LMC – Ian Bade’s 1913 Lloyd Motor Engineering Company bike

LMC

Underway at start 26th National rally 2019.

A potted history and anecdotes of some 60 years ownership of my 1913 Lloyd Motor Engineering Company (LMC) 3.5hp motorcycle – registration 74552 In December 1960, while on a touring holiday with his family in the South Island, Ian Bade’s father went off to get the family Ford Customline‘s muffler repaired while in Dunedin. He returned to the campsite with news that he’d bought a 1913 LMC motorcycle – which is still owned by son Ian! How’s that for provenance?

Words and photos Ian Bade

The muffler of our Ford Customline had been damaged on a rutted track leading to Lake Paringa before the advent of the Haast highway, hence the trip to get it repaired. To this day I do not know how he found out this bike was for sale. The story he told us at the time was that an apprentice builder had been knocking down the wall in a basement of a house they were renovating and the LMC was one of two motorcycles stored behind the wall, and was in running order. On our arrival back home Dad said ‘If I ever wanted to understand how an internal combustion engine works then a very early motorcycle engine is the best to learn from’, and duly said I could have the bike. I would have been aged 19 at the time.

As I did not know of any vintage motorcycle clubs in New Zealand I wrote to the Vintage Motor Cycle Club (VMCC) of the UK for information and they gave me specifications on tank colours (which was not quite correct) and also told me that mine was the first LMC they had on their register. In 1962 I set out on my big OE and on arrival in the UK in early 1963 made a point of going to the headquarters of the VMCC and meeting the officials of the club and talked about the bike.

THE RESTORATION

On my return to New Zealand in 1965 I commenced removing the rust from the wheel rims and mudguards which were quite severely rusted. Not having any skills or knowledge about restoration I just sanded away by hand with coarse sandpaper and in the process thinned the tinware so much it became as thin as tissue paper and see-through in places. So much so that when the pieces were taken to the spray-painters they had to put on such a thick coat of filler putty before the undercoat thus it was the putty that could be regarded as the mudguard! I knew nothing of rust converters and I am not even sure whether they were available back then. The result was that about 30 years later the rust had returned and I had to repeat the process. But this time I treated the metal before painting.

GETTING INFORMATION ON THE LMC

Catalogues and parts lists at the time were non-existent on the LMC. Thus I had nothing but the scrap of information from the UK Register. At some point I was told that one Andy Thomson of Kairanga, near Palmerston North had an LMC, so one day I took off up to his place on my Triumph 3TA motorcycle and went and knocked on the door of his farmhouse to be greeted by Mrs Thomson. She said that Andy was out on the farm and was very busy with lambing. Being a townie I had never given it any thought, but just as I was about to leave Andy arrived so I introduced myself and he then asked if I was related to the Northcote Bades to which I replied yes and then I explained that I had come to look at his LMC. Andy very graciously led me out to a huge barn type building jammed full of rows of motorcycles under dust cloths. He lifted of the cover of a bike which I could tell from the frame was an LMC but as it was jammed between other bikes that was about all I could see but was enough to encourage me to get on with my own bike.

Pre restoration

Photo Ian Bade. Copyright vcc.org.nz

REPAINTING AND OBTAINING PARTS FOR THE LMC

When I embarked on the repaint of the rest of the bike things started to go awry.

The first problem arose when I sent a wheel to the local panel shop to be repainted and I got a phone call to come down. They’d left the wheel in the stripping bath and had forgotten it. The hub was shrunk to about ¾ its size. I almost burst into tears not knowing what to do. But fortunately I had heard of McEwans Machinery of Kaiwharawara who were engineers and they machined me a new hub.

Next, I was given the name of a tank painter and I took the tank to him along with a 1910 tank that I had acquired, with the instruction to copy the colour. Little did I know the 1910 tank’s colour that looked gold was caused by petrol stains and discoloured clear varnish top coat! Apparently this was a common problem with LMC tanks. So gold it has remained to this day rather than the correct colour of aluminium. I then took the tank, which has a dropped end, together with the 1910 flat tank to a sign-writer to paint the green panels, red lines and gold lettering. The end result is the green panels follow the lines of the 1910 tank and are square and do not taper down like the drop down shape. Being in my early twenties I did not have the courage to tell the sign-writer he misunderstood me nor did I have the finance to pay for a repaint. The green panel was eventually corrected in February 2022.

Then the chain cover was sent to another painter. After three months of waiting I went down to his premises and found them emptied out. More tears. The painter’s wife told me they had had a marriage break-up and the painter had gone to Australia. I put in an insurance claim and one of their investigators found my parts at a motorcycle shop in a nearby town. That bike shop told me the painter had told them to help themselves to all their parts and others he had there for painting. Fortunately the bike shop had not sold my two tanks because they did not know the makes of bike they were from.

The tyres on the bike were perished and beaded edge tyres were not available in New Zealand. Because of the import restrictions a lot of owners at that time were forced to replace the beaded edge rims with modern rims and tyres. I was lucky in that I came from an importing family and was both a shipping clerk and qualified customs agent. I applied for and obtained an import licence for two beaded edge tyres. Through my father’s shipping agents I then ordered two Dunlop BE tyres from the VMCC of UK and duly fitted them to the bike.

The LMC had a kid’s tricycle horn when found so I imported a motorcycle horn direct from Klaxon. But I always wanted a brass bulb horn. The neighbours to our family holiday bach in the Marlborough Sounds always honked a horn to their family members when it was time to come in from fishing for dinner. One day I was at the neighbours’ for lunch and noticed the horn was in fact a Lucas King of the Road bulb horn for motorcycles. I asked if I could have it. I could, I was told, if I replaced it with another horn, so I swapped it for one of those cheap tourist TukTuk horns from Thailand.

Believed preparing forNew Zealand Vintage Car Club 2nd National Motorcycle Rally.

Ian Bade, copyright vcc.org.nz

JOINING THE VINTAGE CAR CLUB

About 1967 I heard that the VCCNZ had a motorcycle section, so I went out to the Wellington branch monthly meeting only to hear a report on the first national vintage motorcycle rally where I learned that I had missed it by a month.

I did however take the LMC to the 1968 Wellington branch rally, and the 1970 North Island rally. Both were held at Masterton. As I did not own a car at that time, to get to those rallies, I would load the LMC into the pram compartment of the electric unit train at Tawa station on friday morning and bring the bike to Wellington where I would leave the bike in the Left Luggage office at Wellington railway station while I went off to work. After work I would collect the bike and load it in to the guard’s van of the Friday night Wairarapa express and unload it at Solway showgrounds station. On the first occasion the rally organiser, the late Glen Bull nearly did a backflip when I told him I had bought the bike to the rally on a train.

In 1971 the second National Motorcycle Rally was held, this time at Wanganui. There being no train service from Wellington and knowing my brother Keith had an old American car with a towbar I asked him if would he take me and the LMC to Wanganui on a trailer. As a bribe I said we could take my Bradbury that I had recently purchased and that he had helped me assemble and he could ride it at the rally. (That Bradbury now resides in Motorcycle Mecca museum, Invercargill). The Beaded Wheels magazine report of that rally says the LMC “suffered a wet sump and a crank case full of oil but somehow I managed to drain the oil and finish the rally”. I do not remember how I drained the oil but I do recall the cause of the oil loss was because I set the pump tap to continuous flow and not to pump feed.

EARLY ASSISTANCE

The first person to come up to me at my first rally in 1968 was the late Richard Caldwell. He told me that his family had owned an LMC and he still had the front fork springs from it. That was great news as my LMC had mis-matched springs as obviously one of the originals had broken at some time previous. Another person to introduce himself to me at that rally was the late Sir Len Southward. His first words were ‘Ah! An LMC bike - Loud Mechanical Clonks’. Len was very good; he would later give me a LMC side-car chassis. One day he was driving down our street and stopped to talk about my bike which I was test riding at the time.

LATER WORK

At the 1997 National Motorcycle Rally in Masterton, while riding out near the Wairarapa coast, the LMC blew the priming cup out of the cylinder head. The late Dave Adams of Levin offered to machine a new thread and at the same time go over the engine. He determined that the valve guides and valve stems were worn so he replaced them. Dave also told me the engine of the LMC was in its original condition and had never been worked on and that the valves he replaced (I still have them) had the LMC brand stamped on them.

2019 RALLY BLENHEIM

I had not ridden the bike for a while and now with replaced hips, I arranged for my son, Leith, to push start me. Once going I set about remembering the settings of the gas, air and ignition levers. I then noticed the countershaft gear would not engage the lower chain drive gear. It was extremely hot and the engine started to get very heated. At about 7kms into the rally I came across a couple of short steep jump-ups. So I set up the engine for full power and attacked the rise. Just as I was getting to the crest the engine revs died and I stalled. So I sat on the bike waiting for Leith to catch me up and push-start me. On arrival he announced that the leather belt driving top gear had broken. It was in several pieces. Believing that I had no spare links I decided the rally was over for me. On returning home I ordered from the Waikato Branch a length of Whittle leather belt that they had in stock. After replacing the broken links I put the remaining links in the LMC’s toolbox. On opening the tool box what did I find? I already had spare links in there. Probably put them in there for one of my previous rallies and had forgotten. I could have continued on the rally!

EPILOGUE

The LMC now has a sister bike in my garage only four frame numbers apart and restored with more professionalism, experience and knowledge but I still like my old faithful.