Historic Motorcycle Brands
Whiting
The Australian Whiting Spring Frame motorcycle never went into series production, but exhibited sufficient innovation to warrant its inclusion in this Motorcycles Brand section.
In 1912, Melbourne-based engineer, Saville Whiting (1889-1973) – no known relation to HV’s Allan Whiting – penned his solution to the poor ride quality of early motorcycles that relied almost entirely on tyre sidewall flex for suspension. Few had any front suspension and none had rear suspension.
European and North American roads in the pre-WWI era were bad enough, but Australia’s were far worse, so machines and their riders suffered horribly.
Whiting’s solution was four semi-elliptic springs, two front and two rear, just as most early cars were using. To achieve that he designed a specific frame, with triangulated structures front and rear to mount the fore and aft spring hangers.
At the front, the forks were reinforced by rear-mounted, almost vertical struts and the spring hangers were fixed to two bars that ran parallel with the road and the leaf springs. Loads transmitted through the rear hangers were absorbed by the struts that led to top of the forks.
The front hangers were positioned at the ends of the cantilever bars. That looked like the weak link in this initial design and this was replaced on the later V4 model by a front end with quarter-elliptic springs that did away with the cantilever-mounted hangers.
The front axle ends rotated in brackets that were attached to the spring centre pads. The front end also featured adjustable pneumatic damping.
At the rear, the triangulated rear frame supported both ends of the springs, while the axle brackets were connected to the spring pads and the axle ends to a swing arm that oscillated inside the triangulated frame envelope.
Saville Whiting patented this swing-arm design and it’s still the preferred rear suspension design on most motorcycles to this day (albeit with a coil/shock unit, not leaves).
His first ‘mule’ was a Douglas-powered machine.
In 1914 and armed with his design, Saville Whiting set off firstly for the USA and then the Mother Country, in search of a company with whom he could collaborate in producing his machines.
Unfortunately, Kaiser Wilhelm II interfered with plans by introducing WWI and that considerably slowed the motorcycle project.
While in the UK, he partnered with Julian Forman of Blunt and Wray, an engineering firm and produced his second Whiting machine, powered by a 4hp, 494cc JAP V-twin. The March 1915 issue of Motor Cycling featured a two-page article on the Douglas-engined machine.
Saville then designed a 45-degree, air-cooled, 685cc V-twin engine, to power his next prototype, but the post-War slump in the UK restricted manufacturing and marketing opportunities. Whiting and Forman headed for Melbourne, where a factory was set up in Richmond, to produce V4-powered machines. The JAP twin prototype remained in the Old Dart.
Unfortunately, the economic situation in post-War Australia was no better than the UK’s so the operation soon ground to financial halt. Only one Whiting V4 was built and Saville rode it around for two years, including a trip from Melbourne to Adelaide and back, via Mildura.
The V4 bike languished in storage until after WWII, when Saville Whiting gave it away for scrap. In the 1950s, old bike guru, Jack Nelson, discovered that it had not been scrapped and tracked down the dispersed engine and frame bits. In collaboration with Saville Whiting, he restored the V4 machine to its original condition.
Also, the JAP-powered machine was returned to Australia and HV caught up with it at the Bulli Bike Show in 2019.
In 2018, the V4 Whiting was honoured with an Australian postage stamp issue. Note the quarter-elliptic front springs.
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