Back Street Heroes July 2024

He’s been with us (as in the mag’) for thirty-two years, since way back in 1992, bar four years in the early 2000s, and in his time’s done 345 issues of the magazine. He first started doing artwork, centrespreads and fiction illustrations, had had his first pieces in issue 95, and started designing it from issue 99, back when that involved lay-out paper, Pritt Sticks, and cutting photos with scissors to make ‘em fit. Then, when the digital revolution in publishing happened in the mid-Nineties, he transferred effortlessly over to computerised design, and’s been doing the magazine’s layouts in the small (and bakingly-hot in summer) converted shed in his back garden in North Wales. And, as well as BSH, he’d also designed, back in the Myatt McFarlane days, Streetfighters, Live…

AS you may know, the fine people from the branch organise quite a chunk of events over the course of the year. This one was their first for 2024, and it sold out! I’ll tell you about my meanderings at this event, and leave you with the problem at the end… As it was my first ITV (yes, I know, I deserve the naughty corner, or being banished to an island for crimes against the annual rally calendar… oh, yeah, I already am, aren’t I?), I decided to have a good scoot about, check out the music venues, and suss out which toilets had the best chance of a cold seat at the start of each day. Having completed a sighting lap, I’d got a good idea of where I needed…

This A65 is a chop based on a 654cc Birmingham Small Arms Company motorcycle, built between 1962 and 1972, aimed at the US market for unit-construction twins. As well as giving a clean look to the engine, with the pushrod passages part of the cylinder block casting, the unit-construction reduced the number of places oil could leak from… something you can’t say about the A7 and A10 pre-units that preceded it. It’s a fairly early example… well, the engine and frame are anyway, built, as they were, in 1965, and belongs to a gentleman by the name of Maurice Davidson from down in the West Country (so, as it says, nowhere near Leeds). He’d been looking for a chop with a British engine, at a reasonable price, for about four…

I know now there’re other specific Harley boot sales, but this certainly must be the longest running in the UK. With Beaky being a stalwart of the National Chopper Club, it also brings out many members of that fine organisation, often on new builds, and many others. One of the nicest was a lovely Knucklehead which looked very useable. With the spring flowers out, lifting spirits after the greyest and wettest ever winter, and the promise of a great day ahead, I headed to Dorking far too early. This getting up silly early was probably a warning sign for how the morning was to go for me – as always it took ages to reach the sale as I kept bumping into people I’d not seen in some time, but…

The laws in Taiwan make out-and-out chopper building a little tricky (there are ways of circumventing them, but…), so most of the bikes Rough Crafts build have, near as dammit, stock frames so as not to attract the attention of the authorities. That doesn’t stop them being cooler than penguin pi…er, widdle though, as you can see from this dragster-style Sporty. Back in 2012/13, they built a Sportster, named Stealth Bullet, that was converted to oil-in-frame, and had a very neat girder fork front end, and it won awards everywhere including in the AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building. It was a very, very impressive bike (as well as being very, very black), and it inspired a customer of Winston’s to commission him to create something similar but within…

The North Manchester Custom & Classic Bike Show was held in September last year, hosted by the Devil’s Disciples MC Northside, at Ramsbottom Cricket Club, where dark skies were heavy with the threat of rain that, happily, never really turned up. The NMCCBS is a proper down-to-earth club show, with everything you need for a good day of custom bikes on a really well organised site with good facilities. The main site is long and narrow, with a stage at one end with bands blasting out some good rock, metal, and punk covers. There was trike parking next to the stage, with bikes ranging from a reverse CBR1000 trike to the yellow VW beach bastard that took Best Trike, not forgetting the open-cabbed trike-van creation – fantastic lunacy. General bike…