Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2026 i Back Street Heroes

I have to admire our Continental brethren who make their way here to Blighty on what are, by anyone’s standards, bikes not really designed for serious mileage. Over its 27 years, we’ve had bikes from Spain, Portugal, Sweden, the Netherlands (a fair few o’ those), Ireland and France – anyone who crosses La Manche, as our Gallic cousins call it (it translates as ‘the sleeve’, doncha know, cos it’s wider at the western end, tapering down at the eastern) in either direction these days has to pay through the nose to do so, and I’ve heard whispers that it’s even more expensive if you’re coming from continental Europe to Blighty than it is to go the other way. Nicco may’ve only come from up near the Belgian border, but his bike,…

The R 18 B is still powered by the same air-/oil-cooled, 1802cc boxer twin, with 91hp and116.5ft/lb of torque but, due to the batwing fairing and the rear bags/boxes/whatever-you-want-to-call-‘ems, weighs a hefty 53 kilos more at 398, as opposed to the base model bike’s 345. It is a big motorcycle! Oddly though, given that it is a big motorcycle, sitting aboard it you instantly find it’s actually tiny. I am, you see, about five(foot)-nine and it felt a little cramped to me – the seat feels it needs to go back a few inches to be a little more comfortable, and to increase the reach to the ‘bars (I kept trapping my elbows against my chest pulling out of 90-degree junctions), and to get my obviously huge (size 9…) feet…

AS chairman of the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD), I’ve researched extensively the implications of this transition to electric vehicles (EVs) for disabled riders. A potential advantage of electric motorcycles for disabled bikers has been the universal adoption of single-speed transmissions as these eliminate the need for manual gear changes and clutch operation, reducing the necessity for some common adaptations required by disabled riders on manual ICE motorcycles. However, this advantage’s now been brought into question with the introduction of multi-speed e-bikes like the Amar Impulse RS (six-speed), and the Kawasaki H2R (four-speed), which reintroduce the prospect of necessary clutch and gearchange adaptations. I’ve also identified numerous, apparently overlooked, disadvantages for disabled people in the use of e-motorcycles, and the authorities responsible for ensuring fair treatment for people…

Held on a farm above the little town of Usk in Monmouthshire, it’s one of the few gatherings of the vintage chopper clan we have here in the UK (they have loads on the Continent, why do we have so few over ‘ere?), alongside the 101 Run and The Trip Out (and, yes, the Early Hook Up, too, o’course). Its attendees are, in the main, aboard suitable machines, mostly chops or classics: Panheads, Shovels, Iron’eads, Evo Sporties, a few Brits, a smattering of older Japs and, while the ‘show’ bikes’re parked mostly in the very evocative old stone farmyard, the camping field itself’s always crammed with bikes that’re worth a second glance. Almost everywhere you look there’s cool shit, if you’ll pardon my vernacular, and folk’re friendly and willing to…

“THIS BIKE’S BEEN A LONG TIME COMING…” “Back in 1974 I saw a guy on a pre-unit Triumph with apes, a springer front end and a rigid rear, big roses on the headers, stacks, and a reasonable height sissy-bar, and that image’s stayed with me ever since. Bikes’ve come and gone and then, some years ago, my mate Mark Dryden at Flatlands Cycle Works got in touch and offered me a pre-unit Triumph as an unfinished project. When I saw a picture of it, immediately it brought back that memory and would’ve been an ideal basis for building something similar but, unfortunately, he changed his mind as he liked it so much. A year or so passed, and he offered it to me again but, again, the same thing happened.…

Although the venue, the Breighton Ferry, is used by quite a few events, it’s not one I’d been to before but, upon arrival, it kind o’ reminded me of a miniature version of the Farmyard when it was held in the lower fields of the Helmsley estate. So, what do you get for the £15 entry fee? A pub with real ale, a campsite, two food vans, hot showers, proper toilets – what more could any biker need? The food on sale ranged from £5 to about £12, and the pub itself also had an excellent menu at sensible prices. By the afternoon the campsite was filling up, with people pitching up both along the riverbank and in the field that runs parallel with the entrance road. Entertainment on the…

This, ladies and gentlemen, was the last bike built by P&D Custom Bikes in the days when it was a partnership between Chris Nichols and the legendary Dave Batchelar. Now, typing that sentence does concern me a little because, in these days of everything in ‘the media’ being taken out of context for, usually, nefarious purposes, I don’t want you to take from it that this is the last bike ever built by P&D cos it really, REALLY, isn’t – no, P&D is now being run by Jon, the new owner, and Dave, and is still building custom motorcycles of both the highest quality and for the less well endowed of pocket, too. Michael, the owner of this ’ere Shovel, has been into custom Harleys for a while now; he’d…

MERLIN REVIVAL VINTAGE HELMET The new Revival vintage full-face helmet from Merlin is available in both matt carbon fibre, and classic white reinforced fibreglass, too. Both’re inspired by vintage racing; the carbon one brings together classic style and modern performance, offering superior impact resistance while keeping overall weight to a minimum for all-day riding comfort, while the white gloss fibreglass one is complemented by retro detailing, making it ideal for riders who appreciate timeless design. They both use military-grade resins in their construction, and have Snap Off removable and washable liners; double D-ring straps; screw-release UV-protective clear visors (OptiClear anti-fog lens insert included) that’re Pinlock ready; Bluetooth ready internals; a sunglasses slot; and ventilation points with EPS channelling. They cost £329.99 for the carbon Revival, and £199.99 for the gloss…

Three letters. Three ministers. Three issues that directly affect whether you’ll be able to buy, ride, or be safer in coming years. The response? One polite brush-off, and two who couldn’t even be bothered to reply. I wrote to Keir Mather about plans to end sales of new petrol motorcycles; I wrote to Simon Lightwood about the promised Integrated National Transport Strategy; and I wrote to Lilian Greenwood about the Road Safety Strategy they keep banging on about. These aren’t random topics – they’re government policies that’ll reshape motorcycling in this country. Mather’s office at least had the courtesy to send back the political equivalent of ‘new phone, who dis?’ – a nice little note thanking me for my interest, telling me the minister’s diary is very busy, and hoping…

IT was in an online ad on t’internet and, while he had, as I said, planned to do the Iron’ead next, he couldn’t resist enquiring. He spoke to the seller, came to an understanding, sold a few things and, lo, the Shovel came to his workshop. The best laid plans, eh? It was a stock ’76 FXE Super Glide, a 74-cube (1200cc), and was complete but in bits which, he says, was handy as he knew he wouldn’t be using most of the original parts so it saved him having to strip it down. The engine in it was good – it’d been fully rebuilt by the previous owner: new bearings, pistons, rings, barrels bored to +0.010 over stock, new gaskets throughout, and the cases, heads and rocker covers’d been vapour-blasted.…

David Law, the owner and builder of this Honda Shadow 125 chop, lives on the outskirts of Barry*-Central, or Southend-on-Sea as it’s known on maps, and, having got back into riding after, nearly, a 25-year gap, and making a Sinnis Apache 125 his own, got a little sick of being mistaken for a youngster because he was on a small bike. He’d always liked choppers and so decided he’d build himself one out of a 125 so that he could ride legally, and then sell it to fund his full licence (and aboard a purpose-built chop, people’d stop mistaking him for someone who didn’t need to shave yet). Back in 2023, he picked up a ’99 VT125 Shadow as an unfinished project as just a pile of parts, really. He…

‘Course I didn’t find that out ‘til a couple of days later, or that the rain’d’ve actually stopped by the time I’d’ve reached Newmarket about ten miles away. Ho hum. Maybe I’m getting old (maybe?!?), but seventyish miles in the piddling rain (on a custom bike without much in the way of mudguards) to stand about in a field in the piddling rain, unable to take any pictures because of said piddling rain, doesn’t appeal as much as it used to, y’know? This year, though, them up there with the big watering can were a bit distracted, and I managed to ride over in, if not brilliant, actual sunshine. The Walden Bikers meet at the home of Steve with the glorious 45 outfit from issue 500 a couple of months…

“It’d been a while since I’d had a new bike, and I wanted to do something different to what I’d done previously, but I wasn’t entirely sure what. One evening, while scrolling through eBay (and, yes, drinking) looking at wheels and other stuff, I stumbled upon a DNA 26-inch front wheel. I thought that one of those’d look different, but what’d really stand out was having one at both the front and the rear. I knew it’d been done in America, but it wasn’t something you often see in the UK. That was it for me – a pair of them ordered, all thanks to eBay’s new global shipping programme. Four weeks later, two brand-new wheels, a front disc and a rear sprocket/disc were delivered. At the time, I owned…

DEAR BSH, In Letters last issue Bella sent a picture of the Harley her hubbie Richard ‘built’ – actually he bought it with most of the work done and, by the look of it, added the pad to the sissy-bar back-rest. I bought the 2017 Street Bob new (well, ex-demo) from Cheltenham Harley-Davidson, and spent about a year rebuilding it into what I wanted. When I got home, the first thing I did was remove the rear mudguard and rails, and replace them with a nice, new fitted one from Rick’s, along with a Harley-Davidson seat and a homemade sissy-bar and rack. Happy with this, I wanted a custom paint job, and there was only one person for the job: Sarah McCreery (Sarah McCreery Airbrush Artist on Facebook), and she…