User:Seasalt/Rudge
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Charlie Salt
Picture 1 shows Bill Nicholson and Bert Hopwood demonstrating the Super Flash to the French police at Monthlery April 1951. Picture 2 is a feature on the event from a French bike magazine. Picture 3 may be from a different magazine or issue and interestingly describes the bike as having 2 carburettors - it clearly doesn't.
The French police wanted a bike that would haul a fully-equipped Gendarme sitting upright at 100mph. The only way the BSA test riders Charlie Salt and Bill Nicholson could do this was to chin the tank in the wooded section of Monthlery where they couldn't be seen, get to 100 then sit up just as they emerged from the trees and into view...
http://www.restorenik.com/Super%20Flash/details_and_specifications.htm
1957 Charlie Salt (GBR) Ulster GP Death
Roland Pike discusses Gold Star development, "Charlie Salt once set out to design a new crankcase for the Gold Star using a high camshaft, but it had to look like a BSA he was told. Sunbeam and Rudge had both made high camshaft engines pre-war with chain driven camshafts." http://www.restorenik.com/daytona/RP_chp_23.htm
Charlie SALT - Senior TT, 1957, Isle of Man http://forums.atlasf1.com/showthread.php?postid=1721605
Rode in TT from 1946 to 1957. It was mostly Norton with a bit of Velocette riding till 1951, when he rode for BSA. His best ever TT result was a tenth place on a Pike-Rudge in the 1952 Lightweight, and for BSA, a 13th in the 1951 Ultra Lightweight TT. http://www.iomtt.com/TTDatabase/Races.aspx?meet_code=ALL&ride_id=1153
The record breaking Senior TT Race and the Golden Jubilee celebrations are marred by the death of Charlie Salt who crashes a BSA motor-cycle at Ballagarraghyn Corner and is killed during the later stages of the 1957 Senior TT Race.[12]"The Motor-Cycle" dated 13th June 1957
[edit] Email received
Charles Francis Salt was a 43 year old motor car dealer from Streetly, Staffordshire. An experienced rider, he’d been riding for 25 years and had competed in the TT, Manx and Ulster TT.
The senior race of 1957 was run over 8 laps for the first time, and it was on this final lap that Salt crashed.
At 2pm, as he raced through Gorse Lea, about a mile before Ballacraine, the engine of his BSA seized. Struggling to contain the wobble, salt and his machine struck a low stone wall and a concrete post adorned with red reflectors, ripping it from the ground. Salt was thrown 33 feet and landed suspended between a beech tree and the wall, from where the injured rider was recovered by spectators and laid in the field.
Dr Bull attended from Ballacraine and found the poor man unconscious and with multiple spine fractures. He did come round sufficiently to ask what had happened.
Salt was placed in an ambulance and arrived at Nobles hospital at 3:30pm, but despite the administration of oxygen and blood transfusions, he succumbed to his injuries.
His wife and young son were spectating from the grandstand at the time.
The above info is taken from ‘Monas Herald’, a local paper of that time.
Strange thing about Gorse Lea. It’s probably one of the safest parts of the whole course, and I think that’s probably been the only accident ever to occur there. I guess he was unlucky that the organisers added two laps onto the race that year, which his bike just couldn’t handle.
