Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2021 i Classic Bike Guide

IS THAT A SIX-VOLT GLIMMER OF LIGHT I SEE at the end of the last year’s dreadful tunnel? Wave your pullovers and petticoats above your head – it may well be! From all here at Classic Bike Guide, we hope you enjoy those first forays out; mind the hedgehogs and deer, and remember those car drivers are as rusty and blind as they ever were… It has been busy here in the workshop, trying to give everything a ‘birthday’ in preparation for ‘getting out there’. The Suzuki has had a carb and tank clean, the BMW ‘pig’ started first time from hibernation but needs fettling, the Benelli has gone to Maria’s Uncle Dee for some electrical gremlins to be banished, and the B31 needs a number of little jobs –…

TWELVE TIMES WORLD trials champion Dougie Lampkin MBE will appear alongside TT legend Phillip McCallen as guest of honour at the upcoming International Classic MotorCycle Show at Stafford County Showground on July 3-4. Fans at the event will hear stories from Dougie about being a member of the famous Lampkin clan, who have been a household name since the 1960s with their appearances on TV Grandstand Trophy on Saturday afternoons. Winning his very first trial at just nine years old, Dougie rapidly progressed to the British and world trials scenes with the help of his father and mentor, Martin. Dougie won his first world round at Houghton Towers in 1994 when he won his first British title and finished sixth in the world title chase at his first attempt. In…

BUYING A CLASSIC MOTORCYCLE Immediately after purchasing a classic motorcycle, you will instantly see what appears to be a better example of the same model being sold for less money, often in an unexpected location. This happened with my newly-acquired AJS. I bought it for what I considered to be a very reasonable price and was very happy for almost six hours. Then I spotted a Matchless G3 of the same vintage in smarter nick go under the hammer at a local auction house that usually just deals with worn-out farm equipment, old medals and brown wood furniture. It sold for £300 less than I’d paid for mine. OIL The oil you have in that can is not quite the recommended grade. If you ask online, and you should never…

AS CLASSIC FANS WE ARE PRONE to lamenting the passing iconic braaikes of BSA-Triumph, Royal Enfield, AMC and NVT; their ultimate demises are both recognised and well documented. They are also still hugely popular. On the continent, firms such as Ossa & Bultaco, Adler & Zundapp, and NSU & Maico similarly still have faithful supporters, even though the firms no longer exist. Drill down a little deeper and the retrospective passion for smaller brands is still there, but they don’t always get much in the way of coverage. Think Ambassador or Dunelt, Monark or Itom – they all have their followers. However, the same cannot necessarily be said of the obsolete Japanese brands, at least here in Europe. The Big Four are obviously well-known and, occasionally, the Bridgestone marque gets…

“DO YOU WANT A YAMAHA AS1 for £75?” This was my good friend Phil Denton, of stainless parts fame, on the other end of the phone. “It’s been in a damp coal cellar for at least 30 years and possibly longer, so don’t expect too much from it. Oh, and it was taken apart some time during the 1980s after it went bang and never got rebuilt.” At the time I needed another project like a pirate needs woodworm in his bad leg, but even back some 12 years ago the legendary Yasie (YAS1) was something of a mythical beast. Okay, so I didn’t ‘need’ one of Yamaha’s seminal buzz bombs but, I had to admit – I wanted one. From memory I think the bike’s transportation from the Llanwrst…

IT IS SO EASY – TOO EASY – TO TAKE THINGS for granted. And one of the many things I certainly take that way is the ready supply of spares parts for my motley assortment of increasingly elderly British motorcycles. One of the others is ready access to expertise – or, at least, access to folk who have some legitimate claim to be expert in some particular motorcycles. Both, of course, can be of variable value, depending. One of the several lockdown projects in The Shed has been a Norton Electra, for example. Remarkable machines and interesting in many ways. Stop sneering now! Strangely enough, sneering is what a surprising number of folk do whenever I reveal that I’ve been tinkering with an electric-start Norton which is neither a Commando…

Brilliant, Thoughtful, Inspiring Doug Hele, seen in a promotional photo for Motor Cycling magazine on his Norton combination. It looks like winter if his attire is anything to go by. From the Featherbed frame and Manx Norton to Triumph’s greatest Grand Prix result and Hopwood’s BSA’s 250 racer, whenever there was a stand-out product coming from the British bike industry, this forward-thinking, open-minded man would be heavily involved, constantly looking to improve, evolve and innovate.…

LOVE THEM OR hate them, Henry Cole’s TV shows are one of the few occasions you can see classic motorcycles on your screen. Henry and his sidekick Sam Lovegrove are back on television this month, searching for yet more automotive treasure lying dead in the nation’s sheds, outbuildings and garages. In 10 brand new 30-minute episodes, Henry and Sam travel across the country on their quest to find neglected motoring gems on two, three and four wheels, as well as automotive memorabilia, which they hope to “fix up and sell for a tidy profit”. The third series of Shed & Buried is on screen from June 8. You can binge-watch all 10 episodes on Discovery+ or watch the first two episodes on Quest (Freeview channel 12) at 9pm on June…

Testing modern petrol I thought your recent feature about ethanol in petrol was very informative. I have been using the Esso super unleaded for the past few years and believe this is now the only ethanol-free standard pump fuel available, except in some areas mentioned in your article. Unless you test the fuel you put in your bike, you don’t know for sure if it contains ethanol, so this is how I have been testing the Esso fuel. Use a small plastic pipette to transfer a couple of teaspoons into a small clear glass bottle. Then add three or four drops of food colouring and shake. If the fuel has no ethanol, the colouring will stay separate and form a layer below the petrol. If the fuel does have ethanol,…

IT WAS QUITE A STUNNER, THE BSA SUPER ROCKET glinting in the spring sunshine. Perfectly proportioned, classy as heck, and in astonishing condition for a motorcycle that had been turning its wheels for as long as I’ve been on the planet. I can only dream of being so well preserved. This 1961 A10 Super Rocket at Russell James Motorcycles had already been sold, to a reader of this very magazine no less, who kindly gave us permission to try it out before he came to collect it. Things were set for my first ever ride on a pre-unit BSA twin, on what was the first perfect day for motorcycling in 2021. Perhaps it was the quality of preparation, perhaps it was the circumstances, but I’m going to gush a bit…

Fancy a go? THE JOURNALISTS MAY HAVE HAD A ride and declared their love to the Triumph Trident, but they are flown out to test them in hot climes and are wined and dined, and anyway, journos never buy new bikes. So when the Triumph ‘Trident tour’ came up on Butch’s (Dad) radar, and, as he has done nothing but go on about the new Trident for months, I thought it only right to sign us up for a test ride. We turned up on a cold but dry Sunday morning to Lings Norfolk Triumph, in nearby Watton. As soon as we parked it was obvious where we needed to go with our paperwork. Once we were all checked in, our temperatures were taken and we were able to have…

YAMAHA’S FIRST FORAY INTO THE WORLD OF two-stroke twins, the YD-1, used a design, erm, ‘borrowed’ shall we say, from the German company Adler and their MB250. That first Yamaha 250 two-stroke twin was launched in 1957, but by then Adler had begun moving on to make office equipment instead of motorcycles and probably didn’t care. Yamaha’s early naming system seems to lack any logic, being a cluster of letters and numbers, with the smaller the bike the bigger the number, except when it isn’t. The big change came with the RD250 (common legend states RD was for Race Developed), which was officially launched in December 1972 but did not arrive in the UK until 1974. The Yamaha RD250A was the first production road bike to use reed valves to…

WHEN I FIRST STARTED PLAYING about with ‘older’ bikes, one of the arguments often given in their favour was that they were easier to work on and maintain. I soon learned this was not always true after my first Commando. The more modern, mostly Jap, bikes often needed less maintenance and certainly got exactly that, especially the budget bikes my mates and I tended to run. One job that was avoided like the plague was doing the valve clearances on bikes with bucket and shim adjustment. Many of these bikes and newer ones are now being seen as appreciating classics, having gone through the cheap speed/old hack stage and come out the other side. The job of checking the valve clearances on these bikes is no less a PITA (Pain…

ARGUABLY, SWISS PERFORMANCE GURU FRITZ Egli, today 84, invented the V twin Café Racer more than 50 years ago. He ran the gamut of two-wheeled excess, with a series of bikes he and his team constructed to the highest engineering standards in the converted hilltop lumber store south of Zurich, which comprises the Egli factory, powered by a variety of engines ranging in complexity from one to six cylinders. The 3000 or so hand-built motorcycles Egli created from 1968 up until his 2012 retirement, when he handed his business over to the Frei family who run it today, have included esoteric two-wheelers of every extreme. These range from the Vincent twins and singles that kicked off the café racer cult back in the 1960s through the dozen or so TZ750…

THERE ARE THINGS in life that are better than a ride and a decent breakfast, but only a few. The Sammy Miller Museum Tuesday Breakfast Club is getting great turn-outs of riders, especially when the weather is good and everyone can keep dry and reasonably warm in the courtyard. A Full English at the Bashley Manor Tearooms, attached to the museum, costs £10. The museum proper has now reopened with a new 10,000sq ft extension which has been closed due to lockdown for almost a year. Events coming up include the Despatch Riders Rally on May 29-31, and on Sunday, June 27, the museum hosts the Honda Owners Club (GB) Classic Show. There is an Italian Bike Ride-In on Sunday, July 4, and on Sunday, July 11, there is an…

WHILE DEEP IN CONVERSATION ABOUT how to keep this magazine fresh and, more importantly, profitable, Oli said recently, “The reader’s don’t know anything about you.” One either seeks out the limelight or runs from it; Maria and I are the latter, mainly as our views seem out of touch nowadays, so this has proved tricky. So here’s what the village newsletter once wrote after a minor court appearance arising from a misunderstanding involving sugar beet, a servant’s lady-friend, a rabid peacock and what was reported by some witnesses as “a few too many pints of Old Mardle”. Since running away from a far-flung world that no longer exists years ago, Matt and Maria live deep in the unknown territory of Norfolkshire, in a derelict old railway station, keeping away from…

Founded shortly after the closure of the original Daventry factory, the club is very active with a regular magazine (The Sock), and has addressed the problems associated with the marque by sourcing spares and developing a strong relationship with Mick Broom. Most bikes are bought and sold through the club rather than dealers or auctions, and in doing so you’ll know exactly what mods the bike has (or hasn’t), and probably learn of its history too. Parts should be no issue, given that there were plans to make far more than actually got assembled. It was even possible to find brand new frames only five years ago! They have a busy online forum and an annual rally, and can be seen at many shows, including Stafford. Find out more at…

THE PROLOGUE IT WAS AUGUST 1986 AND I WAS ABOUT to embark on a long love affair. Some two years previously, I had awoken to find that my XJ650 Yamaha had been stolen. I put in an insurance claim but didn’t hold out any hope of it ever paying out. After all, I hadn’t even bothered to put the steering lock on. But that sunny August morning a cheque popped through my letterbox. And the same day I saw a small ad in the local newspaper – “Moto Morini 350 Strada. MoT. £300.” A phone call was made and the seller visited. The Morini was five years old and had seven previous owners. The latest was a young student who’d just split up with her biker boyfriend, and had lost…