Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2023 i Classic Bike

APPARENTLY THE TERM ‘Autojumble’ was first used in 1967 for the bring and buy sale that’s now an annual fixture at Beaulieu. Now they’re an established part of the classic scene, albeit one that’s declined in quality and significance in the UK since the advent of eBay. They’re called Mostra Scambio d’Epoca in Italy – it translates as Vintage Exchange Exhibition – and the event held at Milan every autumn is fantastic. Obviously, you wont find many British bike parts at an Italian jumble, but equally the number of stalls selling household cleaning products and fudge is much less than the typical UK affair. November’s Milan event takes place at the Novegro Exhibition Park – and the huge site, with indoor and outdoor spaces, is stuffed with interest and temptation.…

Me and my XT have gone through a lot together. I’ve bought it twice over, and after three very different attempts, I’ve finally got this long-term on/off project in the place I want it. That place tends to be old International Six Day Trials tracks in Wales and Yorkshire these days. In previous incarnations it has taken me past the Pyramids on the way from the UK to Australia, in one of the most incredible adventures of my life. But now it looks great as well as running beatifully – it can cut it through the madness of metropolitan motoring and look cool. So fittingly, the story of my life with the bike starts and has ended up in the city. Rewind to the Thatcher years in Loadsamoney London and…

For the last 50 years, Steve Linsdell hasn’t just ignoredconventional wisdom, he’s ushered it to the edge of a cliff, invited it to bend over and given it a kick. From beating Suzuki RG500s at the Isle of Man on a four-stroke British single, to getting points in the F1 world championship on a home-built Yamaha, to turning an Enfield 700 into an unbeatable race weapon, his career is largely made up of well-nigh impossible feats. Perhaps the most famous example of this commendable determination to disregard common sense, was taking a new Yamaha GTS1000 – the 1994 sports tourer with hub-centre steering – and riding it into the top ten of the Formula One TT three times. “Yeah, I was proud of that,” says Steve, 68, sitting in his…

Our Classics The bikes ridden and fettled By the Classic Bike team Rick owns 25 bikes, from a 1916 Blackburne to a ‘67 Triumph 650. It’s great to have a choice of machines for every event, but keeping them all in decent fettle is a full time job. THERE’S A long-running German ‘conspiracy’ spoof that the pleasantly unremarkable town of Bielefeld doesn’t really exist. In fact, while I’m pretty sure I visited Bielefeld with the Martinsyde this month, the experience was so surreal that I’m beginning to wonder if I imagined it all... After driving into a suburban car park with a funfair set up, I entered a gate marked ‘Radrennbahn Bielefeld’. Inside, I unloaded the van, signed a disclaimer, paid 20 Euros and rode the Martinsyde down into a…

£895 1961 Kerry Capitano Ideal for autocycle runs, this two-speed moped, being offered by Cheshire dealers Classic Motorcycles Ltd, looks largely complete and should make a fun ‘resto to oily rag’ project.  01928 244380 £995 1998 Honda CBR600F A 1990s sports 600 in good running order for less than a grand. There are a few scrapes and scuffs to the bodywork, but this is an ideal rolling restoration project, tradebikesdirect.co.uk £995 1979 Kawasaki KE100 If you have a camper van, here’s the ideal learner-legal classic to hang off the back of it. Needs recommissioning, but turns over with good compression and is on the NOVA database. 07932 763658 £950 1983 Suzuki GSX750ES Lots of money has already been spent on this – though it hasn’t run for a while. New…

1977-2008 | 346/499cc | 18/25bhp | 163/168kg | 75/85mph THERE ARE RETRO bikes – and then there’s the Royal Enfield Bullet. There may be more glamorous machines, but few motorcycles can match Royal Enfield’s famous single for longevity. After World War II, the G2 model – widely regarded as the definitive Bullet – appeared for the 1948 season. Royal Enfield closed its doors in the UK back in 1970, having ceased production of the Bullet in 1962 – but the Bullet name lived on in India. A deal to produce 350cc (and later 500cc) Bullets in Madras was struck back in 1955 and, from then on, a little slice of ’50s Britain would continue to roll out of the Enfield India plant until tightening emissions legislation forced the company to…

I got my first bike in 1957, a tiny WWII paratroopers’ Welbike for £10. A complete rip-off, it never ran once. That was followed by a BSA M20 – at £45, it was another lousy deal. It ran but, after years of abuse, was horribly unreliable. I had to keep tightening the worn-out nuts and bolts, and it was impossible to get an oil-tight seal with its bent chaincase. Riding across Rannoch Moor, my voltage regulator caught fire and set the seat alight too – but I managed to put the flames out and make it home. When I swapped the M20 for a climbing rope, I forgot to tell the new owner about the nut-tightening ritual, with unfortunate consequences... Next came a BSA 500 twin, again sorely ill-treated and…

NEWS SHOW US YOURS YOUR LETTERS DIARY John Harrison, 1972 Triumph TR6R “I’d always wanted a Harley-Davidson XR750,” explains John. “But I was never going to be able to afford one, so I built this back in 2002-3 as an XR750-inspired street tracker. Around 2012 Sideburn magazine showed me that other people were interested in this style of bike too. Then in 2016, at the age of 56, I started racing it. I’ve since been runner-up in the Vintage Four-Stroke class twice, though I had to take last year off because I got diagnosed with cancer. I’m still waiting for this year’s results, but I’m hoping to be on the podium. The bike started as a stock, conical-hub four-speed 650, but now has a 750 top end. I qualified for…

Book now for Moto Giro Regstrations for the 2024 Moto Giro d’Italia are open. But be quick, the 200 places on the 1000-mile six-day classic bike romp round Italy are expected to fill by December. Dates are May 19-25, the start and finish will be at Bologna. motogiroitalia.it Vincent film released Speed is Expensive, the film about the life of the man who made Vincent motorcycles, is now available to stream on all major viewing plaforms. A limited number of cinema showings are also planned. speedisexpensive.com Andy’s Calendar for 2024 Christmas must be coming, because classic dealer Andy Tiernan has published a new calendar. The theme for 2024 is Panther, and 12 fresh artworks illustrating the marque are featured. Proceeds to East Anglian Air Ambulance. andybuysbikes.com Electric boot for Commando…

It was lovely to see this year’s Manx GP feature so heavily in your magazine (CB October), and to read Austin Smith’s exhuberance at going to the races again. I suspect if I had not been for 20 years, I too would have been pleased to be back in the IoM, however as a regular visitor to the Island (six times in the last 10 years) I’m afraid that all is not well with the Manx and its supporters. Reduced, as it is, to a long weekend with some practice beforehand makes this a tricky thing to attend. Unless you fully comit to attend the whole two weeks, most people are faced with either a week where there is only practice (the Friday race was cancelled this year due to…

A subscription to Classic Bike gives you access to great tales from motorcycling’s heroic past, brilliant reader restorations and rebuilds, buying advice and workshop tips to help you make great buys and keep your bike running sweetly. Choose from a Print or Digital + Print subscription to read all the content in Classic Bike magazine. PRINT 6 issues for £19.99 Get your first six months of a Classic Bike print subscription for only £19.99 this festive season Digital + Print subscription: £5.20 per month ✓ 12 print editions with free UK delivery to your door ✓ Digital access via members-only app and website ✓ Past editions archive DIGITAL + PRINT INCLUDES ✓ Members-only rewards, discounts and prizes ✓ Monthly editor e-newsletter ✓ Selected audio articles on the Classic Bike app…

I find holidays soon give me workshop-withdrawal symptoms. Luckily, for our trip to Germany (see page 80) we stayed with our mate Matthias, who’s a big BSA fan but has been rebuilding his first pre-war bike – a1929 RMW 125cc two-stroke. Having unsuccessfully tried an inaugural fir-eup shortly before our stay, I decided I’d take a quick look while he was preparing an afternoon barbecue. The learning curve involved in migrating from modern bikes to classics is readily apparent, but even if you’re already a classic owner like Matz, that curve continues to coil round when you get into vintage bikes. They are simpler, but the almost total lack of parts, manuals or other support makes guesswork unavoidable. Having now spent years driving myself around this particular bend, I hoped…

Interest in homologation specials has been on the rise for some time. Initially, it was the How often do you see an unused, generation of Honda’s legendary RC30, Yamaha’s 24-year-old homologation special? OW-01, Kawasaki’s ZXR750 RR and Suzuki’s GSXR750 RR that burst onto collectors’ radars – and prices and demand for the over-the-counter Superbike racers soared. But time marches on. And now the next wave of racers for the road are becoming highly sought-after. Leading from the front is Yamaha’s stunning YZF-R7 OW-02. Yamaha’s 1999 World Superbike contender has to be one of the best looking bikes of that year. The wild riding of Nori Haga endeared both him and the OW-02 to fans, but if they wanted to emulate him on the road, there were obstacles. For a start,…

MOST MOTORCYCLE MUSEUMS are only really interested in the bikes themselves, showcasing their engineering development. And they are usually focused on racing and prestige machinery, while ignoring the social history of the motorcycle and the ordinary people who actually bought and rode them. A new exhibition that has just opened at the Haynes Motor Museum at Sparkford in Somerset aims to look at the motorcycle from a different angle. ‘Life on Two Wheels: A British Motorcycling Story’ has just opened and will, according to the museum, ‘provide a fascinating new perspective on the social history of the motorbike and the impact bikes have on society, technology, and the economy’. As well as displaying 24 historic machines ranging from a 1901 Ormonde to a 2004 Triumph Daytona (and also an 1897…

SEND YOUR PHOTOS TO letters@classicbike.co.uk Harley-Davidson SX350 Restored I thought you might like to see my recently completed restoration. The bike was purchased in the mid-1990s and had been awaiting its turn in my garage whilst other builds took priority. I have a collection of these Harley-Davidson two-strokes [we featured Michael’s H-Ds in the September 2022 issue – Ed] and wanted to do something a little different with this particular one. So I decided to fit a flat-tracker seat unit – the work involved cutting away the rear frame behind the shocks and the fabrication of replacement frame work. Michael Salvatore BSA A65 Restored When I got my 1972 A65, the engine was in an A10 frame with Yamaha forks and swing arm. I sold everything but the engine, then…

A funny thought comes to mind as I waft along on this beautiful blue 1000cc Ariel. The Triumph twin’s 1937 design origin is often blamed for Britain’s inability to compete against the Honda CB750 and its successors, but here I am riding a bike that’s more like a Japanese four than any other Brit bike I’ve ever ridden – and its roots go back to 1931! Clearly that bike was far removed from the Square Four I’m riding today – especially since this one is itself an update of the last Squariel to roll off the Selly Oak line in 1959. Owner Pete Kemp used his long-term Ariel experience and resources to build up the right bike for his needs, resulting in a reliable and capable tourer that has made…

This is pure Chitty Chittty Bang Bang. The machineI’m riding around a twisty, but mercifully smooth go-kart track is really just a bicycle with an engine. No suspension, marginal brakes, weird controls and a power unit that’s making alternate popping and wheezing noises. There’s a fair bit of smoke too. I’d been apprehensive about riding this, er... contraption, but it’s really very simple. As long as it’s already running – and you don’t want to stop. “Don’t bother adjusting anything,” says Gordon May, the bike’s chaperone. ‘It’ll go however fast it wants to. To speed up, start pedalling. To slow down, use the decompressor; on its own, the brake doesn’t really do much.’ The bike has no clutch or gears, just a direct belt drive to the rear wheel from…

Alan Seeley attempts to make a fast period-style bike from a bunch of old bits If the devil lies in the detail, then Lucifer himself lurks in the final finessing required for a successful special build. Many is the project let down by cut corners and laziness in the rush to get a bike built. There will be no such bodgery on Project Magnum. Given the lengths that Harris Performance went to in rescuing the frame, there is no way I am going to compromise its quality. It takes time to get things right – and it isn’t just your own that has to be factored into a special build. There can be time wasted waiting for outside suppliers too – Iapproached a local engineering company to mill me a…

AUCTIONS BUYING SELLING ANALYSIS BAUER & GARY MARGERUM What’s the attraction? To the generation who started their motorcycling odyssey in the 1970s, there’s something about a two-stroke 250. Yamaha’s RD250 and Suzuki’s GT250 were two of the top bikes in a fiercely contested ‘learner’ class during the ’70s and both looked similar on paper – air-cooled parallel-twin strokers with enough top end to excite. And, apart from sharp looks, that was probably all that concerned their teenage buyers. Both bikes are capable of around 90mph, but what’s more important is the way they zip up to the legal limit. Quite apart from nostalgia, the attraction of these bike is much the same as it was in the mid-’70s – light weight, plenty of poke and an exhaust note that rolls…

CLASSIC SUPERBIKES DEALER EXPERT Sometimes, you need to remindyourself why you got into classic bikes in the first place. Business has been slow for a lot of dealers since the cost of living crisis started to bite. It’s no secret – and probably no surprise – that it’s been a buyers’ market for some time. Prices have dropped. But what hasn’t changed is the way classic bikes can make you feel. And it doesn’t hurt to remind yourself of that now and again. I was invited to go to the recent Goodwood Revival by a friend. He’s into classic Porsches and races them there, but he loves his bikes, too, and is a very good customer of ours. He put me in touch with the Goodwood organising team and they…

Consigning a pair of Brough Superiors, one old, one new, for our upcoming sale set us thinking about the revival of famous old marques – and whether the new versions of old favourites would ever become classics in their own right. It’s a tough one, but here goes... First up, Brough Superiors. Buyers of both vintage Broughs and the new versions seem to be the same sort of people. Because the prices of both modern and pre-war bikes are relatively high, there’s an attraction for investment buyers. And, although the ‘new’ Broughs divide opinion and don’t appeal to everyone, I’d say yes to them becoming classics of the future. What about Norton? Traditional classic and vintage era Nortons have a strong and enthusiastic following of course. The rotary machines have…