Vintage Scott

[georgie]

Back in 1948, I really did have the privilege of riding on a Scott motorcycle, girder forks, water cooled with a leather belt drive, could this be true, also 650cc. Please let me know any info, it cant be all fantasy.

[Geoff Case]

George have you lost the plot! That was no Scott,but it might have been a Wilkinson!!

[BRIAN MARSHALL]

Sorry, but it couldn’t entirely be true as apart from an experimental machine, well over 100 years ago, no Scott has been ‘leather belt drive’, as all production bikes were always fully chain drive. The Wilkinson motorcycle mentioned by Geoff was, I think, shaft drive, with an in-line four-cylinder engine. The Stuart Stellar motorcycle was a water-cooled two-stroke twin, with a very Scott-like radiator, but that was also shaft-drive.
I hope that you can fulfil your dream in the near future, but do forget the leather drive belt part of your reverie !
Brian

[georgie]

Thanks for the reply, The machine was a Scott, however I think that some of the info I gave was not true, I must have got it mixed up. The Scott was EX Military dispatch, from the desert hence the belt drive, the cc I think was incorrect.

[Geoff Case]

Sorry George the bike i wanted to mention was a Williamson not a Wilkinson. The Williamson was a water cooled twin pot machine based on a Douglas engine. A mate of mine was told of a “Scott in a ditch”,(he noticed it had a radiator) He zoomed over to the farm ditch and recovered the remains of a 20s Williamson attached to a “turnip chopping”farm implement. He gave it to the only other Williamson owner he found on the VMCC register .He was as pleased as punch to drive a long way to collect it as it was F.O.C. to a good home!

[jampotrdann]

i was looking at some records and it said the british army didnt use scotts in the first world war, scotts sent some for evaluation and they were turned down

[BRIAN MARSHALL]

It was the three-wheeler machine gun car, called the ‘Guncar’ that was evaluated but not ordered, but quite a number of more conventional Scott sidecar outfits were used by the Motor Machine-Gun Service. They were not a success in the cloying mud of the Western Front, and were generally too delicate for the average Squaddie to use. One delivery of brand new machines was parked up overnight in a marquee, during a hard frost, and in the morning every machine had a cracked cylinder block !! No antifreeze, and no-one had thought to drain them down overnight. The Clyno sidecar outfits that were also ordered were much more robust, and did quite well, but were of little practical use, and so the MMGS was disbanded. My uncle Charles Victor Toms (born 1898), was one of those transferred to the new Tank Corps from the MMGS. I have his pay book and photographs taken in WW1.
Alfred Scott was very disappointed that his Guncar was rejected, but it evolved into the ‘Sociable’ three-wheeler car, which in truth was too unconventional in appearance to appeal to many buyers.
Brian

[Dripfeed]

As the wills are on , another rare bike was a Willkin If memory is not too fuddled it was a side valve single of the 1920s at one time owned by Steve Dawson in the 1960s. Any more useless info needed just ask. RegardsD F.

[BRIAN MARSHALL]

No thanks, I’ve got more than enough already. My family tell me that I am a mine of useless information, but at least it comes in handy at pub quiz time !
Brian

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