Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2019 i Real Classic

Today was a revelation, not of the religious type but of the motorcycling type. I had a test ride on the new Enfields, back to back. First the Himalayan 400 single and second the Interceptor 650 twin. Initially things did not bode well for the Himalayan as I had to climb onto it, being a bit short in the leg, but once riding I loved it to bits. The handling is perfectly balanced, engine torquey and it's perfect for lumpy backroads. All the bumps were soaked up without me knowing they were there. After 50 years of riding many bikes this was the easiest bike to ride I have ever been on. After just a few miles it felt like I had been riding it for ages, so easy were…

I was the technical and service manager at Ducati UK (Coburn and Hughes of Luton), and visited the 1974 Milan exhibition with Mike Coburn, Clew Hughes and Ray Elliott who were the directors. I saw the 125cc Regolarita on the exhibition stand, however I had seen this bike in the Ducati factory's experimental department on previous visits to the factory. I visited the Ducati factory on a fairly regular basis as part of my job as Ducati UK's technical manager. Franco Fame, the head of Ducati's experimental department who I knew quite well, asked me what I thought of the bike. Franco knew that when I was working for BSA I had ridden in three ISDTs and won two gold medals, so I said to him it would be nice…

When you set out to buy a classic bike you can never be too sure where the journey will take you. That has certainly proved to be the case with the Royal Enfield Continental GT I bought last year. Much has been written about this little bike and I am sure many readers are familiar with its idiosyncrasies and history . I had wanted to own a Continental GT for many years - since the days when they were launched - but at £270 in 1965 they were way beyond my budget and I consoled myself with a £30 Bantam. When I saw this one for sale I made what was for me an easy decision, and brought it from its last owner in Essex to where I live in…

Bike builders and restorers have never had it so good. There's a rash opening statement for you. We can all hark back to the days when up and running bikes were fifty quid each (or often much less), and parts were correspondingly cheap. Back wheel for a Triumph? Eight quid . Norton petrol tank? A fiver. Sure enough, we weren't paying the stratospheric prices witnessed today, and you could still put a bike together relatively cheaply. Back then for many of us originality wasn't that big a deal. We were just cobbling things together to keep old bikes on the road, and half the time we were taking factory tinware off bikes and fitting all manner of aluminium or fibreglass 'go faster' goodies. If you or your mates didn't have…

When Martin Gelder (known to many RC regulars as 'RealMart ; from message boards of yore) died in 2018, I lost one of my oldest and dearest friends. He'd arranged for his bikes to go to his friends and my name was on the list. One option was his 1983 Moto Morini 3% Sport, which I'd briefly crossed paths with before. It was the subject of our April Fool joke on the world endurance community - we were 'entering it for Le Mans 24 hours ; saying that we were 'down on power but hope to make up for that with far fewer fuel stops: The Sport is small, praised for its great handling and has a reputation as an ideal first classic bike, being relatively simple to work on.…

I have been very fortunate to own many of my dream motorcycles, but the Royal Enfield Interceptor Series 2 has slipped through the net on three occasions. The first time was forgivable. In 1970 I saw the pictures in the bike press and thought that the big Enfield was the sexiest twin on the block, but it was way beyond my student budget. Some years later, I was racing in America and a fellow rider offered me a mint Series 2 for not much more than a decent meal out , but I was only really interested in competition machines. I drooled over his garage floor but the Enfield stayed in California . The final time I didn't buy an Interceptor was when I had a whopping mortgage of death-defying…

Once the dust had settled after the Great War, it became clear that America's thriving motorcycle industry would struggle to survive in the 1920s. The initial abundance of multiple pioneer marques contracted massively. The pattern followed the same path as the British industry, where dozens of one-man workshops collapsed or consolidated into major concerns. But America always does things big - including industrial decline. At its pre-war peak, the USA could count nearly a hundred motorcycle marques but after WW1 there were only three left standing. One of those was Indian, and the Springfield firm certainly struggled to adjust to the post-war situation. Before the war, Indian was the biggest motorcycle manufacturer in the world with the most up-to-date factory. When the firm's annual sales exceeded 30,000 machines, Indian expanded…

'Cotton never put Triumph engines in their frames - is it a special?'That's a statement and question all rolled into one that I often hear at events where classic bikes and riders congregate . 'Yes, they did ... but yes, it kind-of is; I reply, my usual slightly tongue-in-cheek answer to those observers as they cast their eyes over the scarlet red 'street scrambler'. Of course putting a Triumph twin engine into a different frame, most notably the Norton featherbed, was once almost a national pastime, and all varieties of frame and Triumph engine combinations spring to mind. Before this machine arrived I'd been trying to locate a suitable Triumph twin to slot into a spare BSA rolling chassis I happened to have and create my own Tribsa suitable for…

I first saw one of these machines howling up Sunrising Hill during the VMCC Banbury Run. It wore a BSA logo on the tank but the engine looked and sounded like an eardrum breaking four-cylinder two-stroke. I spotted it next at the Rose of the Shires Run but once again this elusive machine and its rider escaped me. Fortune favours the persistent and I finally made contact with rider I builder Roy at a Northampton VMCC event. And so it was that he and I sat outside the canal museum in Stoke Bruerne, drinking coffee and talking about his remarkable trio of motorcycles. Roy was brought up a family steeped in the lore of the BSA Bantam. His grandfather was a bookie's runner and rode around the nearby villages on…

I was getting bored with walking round and around the BSA - the formerly project BSA. It looks very nice, and it's very interesting to look at, but ... OK, it's time to learn how to start it. My first attempt had been notably inefficient, with serial kicks producing nothing nothing nothing, followed by a sudden and unexpected roar and a lot of spitting back and reluctance to rev. A motorcycle, be it ever so handsome, is nothing if I can't start it. Was this BSA secretly a Velocette in disguise? I rarely have any problems at all kickstarting BSA twins , and never the soft old sofa single-carb models, so I was plainly doing something wrong. The answer is clear: email Richard the rebuilder and ask him if there…

Just read Classic Techniques in RCl 86 concerning electrical wiring. I agree with most of the info and advice given in the article, but I was surprised to read that Stuart Francis is advising spraying WD40 on electrical contacts. As an electrician of 50 years (now retired), I recall several instances of electrical faults on machinery where WD40 had been sprayed on contacts, thus preventing a current passing through the oily film that WD40 leaves behind . We all know that WD40 can be applied to good effect on dodgy HT leads, because it acts as an insulator. Far better to use an approved contact cleaner (usually alcohol based) that evaporates off after the cleaning process is complete. John Lee, member 3598 I enjoyed the article by Stuart Francis; very…

We read about the dog-awful Ducati 125 Regolarita, it of the 4-stroke bottom end and terrible 2-stroke top end in RC185. Here is our tale of woe on the subject. About a year ago my son and I acquired two (yes two) of these bikes here in Canada, both very much classified as true'barn-finds ' within the literal and liberal description of what a barn-find must include: green cow-poop encrusted undercarriage, non-runner, flat tyres, missing parts, pigeon-crap covered bodywork, torn seat and more. Our bikes fitted the description at every level. How these bikes got into the hands of a prairie farmer we have no clue. He didn't even know when and where he acquired them. Both bikes still had the original tyres on them and one set still had…

The first photo shows my grandfather, William Roberts, with my grandmother Gladys and my uncle Phil, aged three, in the sidecar. It was taken in 1916 in Eling, near Southampton. I would really like to know the make and model of the bike. The other image is of my father, Peter, sitting astride Phil's 1930 Model G Royal Enfield 350. Uncle Phil had grown up a bit by then! This was taken around 1933 in Langland near Swansea. Paul Roberts, member 10,626 Here are two items I made earlier: my son Michael and my Triton. The bike used a featherbed frame and a Triumph 6T Thunderblrd pre-unit engine. The bike is long gone now, and wish I still had it. John Davies, member This pair of photos show my BSA…

As we had an Indian expert available, we shamelessly exploited Tim Pickering 's expertise on the subject of actually buying a Scout to ride today. 'All Scouts are good, he says, ... for their times. Even the much-maligned Standard Scout. But in modern-day riding conditions? The 1920-1931 Scouts are at the limits of practicality for riding on modern roads. This is due to total loss oiling (you have to carry a tin of special oil with you to ride any decent distance); the 600s have a realistic cruising speed of 45mph; and before 1927-28 they ran on clincher (beaded-edge) tyres and had no front brakes. ‘I once had a rear tyre let go on my'25 Chief and it was a sphincter-loosening moment. The flat-tank Scouts are charming bikes for organised…

It was a local friend and talented club rider, David Heaton, who approached my dad and wanted a Cotton 250 replica to ride in the then relatively new sport of pre-65 scrambles. We talked about it and agreed a price and went about building two Cobra replicas. I built the frames and frame jigs, my dad built the engines and sorted the front forks. Initially we built two bikes, one for David Heaton and the other for me to ride. I seem to remember we rode them for the first time at a Bath classic meeting. I had been used to riding 370 Stormers and soon fancied something bigger to ride than the Cobra 250. I learned about the Tri-Cot and fancied building one. I tracked down an original frame…

You've read some articles, seen social media pictures of normal -looking people appearing to extract abnormal levels of fun from very old bikes and thought, perhaps, there might be space in your heart and shed for a vintage bike. Congratulations! You've made the first steps towards improving your motorcycling experience immeasurably . But before you rush out and spend your money, pause for a moment and consider these questions ... What is a vintage motorcycle? The term 'vintage' means different things to different people. To some, it simply means secondhand (think' vintage' clothing), although it would be quite a stretch to consider a 1999 Ducati as being either old or vintage. The Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club (VJMC) accepts it as being a Japanese motorcycle being fifteen years old or more…

The bait had been dangled several months earlier by Anthony who, very kindly, sent me a couple of photos of a very dirty engine and gearbox sitting on a workbench in someone's garage. This, he assured me, was a prototype Norton twin from the 1940s designed by their then Chief Engineer Jack Moore. I, perversely, was more interested in another engine in the background which appeared to be OHC with a face cam and angled rockers; (hater Lea perhaps, but certainly more interesting than an ordinary 'Never-Wozzer' parallel twin that didn't look at all like a Norton. A few months passed with no further mention until, out of the blue, Anthony informed that the mystery twin had changed hands, the new owner Phil wanted it rebuilding, and was I interested?…