Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2025 i Classic Bike

April 1975, MCN Superbike Championship, Cadwell Park Barry Sheene (#2) pulls a monster wheelie on his Suzuki 750 at the start of the 20-lap Superbike race at Cadwell Park. Sheene was making his racing return, just two months after the famous 170mph crash in which he broke his left thigh, right collarbone, right arm and a couple of ribs, as well as leaving a lot of skin on the Daytona banking. In fact, the Cadwell Park starter hadn’t actually dropped the flag as the field smoked away, but the race continued anyway. Sheene’s Suzuki team-mate Stan Woods led at the end of lap one, with Barry in second, though he briefly re-took the lead on lap five. Mick Grant on the updated Kawasaki triple worked his way up to the…

Self starter Two things on the subject of Startline. First, here are a couple of pictures I took of the grid at the John Player International Grand Prix at Silverstone on Sunday, August 11, 1974. This was the line-up for the FIM Formula 750 race, which was followed later in the day by the Senior 500cc race and then the John Player International Grand Prix (251 to 750cc). Phil Read and Tepi Lansivuori didn’t participate in this F750 race, which was disappointing, but we did get to see them later in the Senior and headline race on the MV Agusta and Yamahas (500 and 700). Secondly, you printed another great Startline picture in the December 2024 issue – and asked if anyone knew who the rest of the riders are…

£3220 1976 Suzuki TS125 This unrestored and low-mileage machine is in exceptionally good cosmetic order and very original, but was described as being in need of some recommissioning. UK registered on V5C. iconicauctioneers.com £98,900 1997 Honda NSR500 VF Setting a new live auction world record price for the model, this is one of only 20 factorybuilt GP V-twins produced. Supplied new to the vendor in 1997 by Padgett’s of Batley, it’s in superb, original condition. iconicauctioneers.com £2445 1962 Royal Enfield Super 5 Now fitted with a four-speed gearbox (probably no bad thing), this three-owner bike has been restored a few years ago. Ready to ride and comes with a history file including receipts for parts and work. eBay £6900 1990 Honda Africa Twin This is the desirable RD-03 version of…

Congratulations to Phil Ranson, who recently rode 2000 miles from his home in Romford to Istanbul in Turkey on his 1970s Honda SS50. He crossed France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia and Greece before arriving in Turkey, having had precisely zero breakdowns. He didn't use much fuel, either. “I was putting in half a gallon every other day, soI didn't spend much on petrol. It wasn't uncomfortable, becuse I wore padded cycling shorts and added a sheepskin to the seat, and some days I'd only ride 50 miles – there was no rush. Well, you can't really rush on a Honda 50.” It’s not Phil’s first long-distance jaunt on the little sports moped. He’s previously ridden it to Spain and fancies…

Getting there The Mostra Scambio happens in November at the Novegro exhibition centre in Milan. It’s a 15-minute walk from Milan’s Linate airport – you can get there and back in a day. parcoesposizioninovegro.it…

The Honda dealer seminar in Portsmouth on January 20, 1975 must have been an upbeat affair. Bike sales were on a high and there were fresh new models to bring punters into showrooms. The new GL1000 Gold Wing might have been a bike to make onlookers gawp in disbelief, but the CB400/F was about to capture the heart of the motorcyling public. It turned out that a four-cylinder 400 was an ideal blend of glamour and practicality. It still is. Looks were always part of the 400/Four’s appeal. It was lithe and classy – and the sweep of the fourinto-one exhaust was sensational. Swing a leg over the compact four and you’re back in the ’70s. By modern standards, there’s nothing remotely high-tech about Honda’s smallest UK-market four (unless you…

Cecotto began his car-racing career in 1980, weaving four-wheel outings around his bike GP duties. “After all this shit and problems and injuries, maybe it was time to change. My aim was to arrive in F1, so I couldn’t wait too long. In 1980 I did three F2 races. I did the motorbike GP at Zolder [Belgium] and the weekend after I did F2 there. It was so funny, because in a car the track was completely different – I didn’t even recognise it from riding bikes!” Cecotto achieved his F1 dream in 1983, driving a Theodore Cosworth V8. The team was skint and the car was slow, but he scored points in only his second F1 race – that innate feel for speed again. The following year he moved…

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Hammers Cost: £40 Where? Tool shops You need good hammers to make exhausts. The planishing hammer was my grandad’s and I use it all the time. I’ve bought replacements for it, but they don’t work as well – the head of this one has been polished so much to make it smooth that the head has shrunk. Its balance is lovely. Blow torch Cost: £60-100 Where? Welding suppliers If I had a bag of sand, some tube and a blow torch, I could set up anywhere. When I first started I used a roofing torch, but they make a lot of racket and get through gas. I saw the Yoshimura guys use oxygen and calor gas, so I got this. It’s nothing fancy – you can get it from any…

Rick Parkington As far as I’m concerned, few things are more frustrating after getting a bike running really well, than finding you can’t enjoy the benefit because the clutch is slipping. Here are a few tips to help get the power down on the tarmac. Clutch problems can ruin your ride and take two main forms: slip and drag. Slip is like wheelspin; revs build, but speed doesn’t. Drag is when the clutch won’t free properly, causing difficulty finding neutral, crunchy engagement and the bike creeping forward with the clutch withdrawn. Worse still, you can get both slip and drag at the same time. British and Japanese clutches differ in that the primary ratio – gearing between engine and ’box – is typically lower on Japanese bikes because they rev…

No estimate 1967 Honda CR450 One of two surviving Team Hansen Daytona race bikes (the other is in Honda’s Motegi Collection Hall) built for Daytona ’67. Ridden by Jim Odom, it achieved the fastest lap ever recorded at Daytona by a motorcycle. January auction mecum.com £5750 1955 TriBSA An elegant, stylish special without the skinned knuckles of building one yourself. BSA Shooting Star frame with 1953 Triumph Thunderbird engine. Very well put together at a cost said to be double the asking price. Dealer sale classicsuperbikes.co.uk £9500 1995 Aprilia RS250 MkI Loris Reggiani edition of this soughtafter 250 race replica. Currently fitted with aftermarket Tyga exhausts and MSA screen (originals included). Relined cylinder, new pistons and crank rebuild. Private sale 07950 064579 No reserve 1974 Ducati 750SS Being offered from…

’How much?’ Gez Kane on classic values The iconic Bonneville hasn’t been immune to the market downturn, but I reckon prices are beginning to bottom out. Not so long ago, a mint pre-unit machine might make more than £10,000 – but not any more. It’s true that some sellers are still asking £10,000 and beyond, but the sold prices are a true reflection of the real state of the market. First-year and limited production models can make more; a genuine and immaculate TT Special might sell for more than £10,000, but you should be able to get a good mid-’60s unit construction bike for £5000; later T140s in decent order can be had for £4000. Prices of project bikes continue to amaze me, though. After resto costs, a £2500 bike…

RIP Ron Williams Chassis guru Ron Williams has died, aged 84. The Maxton founder worked with top racers including Mick Grant, Charlie Williams, Chas Mortimer, Tom Herron, Joey Dunlop and Ron Haslam, changing their bikes from unwieldy barges into race-winning missiles. Classic Bike send condolences to Ron’s friends and family. Triples all round Over 250 Triumph Speed Triples gathered at the Hinckley firm’s museum last month to celebrate the model’s 30th anniversary. The free event featured technical talks, a concours competition and a riding demo of the stunt Speed Triple 1050 (complete with bullet holes) from The Hitman’s Bodyguard movie. The day ended with Triumph CEO Nick Bloor handing out the concours awards. NMM Winter raffle prize Top prize in The National Motorcycle Museum’s Winter Raffle is a 1972 Norton…

‘The Chapman Vincent raced past Penfold to take the victory, as his Triumph shed its blower belt!’ First introduced in 1975, the MCN Top Bike Championship was to be held across five different venues – and kicked off on the notoriously difficult Blackbushe airfield track on April 13. While some racers were busy with new and improved machinery, incorporating the new breed of slider clutches and two-speed transmissions, mated to everwider rear slicks, not all were headed down that route. On the other hand, the likes of Brian Chapman were continuing to coax more out of their smaller capacity bikes like his little blown 500cc Vincent Comet in their own methodical way. And at the parttime venues, the more powerful machines could easily be undone by overpowering. John Hobbs was…

Just before Christmas 1975, it was announced that the last Triumph Trident T160 had come off the NVT Manufacturing assembly line at the former BSA factory in Small Heath, Birmingham. The news signalled the end of 67 years of motorcycle production at the Midlands site and put the cap on a grim year for the once-great British motorcycle industry. NVT had built Triumph Trident triples at Small Heath since early 1974. Assembly at Triumph’s Meriden factory stopped in 1973, when plans for closure sparked a workers’ occupation and blockade. Triple engines had always been made by BSA, but critical machinery and jigs locked in at Meriden had to be expensively replicated to get Trident output rolling at Small Heath, initially with the T150V five-speed model. The Meriden-developed electric-start T160 was…

Rupert Paul 1971 BSA A65 Thunderbolt The saga of Rupert’s BSA resto was covered in CB in 2024. The non-running US import’s motor and chassis were rebuilt, aiming for a stylish, useable motorcycle. After 750 miles on my BSA, I’ve got the winter to sort out the inevitable teething issues. Well, in fact, the problems that have emerged are inherent to the bike’s wretched design and conception. As it was a last-gasp model built by a company with clueless leaders and no money, it’s hardly a surprise. So, what worked well on my bike and what didn’t? Good news first. Thanks to the liberal use of nylocs or split washers, the famous Brit twin vibration has failed to dislodge a single screw or nut anywhere on the bike. Not one.…

This photograph is from 1977, taken on my first visit to the Isle of Man. I travelled up there on the Domi 650SS with my mate Steve, who had broken his arm badly not long before. I picked him up from Nuneaton in Warwickshire, and we rode up there with him on the pillion, with his plastered arm inside his leather jacket. It rained all the way – and most of the time on the island – so it was a soggy trip! I kept the bike for 19 years, writing it off once and then rebuilding it better. Is 438 BEL still out there?…

This photo is of my great uncle Denis Baxter and his Canadian mate, Fred Viera. It was taken sometime in the late 1940s/early ’50s on Denis’s Matchless G3L, somewhere in Essex, when they were clearly off on an adventure. My cousin Sarah thinks the bike was ex-WD; the riding kit and luggage certainly are. Denis met Fred during RAF service on an earlier adventure, when he was piloting and Fred navigating B24 Liberators in and around India and Burma. This included flying over the Eastern Himalayas, delivering supplies into China (the air crew casualty rate for these trips was horrific). Denis maintained his RAF interest and was actively involved in air crew reunions. He stayed interested in bikes – modified by my formidable great aunt Mair – and latterly pottered…

Morini Riders Club The energetic Morini Riders Club provided this month’s report from the Italian autojumble at Novegro. morini-riders-club.com Pages 22-27 Keith Lee A lifelong drag racing devotee, Keith has been documenting quarter-mile action for over half a century. He was actualy there in 1975. Pages 50-51 Rick Parkington Even by Rick’s standards, this is mad. Buy a project bike for its frame, then decide to fix your crashed original. Luckily he’s got a 35 ton press… Pages 120-123…

Talk about provenance. This motorcycle is surely one of the best vintage two-strokes with the most storied background you can buy. A factory machine with unimpeachable history – that also happens to be a scream to ride – does not come better than this. Scott’s entrants for the 1930 Manx Grand Prix were Noël Mavrogordato (better known as ‘Mavro’) and Roland Stobart, who also rode a bit of speedway. Both had been ‘up’ at Cambridge University together before they visited the Scott Competition Department at the Shipley, Yorkshire factory to spec-up their ‘mounts’ for the Manx. Mavro favoured the early single downtube frame, despite a duplex version being available, and Stobart opted for the same. The Auto Cycle Union was heavily against thinly-disguised factory bikes entered in amateur events and…

One of the most influential figures in 1970s motorcycling has died. Malcolm Smith – a star of the 1971 film On Any Sunday, six-time Baja 1000 winner and eight-time ISDT Gold Medalist – passed away in November at his home in California, aged 83. “What an amazing contributor to offroad sport he was,” says Mike Jackson, who raced against Smith while working for Norton in America in the early 1970s. “I only rode against Malcolm once, at the High Sierra enduro,” recalls Mike, a fast dirt bike rider who finished fifth out of 1200 in the 1972 Elsinore GP. “He was about 10 numbers behind, so I knew he’d come by – and sure enough, he went past. I thought: ‘I’ll learn something here,’ so I tried to stay on…

The trend for ‘reimagining’ famous old models continues with this, the new Moto Morini 3½. It features an all-new 350cc V-twin motor, which is very different to the 344cc original, with water cooling, dohc and a 60° V-angle rather than 72°. It makes a claimed 32bhp at 8500rpm. Though a creditable effort – most of the sub-400cc bikes these days are singles or parallel twins – the new 3½ won’t have anything like the impact of the old one. When the original hit the market in 1974, it was a high-tech revelation with deft handling and zippy performance. Its price wasn’t so clever, though – it cost almost as much as a CB750. There’s unlikely to be any such financial misstep with the new bike, which will be made in…

RESCUED Seeing the light I purchased this 1966 BSA A65 in August 2024, having extricated it from a shed after what we believe to be 45 years (the tax disc expired in November 1979). Long-term CB readers with powerful memories may recall seeing the photo of the bike (right) in the shed in ‘Your Classics’ in the November 2018 issue. The A65 had been parked in the late seventies alongside a 1963 B40 350 by the late father of Stephen Meredith. I’ve recently retiredfromwork, soI’vetaken the A65 off Stephen’s hands and plan to make it my winter project. The B40 is still in the shed, possibly to become a project for Stephen and son at some point. After you printed the photo of the A65 in 2018, the original owner…

On March 9, 1975, Johnny Cecotto shocked everyone by putting his year-old TZ700 on the front row of the Daytona 200, alongside Kenny Roberts, Gene Romero, Teuvo Länsivuori and Steve Baker. All were riding the faster TZ750. Then disaster struck. “On the starting grid an official saw something leaking from my bike, so they pushed me off the grid,” says the Venezuelan. “My mechanic fixed the problem immediately, but they wouldn’t let me back onto the grid. They said I must start last – after the two groups of 40 riders had gone. So I started 80th and finished third.” His GP debut, a few weeks later at France’s Circuit Paul Ricard, was even more spectacular. He won the 250GP, passing factory Yamaha rider Ikujiro Takai on the last lap,…

Road tyre technology barely moved on from the 1950s to the late ’60s, but in fairness bike technology hadn’t moved on by much either. It wasn’t until the arrival of the Triumph Trident and Honda CB750 that a new generation of tyres was required, in wider sizes and with lower profiles, to cope with the increased power, performance and weight of the coming superbikes. Dunlop introduced their Roadmaster K81 rear tyre in 1968 and it was rebranded as the TT100 after Malcolm Uphill’s 100.37mph lap aboard a 650cc Triumph Bonneville as he won the 1969 Production TT. Avon were Dunlop’s traditional rival for UK tyre sales, but they didn’t respond to the TT100 until the summer of 1975, when they launched the Roadrunner in direct competition with Dunlop’s market leader.…

There were hints that Ron Haslam would do something extraordinary at Cadwell’s International meeting in September 1975. He’d won dozens of club races that year, and on the day before the International he was leading Roger Marshall at a national race at Croft by a country mile. But the 19-year-old was impetuous – he crashed trying to break the lap record. “I fell off on the last lap,” he recalls. “It was the first time Malc [Malcolm Carter, Ron’s terrifying manager] gave me a bollocking. I was feeling very guilty that I’d done that, so when I went to Cadwell I wanted to redeem myself.” Redemption wasn’t guaranteed though, because the race was a step up. He was up against Phil Read, then a two-time world champion and riding a…

If there’s one thing that matters to Ian Edmondson, it’s quality. As a welding and construction inspector by trade, the need for perfection and seeing a job done properly runs deep. And that, Ian explains while showing me photographs of bikes he’s previously owned and has currently, is why he’s a Honda man. His present collection is an eclectic mix ranging from the weird and wacky to the achingly exotic and rare, but they’ve all got one thing in common – the winged badge on the tank. Standouts include: two RC30s (one an ultra-rare, all-white ‘ghost’ RC, currently wearing Rothmans rep bodywork), an RC45, Evo Fireblade No.1, Jonathan Rea’s 2012 Ten Kate WSB Fireblade, a strange and exceptionally hard-to-find EZ90 Snow and Honda’s most exotic race replica, an RC213V-S. “I’ve…

1. Manx International This Norton ‘Big Plunger’ Manx International taught me that the older bikes can be just as interesting to work on as newer ones. This has a works-style exhaust, and was built to be raced in the Lansdowne series and Goodwood. I love working on Manx Nortons too – my grandad had them. 2. BSA B50 This is my dad, Ray Hardman, on his home-built BSA B50 in 1987, the year after I was born. He was sponsored by my grandad’s bike shop, Unity Equipe. Dad’s racing taught me to love the competition side of motorcycling – and these days I make a lot of exhausts for classic racers. 3. Benelli Six I’ve done two of these, and they taught me that I can do complicated stuff. With…

Alan Seeley 1984 Harris Magnum 2 Many hundreds of hours have gone into the building of this Suzuki-powered jigsaw.But, at long last, CB’s modern classics man and mate Gary were ready for that landmark project moment: the first start-up. Patience is the most elusive of virtues, but it’s a toolbox essential for the specials builder. The wisdom of even embarking on this build has been called into question many times. And as for the money – well, we don’t talk about the money, do we? Such is the rollercoaster ride of any build or restoration. However, perseverance, sheer bloody-mindedness and, in this case, the relentless incentive of magazine deadlines have been enough to keep things moving. Project Magnum may not yet be finished, but it is at the point where…

1 Side impact effect The bend is obvious here, between the saddle tube and the rear tank mount. It’s a fairly gentle bend – but 19in away at the other end of the tube, the headstock was miles off to one side. 2 Some of it stayed straight A straight edge placed against the rest of the tube suggested it was straight after that, between the front and rear tank mounts – the sturdy tank providing a brace between the two. 3 Pressing time Time to start straightening. Supporting the tube at the saddle lug and tank bracket, I pressed the apex of the bend. You should go a bit over, allowing for spring-back – but it’s difficult to see, so it took a few goes. 4 Lug check To…

This photo with me and my heavily overloaded Norton Commando was taken in Andorra on my way south across the Pyrenees into Spain in 1985 – it was a fantastic trip, living wild and free, sleeping under the stars and riding to wilderness places looking for rare birds. I was lucky to have got into bikes in the early 1970s – a time when I saw the first Honda 750 four join our little group of bikes. What a magical thing it was – but it couldn’t keep up with my first Norton Commando – the 850 shown poking out of the garage next to my BSA A10 Chopper in the other photo, which was taken in 1976. As you can see, my poor parents’ garage was a no-go area…