Although I had various semi-junk motorcycles before I was fifteen, I lucked onto a Ariel Red Hunter 350 that had been well cared for before I got it. I was working part time in a motorcycle shop at the time. An older guy tried to trade it in on a new BSA, but the shop owner didn't want the Ariel because it was a 350cc. Hard to sell, he said. I said too bad, I wanted it, but I guessed I was out of luck. He said If I can get it for the right money, will you want to buy it and work it off? Oh yeah, I said. So began my love affair with Ariels, and singles all in one shot. It came with an Amal TT9 carburetor. The first thing I did to that bike was change the exhaust to a megaphone, so I had to learn how to re-jet the carburetor and change the throttle valve in order to get less cut-a-way. Less cut-a-way means more acceleration with the more open exhaust. When I finally got the jetting right, it would pull like a freight train from 1000 rpm right to redline which was 6000. It topped out at a little less that 85 mph. For those of you who don't know, the Mikuni round slide carburetors are pretty much the same as an Amal Concentric. I got involved in flat track racing a year later as a tuner because I was a hot hand at tuning Amal carbs. I was considered a minor league genius at making our BSA Goldstar flat tracker an easy starter. And that Goldstar was one of the fastest around - it was tuned to the eyeballs. Why did it start easy? I hooked back up the compression release and the manual spark advance.
