American Civil War, or the "blockhouse" policy used in South Africa in 1900-02. However the political thinking of the day precluded this, bearing in mind that the American Constitution was, and remains to this day, an outgrowth in extremis of 18th-century British political debate.

one thing which has always intrigued me are the various legends linking the American Revolution to the Napoleonic leader, Marshal Ney''

http://www.salisburypost.com/2001oct/100601c.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Rudolph

re Matchless, wrong. Better cylinder filling provides more power and more torque. Sidevalve engines were widely credited with having more "low-down" power than ohv units, but this simply isn't correct. The 350cc Matchless was a softly-tuned machine with relatively small ports and valves.

[Pa]

Mel Gibson ? Oh...you mean the movie "The Patriot". I haven't had the pleasure of seeing it yet.

England knew full well they could not crush the Colonists unless they disarmed them. The Colonists knew this also. "The Shot Heard Round The World".

The diaries of both sides are more credible than any modern day scholars accounts.

I still go with the 45 in tug of war.

I don't know about "The Patriot" but Mel Gibson's version of Scottish history has made him a hero North of the Border and a laughing-stock South of it. There's a can of worms if you want a long evening's tiresome ranting, almost entirely devoid of actual facts....

Diaries from the 1600s and 1700s are facinating documents. The authors were mostly people of some education, because you had to be to keep a diary then, writing without thought of publication about things they mostly believed strongly in, or against.

The British view of the American rebellion was essentially that the distances and cost of attempting to contain a relatively small, widely dispersed population at such a distance from home was never going to work. There were those who dissented, and there was a considerable difficulty in assesssing with any accuracy quite how comprehensive the actual support was; but once the military had demonstrated that they could win the battles without winning the war in a political sense, there was no will to fight on.

The British never regarded the end of the American War as ceding all claims to a territory extending to the Pacific. European doctrine regarded a nation as constituting those areas effectively controlled by the government of that nation.

It's also important to remember that in Europe, "Revolutionary War" is a term applied to the huge conflict arising from the French Revolution of 1789.

The British were still in Canada, and saw no reason why they could not expand down, West of the Great Lakes and the Rockies and into the Mississipi should they see fit, with no implications in respect of the fledgling Unites States - effectively New England, the upper South and the Old North-West.

However the French Revolution and the subsequent Revolutionary War and Napoleonic Wars, meant that Britain was fully occupied on its own doorstep for the next twenty-five years; the French over-reached themselves in Russia, there was a brief and inconclusive war with the US ( more assymetric warfare, with both the British and French reluctant to take the risk of driving the US to side with the other ) and by then, the window was closed. The Lewis and Clarke expedition was a highly political act; combined with the Louisiana Purchase it meant that by 1806, the US had staked a de-facto claim to territories beyond the Appalachians which was in accordance with European notions of sovereignty and an occupation would at that point, have been an act of war against a recognised sovereign nation.

[Pa]

I don't know about "The Patriot" but Mel Gibson's version of Scottish history has made him a hero North of the Border and a laughing-stock South of it. There's a can of worms if you want a long evening's tiresome ranting, almost entirely devoid of actual facts....

Diaries from the 1600s and 1700s are facinating documents. The authors were mostly people of some education, because you had to be to keep a diary then, writing without thought of publication about things they mostly believed strongly in, or against.

The British view of the American rebellion was essentially that the distances and cost of attempting to contain a relatively small, widely dispersed population at such a distance from home was never going to work. There were those who dissented, and there was a considerable difficulty in assesssing with any accuracy quite how comprehensive the actual support was; but once the military had demonstrated that they could win the battles without winning the war in a political sense, there was no will to fight on.

The British never regarded the end of the American War as ceding all claims to a territory extending to the Pacific. European doctrine regarded a nation as constituting those areas effectively controlled by the government of that nation.

It's also important to remember that in Europe, "Revolutionary War" is a term applied to the huge conflict arising from the French Revolution of 1789.

No one believes Hollywoods account of the Scotish situaton. thought the flick was very entertaining.

Even the uneducated Indian kept diaries, though they were primitively recorded in nature.

Spain and France lost the will to continue also.

Have to agree on this one.

What a world...heh ?

[Pa]

The British were still in Canada, and saw no reason why they could not expand down, West of the Great Lakes and the Rockies and into the Mississipi should they see fit, with no implications in respect of the fledgling Unites States - effectively New England, the upper South and the Old North-West.

However the French Revolution and the subsequent Revolutionary War and Napoleonic Wars, meant that Britain was fully occupied on its own doorstep for the next twenty-five years; the French over-reached themselves in Russia, there was a brief and inconclusive war with the US ( more assymetric warfare, with both the British and French reluctant to take the risk of driving the US to side with the other ) and by then, the window was closed. The Lewis and Clarke expedition was a highly political act; combined with the Louisiana Purchase it meant that by 1806, the US had staked a de-facto claim to territories beyond the Appalachians which was in accordance with European notions of sovereignty and an occupation would at that point, have been an act of war against a recognised sovereign nation.

When ya want the whole pie each piece comes at a cost.

Lewis and Clark ? The term "what goes around comes around" comes to mind.

Now about the Matchless verses the HD 45 ?

Scots believe in Mel Gibson, curious though it may seem

I'm not sure about France "losing the will to continue". The French Revolution didn't happen as a random act out of the blue, but was predicted several years in advance by quite a few people. The British certainly foresaw it, and this was a significant factor in their thinking to abandon the American colonies. There was no military reason why the British couldn't have continued the campaign from Canada, and established posession of an unlimited amount of territory beyond the Appalachians, but the cost and logistics were unrealistic given the expectation of a major war near home in the foreseeable future.

Lewis and Clarke were specifically sent to establish a political claim to the Louisiana Purchase territories and beyond, it being generally disputed that they were Spain's to transfer, or France's to sell in the first place. The Purchase was arguably contrary to the then-US Constitution. By establishing a de-facto presence and particularly, by carrying out a survey by a formally constituted government agency which had the specific power to negotiate with any nation it might encounter, Jefferson made a completely logical response to the situation.

The Spanish and French claims were not universally recognised precisely because their only actions there were carried out by free traders acting on their own behalf. On that basis, Britain, France, Russia, Spain and indeed the US had claims to the Western seaboard by virtue of the traders operating there on their own accounts. Jefferson's actions were generally recognised as establishing a legitimate claim to represent a de-facto authority there, and head off the possibility of a multi-sided war of aggression, which no-one wanted under the circumstances.

Apart from anything else, Spain's American colonies were generally perceived as being in a state of collapse, waiting for someone to come and push them over; a feat accomplished by John Wayne, Davy Crockett, Hoss Cartwright and a number of other ludicrously-hatted worthies a few years later. This was all very well, but it isn't far from Spain to Britain and Spain were "the Old Enemy" at the time, and to provoke a war with Spain at such a time would have been a long way from Britains' best interests.

Damn,

Can the history class be dismissed?

[Pa]

Damn,

Can the history class be dismissed?

ALMOST GEORGE.

[Pa]

France solicited the Indians who finally saw through the solicitation. Same goes with England. A hand full of meek Pilgrims staked claim in the Americas and was soon followed by great nations such as England, France, Spain and every other major power of Europe at the time, seeking the benefits and resources the new land possessed, once pilgrims acknowledged those resources abounded. Each nation sought to enhance their own domains. This is very understanding, considering the threat one another had upon each other. From furs, lumber, and gold, the powers at hand sought it out. the possiblities of such great rewards drove all past nations into wanting a grasp of such resources. On the other hand..... The meek meant to live a free life. Free from forced gov regulations and gov dictated religious beliefs. It was this that drove the Colonists to revolution. Not one European nation was selected for rule. Colonists... [ from every nation known at the time]via escape from gov slavery, brought forth a new nation, under God, indivisable, with Liberty and Justice for all who sought it. In other words....Man Can Rule Himself. He needs no King. Nor does he need anyone above each citizen. The People ! By the People....For the People...and Of the people ! Nothing more....nothing less... Fortunately, the new world of nations, recognizes, the struggle those Colonists over took and the present govs of the world realized the errors in which they made. The Americas as not the only lands this took place on. There are still a few govs and people who refuse to acknowledge this. Forunately....forums such as this puts history such as this behind us all. Again...fortunately folks like us know better than to use history as a basis for present friendship and understanding. And again....fortunately the predicessors to us cannot influence our friendships today. We have though....most of us...learned how and why it all happened. This knowledge is what unites us today. We all actually learned from it all ! What was done was done....what is now is up to you and to I. History lessen is over now.

history lessons cannot now be taught thanks to America's more recent gift to the world.. political correctness....

Personally, I like fat chicks.

ok, now we're talking serious stuff...

[Pa]

Works for me too !