UK-based photographer Del Hickey has a talent for uncovering unique machines, built by highly skilled individuals that would otherwise fly under the radar. This time, he’s dug up a real zinger—a modified Ariel Leader from a small village in Gloucestershire, England.
It’s the work of Ivan Counsell—a retired engineer and designer with little internet presence beyond his personal Facebook profile. Asked what he’s up to these days, he simply replies that he spends his time “making things different.” And this custom Ariel Leader sure is different.
The project was born when Ivan acquired the donor bike from a friend of his at a price that was too good to refuse. “It was in totally standard form and covered in dust,” he tells us. “Needless to say, it was neither pretty nor clean.”
Released in 1958, the Ariel Leader was a 249 cc two-stroke twin with a pressed steel monocoque chassis and a fully enclosed body. It carried fuel under its seat, with a faux fuel tank, mounted in the traditional spot, acting as a frunk. As you’d imagine, taking one apart is an arduous task.
“I can honestly say it has never taken me so long to strip a bike down in my entire life. How many nuts and bolts of different sizes can a motorcycle manufacturer possibly fit to one bike? Anyway, after hours of grazed knuckles, swearing, and much to-ing and fro-ing—gathering many sizes of British sockets and spanners—the tin wonder was finally dismantled.”
“Wondering what on earth I was to do with a mountain of tin and plastic, I advertised everything I had spare on eBay. A chap drove up from the South Coast to Gloucestershire and filled his Ford Fiesta to the brim with unwanted Ariel parts.”
“Much to my amazement, he covered the cost of the Ariel’s purchase and even left me with a few hundred quid to spend on it! Happy days! To date, I’m still in pocket—something that never happens to me.”
“It didn’t take long before I decided what to do with the Ariel. I remembered seeing George Brown’s Ariel Arrow sprint bike in the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham and thought, actually, that’s not too bad. So I started work, marking out where I would lighten the pressed steel frame.”
Going ham with the hole saw, Ivan gave the Leader’s monocoque an array of ‘speed holes’ before turning his attention to the enclosed front forks. Once he’d piled up all the bits of metal peppered across his workshop, he dug into the Ariel’s motor; “A simple affair, as two-strokes go.”
Ivan had a pair of Suzuki GT250 X7 pistons lying around, which were a perfect match for the Leader’s bore and stroke. So he modified the Ariel con rods to accept Suzuki wrist pins and installed the GT250 X7 pistons. The barrels were modified slightly, and the heads were swapped for Ariel Arrow items with a 10:1 compression ratio and a squish band.
Ivan also bored out the crankcase’s single inlet port, fabricated a new intake manifold to accommodate a 32 mm flat-slide carb, and added a foam air filter. The crankshaft was sent off for a rebuild, while a friend machined the external flywheel down to help the engine spool up quicker.
Ivan tried building his own electronic ignition for the Ariel Leader next—but wasn’t happy with any of his attempts. In the end, he built one using the backplate from a Triumph T120 points assembly, a six-volt battery, new condensers, and a new ignition coil.
“There was a reason I didn’t go overboard on tuning the engine too much,” Ivan explains. “I knew that when I rebuilt it, there would be more horsepower than the Ariel Golden Arrow. But the brakes are absolute rubbish, so a bike capable of over 80 mph would be bloody dangerous on today’s roads—or any road, in fact. I’ll address that problem at a later date.”
Although Ivan binned the Ariel Leader’s all-encompassing bodywork, a number of OEM parts survived the cull. The bike still has its original wheels, suspension, foot pegs, and rear fender, but everything has either been refurbished, repaired, or massaged.
The standard exhausts needed more than just a little tweaking though. “They’re longer than a double-decker bus,” says Ivan, “so I cut eight inches out of them. I also removed the inner baffle and, as luck would have it, inside the rear aluminum cone is a small tube. I pulled it out and reversed it so it protruded out the back of the cone, giving it a sort of expansion chamber look.”
“The exhaust note is quite pleasant and not too loud. I’ve made expansion chambers in the past, but this cheap option saved a lot of time. And the word ‘cheap’ suits this build very well, as I never intended to part with too much hard-earned cash on a motorcycle made with large amounts of pressed steel.”
To save even more money, Ivan started filtering through the countless motorcycle seats he had hanging in his shed for a suitable perch. “I routed around and found what I believe to be a Lambretta racing seat, so I grabbed it and placed it on the bike. I made up a hinged bracket to access the battery and used two sprung clips to keep it from flipping up.”
Ivan paints his bikes himself, usually opting for different shades of green. In a bid to shake things up, he picked ‘Sky Blue’—a color typically used by the British military on their engines, that Ivan notes has a suspicious green hue to it.
Although this is the first time we’ve seen a custom bike from Ivan, it’s not his first (nor his last) project. “I’m now trying to shy away from Brit bikes, as I’ve had them since 1971 when I was 11 years old. I have a 1972 Harley Shovelhead that interests me more, so that will get the treatment later this year.”
“I have a passion for all bikes, but I’m afraid early Japanese stuff still does it for me. The engines are easy to strip and rebuild, and the gearboxes are lovely to use. I’ve worked on hundreds and hundreds of them since I was 15 and owned around 150 of them—including other makes, it totals over 200 bikes.”
“I’m always planning what to build next. Unfortunately, important stuff like working on the house gets a back seat—much to the annoyance of ‘her indoors’.”
Images by, and with our enduring thanks to, Del Hickey
