Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2018 i Classic Motorcycle Mechanics

A cool kit for just three grand… This month John Nutting enjoyed a very special kit bike. The CRK Triumph Roadster takes the basic bits of a 20 (or more) year old bike from Hinckley and transforms it into something unique. You can mix and match parts from the café racer kit to pretty much tailor the bike to what you want from it. We know that some of you out there may quail a little at the prospect of cannibalising a classic bike. Steve Cooper talks about the very same thing this month in his Kawasaki Hybrid build and the T300 series of Hinckley Triumphs are fast-becoming classic themselves – but you can find bikes out there that would otherwise just fade away. We think that our friends at…

THE CLASS OF 2018 Here at CMM we like to keep our finger on the pulse of both established classics and emerging classics. Our rule of thumb is the ‘15 year rolling rule’ that the gods from the VJMC use in helping to define what can join their club. So, here’s a pick of the crop from the class of 2003. To get in the mood we need to remind ourselves what was happening within the motorcycle world 15 years ago. The two-stroke was all but dead; a few tiddlers still used the configuration but the heyday of screaming strokers had passed. MotoGP was also a year into the new four-stroke age, and that’s a decent place to start our homework. The Honda CBR600 got a top to toe makeover,…

SEE YOU THERE! January 2018 1 Ace Cafe London The Hangover Meet.london.acecafe.com 6-7 The Carole Nash Classic Bike Guide Winter Classic Newark Showground NG24 2NY: www.classicbikeshows.com 17 FEBRUARY ISSUE OF CLASSIC MOTORCYCLE MECHANICS 19 Ace Cafe London Bike Night + Rockers & Classic: london.acecafe.com 20 Kempton Park Motorcycle Autojumble TW16 5AQ: www.kemptonparkautojumble.co.uk 21 Malvern Drive-In Classic Car & Bike Autojumble Three Counties Showground, Wye Halls WR13 6NW: www.classicshows.org 28 Normous Newark Autojumble The Showground, Drove Lane, Winthorpe, Newark, Notts NG24 2NY.www.newarkautojumble.co.uk…

CLASSIC RACING FAST BERK RACES! In his final instalment our own Charlie Oakman races the Yamaha TZR250 at Snetterton. How did it go? WORDS: CHARLIE OAKMAN PHOTOS: CHRIS SELBY, GARY CHAPMAN, JOHN MANCLARK So this was it, the culmination of a nine-month build: to turn the rolling frame and box of bolts found languishing at the back of Fast Bikes magazine’s lock-up, a mere shadow of Benjamin’s beloved 30-year-old TZR250 2MA, into a race machine. The final part of this plan was to take it to Norfolk and race what we had built in the final round of the Yamaha Past Masters (YPM) series around the Snetterton 300 circuit, so here we are! For a non-racing, mechanically-challenged person like myself, with no on-track or road experience of two-stroke machines this…

The Owner’s Tale: Karl Chadwick My Honda CB77 is a 1965 US model bought in 1991. It had the high bars and still has the US seat, with the raised front protecting the rider’s tackle, along with the folding footrests. For that one year only Honda fitted stainless steel silencers and this bike still wears them. With only 9000 miles showing on it, the CB77 is original save for a chain and sprocket, new carb needle, UK bars from one of my other 60s bikes and new brake shoes. It also has a coat of primer under new paint plus triple layered plating on the chrome bits and stainless spokes, double butted of course! The engine hasn’t been stripped and runs as quiet as a mouse eating paper, just like…

WORK SHOP Q&A Our very own wizened sages , Messrs Mark Haycock and Steve Cooper are here to answer all of your woes, be they mechanical or spiritual. Every month we will be giving advice, as well as some general tips. Don't forget to send in your own tips too. 1976 Kawasaki Z900 Q: When I start my much-loved and recently restored Kawasaki Z900 from cold I’m getting quite loud valve noise which persists for around five minutes until the engine warms up and then everything quietens down. I’ve repeatedly checked the valve clearances and these are all within the 0.05-0.01mm manufacturer’s spec. The head was overhauled with new valves, guides and seals during restoration and vacuum checked, so I’m left wondering why the valves are making so much…

Seals and cases The earliest 500 triples had a reputation for crank failures which was due to the seals used. Kawasaki was really still getting to grips with high-performance strokers and had opted to use seals without garter springs. Arguably a schoolboy error but the company was on a learning curve back then. Amazingly cranks built around the older seals still show up but anyone who knows their stuff will automatically use seals fitted with the vital spring retainers. You’ll have spotted our crank uses synthetic rubber seals throughout, unlike Yamaha who ran a labyrinth seal between the primary composition chambers. This clever metal seal contains a series of carefully machined grooves which hold and trap oil around the main shaft of the crank while the tops of the ridges…

Any lessons learnt, Scoop? And so that’s pretty much it for Project Stinger. Fourteen years in my hands, six being hosed with penetrating oil and eight years as a work-in-progress (and don’t we just know it, Scoop. Bertie). Possibly not the slowest resto in history but certainly longer than I’d expected or wished for. Even allowing for 18 months off the tools due to the building of a new workshop, post house move, it’s still taken far too long, yet I was warned Stingers can and will tax your will to carry on. Am I glad I’ve got it sorted? Definitely. Would I do another one? Are you mad! Am I taking a break from full restorations to get over the trauma? Am I hell! Sitting in a mouldering heap…

Repair not replacement & hoarding! It would have been easy to buy replacement parts but at what cost? Who can justify $105 for three wires, a spring and a pressed metal cup? Now add on VAT charged by HMRC at 20% plus whatever rip-off handling fee Royal Mail see fit to levy and we’re fast approaching £100 for something no one will ever see. Me? I’ve learnt something new and useful and, in my mind at least, saved a wedge of cash I’d much rather spend elsewhere and more wisely. Had the parts I was working on been Yamaha in origin there would have been a real chance I’d have had something in the ‘Used but Still Viable’ box I could have adapted. As the Stinger is the only Suzuki…

Pip Higham S90, definitely not C200, oh no! At my stage in life I’m always delighted to wake up in the morning, but recently I woke up after dreaming about one of my little ones that I’d let go. Not one of the kids, no. This was one of my bikes. The bike in question wasn’t a GSX1100, or a turbo nutter nitrous anything, it was a Honda S90. What’s that? Well, Honda launched a diverse skulk of bikes on the world markets in the early Sixties and among them were exciting engineering masterpieces such as the CB92 and the CB72/77; there were also several 50s sporting rather uninspiring little push-rod, cast-iron top-ended motors that would struggle to lift skin off a rice pud, but soon these were joined by…

SCOOPER MAN! The sunny side of the classic world, with the VJMC’s Steve Cooper www.vjmc.com ❙ 01324 410519 Do you ever question your reasons for buying a Japanese classic? I only ask because I’ve been hearing a lot returnees muttering they’re not the bikes they thought they were when they set their heart on them all those years ago. Those shiny chrome and candy paint icons have only aged the same as their aspirant owners, but time and expectations can be uneasy bedfellows. Simplistically the brakes on an early 1970s superbike were never outstanding and the handling on an early 1980s bike was far from ideal. Would-be owners of Suzuki Kettle and Yamaha XS1100s please take note! Even when things got rapidly better with machines such as the Kawasaki GPZ900R…

Mackenzie Hodgson Insurance Triple British Superbike Champion Niall Mackenzie and World Superbike Champion Neil Hodgson have become insurance salesmen! With many race and former race stars fronting up big bike insurance companies for their own gain, this is a little different. These two have spent two years researching the market and now want to provide ‘insurance by bikers for bikers’. Niall and Neil realised that there was a need for a more biker-focused kind of cover and hence their joint ambition to create Mackenzie Hodgson Insurance Our very own Niall explained: “This isn’t just a sponsorship thing: my name is above the door, so to speak! “Anyone who knows me, knows that I live for bikes and I’m always ready to put something back into biking. Working alongside Neil Hodgson,…

I bought a CRK Roadster kit Farmer Tom Saunders was one of the first to buy the CRK Roadster kit. The donor bike is a 900 Daytona triple he bought for £700. “It was registered in 1997 but a 1995 build. It was a non-runner and a bit of a mess but when I took it apart it was only the vacuum pipe to the fuel that was kinked, so the basic are okay,” said Tom, who farms arable land in Northamptonshire. The CRK Roadster will provide a return to bikes after a break of a few years. Tom has owned Moto Guzzis, RS BMWs and various Triumphs. By the end of August he said it was coming together. “I’ve chopped the back end off, fitted the new sub-frame and…

Project Big Zed part 3 Head for the Zed! Our Ralph has to sort out the top-end of this big-bore Kawasaki Zed project. WORDS AND PHOTOS: RALPH FERRAND This month I will be tackling the tricked-up cylinder head which needs to feed extra fuel/air mixture to the massive combustion chambers. Last month I made the discovery that a couple of decades ago someone had managed to damage a couple of valve stems in No. 4. Luckily I was able to get another pair of big valves the correct size, so the first job was to lap them in. Firstly, I popped the head on my cylinder head stands. In the old days I used the ubiquitous stick with rubber suckers either end, that hadn’t changed in design since Stonehenge had…

Allen Millyard The joy of six! Specials builder par excellence Allen Millyard tells us about his saucy six. I’ve had a really busy month working long hours on my latest project: a 374cc six-cylinder, twin-cam, short-stroke engine that will resemble a 1960s Honda RC174 six-cylinder when it’s finished, not an exact copy but my take on one. I am using a pair of Yamaha FZR250R engines for base components making and modifying all parts at home, including the 12-piece roller bearing crankshaft, with simple hand tools and my trusty 1970s Colchester lathe and 1950s Elliot Milling machine. This is by far the most complicated and mind-consuming project I’ve taken on to date and I will be talking about this in detail soon. I was also invited to display three bikes…

Project Honda CB750 K2 part 7 Getting his bearings Mark finishes off the front brake system and sorts some new head bearings out on his K2. WORDS AND PHOTOS: MARK HAYCOCK The final part of the front brake overhaul was to attend to the hose assembly as time had taken its toll (Photo 1). The arrangement consists of several parts: two flexible hoses joined to a block called the three-way joint, which houses the pressure-activated brake light switch (Photo 2) and joined to the end of the lower hose is a length of metal pipe which in turn fixes on to the caliper. I still cannot work out the rationale for this. The top hose does not need to be flexible as the master cylinder is in a fixed position…

IT’S MY BIKE: Steve Cooper If read CMM you’ll probably have read some of my tales of woe caused by this very bike. Owned for 14 years it’s been ‘under restoration’ for eight. I had to hunt down parts for some six years until I knew I had enough to start. Issues? Pistons corrosion welded to their bores, dead gearbox, tank like a sieve and these were only for starters. This bike is an early Mk 2 with the intermediate mudguard and low bars but I opted to use Mk 1 exhausts because they were given to me. The tank is painted Pholina Yellow, which was an option in the USA. It’s the same colour as used on the later PE enduro machines. Stingers are…

cmm Marketplace Healthy investments Every month we take a look at the classic motorcycle market with a range of industry experts. This month, Paul Jayson from The Motorcycle Broker and our very own Scott Redmond look at the high and low end of the marketplace. Whatever the criticism about people using their classic motorcycles as an investment, there is not much that will match them for returns. I’ve been crunching the numbers and now have the figures from 2010 until 2017 and all of my predictions from 2013 have already come true. Ducati 916/996 SPs are becoming the Broughs of the future. They have been outperforming Broughs, since 2010, quite considerably. They’ve slowed a little, but prices won’t stay static for long, so now is a great time to buy.…

BOOK CORNER MOTOGP YESTERDAY AND TODAY This is a pictorial look back through the years by the legendary Michael Scott. The book contains 192 pages with 190 colour and black and white pictures looking at the blue riband class of motorcycle racing from 1949 to 2017. www.carltonbooks.co.uk MOTOGP THE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY Much more word-heavy (80,000 as opposed to 20,000) this is a full history of the 500cc/MotoGP class of Grand Prix racing over 256 pages. Includes 150 pictures and exclusive interviews with the likes of Casey Stoner, Valentino Rossi, John Surtees, Kenny Roberts and Nicky Hayden. www.carltonbooks.co.uk…

Winter Classic tickets available! Don’t forget you can still get tickets to the Carole Nash Classic Bike Guide Winter Classic show, which features veteran racer Michael Rutter as guest of honour. Michael has always been a fan favourite and he is going to be at the show and on stage over the weekend of January 6-7, 2018. The show – which is held at the Newark Showground – is also the perfect opportunity to explore hundreds of lovely classic bikes on display. For more and ticket info go to: www.classicbikeshows.com.…

Anniversary Blade book coming! The 25th anniversary of the Honda FireBlade (or Fireblade post-2004) was in 2017 and a new Mortons’ bookazine is coming along in 2018 to celebrate this fact. Written by our own editor Bertie Simmonds, it tracks the development, birth and subsequent models of the Honda CBR900RR FireBlade from 1992 all the way through to the current model in 2017. Chapters cover technical aspects of all models as well as the rich racing history of the bike itself. Based in part on his 2000 book on the first models of the Blade, Bertie says: “I really think people should buy this book.”…

FEEDBACK WIN BRIDGESTONE TYRES Every month we’re giving away a pair of Bridgestone tyres to the writer of the best submitted letter we receive. You can choose between Bridgestone’s BT-016 Pros, BT-023s or BT-45s! No cash alternative, before you ask! Simply get in touch by sending emails to: letters@classicmechanics.com or post your letters to the normal address, giving contact details just in case you are that lucky winner. Another Stinger! Greetings from San Diego! Although my 1969 Stinger didn’t take 10 years, I did follow Scoop’s build and was even fortunate enough to be able to provide a small bit to his Stinker’s oil pump. Mine didn’t start out as rough as Steve’s, but it did suffer from the previous owner’s ‘maintenance’ attempts. Apparently the only tool he owned was…

The way we were… Send us your nostalgic snaps of you back in the day with your steed! Either send to me at bsimmond s@ mortons.co. uk  or via our vibrant Facebook page. C’mon! “I enclose a few photos of my first big bike – a BMW R80,” says Martin Kesans. “Check out the socks and helmet, very retro in the 1970s! The second is a rebuilt Honda Nighthawk. It’s had a top-end rebuild carbs, refurbished clutch-plates, new shocks, braided hoses and it took two resprays to get it right at a total cost of £900. My first rebuild was in 1975. I bought a BSA A10 and sidecar for £35, advertised for £50 (a lot of haggling!). It had a seized cylinder, which he had…

Who was Dennis Neill? Dennis Neill was a legendary Australian racer from the 1980s with a results list as long as your arm but is perhaps most famous for his crash on the Honda CB1100R, a bike which he assisted Honda in developing to win the 6-Hour. At the time Dennis was an A-Grade factory racer in Australia, about to head overseas, who saw Giacomo Agostini racing in 1971 at Oran Park and upon viewing the support races, decided he could probably beat most of the field. He then joined the Bankstown-Wiley Park MCC and proceeded to win his first race. Turns out he was right! In 1981, Honda built this stunning Superbike Spec CB1100R for Dennis to race in the Arai 500 Endurance at Bathurst but famously, Dennis suffered…

Project Kawasaki Hybrid part 2 Going cranky! Scoop’s on the way to getting the H1 engine into the tiddler frame – but first he needs to sort the crank! WORDS AND PHOTOS: STEVE COOPER With any motorcycle restoration, rebuild, renovation or overhaul there are a handful of factors that will determine just how good or bad the end product turns out to be. A cosmetic refresh may very well deliver a machine with selling potential to the more gullible enthusiasts but gleaming paint and sparkling chrome supply jack in terms of motive force. For a motorcycle to be a viable entity you’ll need a viable chassis, a working electrical system and, of course, a dependable engine. Arguably the crankshaft and allied components is the spot where you should throw most…

Better bulb holders! It seems Project Stinger has given us so much over the years… and so here’s Scoop’s guide to bulb holders! WORDS AND PHOTOS: STEVE COOPER Funny things, magazine workshop articles; sometimes they’re the result of a carefully laid out plan yet at other times they come about either via serendipity or self-perpetuated disasters. Acknowledging the fact that I’ve been working on the accursed Suzuki Stinger for far too long, you (the gentle reader) may already have grasped how this month’s missive came about! On the final lap of said egregious two-stroke twin I’d been fitting the sub harness that goes to the clocks with new connectors and sleeving, as you do. The wires to one clock all checked out fine but with the second unit I had…

Project Suzuki GSX-R750WT SRAD part 1 The beige bullet! Scottie has a plan: turn a tatty beige SRAD from track bike to road rocket over the coming winter. WORDS AND PHOTOS: SCOTT REDMOND Like many of you I have soft spot for old GSX-R models. My first 750 road bike in 1989 was a GSX-R750H, and there’s been plenty of other GSX-R750s pass through my paws over the decades. Here’s the twist though; when I felt that I needed another GSX-R750 in my life I wasn’t drawn to those oil-cooled models that many of you love. Having ridden a few since my teenage flirtations with the model I’ve realised sometimes the past should be that – the past. Also, given that asking prices for oil-cooled GSX-Rs have shot up I…

Next month YAMAHA TX650: John Nutting rides a US-inspired parallel twin. HONDA NX650 DOMINATOR: Bertie Simmonds rides a legendary single! KAWASAKI Z900RS: Our mate Mikko rides this retro on its launch! YAMAHA TRX850: Bruce Cox on the story of when Yamaha ‘did a Ducati’. KAWASAKI S2: Scoop with our buyer’s guide! WORKSHOP: How to break down a new project bike. Meanwhile, our Honda CB750 K2 with Mark Haycock gets its rear-end sorted! PROJECT BIKES: Ralph gets further on with the Project Z1325 ‘Big Zed’ while also starting us off with part one of a series on the Laverda Jota. Steve Cooper has got another project on the go, Yamaha’s CS3C, oh, and he’s still on with his Kawasaki Hybrid while Allen Millyard continues with his engineering musings! AND MUCH MORE!…