Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2022 i Classic Bike Guide

GREETINGS OLD BIKE FETTLERS, ONE AND all. May we find you itching to get out, with the first signs of spring in the air. I will not skirt around the glaring front cover mistake last month. Spelling Ariel wrong was, and is, inexcusable. Mistakes on the cover are the faux pas that, as an editor, you hope never befalls you. It was completely my fault. I looked at the cover at least a dozen times, adjusting this, moving that, and all the time the error stared at me – yet notice it I didn’t. It especially hurts as the feature on the 600 sidevalve was great, with Ariel specialist Roger Gwynn, of Draganfly, freely giving so much interesting and useful information. So, to the many that emailed in, to those…

Fancy winning a Panther custom for £10 and helping a great cause at the same time? A family member of a Weston Hospice care patient has donated his prized Panther motorcycle to the charity to raffle off to try and raise £20,000. Tony Hutchings, from Cheddar, had recently experienced the care of the hospice after stepdaughter, Paula received care there. Tony is part of the Panther Owners’ Motorcycle Club and decided he would donate the customised M120 to the hospice. Tony said: “I have owned the motorcycle four years. I’ll get another one when the time is right! I just thought it was the right thing to do and particularly as the hospice could make quite a bit of money out of it.” Tickets cost £10. If you are interested,…

Each judge was given a series of categories. I was pleased to discover my categories would be Post-War and Post-1980, where I needed to pick out four bikes in each category, with a handful of rosettes to award, too. I also had to pick winners in Best American, Best Competition (Trials or Moto-cross), Best Competition (Other), Best Scooter and Best Non-Standard. A splendid Velocette Thruxton, a 50cc Moto Morini Corsarino and a lovely Moto Parilla 175 were already on my radar. First stop were the club stands; there were lots of splendidly prepared machines there. A spotless Kawasaki GPZ750 turbo went on my shortlist, as did a Moto Martin CB1100R. The VMCC stand had something that looked like a BSA Gold Star, but at second glance it was a very…

IT SURPRISES ME EVERY TIME IT DAWNS ON ME, BUT I’ve been riding motorcycles for more than half a century. Even more remarkable is the fact that I’ve been paid to ride them and then write about them for three of those five decades. What a way to earn a shilling. The careers master at my old school somehow failed to suggest this as an option at the time. What did he know? You might think that after riding an average of three or four different machines every month for 30-odd years, it would be difficult to remember much about any of them. But you would be wrong. Although the great majority of the bikes have faded from my increasingly ancient recollection files, a few – relatively few – still…

WHEN TWO IMMACULATE magnetic clocks appeared in the post, I made up a little rubber seating gasket from an inner tube and set them on the fork bracket. The existing cables were in good condition, just needing a light clean-up, and fitted with no problem. However, the speedo cable seemed short unless routed over the top of the engine (as it was) but the female screw was a bigger diameter than the magnetic clock’s male – yet fitted a chronometric perfectly. I tried the tacho cable on the speedo and that fitted perfectly, so I had to order a replacement speedo cable which would route under the frame. The throttle and air lever cables were reusable and fitted, along with the re-plated handlebars. The ignition switch bracket had gone missing,…

It’s refreshing to have a colour photo from the archive for once and Ron Haslam’s smile sums up the love so many have of racing. The scene appears to show a typical club racing scene, with friends helping out. There may be no factory overalls or promo ladies but the Mal Carter Pharaoh team van makes up for that, with ‘Ron Haslam Superstar’ on it! Ron to me personifies the near-addiction levels that racing gets for some. This photo was taken in 1979, just as Ron was breaking through. He was still racing with Carter, the ex-racer and businessman who first supported him with the Yamahas you can see, but he was also in contract with Honda Britain, winning several titles and the Formula One TT race in 1981 (and…

WHILE THE ‘BRISTOL show’ is held nowhere near Bristol (but instead near Shepton Mallet in Dorset), it has since 1980 been the main meeting point for like-minded folk of all things old and two-wheels. And after the last couple of years, boy didn’t we want to meet! It’s more than a 400 mile round trip for myself – including drudging around the M25 and the nose-to-tail of the M11 and M3 commuters. But for some reason, The Bristol show is always worth it, with bikes you don’t see at Stafford, and an incredible array of club stands. Lucky Oli only lives down the road and was representing one of the clubs all weekend, as well as us both heading off to take photos and speak to owners. Oli even got…

EUROPEAN MOTORCYCLE FANS KNOW THE DUCATI bevel twin legend was forged by great men in the heat of two battles – Paul Smart at Imola in 1972 and Mike Hailwood on the Isle of Man in 1978. Magnificent achievements, even though both riders were hired guns on race-ready factory machinery. Either rider would have been happy on another bike; Paul’s wife Maggie famously committed him to Imola and Mike had been turned down by Honda before he agreed to the Sports Motorcycle ride. Everyone involved had an eye on generating bankable publicity or a pay cheque. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – we all have to earn a crust. What some forget is that the stool the bevel twin legend sits upon has a third leg – Cycle…

IF YOU’RE READING THIS, THEN HURRAH! WE HAVE HELPED YET ANOTHER dear soul delve into the wonderful world that is old bikes. May your lights forever be bright and your magneto forever spark. But we want you to enjoy this escapade, so have a read. It does involve some questions you need to ask yourself, as well as some home truths. But honesty will bring more fun and avoid most pitfalls. WHAT IS IT THAT YOU REALLY WANT? The answer to the above could lie in a retro classic, like the Bonneville range from Triumph, the Royal Enfield Intercepter 650 or a Moto Guzzi V7. They offer all the looks with most of the feeling, yet most of the time, better performance, better brakes and much, much better reliability. They…

My BSA A65 really is a bit of a bitsa. It was a genuine (pig) barn find that I put together nearly 10 years ago with whatever I had knocking about in the workshop. As is the way of this type of bike, it’s been a fairly trouble-free runner since built. I’ve not ridden it much over winter, or last year to be honest due to the world, work and other excuses. Not because I’m precious about it, but more there have been other bikes I wanted to ride on the chances I had to get out. But it’s time came and I pulled it out of the workshop a few weeks ago. The battery was charged and the sump drained where it had wet sumped from standing, the petrol…

THE STORY SOUNDS FAMILIAR. LIKE SO MANY OF us, Matthew Marsham has always liked bikes – modern, fast ones when he was younger and as he, erm, gained years, the older bikes appealed more. As I went to see the professional painter, mechanic, restorer and talented competitor of American Western horse shows at his workshop, I squeezed by some covered bikes; an immaculate three-cylinder Honda NS400R and a Honda CL350, also immaculate, and oh, a wonderful, restored and modified ‘50s American Ford pick-up truck fitted with a potent V8, with wide arches to cover racing wheels. Naturally. But to the job in hand. Sitting on the bench is a bike with a BSA DBD engine in, but the body is less instantly recognisable. It’s a BSA Gold Star DBD34, in…

The Malle Motorcycle Club is heading for Margate for The Mile Beach Race 2022 on the weekend of May 20-22. There will be a race pre-party on the Friday night at a secret venue in the Kent resort, while Saturday and Sunday are both race days, with an array of wild machines entering The Sprint, The Double, The Malle100 and Motopolo on the beach. The beach race after party will be on the Saturday night and the podium awards will be held on the Sunday afternoon, at high tide. After the sea won The Derby in the final seconds of last year’s beach race day, organisers have doubled the beach race with two full days of beach racing action which are scheduled to take place during the best tidal conditions…

THE WINTER OF 2021-22 FOR ME HAS BEEN ONE of lumpy old singles and characterful twins, so the experience of riding a 50-year-old Honda Four for the first time in an age came as something of a surprise and a treat on a grubby, muddy and moist day. I had two 1970s Honda middleweights to play with. I like to imagine the shock that the motorcyclist of 1972 might would have experienced on a first encounter with Mr Honda’s Four. They would, no doubt, have enjoyed the experience of just pushing a little lever on the end of the carburettor bank to engage the choke, rather than dribbling expensive Four Star over the engine while tickling an Amal... of turning on the ignition with a proper key, not something left…

“MAN, THOSE R1200GS Adventure and HP2 rocketships are too big and too fast for an old fart like me,” says Chris King. “You have to be careful with the throttle on a bike with that much power. Loose rocks don’t give much traction and if you are not paying attention the bike will swap ends with you in the blink of an eye, especially on an uphill turn. The HP2 is a lot of fun but you have to respect it. There are a lot of tinhorns out here that are going to hurt themselves with one.” That’s why this Texan greybeard rides his own take on BMW’s classic airhead GS when he gasses up and leaves Alpine, Texas, for the Mexican border. Basis for the Chris King dirt BeeMer…

THE BIG BATTLES ARE WON, I THINK, so it’s mainly small victories now. The rear wheel had been sitting in the corner quietly, and the other day I really needed to use the bench for Maria’s TriBSA but couldn’t move the BM, so the wheel got bumped up the list. After photographing the spoke pattern, the offset had to be measured. I almost forgot, as the front wheel is even both sides. The rear isn’t, with the offside 6mm clear of the rim and the nearside 1mm, presumably to clear the swingarm. Then the torturous yet strangely satisfying (what does that say about me?) job of cutting the spokes with bolt croppers could start – though 5ft croppers may be a little OTT (I used them in a previous life…

a Sunbeam twin – is proving to reward disastrous levels of cash and time input by reliably failing to work. Which is the trouble with fettling. IT’S HAPPENING AGAIN. IT REALLY IS. Despite resolutions, New Year and otherwise, I’m doing it again. I spent the entire Bristol Show doing it, and it was surely unintentional. I’m looking for a rebuild project. And I swore – long, loud and indeed often – that I would never do another. The snag is that I usually enjoy carrying out a rebuild, but the last one I attempted was so entirely catastrophic that I swore – long, loud and indeed very often – that never ever again would I embark on that dark road, strewn as it is with deep pits waiting to consume…