The Brough Superior – the creation of George Brough – is a motorcycle known to almost all two-wheel fanatics. However, did you know that Brough motorcycles go further back in time?
In 1902 William Brough (father of George) created his first motorcycle, and by 1913 and he developed a 497cc overhead-valve flat-twin which sat in-line with the frame. In was a beautiful motorcycle, however there are very few left and so being able to find one, let alone afford one, is out of reach for most. So what other options are there? Well, this is a story on one such option. In this article, Dave Clark talks about his quest to build a W E Brough from an original engine that he acquired from Bonhams back in 2012, and we had the privilege of having a look over the motorcycle at the 2025 Kop Hill Climb.
Words: Dave Clark
Photos: Dave Clark and Rich Orriss
I usually am sent the Bonhams Auction catalogue and look through to see if any Broughs are listed. The Stafford 2012 October catalogue had arrived – I had seen the Brough Superiors and had not given much thought to the OHV 500cc flat twin W E Brough listed in the automobilia section. It was in good external condition, and turning over with some compression.
Image Credit: Bonhams
A week or so later I had looked again through the lists, and noted the fact that the engine had no number. I have dealt with several W E Broughs in the past and I knew where the engine number should be. Interest started up and I rang Bonhams who confirmed that there was no number anywhere. I then asked if they had any other information from the seller other than the bare details in the listing… back came the reply that it had come from the granddaughter of someone who worked for the Brough factory, as an electrician.
What next? Well the only person who might know something was Barry Robinson, so I rang him. I had hardly finished telling Barry and he was already telling me exactly what the engine was – a factory works engine. It had been on display after being cosmetically restored by Ron Storey and placed on the works display stand in the canteen.
I then thought of bidding for it – the only W E Brough works engine known (also there are only 14 W E Broughs on the register). I certainly could never think of buying a Brough Superior works engine – I would get blown out of the water by all the big money collectors. I asked Barry to keep it quiet, also Mike Leatherdale who I had talked to.
Image Credit: Bonhams
Initially I thought of a maximum bid of £6,000, but I did not want anyone else to get it. I started sorting available funds and had my bidding increments set out on a spreadsheet, so I could see final totals with commission and VAT. Initially registering an absentee bid, I then changed this to phone bidding.
It came the day and I was watching online, and finally the phone call came from Bonhams. Lot 11 was starting, and online I watched the bids going up, eventually starting in around the £10,000 mark. Going up in £500 steps, by the time it had got to £14,000 I was literally shaking with excitement, or was it fear or trepidation? The bids kept going and at £16,500 I went for one last step up to £17,000. I heard the auction room go very quiet, and then the wonderful sound of the hammer. The Bonhams chap on the other end of the phone said, “We’ve got it”! I had taken a real step in the unknown, what if the engine internals had major problems..?
I collected the model W engine from the Bonhams depot in North London, and spent some time just looking over it. Eventually I took off the front head and cylinder so I could have a peek inside – and had a wonderful surprise – standard bores and the crank and rods were quite highly polished, so it all looked good.
Barry Robinson kindly sent me some model W information, a 1923 catalogue picture, and a 1922 fine detail picture of a similar machine. The earlier one had 26 x 2.75 wheels, the other 26 x 3. Howard Wilcox also gave me a catalogue reprint and other stuff. I then scanned the model W photograph from Ron Clarks book. So these few photos were all I had to go on and no chance whatsoever of a correct frame turning up.
I scanned the detailed photo into the PC and into photoshop, and using some of the features of this programme I tweaked the image as best I could to take out photographic distortion. I then blew it up to half full size and printed it off in A4 sections and stuck it together. Photoshop allows you to increase the image size onscreen, and I used this considerably to measure at full scale, checking against known measurements on the engine, and the width of the gearbox and wheel diameter.
The next step was to measure up and set out the crankcase full size on a 6′ x 4′ sheet of white faced hardboard, adding in basic cylinder dimensions, the gearbox and what little I knew. John Wallis kindly provided one of the genuine Brough steering head castings. These had been used, probably after William Brough died, as hardcore for the concrete of the yard, in an extension to the Vernon Road works in the 1930s. In the 80s I think, Mike Edwards was showing someone round and happened to be at Vernon Road. Part of the site had been sold off to build houses in what is now Kingfisher Court. While they were there the yard was being broken up and various castings emerged from their concrete tomb… there were mostly model G steering heads, but there were flywheels and a cylinder from a single cylinder job.
I gradually built up the drawing, which occupied many hours, head scratching over the details in between the gearbox and the rear wheel. I kept a pad by my bed and woke during the night (quite a few times) and scribbled possible solutions down.
When you do something like this its very easy to construct an outside ‘envelope’ into which things must fit. I had chain lines, which the frame tubes had to be clear of. Even so, I probably redrew the gearbox frame part at least 6 times if not more, thinking all was OK only to realise there was a measurement or some other requirement that I had not taken into account.
Eventually I started on the straight engine plates that mount to the crankcase, and then cut the ‘T’ shaped ones that bolt to these. Most of the 1/4″ thick shaped plates were cut by chain drilling, then hacksaw, with final work using an angle grinder or file. One aspect of this frame showed up well in the picture from Rons book. The saddle tube lug forks into two ,totally unlike any other WE frame. This model W in the picture, registration AU 6012, is actually that ridden by Freddy Stevenson in the 1922 Edinburgh trial. This lug, as with all the others, was fabricated. Starting with a steel wire bend as a pattern, a rectangular strip of steel was heated in a forge and slowly worked around to match the pattern. It was then setup and lightening holes bored into it. Then a considerable amount of angle grinder work was used to take the rectangle to a ‘D’ cross section shape. Next the tubular parts of this lug were machined up and electric arc welded to the forging. Finally the whole assembly was machined up including the end sections that had to go into a ‘D’ shaped tube – which I also did not have and was not a standard tube size. So I made it, cutting a piece of round tube lengthways in half (it was only about a 12″ length) and making the requisite strip of flat plate to be the back. I arc weld the lot together and finally ground and fettled and dry fit it to the forging. Next were the two spade shaped ends that also had to fit into the ‘D’ tube. Luckily these were dead straight, so I machined these from solid steel bar.
I could now temporarily clamp the saddle tube assembly to the engine plate sets. Once these were set I drilled for the necessary studs. It was now possible to start fitting the two petrol tank tubes and get an idea of where the steering head was to be. The biggest headache with the steering head was it had to be cut, sleeved, brazed up, two new steering head bosses machined and finally finished… oh, and I had to make the top steering head races – luckily the lower set were the same as early Brough Superiors. Lastly I had to be sure that the side spring Druid forks with front wheel in place (neither of which I had) would give clearance to the front engine cylinder.
With the front section sort of completed I started on the rear half. The rear wheel lugs were chain drilled from 3/4″ steel plate, then milled, and a general repetition of what I had done before – forging to shape, more ‘D’ tube profiling and another two shorter lengths of ‘D’ tube for the rear wheel lug sets, plus making a die to squash round tube into ‘D’ section for the saddle stay tubes. Finally I had a near complete frame, requiring lugs for the rear dummy belt rim brake, chainguards etc.
The wheel hubs I machined from billett steel – the rear is Enfield cush type; the sprocket has a very distinctive spoke pattern and this came from Simon Miles. The front hub is a 5″ Webb lookalike, with shoes from an autojumble almost twice the width. So for both I used ball races chosen to fit the dimensions I had. I decided to go for wired on tyres. Hagon the wheel builders had some alloy rims that almost exactly match the profile of the first Dunlop wired type. I asked about painting the rims and back came the comment – have them anodised. Yes please, and so they are matt black. The 2.75 x 21″ Continental tyres came from an internet supplier at £39 each.
The forks were made out of lugs milled and ground out of solid, the oval tube was round tube squashed into shape and hand finished. I did get two original Druid fork links though. The bars are 7/8″ diameter, and are TT pattern – mounted in figure 8 lugs slung underneath the top yoke.
With the wheels built and tyres fitted, I could now test out nearly all of the frame build, with minor adjustments and then a major brazing session.
The only part I left was the position of the side-spring fork anchor lugs on the main blades. These were positioned once the bike had all its major parts in terms of weight and then they were brazed on. The fork springs are a pair of vintage saddle springs I had.
While all this was going on I had completed a heavyweight Sturmey gearbox. I cast a new racing type end cover, with no kickstart boss. I found the correct layshaft in my box of bits – the sleeve gear was worn as usual so this was reground and the mainshaft diamond hard chromed and ground to fit (this was beautifully done by Philpotts of Luton). The clutch I chose was slimmed down Norton 16h type that I already had. The engine sprocket was made from a pilot bore sprocket blank, machined, left hand threaded and then hardened and tempered – then there was the sprocket right hand threaded lockring.
Back on the engine, all the parts were stripped of the chrome plate done when Ron Storey did the engine. Now the bores were honed, looking very good on standard bore. These went away for nickel plated bases, along with the other engine parts.
The only major engine fault was that one of the valve rocker arms had been welded and looked suspect. A tap with a toffee hammer confirmed this when it snapped in half! It was too critical a component to repair in my opinion, so I got a chunk of case hardening steel, machined and filed a new one out of that, and then hardened it.
The valve guides were very worn out (remember its a race engine) – they had been cut off flush inside the ports so as not to obstruct gas flow. When I punched them them out, they were barely 3/4″ long. The valve stem size was 3/8″. I made the new guides from Matchless 500 single ones, a bit longer than what had come out. New conical style valve springs were made by Paul Savage.
I had to make new pivot pins for the rocker arms. They are plain bushed-steel on steel and I modified the pin design to fit grease nipples. The only part actually missing on the engine were the two decompressor levers. I made a crude template from thin card (it was actually a cornflakes packet), and worked the design up from that. I use the said cornflakes packet quite a lot when making patterns of stuff to be cut out of steel etc. There is always some in the house.
The cam follower rollers also had new pivot pins. All these pivots were made from silver steel, hardened and tempered. At one point I found out when looking on the internet that William Brough had pinched the cam follower/tappet guide design from Douglas.
The Best and Lloyd oil pump that was on the engine was brand new and still had manufacturers grease on the inside. Obviously Ron Storey had drawn a new pump from the works stock when he did the engine.
New big end rollers were the last thing I wanted, which came from the Vintage bearing company.
The tank body was rolled up from 1mm sheet steel and seam welded on the inside centre strip. Then more cornflakes packets were used to get the templates for the ends – a mammoth session of bending, annealing, and tin bashing eventually got me to those bits.
The oil tank is inside the petrol tank. I decided to weld up a steel box, and then weld that into the tank. With all that done the ends were welded on very carefully using sheet steel welding clamps to align the joint edges. The filler cap necks, oil pump mount block and other fittings were soldered in place. Then hours of tidying up welds, sorting blemishes and final polishing for the platers.
The magneto is a CAV unit, purchased from eBay because it looked good. The mag was stripped, and the armature rewound. It had new bearings, all the missing screws were made in stainless steel. As an afterthought I made a coupling cover shield in case prying fingers get anywhere near it while running.
Next it was the exhaust pipes and fishtail. Two exhaust nuts were milled from round bar and screw-cut to fit the heads. Then the tail pipes clamp/stay was bent up from steel sheet. I got hold of some preformed bends for the tight pipe radius at the cylinders head end. Wire templates were made for the pipes and tubing was gradually cut and shut welded to get the shallower bends. They were finally fitted to the bike to make sure everything missed where it should do. The fishtail was made from an alloy billet at the pipe end, then more cornflakes packets were used to produce the wrapper template for the 4mm alloy sheet. This was formed over a timber mandrel, then the local welder did the necessary, leaving it looking like a casting.
I had also made the chainguards from the same alloy sheet, bashing out the primary case clutch dome. The welder did the rest again. I finally hand engraved ‘Brough’ on the primary case and polished the lot up.
Originally the bike would never have had a primary chainguard, but I had to do this and the worst bit was making the central mounting bracket. This fixes on the two studs holding the straight engine plates to the engine platform. You have to leave out the front stud, with the bracket swung out of the way while the flywheel is fitted, then bring the bracket down to fit the stud. Impossible to do otherwise – a sort of Chinese puzzle from Nottingham!
Oh and I nearly forgot the saddle. I had a subframe and some springs, but no pan for the leather. I had made a saddle years ago and never thrown away the wooden block for that. So a large sheet of steel was bashed about and annealed until that was OK, and I made all the adapter plates and bits except for the stem clamp which came from club spares.
The leather for the top came from an eBay supplier as did the extra thick felt which came from RAM gaskets. Therein lies a tale. I sort of recognised the name and location of the seller RAM gaskets. Many years ago as an NHS Hospital Engineer I dealt with the steam ancillary supplies firm James Walker of Woking. The rep I dealt with – Frank Ellson – left their employ and setup his own company – Ram Packings in Truro. He is now long gone, but I got a good deal from the eBay contact after I had asked after him.
The leather was rough cut to size, laced down on the block to a load of steel hook-eyes in the block base and stretched whilst being damped down. When I judged it was right it was then removed and temporarily clamped to the leather strip I had rivetted to the steel pan using a myriad of clothes pegs. Then I started stitching, about ten o clock, finally finishing at about half past two in the morning.
The toolbox case I had made and welded up. I got some millboard from the car restoration firm Woolies for the interior lining. The leather front was the same as that for the saddle. More stitching took place followed by the final assembly with a refinished and replated correct type Brooks lock.
I wanted some frame transfers, and used the very early Brough design. This was translated into vinyls by a firm called the Image Works, located in the holy city of Nottingham.
After a considerable time ,or so it seemed, all of the parts were back from the painters and the platers. The assembly went quickly, and the only thing I had to alter was to file a shallow scallop in the offside rear engine plate to clear the exhaust pipe.
The controls are different from original in that I used a Bowden quadrant type for the front brake, and an Amal internal twistgrip for the throttle rather than levers.
Eventually I wheeled the bike outside, filled it with petrol and oil, and primed the oiling system. I ran and bumped it down the garden path. I got some hiccoughs showing it was going to fire, and eventually it did, but not too well. Checking everything over I readjusted the tappets which had settled, and had another go – better but still not good.
The only thing was the Amac carburettor. I made up and fitted a type 6 Amal from new bits I had. The next try and it went. It turned out to be very noisy being straight through pipes, and it also started to smoke! I had two float chamber full runs and then left it.
The next job was to fit new rings. I tried to leave as much original kit in the engine as possible, but compression said they had to go. The rings were 70mm bore by 4mm wide. I made the width up by fitting 3/32” 680 JAP rings, plus a 1/16” ring from Matchless G3 in the one groove. You can take the heads and cylinders off in the frame, and as a result I had new rings installed in just under two hours. The starting was much improved, however I did realise that I had to quieten it down a bit.
The Brough is very low, the saddle height is just under 29” and all up weight less than 200 pounds.
All the effort has been worthwhile, those who have seen it think it stunning. One thing is that it will never leave these shores while I am still about.
Having sorted out minor teething troubles, and also fitting nylon lined throttle and clutch cables, it was apparent the engine was not responding much to advance /retard, and it was very easy to push start. Checking the compression ratio by measuring the oil it needed to fill the combustion chamber at TDC, I worked out why. It was just over 4:1. The Brough catalogues and articles said that engines were available with low, medium and high compression ratios. I think at some point the engine had been fitted with the low compression ones.
Some careful measuring gave me an idea of the piston shape required. I have access to a small foundry at a local school, so I cast a piston and machined this so I could see it and check the compression ratio that would give about 7: 1, so that was OK. Next was to find someone who would cast, and more importantly heat treat castings. All the so called piston specialists drew heavy mutterings and there was no result. I had used a foundry near Hitchin to have some brake drums cast, so as a last shot I rang them. “Piston castings sir, certainly. We have LM13 ingot and heat treatment no problems.” I made a better pattern up and went to see them.
Talking to their man Steve gave me an edge I was not expecting. Many moons ago I was a Royal Navy Engine Room Artificer (I did the 3 1/2 year apprenticeship etc). It transpired that Steve had been a Royal Navy Stoker, and so much lamp swinging then took place (stories for the uninitiated,) both real, tall and the rest. So two weeks later, and at an excellent price I collected four fully heat treated LM13 piston castings. I have no hesitation in recommending them for vintage work.
It takes about two hours to machine one piston. “Ovality” all the so called specialists go on about is carefully done with an extra smooth file, and then I machine finished the valve clearances. I took the bike on a few test runs and it has a much better engine response.
I polished up the last bits, and fitted a pair of new Lodge H1 plugs of the early type with mica insulation and nickel plated fins. I had one, and then another new one turned up on eBay, so I had to have that!
I was quite happy with the front brake, but the rear brake was still giving me worries. The rubber which I carved the block from had a tendency to jam on, no matter what I did. The leading action of the brake was causing the rubber to distort and then wedge itself in the brake rim. I had experimented with an oak block to get the shape, and while doing another job (putting new circular ferodo inserts in a Sturmey Archer clutch), an idea came to mind.
I drilled out the sides of the oak block so I could press in several of these ferodo inserts. When fitted, there is not so much braking area, but the ferodo bit more importantly released.
Hugh Palmer had sent me some W E photos, including an original copy of the one Barry had sent me. I scanned this into Photoshop, where you can enlarge and see all the details, down to the “Brough” logo stamped into the toolbox leather. That was it, a little online research found people who could make a stamp, at a price. Well I’d made nearly everything else, so ever onwards. The stamp was printed out in mirror image at full size; this was paper taped onto an aluminium block and the outline of the letters dotted through with a centre punch. Then I ground up an old chisel into an engraving tool ,and spent about an hour gradually cutting out the lettering. I then cut the aluminium into the necessary oval shape. Squashing the new die onto an old piece of leather briefcase in the garage vice produced a result. So I then did it for real on the toolbox, and it looks great.
Next on the agenda is Kop Hill climb. The last time that one of these Broughs most likely ran up Kop Hill was in 1922, with a team from Nottingham competing in the ACU quarterly trial. The numbers before each entry is the start time.
And that will be about it for this year. The Brough is coming indoors for the winter, so I can sit on a crate and look at it. To quote the Motor Cycle review for the 1922 Olympia show:
“The model in question is one of the best-looking machines in the show, having a nickel plated tank with rounded corners and of course the long separate exhaust pipes ending in an aluminium fishtail, which all good sporting models should have”.
an article by Dave Clark for The Girder Club
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