Les Diener's big cammy petrol tank

Les I were very aware that his cammy was rather outdated by the larger petrol tanks that had appeared as standard in 1934, and from time to time we discussed the possibility of deepening the tank to modernise the appearance, but we were always so busy on some new project, that it never went past the talk stage until...

Les and I both had farming cousins, and we had visited his cousins both at Golden Grove (these days an Adelaide suburb) and out past Murray Bridge in the mallee country. I had cousins further out to the East, right on to the Victorian border at Pinnaroo and Parilla. I had ridden my old pushbike these distances on two occasions before – a 2 day journey, sleeping in the railway wheat stack sheds at night. I was preparing to go again when Les said 'No, take the cammy’ – something that I naturally didn't refuse, especially as Les took my latest full race pushbike which he loved riding.

And so for the first time I enjoyed eating up the country miles solo, through the Adelaide Hills and on to the plains beyond. The country roads of that time were graded dirt, which required a skill I could manage, but suddenly a few miles from my destination, I encountered the usual phenomenon of those years – sand drifts across the roads! Still, an easily negotiable hazard at sensible lower speeds, but then I came over a rise and plunged straight into a solid drift. In a split second the right handlebar had dug in and bent right back into the tank! It was just a matter of sorting things out and resuming the journey, in a much more sedate manner, but with the bent bars and dented tank to remind me that I had committed the sin of bending our beloved cammy!

My cousins were skilled farm mechanics and the handlebar presented no problem, and so I returned home a few days later and returned the bike to Les. These things never fazed Les, we had a mutual friend who owned a new MSS which was always being sorted out by Les after yet another journey down the road, and Les surveyed the tank damage with little more than a shrug of his shoulders, and I collected my pushbike and pedalled home.

Les turned up at work the next day with a temporary can of petrol strapped to the bike and little was said. However, within a couple of weeks the cammy sported this huge new tank, freshly painted and. as Les said, it was an opportunity too good to miss to carry out the upgrade.
To this day I have no idea where he carried out the oxy welding needed to do the work. We were both skilled welders but we had no such equipment then. There is a good chance that the work was done as a trade off 'foreigner' at Kelvinators (Aust) where we both worked. While I was on day work, Les did regular 'week about' night shifts, and small 'foreigners' were a regular part of the machine shop's personnel's life, and Les would have been able to use the welding shop facilities on the night shifts.
Whatever, the job was done, and now the otherwise rather tatty looking Velocette, assumed a new look of importance!

It was 1939 and WW2 broke out at about this time, but almost 6 years later I had returned to civilian life, and the first priority was to completely rebuild my 1930 KSS Velocette, after the ravages of wartime use. I had aquired the remains of two more cammy machines, one a KTP in pieces, and the other a 1933 model with a split open cambox, also a KSS motor which Les had bought for me during the war, but it subsequently turned out to be stolen.

So, one of the spare petrol tanks was immediately savaged and deepened in my spare time, using the welding facilities of the Tuck and Diener workshop. I chose not to deepen my tank as far as Les had done, from memory mine was about 60mm deeper, while Les's had been more than 80mm.
Later the 1933 model KSS tank (with different mountings) was extended down 60mm, and the bike sold as a basket case with a 3 speed gearbox to Bruce Pederick. The original 4 speed box with patented external positive stop change mechanism had been removed from the complete bike with the split cambox within hours of it's purchase, and installed in my newly rebuilt 1930 machine.
All this modification and 'swappery' is viewed with dismay in this era, but back in those far off days it was a facet of our normal life!