Back Street Heroes September 2025

Last issue I talked about the stupidity of car drivers (well, one anyway) – this time it’s about the stupidity of motorcyclists. Sitting outside my local biker café the other day, I had the misfortune to meet a man the likes of which I, thankfully, haven’t met for a very long time. He’d rocked up on some anonymous, but fast, Japanese sports bike at about the same time as me, but taken longer to get served, and he came over and plonked himself at my table without asking (that rankled instantly – there were plenty of others, and isn’t it polite to ask first?). The conversation started okayish. “Is that one of those new Ruroc Iron Maiden helmets?” “Yeah, it’s good – quiet, light, cool-looking.” “And you came in on…

I decided to travel over slightly earlier from the Bikersmag Penthouse Midden as it’d mean avoiding the plague of Bank Holiday speed traps and campervans that greatly reduce the pleasure of riding on the UK’s highways and byways. After picking up my camping gear from Wales, I decided to take the scenic route via Cheshire and the Cat & Fiddle, followed by lunch in Matlock Bath, and then onwards in a north-easterly direction via the A1M and A614 to arrive at Driffield Showground with ample time to set up camp and check that my Box Brownie had sufficient memory cards and batteries to last the weekend. Friday lunchtime saw riders drifting into the site from far and wide, quite a few having travelled more than 175 miles to attend. The…

No one’d ever built a twin-engined bike using a pre-unit and a unit motor together (Triumph, of course). So, with this in mind, I set about building a frame using the backbone of the T120R frame (the oil tank), using a jig I made specially, ordered some seamless tube to make the frame, and used a mate’s tube-bender to bend it up. The guys at Cheltenham Harley-Davidson very kindly let me have a root through the storeroom at the back of their workshop – what an Aladdin’s cave! It had everything I needed, but all slightly damaged; a Road King petrol tank (dented) and front mudguard (twisted and dented), V-Rod wheels (water damaged), etc., and that meant I only paid scrap price for it all. Next I needed a drag…

Max, you see, is deaf (which kinda explains the show’s name), but he’s never let his deafness hold him back, and at one time had one of the loudest chops I knew of (it sounded okay to him) and, because of it, he decided to put on a bike show to raise funds for a charity close to his heart. He’s an active member of the West Harley Riders Club, who came out in force to support, but this’s very much his show, and he should be rightly proud of what he’s achieved. Entry is free, but there’re buckets for donations and a raffle to raise funds, and the day did really well. Arriving early, I found traders struggling setting up stalls against the wind, while Max ran around with…

This happened to Dale from Hellstown Choppers way, way down there in Cornwall back in about 2017. He’d sold his most recent chop (and begun to regret it almost immediately), and’d just closed down his then workshop, semi-retiring from bike building. Then, one day, a guy he’d built a frame for some ten years before contacted him to see if he wanted to buy it back as it’d sat gathering dust in his garage for years. Dale went over to see it, and worked out he could do something with it, so a deal was done, and went home with the rolling chassis. “It felt great to have one of my Hellstown Chopper frames back home,” he says. Around this time, too, quite by chance he managed to reconnect with…

WE hoped it’d raise some money for an old work mate and biking paddling pool on a hot summer’s day in July 2015, resulting in a spinal injury that’s left him completely disabled from the neck down. That was in 2018, and now the show’s grown to a point where we can support three good causes per year with a meaningful donation. This year we’ll be sending money to the Wiltshire Air Ambulance, and Macmillan Cancer Support, as well as Stu. This year’s show attracted more trade displays than ever before, and we always encourage clubs and riders’ groups to apply early for pre-booked display space – something that’s very reassuring to us as organisers as it means people want to be involved with what we do. There were over…