Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2024 i Back Street Heroes

Anyway, welcome to this 480th issue of Britain’s oldest and longest-running custom bike magazine (we may be Europe’s oldest and longest-running, too, I’m not sure – since the pandemic and the various lockdowns a fair few custom bike mags’ve gone to the wall, and information on who’s still going and who’s now online only is a bit sketchy, y’know?). This issue, and the next one or two, too, we’re trying to clear out a backlog of features, bikes and events from 2023 so as we can start, very soon, to bring you the best of 2024. With the biking season soon to be starting, and a host of new bikes hitting the scene (and, hopefully, a fair few of the ones from last year our frankly crappy summer prevented us…

The Hook Up, as we’ll call it to save me typing out its full title every time, was, you see, one of those traditionally covered by the late, lamented Garry Stuart, along with The Trip Out (which you’ll see coverage of next issue) but, as I’m sure you know, the poor bugger passed away last year so, for 2023, meself and the lil’ Harley made the long haul across from East Anglia to the site not far from the small Monmouthshire town of Usk… in the van, naturally. Look, Chez ‘Ere to Usk’s in excess of 200 miles each way and, at 45 speeds, that’s six or seven hours a trip, assuming nothing breaks, on an 81-year-old motorcycle – something I don’t think either of us’re up to these days.…

For those of us of a certain age, the most famous pirate ship of all time is, of course, The Black Pig – the ship run by Captain Horatio Pugwash. Captain Pugwash originally ran on the BBC from 1957 to 1966, and was revived in colour in 1974 to 1975, and again in 1997, and was written, illustrated, and produced by a gentleman by the name of John Ryan who, in 1991, successfully sued The Guardian and The Sunday Correspondent newspapers who’d repeated the unfounded myth that the names of the crew all contained sexual innuendo, and that the programme’d been taken off the air for that reason – contrary to public opinion, the cabin boy’s name was Tom (not Roger), and the ship’s mate was called Master Mate (not…

BACK STREET HEROES Eee, hasn’t the world changed, eh? When I first started drinking (semi) legally, a beer (Younger’s Tartan bitter if you remember it) cost 79p in the local biker pub, and BSH was, I think, 95p. These days both a beer (well, round my way anyway) and a BSH cost a fiver each, but what would you say if we could do you a special deal, and do you a BSH at just £3.83 instead of £5? That’s a saving of (works out on fingers) 23% – nothing to be sniffed at! Call 01507 529529 and quote BSHDPS Online: www.classicmagazines.co.uk/BSHDPS or scan the QR code to go straight to our secure online store CHOOSE WHICH BSH SUBSCRIPTION SUITS YOU BEST 1: 12-MONTH SUBSCRIPTION BEST VALUE 12 print issues…

That aside, the essence of the question is that highly-paid pipe welders just weld around the pipe, and they don’t sleeve butt-joins, so why do it on a motorcycle frame? The answer is, fairly obviously, that a motorcycle frame isn’t a pipeline. The difference is that pipes, or pipelines, are for conducting the flow of a material from one point to another, so the main concern is the bore size – pipework is almost always supported along its length, and not usually subject to mechanical loads beyond the weight of the material it’s transporting. Despite both being essentially long steel cylinders, pipe and tube do two very different jobs. The job of a tube is to resist mechanical loads, and provide some integrity to a structure. I will confess I’ve…

CLUB-STYLE HANDLEBAR FAIRINGS These easy-to-install, aerodynamically-shaped handlebar fairings give your bike the popular club-style, or café racer, look, and can be removed and refitted in less than a minute. Fairings and mounting kits must be ordered separately (mounts are not included), and the mounting kits only fit forks without covers fitted over the tubes between the upper and lower yokes. Get yours from anywhere that sells the Zodiac range or www.zodiac.nl CLARKE MIG103NG MIG WELDER The new Clarke MIG103NG MIG welder is ideal for automotive and general fabrication and, as it doesn’t require a gas cylinder, it’s much easier to transport and store in the garage or workshop. It uses flux-cored steel welding wire, a type of wire which produces its own gas shroud as it burns, and this means…

Patrick ‘Patsy’ McArdle’s Ultima-engined ‘Ruby’ was featured way back in 2015, nearly ten years ago, and it was a pretty damn impressive bit o’ kit back then. Having finished it, he rode it around for a couple of thousand miles or so, taking it to various rallies and shows across his native Ireland – no mean feat on a bike with a big motor, springers and a hardtail on the notoriously rough Irish roads. He says himself: “It wasn’t comfortable to ride, and handled like a banana behind a jet ski.” It never let him down, though, always getting him to wherever he was going, and it definitely got noticed everywhere it went, racking up a number of trophies, making the sore arse and aching back a price worth paying,…

IN fact, these days only two of them, Honda and Kawasaki, do any the CMX500 and 1100 Rebels, and Kawasaki the Vulcan S 650 (which is, apparently, one of their biggest selling bikes in the UK). There was then, as you can imagine, a fair amount of excitement in the biking world when it was announced last year that, for 2024, Kawasaki were going to be bringing out a new one: the Eliminator 500. The A2 licence-compliant Eliminator takes its cues from the Eliminators of the 1980s, the ZL900s and 1000s and, later, the 600s, too, and there’re very definite styling echos in the rear mudguard, back light, and fuel tank to their drag-strip inspired predecessors, but the new 500 is an all-new bike with a purpose-designed steel trellis-type frame…

“I like to build bikes, always have, always will. I don’t build them to sell – they’re just for me. I’m a lover of JAP engines, and other marques of yesteryear, and now have quite the collection which I’ve used to build my eclectic collection of bikes, and I have more for future projects. They’re all not shiny, far from it, and they’re not something someone’ll pull alongside and say: ‘I’ve got one of those’ – they’re unique to me, my style, and I love them. It’s also nice when other people appreciate them, too. The bike before you’s only recently been finished, and has a beautiful (to me anyway) VW Beetle engine at its core. The project started with the purchase of a £300 Beetle engine, a 1200, from…

This year I was on me way back from the Hook Up (as detailed on pages 18-22 this issue), in the van, with the 45 in the back (as I said earlier, it’s 200-plus miles each way from Chez Samson, and that’s far too far to ride a motorcycle with an 82-year-old-engine), but I still managed to get there just before the show opened (yes, I did get up bl**dy early), unloaded the chop (the club asked me to before you start), and set about hunting down a cup o’ tea. Bikes’d already started to trickle in, but very soon that trickle turned into a veritable flood, and both the area outside the Cruik Barn (at Bradwell Abbey in Milton Keynes) itself, and the car (bike, surely?) park 50 yards…

HE decided to start with an engine, a suitable engine, and build the bike around it and, after searching for what seemed forever at autojumbles, and on eBay and issue WLC war bike, on eBay and, liking its simple straightforwardness, thought it’d be a great starting point. He bid on it, and bought it, and also managed to get an original Linkert carburettor, too. Once he’d got the old Flathead engine home, he built a steel workbench, and made a simple frame jig. As he wanted to make the whole bike himself without relying on others to make parts for him, he bought a small Myford lathe for all the turned parts, spacers, and the like he’d need, and sourced a 15-ton tube bender to be able to bend steel…

IT was, by his own admission, kind o’ thrown together out of shi…err, stuff he, and they, had laying around (although, as you can probably imagine, you can’t really ‘throw together’ a turbo hardtail… well, not if you want to stay alive and in one piece the moment you nail the throttle anyway), and was conceived as a cheap, no frills, but stupidly fast, project, and it very definitely was that – it’d spin the rear wheel off the throttle in third gear and above, and’d chew up and spit out any sports bike rider foolish enough to chance their arm at the traffic light grand prix. It was plain matt black, unpolished, unfussy, and an absolute animal. Eventually, though, Viz either tired of it (well, his replacement underpant bills…

NEW MONSTER CRUISER! The new C1002V from MBP is a radical new take on the cruiser market. Powered by a 997cc vee-twin 80-degree motor, it makes 65kw at 7,200rpm (that’s just short of 90hp in the real world), and 89Nm (65lb-ft) of torque, it’s reckoned to be good for 125mph, and looks good, too. It’s very tektro-looking: a fat 130 (Metzeler) front tyre; 320mm discs and radial calipers; USD forks; a large TFT digital dashboard; suitably modern cruiser bodywork with a large 22-itre tank; a low (680mm or just 26.7 inches) seat that cradles the rider down in the bike rather than on it; belt (final) drive; and a massive 240 rear tyre (again, a Metzeler). It’s very reasonably priced, too, starting at £9,499, with various PCP and HP deals…