Ken Sprayson / Arthur Wheeler 350 Guzzi
With the recent passing of Ken Sprayson at 94 years old, I thought it would be timely to look at one of the bikes he constructed a frame for during his over 30 years working on various special projects for famous tubing and fabricating company Reynolds.
This is by far one of the lower profile motorcycles worked on by Ken Sprayson in his long and distinguished life, but the machine seen here is the result of an interesting collaboration between Sprayson and English racer Arthur Wheeler that in 1959 saw the pair develop a new frame for his 250 Moto Guzzi racer.
The design was a success so in 1962 a second frame was constructed to house a 350cc motor.Â
A third frame was then fabricated for Trevor Barnes who then spent many years racing and developing the bike seen here.
The motor is a 350 cc race unit which was greatly modified by Barnes with many internal improvements including a twin-plug ignition.
Ken Sprayson was generally involved in some way or another with pretty much every frame design used in the British motorcycle industry throughout the 1960s and 1970s. It was Sprayson who fabricated the first ever production Norton Featherbed frame from the designs of Rex McCandless for the Manx Norton.Â
He also had a special connection to the Isle of Man TT and worked on frame designs with the likes of Geoff Duke, Mike Hailwood and John Surtees.
Sprayson even had a hand in the design and build of the land speed record holding Project Thrust II jet car driven by Richard Noble to a top speed of 1047 km/h. And that only touches on a sliver from his catalogue of works, almost all of which were successful.
