VHA 1952

[adrie.degraaff]

Very nice bike, the tank could be India or the bottem is taken out for repairs, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ariel-VHA-50 ... Sw6VRaOkvO.

[dave.owen]

This is lynne Mitchell's bike.

Dave

[Leejm]

Does anyone know how many vha's were built over the two years they were available?

[davidak]

Hi Lee,

There's an article in Cheval (October 2002) that gives the total production run as 716 VHA (491 in 1952 and 225 in 1953) - the split for frame type was 102 Rigid and 614 Spring. Of course another interesting question is how many still remain...

Regards
Dave

[Leejm]

Cheers dave, that's not many at all. with that low figures I guess it's why it only lasted for two years Lee

[nevhunter]

I thought they were wedgewood blue. A difficult colour to keep clean. Apart from the alloy head and barrel what's different from the "ordinary" Red Hunter? Nev

[adrie.degraaff]

They are faster (inlet and exhaust angles are differend giving a rotation in the combustion chamber) and noisier (alloy).

[Leejm]

Only wedgewood in 53, in 52 they were the standard Vh colours. Adrie and nev I have read in some places that the VHA was 26 bhp were the Vh was 24.6 bhp is this true? If so is it because of the inlet and exhaust port angles?

[nevhunter]

For tuners, the angled ports seemed to be in favour. Some of the shortstroke JAP tuning could have migrated over to the "sportier" models I know the later ARIEL alloy motors had smaller exhaust valves and ports. You can vary the timing with the shape of the cam followers, also. It would take very little tweaking to get 3 or so more HP. I've seen Norton ES2's fitted with Ariel heads for trials work, back when that was a serious effort. The angling of the ports was the reason.
I have a theory the ARIEL oval track successes were not unnoticed by Harley Davidson in the 3 years before the second world war. The 61 inch Sportster heads bear a striking similarity and they were the basis of their "tracker motors" that got Harley the #1 plate after the war. The final motors Later XR 750 had much closer valve angles (to the vertical)then the early JAP and Harleys. The early combustion chambers were nearly half a sphere with valves at around 90 degrees to each other. This made a high compression motor have a combustion chamber like half an orange peel. Poor flame propagation and lots of ignition advance needed. The shaped and flowed ports on the later heads had nearly flat topped pistons and 17 degrees LESS advance and 42 + HP from each cylinder. In my view a good XR 750 Harley is a very collectible bike. Nev

[adrie.degraaff]

I have read in some places that the VHA was 26 bhp were the Vh was 24.6 bhp is this true? If so is it because of the inlet and exhaust port angles?

The VHA has a much lauder bang than 1954-58 VH when using the same piston, cam, carb and silencer, and is 10 km/h faster in each gear.