Classic Bike AT LUNCH WITH...
‘Wrecker Rowley’ was a hugely experienced industry road tester in the 1970s and ’80s. He explains how he managed to end up on the board at Norton
Twenty-six years in the British motorcycle industry saw Bob Rowley progress from degreasing BSA crankcases to being a director at Norton. For much of that time he was riding, on the road and at the MIRA industry facility, testing and developing bikes before they reached showrooms. Bob, a relentless throttle-twister famed for his wheelies and stoppies, was called ‘Wrecker Rowley’ by some, a name he considers unfair.
“That came about when I was testing the Commando,” he says. “I broke three crankshafts in my first week at Norton. Managers got angry if we gave them a problem that could hold up production, but it was my job to find weaknesses. Maybe it didn’t occur to them that customers could have the same things happen.”
Bob started as a teenage Velocette rider at BSA’s Birmingham plant in 1967, lured by better wages than he’d been on at a precision instrument company where he was the UK’s youngest MoD-approved calibrator of military submarine depth gauges.
“I worked on the engine assembly track with Bob Heath [later a top 1970s road racer – Ed] washing crankcase halves with hot trichloroethylene [a toxic, volatile fluid now banned] in a degreasing tank. After being blown dry and racked to cool, they were heated again on hotplates to fit the main bearings. I asked our foreman Jack Lunn why the mains weren’t put in while they were hot the first time. He said: ‘Try it,’ and that’s what we did.
“Jack came to me one day and said: ‘You ride bikes in all weathers, don’t you?’ He said that Sepp Ellis, who was in charge of testing at Umberslade Hall [BSA/Triumph’s new R&D centre at a stately home], was looking for riders and I should go for an interview.
“I got the job, but didn’t get off to a good start. On my first day, we were getting ready to be shown round MIRA by Dave Bean [later a senior Yamaha Europe tester]. When I put my foot on the footrest of a 500cc Triumph to fasten up my waxed-cotton trousers, it fell off its sidestand. I’d dropped a bike before I’d even ridden one! Dave Bean said the stand design was poor – and if it happened to me, an owner would be bound to do the same one day.”
