Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2025 i Back Street Heroes

Wotcha! Welcome to issue 498 of BSH, just two away from the big 500 and, Idunno about you, but the anticipation’s killing me. 500 issues, eh? 500! Eesh… Anyway, what amIgoing to blather onabout this month? I did have atopic planned, but Norm’s just used the same theme in one ofhis Devil’s Advocate things for afuture issue, and I don’t really want tosteal his thunder* so… er, er, er, yes, right, in the fine old British tradition ofifyou can’t think of anything to say inasocial situation, talk about the weather. It’s September (yes, I know it says October on the cover for some unfathomable treason, but let’s not wish our lives away, eh?) which means that, inthese days of us having thrown a three-eighths Gripley into the planet’s weather control…

I had a turbocharged VTR ratfighter that dad and I’d built and, after a few days standing there looking at it, I rang him. “Hey dad, you know that hardtail frame in the garden, and the girder forks under the bench, are they free? Can I have them? I need something to do.” Two days later, I had a pile of parts and a rolling frame, and on the third day I disassembled the VTR, pulled the motor out, loaded the new project into my pickup and drove to his garage. The rolling hardtail chassis was sat on the work bench, and the lines looked pretty sweet, so we dropped the VTR engine in and looked at each other. “That looks insane, but there’s a problem – the engine’s not…

*Americans… you do know that, don’t you? What we mean by ‘filtering’ is what they call ‘lane splitting’, and it’s such an everyday part of life here in Blighty that it’s long been a source of confusion as to why our stateside brethren seem to make such a big thing of it. You see, in the US of Trump… sorry, sorry, America, filtering as we habitually, and legally, do the moment the traffic starts to snarl up, is illegal in every state bar California. Yes, illegal, and will get given a very stern talking-to by men with big moustaches, mirrored sunglasses, and itchy trigger fingers. There are, it has to be said, a few states that allow their version of filtering (defined as ‘moving to the front of stopped traffic…

It’s powered by a 334cc liquid-cooled (although not so as you’d notice at first glance) singlecylinder motor, that makes 29 horsepower (28.7bhp at 7,700rpm, to be precise) and 22ft-lb of torque (21.8 at 6,000rpm if such things’re important to you). It’s a nice-looking motor, too; yes, there is a radiator cos there has to be these days really to pass the emissions and noise regs, but it’s slim and unobtrusive; the head n’ barrel are both finned for an olde-worlde look (the head’s picked out in silver); the injection system’s hidden away behind neat covers; and the cases’re finished in black with discreet silver logos. It isn’t an air-cooled motor, of course, but it looks a lot like one, with no ugly water pipes or anything. This, I think, is…

Despite the window having a thick veneer of grey urban grime that made guessing the time of day, or even year, something of a challenge, the smoke signal currently heading down Bowden Street was unmistakeable. The previously fast-moving cloud of Putoline MX7 came to a standstill, and that was Tommo’s cue to move. Picking up his helmet with one hand, and keys from the table with the other, he headed for the door. Pulling it shut behind him with his left foot, he took the five steps to the top of the landing before jumping the dozen or so steps to the one below. “Bloody ’ell, Tommo, steady on, you scared the crap outta dog then.” “Sorry, Geoff.” “Well think on, I’ve already put me finger right through a poo…

I know it’s the norm to moan about the end of the world as we know it, but I’ve never seen so many L-plates on the camping fields and, additionally, somany people under the age of 35 on A2 bikes and 600s so maybe, just maybe, things’re swinging back in the right direction. How about some more good news? The number ofpeople through the gate was also upfourteen per cent, which was undoubtedly helped byMAG’s multi-level social media campaign (who’d’ve ever thought MAG’d beon TikTok?) and, last but not least, the weather was amazing! Now, where was I? Oh yeah, the rally… Right, here we go. Onthe Thursday there’s always achilled affair with alimited number of people arriving early tosoak upthe atmosphere, pitch up, and have acatch-up inthe Blues Bar,…

2025 marked the event’s third year and, while its reputation for being one of the standout highlights of the UK’s chopper culture was solidified, the road to its success this year wasn’t without its problems. Just weeks before it was scheduled to take place, Mutt Motorcycles, a key partner for the event, went into administration, throwing the whole event into uncertainty, and this left James, Rhys, and the rest of the crew scrambling to find a new venue at the eleventh hour as, without one, the show’d’ve had to’ve been cancelled. In the nick of time though, they found a new venue: the Kingsley Café on the A40 near Eynsham in Oxfordshire, a venue already well known for hosting vibrant community events, which provided the perfect setting for a show…

*Always wanted to write that as it’s what proper journos say… although when you’re quoting yourself it loses its impact a bit. It’s made up of a 1942-engined WL 45 (cubic inches, or 750cc) Flathead engine in a hardtailed 1954 BSA frame, either from an A7 or an A10, and was built, apparently, back in the late ’80s/early ’90s by a guy called Steve Stockdale from Hull. Now, as I read this on the info’ Simon sent, two things occurred to me: firstly, is it actually a 1942 motor or could it be later? Y’see, during a conversation at the Bike Shed Show a few years ago with a guy who worked at Fred Warr’s about my own 45, also apparently a 1942, he knowledgably informed me that a lot…

I first went to the Pod, as everyone, but everyone, calls it, back in the 1980s in the days of Sammy Miller’s Vanishing Point rocket car, The Gladiator Funny Car (known to all and sundry as Gladys), wheelie cars, jet cars, Henk Vink, John Hobbs’ Hobbit, Pip Higham, Brian Johnson’s Imperial Wizard, Steve Woolatt’s The Dealer, and more. I don’t get to go there that often these days (think the last time was 2023) but, when I do, there’s always a feeling, somehow, of coming home – something that’s shared by a few folk I know; one of them, when if asked by pretentious types ‘to go to his happy place’, replies “What? Santa Pod?” And because I don’t go very often, I tend to… forget isn’t the right word…

BSA, as I’m sure you know, have a long, long history of building scramblers (not motocrossers, there’s a difference – scramblers don’t jump so high their riders can look in through your bathroom window and see you having a shit, and motocrossers don’t make gentlemen of a certain age go misty-eyed with remembrance of muddy fields and cow shit) back in the day, and they were damn successful, too; Jeff Smith won the 500cc World Championships in 1964 and 1965 on ‘em, and they dominated the Daytona beach races and scrambles on the IOM, too, in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The seminal film On Any Sunday’s full of BSA off-roaders (scramblers, desert racers, TT flat-trackers, and more), and some of the best mudcovered racers in history rode BSAs. The new BSA…

We’re pleased to announce that, from the next issue, we’ll be starting a new full-page cartoon strip – Deliverants! Written and drawn by the legendary Andy Sparrow, creator of the muchloved Bloodrunners, that was run in Bike magazine in the 1980s, and Jet Metal, that ran in Streetfighters in the years before it’s demise, it’s the story of, according to Andy, an ex-Bloodrunner who’s down on his luck and becomes a delivery rider of less glamorous, less matter-of-life-and-death products, working for the Algorithm. “It could,” he says, “get political, philosophical, deep and meaningful, but more likely it’ll be full of knob jokes.” We’ve seen the first episode, and it’s classic Andy: clever, thought-provoking, funny, and beautifully drawn and lettered, and we’re very proud to have it in BSH. Keep an…

ANYONE WHO’S BEEN TO ANY OF THE BIG RALLIES IN THE LAST YEAR OR SO, AND A FAIR NUMBER OF THE SMALLER ONES, TOO, WILL’VE SEEN THIS BIKE AND THE ONE THAT FOLLOWS IT IN A FEW PAGES: PETE AND COOKIE’S HAND-CHANGE/CAR TYRE RAT CHOPS. THEY’RE FATHER AND SON, AND BOTH ENCOURAGE EACH OTHER TO BUILD CRAZIER AND CRAZIER CONTRAPTIONS, AND WE JUST HAD TO SHOW THEM TO YOU. I started collecting random parts that didn’t really go together, and looking at what we already had, and an idea the born – it was going to be black and, as requested, mental. I acquired a VFR750 v-four Honda, stripped it, kept the engine and electrics, and stashed the rest behind Jas’ garden shed (I have enough stashed around mine already).…

I looked at what I’d amassed and realised I had enough parts to build three bikes (!), so hatched a plan to build three completely different-looking 500 Triumphs with the only commonality being the front frame loop and the engine – this bike is number two of the three. During a work trip to Houston I’d picked up a David Bird bolt-on hardtail with a two-inch stretch, and a one-inch drop, from Lowbrow Customs, and this was bolted to the frame and the rear wheel installed, and custom spacers and a speedo blank were machined in the lathe to get it centred. The idea was to use as many Triumph parts as possible to make the bike look like it could have been something made at the factory. I’d always…

Cassington Bike Night, in the village of Cassington, near Witney in Oxfordshire, is a once-a-year event held on the last Monday of June, and is one of those village take-over events that’s embraced by both riders and villagers alike. The village green becomes the site for a multitude of club and trade stands, and food vendors, and the village hall sells tea and coffee, while the Red Lion across the road from it provides most thirsty visitors with alcoholic sustenance, although the Chequers down the road does a good job, too. The green also provides bike parking to those who get there early enough, or late enough to take the spaces left by early leavers, and is the main viewing area for comings and goings. Those who arrive too late’re…

The upshot of all that testing was that the replacement CDI igniter from eBay wasn’t igniting so I ended up finding a pin-out diagram for a generic Chinese CDI box, and wiring that in (Fig.1), and that fixed it. Given that the replacement CDI igniter was under a tenner, that wasn’t a bad result. Recently I got asked to make a loom for another Honda trail bike, a CRF 230, which was easy enough – after all, I had a Honda diagram, a Clymer diagram, and an original loom to use as a reference. What I didn’t know was that the reason I was asked to make the loom was because there was a charging issue. The point I’d like to make here is that, if you suspect the wiring…

I was never one of the hardcore biker types even back then, and most of my friends, although into bikes and owning bikes, were a little more… how shall I put this… freethinking, shall we say? One of them, name withheld to protect the guilty, somehow managed to get his hands on an old Daimler hearse, and we had great fun hooning round in this with an old single-door wardrobe in the back – two scruffs in the front seats, three across the back seat and, on more than one memorable occasion, someone (can you guess who?) lying in the wardrobe with their arm hanging out. That old hearse used to squeal its tyres on the gentlest of corners (probably down to the almost plastic remoulds it had on it),…