It’s not usual for me to explain my thinking behind a design, or to write about it in this way. I usually prefer to let the end result speak for itself. However, in this case I’m now firmly committed to the idea that I won’t be offering the Pilgrim Precision for sale (as was the original plan) and so I thought I’d share some insight into the evolution of the project.

Advance Warning - caution required

I’m quite happy to acknowledge that the following is delving into levels of granular detail that could leave many visitors to this website cold… or more likely dangerously hypothermic. If so, and before you get to that stage, please feel free to skip it altogether or maybe just enjoy looking at the pictures; no offence taken (and none intended I’m sure)!

A potted History of the Flat Tanker

To begin at (or near) the beginning… it all started a little over 120 years ago…

A potted History of the Pilgrim Precision

To begin at (or near) the beginning… it all started a little over 10 years ago…

The Premise

The flat tank motorcycle existed in its purest form from around the end of the First World War until around 1928 to 29. It’s reign as the ‘way to make motorcycles’ was finished once step-changes in design took motorcycles into their next phase as leaps forward began to appear that wiped away the old pattern of doing things.

The premise of the Pilgrim Precision is very simple… I love flat tankers and view their simplicity and purity as their greatest strength. In the 1920s the ones that worked properly (not all of them did) were king of the road and were ridden alongside the other vehicles of the day much as motorcycles of today are ridden alongside their contemporary road companions - cars, vans, lorries, busses etc… that is, they’re not meant for riding alongside the rest of the traffic, they’re meant for riding past the rest of the traffic. This is what largely allows the motorcyclist of today, on the right roads at the right time in the right places, to still feel the freedom of the open road in a way that has gone forever for those on four wheels or three, except for those lucky souls who still live and travel in the remoter places of the world… (or those with a legitimate reason to travel during a 15 month global health emergency when everyone has to stay at home, but in fairness I never saw that coming at the time)

The problem with riding a flat tanker today is that up to around 40 or maybe 50mph there is some chance to ride them as nature intended but after that it’s largely game over. Many’s a time I’ve found myself on a flat tanker sitting at the lights positioned as I would be on a contemporary bike (almost anything middle-weight built after around 1970 will do it to be honest) only to remember as the lights change that I’m on a bike that is over 90 years old and will struggle to do what I expect of it.

Hence the premise is this: what performance would be needed from a flat tanker to be able to ride it with modern traffic in the way that the flat tankers of old were capable of and what performance would I need to make journeys around rural Warwickshire understandable to me as a motorcyclist in the 21st Century?

From this came the higher question that the Pilgrim Precision seeks to answer… if the step-changes that heralded the end of the flat tank era had never occurred then how far would the flat tanker have gone?

The following story of building the bike seeks to answer that very essential and pressing point…

A bit of background

I have lived and worked with motorcycles for almost 40 years. (Just checked the dates and that’s correct - sounds like a bloody long time to me!) This has always meant a passion for the contemporary and the state-of-the-art (which I ride on a daily basis and which is also my job, after all) but also, in parallel with this, a deep-rooted interest in older bikes. Initially this really meant the bikes of the 1930s through to the early sixties. I bought my first ‘old bike’ in my early-twenties and immediately found the added bonus that I could insure a knackered Triton (‘56 vintage engine AND frame!) for as little as 60 quid fully comp and add my two year old CBR600F onto the insurance as a second bike for an extra tenner!! The hidden benefits of classic motorcycling were becoming clear…

History has always been an amateur past-time (no pun intended) of mine and although I’m quite capable of reciting anorak-levels of technical information with a nerd-like enthusiasm when the occasion demands, I am actually far more interested in the social history of what people were up to and what their lives may have been like, living as we all do, with our toes permanently dangling over the edge of the abyss of tomorrow without the first idea of what’s going to happen next. (“We were building for peace… between the wars” as Billy Bragg memorably wrote.) I’m acutely aware that reading history backwards as we all must do creates a completely false impression about how the sequence of events played out and how much or little chance the people of the time had to see what was coming next. The global events of February 2020 are a sobering reminder of what this is like to live through and how, with 2020 hind-sight (again, no pun intended!) everyone’s an expert after the event… always a day too late.

A while ago, my passion for old bikes shifted back in time somewhat and I found myself particularly immersed in the vintage era, which runs from 1915 to 1930. The changes in society and technology over that period were simply tumultuous. The transition to the modern age was gathering pace, any vestiges of the old world had been annihilated in the mechanised carnage of the trenches and the post-war era coincided with the final relegation of craft and craftsmanship* to a folksy half-remembrance of something that once engaged the majority of adults in their daily lives at one level or another.

*(Can’t think of a gender-neutral phrase which encompasses the deep meaning of this I’m afraid although the term has always applied fully to all sexes since the dawn of time and that’s the spirit in which I use it.)

First steps into the Vintage era

The first flat tanker that came my way, in the Autumn of 2012, was an AJS (Wolverhampton) ‘big port’ E6 from 1925. Although I had been looking for quite some time and was really after a 500 from one of the better-known makers (OHV or OHC), the 350cc big port managed to catch my eye. It was an icon, both now and in its own (original) lifetime. The only 350 ever to have won the Senior TT - in 1921, when the same bike had won the Junior earlier in the week - with the epitome of OHV performance learnt from aero-engine work during the First World War. By 1925 it was becoming eclipsed in road racing by the OHC competition, but for the early twenties it was the ruler of the roost and had the added appeal that by the late-twenties it had become the hooligan bike of choice for the youth of the day; the 350LC of its time. It was also a master class in minimalism - light enough to be held off the ground at 90 degrees to the body by any owner who cared to demonstrate - and it seemed quite a few did.

I initially intended to take what was an 80% complete project and get it back on the road but then the bare metal condition proved too beguiling for me to want to cover up in paint and nickel. The information that the bike exuded about how it had been designed and made seemed to be a one-time opportunity to get to know a bit more about the thinking behind motorcycle design in the early 1920s... And so I left it as I found it… and haven’t managed to bring myself to change it to this day. It really is a unique and lovely thing.