Back in 2010 or so, I decided that with just a Sunbeam S8 in my garage I needed another bike. With two bikes I could have one bike for riding and one bike for fixing – as the Sunbeam was requiring fixing on a regular basis! The bike I fancied was a BSA A10 Golden Flash, however after a lot of searching in New Zealand I couldn’t find anything half-decent for a decent price, so I started looking at the dealers in the UK.
While doing so I found a great looking 1958 BSA Shooting Star for a decent price at Venture Classics, a dealer that was recommended by a magazine I’d written articles for. The fact that it was originally an A7 that had had an engine transplant probably helped the price, along with the fact that it was painted black rather than the original sparkly green. A lot of emails, phone calls and negotiation went on till it got to the point where I thought a good deal could be done.
Now came the hard part, getting agreement from the lady in charge. Being the brave soul that I am, I thought the best way to go about this was to email her from work stating the pro’s and con’s and telling her if I could land it for this much I could easily sell it for the same or better when it arrived.
As soon as I got the go-ahead I emailed the dealer to say its a done deal – woohoo!
After arranging delivery and customs clearance, a couple of months passed before I got an email saying the bike was ready for pickup. Immediately I took a day off work, hitched up a trailer and drove for nearly an hour to a warehouse near the airport to pick it up. I remember thinking it was a strange shape when they loaded it and once I was home, I unscrewed one of the panels to find…a jet-ski??? A phone call, which included some swearing on my part, and another hour later found me back at the warehouse where another crate was loaded on the trailer.
This time I took off a loose panel before leaving and had a peek – holy moly! – I decided right there and then that I’d done the right thing, there was all this glossy black paint and very shiny chrome in the crate, it looked beautiful.
Once I had it home, I managed to attach the handlebars and kick-start and somehow prised it out of the crate and off the trailer by myself. It was about then that it started raining and weirdly all this fog arrived? All I wanted to do was throw some fuel in the tank and take it for a blast but thought better of it in wet foggy conditions with no lights, as I hadn’t hooked up a battery. At least I can see if it’ll start, so, I presume it’s the same as my Sunbeam, turn the fuel tap on, tickle the carb until I can feel some petrol then kick…ok, kick again and then it fired up..very loud woohoo, what a great noise!
Finally, an hour or so later the weather cleared, all was ready for a blast up our local (rural) road. Wow, what a blast, it seemed so powerful after my Sunbeam and made a fantastic noise, just great!
A day or two later I hooked up a battery and expecting the worst – the wiring looked terrible and Chris, the dealer, had told me it would need re-wiring – tried the electrics. Wow, just about everything seemed to work including the horn and the light in the speedo, fantastic.
So, now I needed to get it registered, this took some time as the powers that be decided they didn’t like the over-stamped frame number so I had to jump through a few hoops, and complete more paper work before I could take it for its first fitness test. Funnily enough, somehow my bikes speedo seemed to increase by 500 miles between entering the country and getting the paper work completed? And quite a lot of the time, during this 500 miles, I would leave home on a perfectly sunny day only for it to cloud over and rain at least for some time while I was out – maybe someone was trying to tell me something?
After one such countryside cruise I was nearly home when I noticed the toolbox lid had sprung open and of course all my tools were no longer in the box. I retraced my route but couldn’t find anything. A couple more Sunday rides followed until I spotted a familiar rag on the side of the road, where I walked up and down and rediscovered my lost tools – fantastic.
Once I had the bike registered, I proceeded to ride it everywhere, doing the Distinguished Gentleman’s ride as well as our local Fire Brigade Poker run. The first time I did the poker run I’d gone all of 10 meters before I lost all drive to the back wheel, the problem was obvious once I’d stopped, the rear chain had broken! I did win a prize for the first break down, would’ve been very hard to beat.
Despite this setback the bike proved very reliable. It would always start, first or second kick, if not I would wiggle the magneto pickups and it would be good again, it didn’t happen often enough for me to bother fixing it.
I found the bike useful for supermarket shopping where I’d suddenly need some ingredient for dinner which could only be found in some far off supermarket.
Other uses were commuting to work which involved at least 30 minutes on a packed motorway each way, lane splitting and lots of stop-start progress, sheer madness on a fifties bike.
On another ride I picked up my dad’s ashes from a funeral home and delivered them to my mums house to give dad one last ride.
It was a great bike and I thoroughly enjoyed riding and owning it for nearly 10 years, the BSA swinging-arm frame handles really well, and the 32hp Shooting Star engine was great. However as mentioned elsewhere, it developed a bit of blue smoke and I decided to sell it and try something else.
