Innholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2016 i Motorcycle Classics

Guzzisti everywhere revere Lino Tonti for the light, rigid frame he designed around Giulio Cesare Carcano’s 1967 V-twin engine to create the iconic 1971 Moto Guzzi V7 Sport. They’re sometimes less generous in recognizing his other main contribution to Guzziology: The V35, V50 and V65 “small block” engines. Nevertheless, it was the 650cc V65 transverse V-twin engine that powered Guzzi’s first foray into dual-sport motorcycles, the V65TT Tutto Terreno, or all terrain. The V65TT story really starts when French Guzzi importer SEUDEM converted five V50 Monza street bikes with bigger gas tanks, 21-inch front wheels (retaining the crack-prone cast rear wheel as no suitable spoked wheel was available) and entered them in the 1979 Paris-Dakar race. One even finished, in 48th place. So when Guzzi decided to build a dual-sport…

It’s lunchtime and the phone rings. It’s my buddy Mike telling me to look in my email. “Quick!” he says. Sensing the urgency in his voice, I dropped what I was doing, logged in and saw a message from him titled “You gotta see this!” with a link to a New York state Craigslist posting that read: “1979 Yamaha 750. Parked for over 30 years. Runs but needs work. 291 miles.” I almost fell off my chair! 291 miles! “I bet the seller meant to say 29,000 miles,” I started to think, but I picked up the phone and called. A young man answered and confirmed what the ad said. Sensing my wariness, he asked, “Would you like to talk with my dad?” Mr. Seller Senior came to the phone…

Pursuing perfection when restoring a motorcycle is a bit like waltzing with a porcupine. It’s a prickly proposition, and if any of the details are incorrect there will be barbs of criticism from the experts. But BMW enthusiast Philip Richter isn’t one to shy away from a dance, and he’s consulted those in the know to bring his 1937 BMW R5 as close to 100 percent perfect as possible. Case in point: In the photographs accompanying this story, Philip’s R5 looks refined and ready to roll. It is, but the machine had earlier been restored with incorrect fenders. Philip says he recently “paid through the nose” for an exact set of reproduction R5 fenders, hand-formed by a German panel beater. At the time of writing, the R5 was in the…

Sometime around June or July 1974, after two years of development, clay mock-ups, rigorous engineering and conceptual designs, Honda Project 371 was ready to move to the final stages, with 10 prototype units to be assembled. Honda Motor Co.’s monumental endeavor to build a performance-oriented grand touring motorcycle was about to reach fruition with the GL1000. In the same way the 1969 CB750 Four was a benchmark motorcycle, Honda wanted its new grand tourer to be the same, a motorcycle of firsts. The new bike would be Honda’s first water-cooled motorcycle. It would be Honda’s first horizontally opposed engine, a design chosen for its smoothness and inherent low center of gravity. And unlike any other horizontally opposed motorcycle engine, it would use overhead camshafts. In the early stages of design,…

During the 1950s-1960s classic era of road racing, Czechoslovakia was the only Iron Curtain country to mount a sustained challenge to Italian and Japanese supremacy in the prestigious large capacity classes. Sure, East Germany’s MZ revolutionized Grand Prix racing’s 125cc and 250cc technology, but only the state-owned Czech Jawa and its CZ sister marque flew the Eastern bloc flag in the 350cc and 500cc categories with any measure of success. Founded in 1929 by Frantisek Janecek as a spinoff from his successful armaments business, Jawa embraced racing from the beginning. Its finest hour arguably came in 1961, when legendary rider Franta Stastny finished second in the 350cc World Championship to MV Agusta’s Gary Hocking aboard his double overhead cam awa 4-stroke parallel twin. As the 1960s unfolded, Jawa designer Zdenek…

Lots of smoke Q: I am 63 years old. I have had my own little shop under my house for about 43 years. I have fixed just about every brand in those years. I bought a 1965 T100 Triumph 500 from a friend of mine about seven years ago. When I had a little extra cash I would throw it in the bike. I finally got it running. When I fired it up the left side cylinder smoked very badly. I rebuilt the whole engine. I had the head done by E & V Engines, new valve guides and valves, new pistons and rings at 0.20 over. I cannot figure out why it is smoking only on one side. I even put another set of new rings in it and…

7/8 Still one of the coolest vintage motorcycle events of the year, the AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days return to the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio, July 8-10, 2016. Enjoy the AMA Vintage Road Racing Grand Championships along with motocross, hare scrambles, trials and a round of the AMA Vintage Dirt Track National Championship Series. The event still includes America’s largest motorcycle swap meet, bike shows, stunt shows, demo rides, seminars and more. More info: amavintagemotorcycledays.com 7/8 Visit the New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville, New Jersey, July 8-10, for the 4th Annual AHRMA Vintage Festival. The weekend will feature plenty of vintage motorcycle racing along with 60,000 square feet of swap meet, food trucks, craft vendors, live music and more. More info: njmp.com 7/21 Head to Terra Ata,…

Travel and motorcycles I am responding to a reader who recommended that Motorcycle Classics cease publishing the Rides and Destinations feature. A few years ago, I read Clement Salvadori’s story on the Hippie Highway. I had not previously read any of his work (or any other motorcycle travel articles). I am thankful that I did read his article. In fact, it opened a new world to me. I subsequently read Jupiter’s Travels, One Man Caravan, Investment Biker, and three books by Mr. Salvadori. In one of them, he made the comment that the best travel book ever written was The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain. He was right. What a hoot! I enjoy the feature and encourage you to continue it. After all, the machines we love were created to…

Ride ’Em, Don’t Hide ’Em Get-Away and Isle of Man The countdown is on for the 2016 Motorcycle Classics inaugural Ride ’Em, Don’t Hide ’Em Get-Away in Pennsylvania and our first-ever visit to the Isle of Man for the Festival of Motorcycling and Classic TT. The Pennsylvania Get-Away is Aug. 5-7, 2016, at Seven Springs Mountain Resort in southwestern Pennsylvania’s beautiful Laurel Highlands. We’ll ride to Fallingwater, architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece structure built over Bear Run Creek in rural Pennsylvania, and to Coopers Rock State Forest and the Cheat River Gorge. We’ll have a special dinner Saturday night with AMA Hall of Famer Brian Slark of the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, who was instrumental in helping establish motocross in the U.S. in the 1960s. Need a bike? We’ve teamed…

Every New Year’s Day, Mark Harrigan, as he has for many years, goes for a ride on his 1978 Harley-Davidson XLCR, a bike he has owned since it was new. This is a little more involved than simply going on a ride, as the Harley spends most of its time in Mark’s living room. During the month of December, it sits behind a fully decorated Christmas tree. Mark’s New Year’s Day usually starts with the family project of taking the tree down and putting the ornaments away for another year. He then gets out a couple of ramps, making sure there’s no sticky goop on them before using them to bridge the steps between the living room and the garage. He then pushes the Harley out into the garage and…

When Martin Conachey peeked inside the heavy fertilizer sacks, he knew he was going to need help to transform their contents into the café racer of his dreams. That meant calling on his friends in Ireland, and travelling to England to see legendary Dresda Triton builder Dave Degens. “The first time I saw a Dresda Triton was in 1968,” Martin recalls. “I’ve wanted one ever since. I had just bought a rusty Featherbed frame with a pair of Commando forks, along with a gearbox and big lumps of what was once a 500cc pre-unit Tiger 100 engine. Although there were a few goodies in the fertilizer sacks — including a nice gas tank and new pistons still in their boxes — there was a lot of scrap, as well. This…

By definition, a prototype unit is produced to show the public what a new concept or design is to look like. It is carefully made to almost exactly emulate the next phases of production in appearance and innovation. Following the prototype phase are pre-production bikes. The colors selected for the 10 prototypes were Candy Antares Red, Candy Blue Green and Sulfur Yellow. I believe that six of the 10 were Candy Antares Red, three were Candy Blue Green and one, GL1-1000002, was yellow. I think they painted more of them Antares Red because of that color’s recognizable look and because it is more photogenic than the other two. With exposed body parts, only the red units were used in pictures taken for the owner’s manuals and the later published GL1000…

Tear-down always feels like progress; one minute you have a complete motorcycle and the next, pieces. You haven’t actually gotten much done, but it sure feels like it, especially compared to the long stretch between tear down and build up, where it seems to take forever for anything to happen. Our project 1970 Honda CB350 has been trapped in that middle ground for months, with lots of big pieces waiting to be cleaned, fixed or replaced before any major forward motion could take place. Yet suddenly, it seems like we’ve turned a major corner as things start coming together and we tick off one job after another. Chief among those was cleaning and painting our CB’s engine before installing it back in our freshly powder-coated frame. Cleaning went stupid slow,…

Comedian Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of success is just showing up. Success is one thing, but to become a successful motorcycle racing champion requires applying the additional 20 percent that some people (that is, non-racers) might otherwise leave on the table. As a competitor in AHRMA’s highly contested GP200 class, Ron Mousouris left nothing on the table to become the series champion for 2015. But prior to that and for about 40 years — the equivalent of 80 percent of his time in this sport called motorcycling — Ron was a non-racer. And in racers’ eyes, non-racers leave something on the table. In Ron’s case, it was more than a few wonderfully restored classic Honda motorcycles of 1960s and 1970s vintage before locating a 1957 Honda Benly…

One of the easiest pieces to damage on a motorcycle is the seat. Even being careful, regular use coupled with the cruel effects of time and weather can leave your seat looking less than perfect — and the old foam underneath breaks down over time, providing less support than you might like. What to do? Fortunately, you do have options. Seat foam OK? Then just replace the seat cover. Foam trashed? Replace the seat cover and the foam underneath. Seat pan rusted out? A new reproduction seat might be your best option. 1 Baxter Cycle carries a variety of complete seats, seat covers and seat foam for British bikes. They carry quality replacement seats from two different companies, P&P Seating and R K Leighton, both located in the U.K. The…

In the mid-1970s, Yamaha’s fiasco with its 1973-1974 TX750 overhead cam twin had sent the company scrambling back to the drawing board to come up with something fresh. Next door neighbor and competitor Honda was selling every CB750 Four it could produce, and Yamaha desperately needed a hit in the 750cc category. Eager to clean the egg on the face left by the TX, a nice-looking machine with an unfortunate propensity for blowing up crankshafts, Yamaha had to come up with something good to quash the rumors that it didn’t possess the know-how to build good 4-stroke engines. “They should stick to 2-strokes,” was the often-heard comment in bike circles, even though the double overhead cam, 4-valve-per-cylinder TX/XS500 received favorable reviews by the motorcycle press, and Yamaha’s faux Bonneville, the…

Although the Triton was never a factory offering, the pairing of a Triumph twin engine — 500cc or 650cc — in a Norton Featherbed frame became so popular you’d be excused for thinking otherwise. The name came from the simple joining of the first and last three letters of the respective makes; Triumph + Norton = Triton. Although some sources suggest the hybrid bike was created by builders favoring Triumph engines for reliability and power and Norton Featherbed frames for their wellearned reputation for superior handling, that’s likely only part of the story. Although there were more tuning options for the popular and higher production Triumph engines versus the Norton twins of the Fifties and Sixties, another possible impetus might have been the simple availability of superior Featherbed frames sans…

It was 1945. The war in Europe was almost over and America was winning the war with Japan. After 10 years of the Depression and four years of war, America was looking forward to prosperity and peace. Soon, Johnny would be marching home. After years of privation and giving it all for the war effort, factories would soon be converting from war work to consumer goods production at a breakneck pace. Ralph Rogers, a businessman and former executive with Cummins Diesel, saw an opportunity. The returning veterans would need reliable, inexpensive transportation, and he was convinced he could sell it to them. Setting the stage The 1944 GI Bill meant millions of ex-GIs would be going to school, while others would go back to the jobs they had left before…

As a rule, we try to focus our How-Tos on repairs we think the weekend mechanic can aspire to, so we’ll kick this one off with a qualifying statement: Rebuilding a Yamaha Autolube oil pump requires more than average care and attention. Our factory Yamaha manual specifically says of the pump, “Make no attempt to disassemble it,” yet it can be rebuilt. Pump failure is typically due to bad seals or, as we found with our 1974 DT125, sludged or stuck parts. In our case the spring for the pump shaft had rusted in the compressed position. A previous owner bypassed the pump in favor of premixing the fuel/oil, likely because the pump couldn’t stroke with a stuck spring. As the photo above shows, the Autolube may be a little…

If I asked readers where they’d look for one of the finest collections of historically significant race bikes in the nation, answers would certainly vary. The list would likely include museums, various highbrow Concours d’Elegance, or maybe the collection at the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame. However, I will make the case that I happened upon arguably one of the nation’s most impressive collections of famous race bikes at a Harley-Davidson dealership. I was told that Red Rock Harley-Davidson in Las Vegas, Nevada, housed a nice display of rare race bikes, so I made the stop on a recent ride through southern Nevada. “Nice display” was a profound understatement. What I found was a treasure trove of motorcycles that were ridden in some of the most storied races by some…

Thirty-something years ago Lynn Griffis was perhaps the most recognizable woman in racing — yet she didn’t race. She was Miss Camel Pro Series, the AMA’s ambassador for Grand National Championship dirt track and road racing, officially known as the Camel Pro Series. That’s Camel as in Camel Cigarettes, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company’s bluecollar brand and the chief sponsor for the GNC from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. And RJR did more than blow smoke up racers’ exhaust pipes — the tobacco giant paid handsomely to the pro riders for their Herculean efforts on the race track. And in the thick of it all Miss Griffis packed in more years as Miss Camel Pro Series than anybody, starting in 1975 before stepping down in 1982. During those…