PLA 454L Roadster

Hi Neil and Malcolm. Thanks for picking up on this post which is now quite old. Looking back, I'm surprised I did sell it and for just £250!I had stripped it down into pieces for a rebuild and it had been leftin a lock up garage for several months when someone who knew me offered me the money which I took without really a second thought which I find nearly impossible to believe today.It was bought from that notorious North London dealer; Coburn and Hughesalong with two others that my friends also bought at the same time. The reg numbers were PLA 453 454 and 456, and it seems only my one has survived.

At the time the disc brake was something like another £30? extra but we all thought the disc brake looked ugly compared to the gleaming alloy 2LS brake so it was an easy choice to take the cheaper option and never regretted it as the brake was pretty powerful.

I have to admit to being initially very disappointed with the bike mainly because of the very poor paint finish and soft chroming on the fork stanchions which began to wear awaywith only a couple of weeks use and the black cellulose paint on the frame (not stoved enamel)was simply sprayeddirectly onto the metal without any undercoat or primer! Even the alloy was particularly well finished and buffed and was not much better than the later Indian Royal Enfield Enfield Bullets that were imported after 2000.

However, I loved the overall feel of the bike, which smoothed out beautifully after 3000rpm and could cruise easily at 90 plus mph sitting bolt upright with it's high handlebars. I found the handling completely different to the Featherbed 99 I had sometime previously, but still very acceptable apart from lack of feedback that made extreme cornering angles something of a gamble causing a couple of vicous "high sides" that I managed to stay on but made me a little more warywhen attemptingsimilar race style angles of lean. This behaviour was also witnessed and backed up when marshalling at thetimewith the Bantam Racing Club, where the 750 class races often has many Commandosrunning wide on corners with riders just not being able to set up their bikes to take a fast bend with confidence.I can rememberlaughing in agreement with my old mate and fellow marshal, Bob, as we witnessed these antics as we both knew how the rider had felt to have made the mistake. The exhaust note was second to none especially on the overun, with a very crisp roarty rasp that became louder when everything was just right and the engine was running spot on. I loved that sound.

With a complete rebuild and all the modern improvement the Commando must now be so much better, and the Roadster version must surely be one of the most handsome (prettiest) big British bike ever made. I would love to have my old one back and wonder if I would recognise some of thosecasting marks that are like individual footprints on any engine or other alloy castings. No it's not likely is it? I guessmany partsof it would be replacedby now. I know the the barrel was changed from silver to black by the bloke who bought it from me and this was not to my approval as the silver barrel suited the whole bike and made the engine look more powerful in my opinion. I shall never forget the one and only time I saw it after selling it. The new owner brought it round to show me, he was delighted with it and questioned me why it was so fast compared to other Commandos andabout the camshaftI had replaced in it. As far As I knew it was standard, but I had done some port work but what ever it was it washe was very impressed.After a few minutes morechatting, he started it up and shot off down the road with that delicious exhaust sound and it turned the corner, just leaving the sound to die to a silence as his distance increased and it was gone for ever. I remember feeling slightly sick and empty just standing there looking at thepoint that I last saw it, thinking what an idiot I had been to give it away. I turned and walked slowly back into the house feeling empty with a day that was now evengreyer than it might have been before.

Yes, I would like it back, and you never know, it could just turn up one day.

Les

Hi Neil. Yes, all three Roadsters werebought together, we tried to get an extra discount by playing Coburn & Hughes (Haringay) off against the Tottenham shop "Mooreâs Motorcycles" but it didn't work. We couldn't have tried that hard. I canât believe anyone would loose the profit on 3 bikes just for dropping the price a few quid on each, it doesnât make sense, but it's true. Yes the Commandos were very poorly built. On top of what I said, the fork oil seals blew in about a months use and the chrome was very thin too. On a later engine strip to replace the mains, I found it required a new camshaft that appeared not to have been hardened and a later gearbox strip showed quite a bit of wear on the cogs too, and they also looked as if they weren't hardened correctly. I can also remember just before we bought ours, there were loads of young American guys buying Commandos at Mooreâs of Tottenham after coming back from Vietnam. They used to Tour the UK and then Europe on them. As Mooreâs was so near to where I lived, it was a very common site to see all theNortons coming back under warranty billowing blue smoke and as far as I remember Norton then had to use better piston ringsto fix the problem. This was not a problem when we bought ours a year later though. The reg. numbers were actually consecutive by the way and were PLA 453L and 454L and 455L, I made a mistake before. I also made lots of typing/spelling errors too in the story so thanks for struggling though it. (Itâs a shame we canât correct things after posting).

I had to take my bike back to Coburns under warranty to get the forks fixed. It was immaculately clean with nearly a full tank of fuel and I had just greased the chain and adjusted the tension. I went back a week later to see my bike being thrashed down the road by one of the irks who worked there, they had been using it as the workshop hack. The bike was filthy, and the chain had about 3 inches of slack and also a dent in the tank! Of course, no work on it had been done. I went completely nuts and raged in a fury, but it was like water off a duckâs back, they could not care less. They just gave me the bits to fit myself and a workshop manual as a bonus it was very much like that in those days.

Just an extra footnote. One of my friends never liked his Commando as much as his Triumph Bonneville he sold to buy the Commando. The Triumph was the gold, oil in frame one and probably the plainest bonnie of them all! The other one, same orange colour as my one, was ridden off when my mate let a potential buyer take it for a test ride. It was never seen again, and he never rode another motorbike ever again eitherâ?shame. I just wonder if any parts of those Roadsters still exist todayâ??

I was more into âUndergroundâ music, Captain Beefheart, Zappa and other progressive rock jazz stuff at the time.

Les

PS. Pic shows the three of us after riding about 600 miles to John O'Groats a year before we bought the Commandos. You'll have to guess who are who.