AJS & Matchless Owners Club

If anyone on here has ever spent holiday time with Roger Nicholls on bike breaks in Brittany, France . . .
Just to say he needs whatever support can be mustered from the 2-wheeled community following a truly catastrophic shed fire that has taken out a dozen of his machines, including some tasty stuff - Trident, Bonnie, MAC Velo, several classic Beemer twins . . . 40 years worth of effort up in smoke, or turned into molten aluminium.
His dogs alerted him in the small hours a few days back, but nothing to be done, intense fires being what they be.
FB users can see what I'm talking about here, on his site. Luckily, no human casualties, apart from the mental side obvs.
Insofar as they are able, folk here in France are rallying round, and so are a lot of classic UK riders who have benefitted from his legendary hospitality and good humour - some AMC people among them.
Really devastating, desperately sad. These are good people, cruelly afflicted.
https://fr-fr.facebook.com/CountrysideHolidaysInFrance/

That is sad news my condolences. ;-((

Heart breaking news, hope you can bounce back and at least build a replica of your most favourite bike surrounded by pictures of all the others . Recall all the happy memories they once gave you.

Indeed yes Rob. I'll pass your kind thoughts on.
Luckily, Rog is a very resilient guy. Unbelievably so really. He was over here for lunch a few weeks back, while I was doing him a magdynamo for one of the salvageable machines (now running he tells me) and the least I could do, and his humour is intact.
His sidecar bikes were in another shed so unscathed, and his biking holiday business is running again as far as I know but without his solo bikes to play with.
People from all over (the world) have rallied round as only bike people can. He says he didn't know he had so many friends, so that's a sort-of positive that's emerged from the horror story I think.
(Whatever caused it (jury's still out on that I think), I now turn off the power in my shed completely at the main fusebox, except when I am in it . . . . and have battery isolators on all bikes.)

Groily,

did you mean main switch? A battery isolater has a very specific function found in larger vehicles only.

-Knut

Just mean a simple switch to disconnect the battery Knut. On a couple, I simply have accessible fuses, so pull them out. (But not the things you find on HGVs etc, no.)
Evils being addressed (hopefully very unlikely evils but you never know!) include back leakage via possible regulator fault (had a Jaguar catch fire in front of my eyes once owing to a cut-out not opening on switching motor off); faults in switches various; and ever-present small rodents who aren't fussy eaters. These last have persuaded me to switch off the mains power too, just in case, as they're a regular cause of grief I'm told. Although any house is at just as much risk of that, I'd have thought, and houses are warmer and more inviting for the hungry small mammal population. I'd be more upset at the loss of the shed than the house though, come to think!