Big thanks to Cliff for posting all these interesting Stormer articles, absolute gold dust for fans of these bikes as it's not so easy to find information on them.
My Stormer story is as follows. I rode motocross for quite a few years in the Seventies as a teenager, starting with a Greeves Griffon, then a Bultaco Pursang, a couple of YZ400 Yamahas and finally a Honda 250, two-stokes all. As so often the case that stopped with the onset of work, marriage and children.
Then at the end of the last century I discovered the Pre-65 Motocross Club and decided to have a go in the Pre-74 class. I spotted a 1970 250 Stormer on sale at Cotswold Classics, and on the basis of a couple of photographs I bought it sight unseen. Turned out it looked better in the photos than real life (as is usually the case to be fair) but it didn't take much to get it tidied up and ready for a meeting.
First time out I was very impressed with the handling of the bike, but it wasn't really running right, it didn't feel as crisp as I thought it should. I tried a few bits of basic maintenance and it seemed to have helped, but when it came to the next meeting I couldn't even get it started, so a strip down was clearly in order.
Head and barrel off showed it to be on a standard piston and with some wear in the bore. Getting further down I could detect some movement in the mains, so I suspected that the seals would be shot too. Lacking the tools and skill to do the jobs myself I sent the bottom end off to AJS Motorcycles and had the lot re-done; big-end, mains and seals. In the meantime I'd had the cylinder rebored (the engineer had to go out to second oversize to clear the wear near the exhaust port) and I acquired a new oversize piston from Fluff, along with several small fasteners and sundry bits. I also ordered the MkII Amal upgrade, and had my airbox modified by AJS to suit.
The engine and other bits came back, all done, and I started to get the bike back together. I got as far as getting the engine and gearbox back together and installed in the bike, new piston, barrel and head refitted, and the new MkII carb installed. Then I had to move house. The Stormer was one of the first things put into my garage at the new place, accompanied by the big cardboard box of all the parts (old and new) that were not on the bike. Then other stuff went into the garage.
Long pause.
Roll forward 13 years to the spring of 2013. My brother is back in England after a career mostly spent abroad, and he has bought a Greeves Griffon and joined the Pre-65 motocross club, joining a workmate (and former schoolboy-scrambling friend) who rides an AJS Stormer. A couple of times watching them has inspired me to have another go, so thoughts returned to my old Stormer and its long slumber in my garage.
This weekend just gone, in the blazing heat, I finally took a deep breath and set about clearing out the garage in order to liberate the bike and bits. An unpleasant task, but at the end of it the bike saw daylight for the first time since the year 2000. The box of bits was also retrieved, and everything that should be there seems to be there, some parts carefully laid out in little boxes just as I had put them when dismantling the bike 13 years ago.
However it was apparent that a mouse or mice had set up home there at some point – the box was full of chewed up bits that had once been a new and unused foam air filter, or parts of various small jiffy bags that the new fixtures and fittings from AJS had arrived in. Apart from the foam air filter none of the actual parts I bought back then seem to have suffered.
Given the long lay-up the bike doesn't seem to be in too bad a condition at all – a little bit of dusty white corrosion on some of the aluminium parts but nothing that should be too difficult to make acceptable. Just about the only part that seems to have suffered is the handlebars that are speckled with rust, but they will be easily replaced.
I'm not going to be attempting a “Cliff-style†concours restoration; I just want to get it into a sound, usable and presentable condition suitable for riding in Pre-65 Club meetings. My brother's friend has kindly offered to help with another strip down and rebuild of the engine, no doubt the then-new seals that AJS fitted are now hard and useless, and I'll also fit an Electrex electronic ignition system and get rid of the standard points set up. New tyres will be a must as well, the current ones having apparently turned to Bakelite since they last tasted mud.
Here's a couple of pictures of the bike yesterday.
I'll try to post updates as the re-commissioning gets going, and hopefully end up with some “before†and “after†photos.
One final twist, that mouse evidently got a taste for AJS in more ways than one, and clearly didn't want to leave it even in death – I found its corpse lying on the engine, just underneath the inlet manifold.
