Twistgrips and Spanners
(2013)
Twistgrips and Spanners, that was the title of a regular column in the weekly Motor Cycle magazine of the mid 1960s (no longer known as the “blue-un” by that time as the cover colour changed weekly) written by the late John Ebbrell, where he described how to carry out various maintenance and repair work on motorcycles. “Molegrips and Hammers” it was unkindly called by some who thought that it was a bit too basic in the way the work was carried out. Yet John was not wrong in the way he slanted his column in those years as, much more so than now, most readers would not have had access to most of the tools and equipment that professional mechanics and long term enthusiasts with a lifetime of collecting such things would have had “to hand”. Most, especially us youngsters, had to make do with whatever we might have had or were able to borrow. Autojumbles were unheard of then and what tools people possessed tended to be passed down from father to son etc – and as my father was not a mechanic I did not get any tools from him that were much use for motorcycle maintenance, woodworking and gardening being his interests.
When I got my first motorised transport (a Cyclemaster motorised cycle) the only tools that I had were a couple of screwdrivers, pair of pliers and, yes, a hammer, plus a couple of stamped out multi size cycle spanners from Dad, which I supplemented with one of those rubbish cast multi sized ball ended “fit all” cycle spanners made of some sort of zinc based alloy from my local cycle shop. I didn’t even have a spark plug spanner, so that when I fouled a plug while playing about, it was several months before my motorcycling uncle gave me a box spanner which fitted the plug and he also supplemented my tool kit with a couple of proper spanners which were surplus to his requirements. Even so, my growing tool kit was hardly up to doing any more than the very basic sort of maintenance even when backed up by the addition of my apprentice’s toolkit when I started work with GPO Telephones. Tools back then were very expensive and even the cheaper ones were still far too expensive for me to buy when all of my meagre earnings from my paper round and later apprenticeship were needed in order to pay for the legal necessities in getting the Cyclemaster “on the road” and keeping it there with fuel and oil etc. Ever so slowly I managed to increase the size of my toolkit, mostly with old spanners given to me (or in one case found in the road). One or two came with one or other of my next three bikes and my Dad gave me a King Dick adjustable spanner. My own contribution was a few Melco brand tubular box spanners from Halfords, bought one at a time (all I could afford on those apprentice wages) as and when I needed a particular size. They were not particularly robust but did the job I needed them for. More specialised things, such as “C” spanners of the right size however were never available to me, I never even knew where to buy such things in any case as I had never heard of specialist tool shops, and I have to admit that my usual recourse when removing an exhaust collar nut was to resort to a screwdriver “drift” and a hammer. I might cringe at the thought now but there was no other way for me back then.
In fact it was not until my 21st birthday that I got my first socket spanners, as a present from a collective of uncles and aunts. Not a complete set mind, they were far too expensive for that, but a range of my most used sizes plus a tommy bar wrench and a ratchet wrench, together with a Paramo four inch engineers vice. A mixture of King Dick, Britool, Bedford and Picador makes, they were all good quality tools made by respected British companies – and cost an absolute fortune as far as I was concerned. I felt that I had finally “arrived” in the “tool stakes” and could now think of myself as a real enthusiast with his own proper tool kit. I still have all of those original tools and still use them regularly, although I have added many more to the number since then. In fact it started off an interest in collecting various types of spanners etc which has never really stopped and led me to appreciate them such that I could never bring myself to throw away or refuse any that were offered to me at various times. I have now passed some of my spare duplicates on to my son in order to build up his own collection of the now harder to get imperial (especially BSW/BSF and BA) sizes.
All my spanners up till my 21st birthday and therefore including my first sockets were BSW/BSF as used on three of the four the bikes (and Bond Minicar) that I had owned so far with the exception of an NSU Quickly moped with its metric sizes, more about that period later on. However the year before then I had got my first proper car (Austin A30) and with it the need for some AF sizes, so my first two additional sockets were half inch and nine sixteenths AF ones – and that is how it stayed for some time. Not being able to afford the price of the same makes as my existing ones I found that the German made Elora brand were considerably cheaper. “Absolute rubbish”, I was told by those who said they knew about such things, “won’t last five minutes!” – but they were all I could afford and they are still OK. I am still using them and with the passing of time the Elora brand is now generally considered as a good one. Ever so slowly I started to gain more proper tools and spanners of my own and so by the time I got married and moved to my present home in 1972 I could even boast that my metal toolbox with insert tray was actually full up with useful kit. With our Bungalow came a garage and therefore much more storage space for tools and bikes. My first bike which needed metric spanners was the previously mentioned NSU Quickly, which I had bought back in 1965. It came with one 10/11mm open ended spanner in its miniscule toolbox and that was the only metric spanner that I had for some time and I am ashamed to say now that for some time afterwards during my 1 year ownership of that model any other size nut on the bike was “attacked” with whatever nearest imperial size spanner “sort of” fitted, or the “adjustable”. In the end the need to do some more serious engine work dictated the purchase of a few more box/tube spanners – in metric sizes. With my new found space in the garage and growing number of bikes I found that more of them needed metric spanners and so I bought a few more additions to my socket set and gained some of the more common sizes in ring and open ended types as Christmas and birthday presents.
As my collection grew the number
of various well known (in earlier years) makes of spanners increased and
amongst the various names I started to have favourites when I found that I
preferred using some types to others and I formed a particular preference for
Williams Superslim and Gordon items. Carringtons Blue Diamond was an intriguing name but the
shape and feel of their items was just not as user friendly to me as the
previously mentioned ones. My collection of larger size open ended and ring spanners
increased with some American makes when a work colleague passed some on to me
that he had inherited from his father. His father had been a mechanic during
the Second World War and apparently when a lot of American vehicles and
aircraft were sent over for the war use, each one came with a full set of
tools. Unlike British items, which were all marked with the War Department
arrow head symbol, the American ones had no such identifying marks and so some
naturally got “liberated” along the way and these were some of the “liberated”
ones. By this time my kit of spanners had increased considerably and, having
great difficulty in sometimes finding what I needed I had to organise
everything into separate boxes and gain some sort of order. By this time cheap tools
from
Today there are huge numbers of cheap spanners on sale from China and India among others and supermarkets are selling complete socket sets for not much more than the price of a couple of beers and although they might be relatively poor quality (although you can get fairly good ones at very reasonable prices now and top quality ones are still available if you have the money) they are still far better than anything that I could afford when I started out. The unfortunate thing is that all these now tend to be only in Metric sizes and Imperial sizes can usually only be obtained as high quality and expensive ones from specialist tool suppliers or at the various autojumbles where secondhand examples can still be got for very reasonable prices. If you cannot afford the expensive quality items then it is probably better to go for good condition secondhand examples of those at autojumbles than to buy some of the not so cheap new ones advertised in magazines, which often do not appear to be of very good quality. So, especially if you have a bike with metric fastenings, there is now very little excuse (costwise) for resorting to the sort of worn stamped out cycle type and adjustable spanners, hammer and screwdriver drift type of butchery that many of us (if we care to be honest with ourselves) started out with as impoverished youngsters who could only dream of that much wished for engineers tool set.
Making use of my collection of spanners in
the 1970s
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