Innholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2017 i Motorcycle Classics

In the late 1960s, the adventure motorcycle was still a decade away, so if you wanted to play in the dirt with a road bike, you’d choose from the street scramblers then on sale — like something from Honda’s CL range, for example. These were by no means serious dirt bikes, just street machines with a high-level exhaust and maybe braced handlebars. Triumph’s entry into this market was the TR25W Trophy. Intended to replace the 200cc Tiger Cub in the catalog, the baby Trophy was essentially a BSA Starfire 250 with “Triumph” on the gas tank, high bars and a high exhaust. It represented one of BSA-Triumph’s last desperate attempts to keep their superannuated quarter-liter singles relevant. The 1971 B25T and B25SS “Gold Star” was their swan song. At the…

Motorcycling loses a giant: RIP, John Surtees John Surtees, the only man ever to win World championships on both two wheels and four, with seven motorcycle World titles for MV Agusta between 1956 and 1960 before winning the 1964 Formula 1 World Championship for Ferrari, passed away in London, England, on March 10, aged 83. Born in 1934, Surtees grew up working in the South London motorcycle shop owned by his father, Jack, a sidecar racer with whom 14-year-old John made his competition debut in 1948, riding with his dad to victory on his outfit, only to be disqualified for being under age! He began competing in grass track races at Brands Hatch, but graduated to road racing after starting an apprenticeship at Vincent and by 1951 was winning regularly…

AAmerican servicemen returning home from Japan in the 1960s and 1970s often took along souvenirs of their stay in the Land of the Rising Sun. A popular memento was the motorcycle that had taken the soldier, sailor or Marine on off-base escapades. Aircraft carriers often returned stateside with holds packed with motorcycles, and often as not, the bikes were Japanese homeland models unavailable in the U. One such bike that was occasionally imported by returning service folk was the Kawasaki Z2, the 750cc little brother of the awe-inspiring 903cc Z1. The Z1 was the hot ticket back home in the States, but since the Z1 wasn’t available in Japan, some GIs settled for a Z2, and after putting some miles on the 750, many decided it was at least as…

Australia has a land area larger than the 48 contiguous states, yet its population is fewer than 25 million people (although it has 74 million sheep!). As a result, population centers are often far apart, which means if you’re riding a motorcycle, you need a good fuel range. Australia was an important export market for Norton-Villiers, so the company decided in 1971 to make a Commando based on the Fastback model that could run over 200 miles on a tank of gas. They called it the Fastback “LR” — for Long Range. According to the UK Norton Owners Club, only around 400 were made (though quite a few more than that now exist …) and most went to Australia. The standard Fastback was the first of the Commando model line.…

More than six decades ago, the Vincent Black Shadow delivered the most performance from a street-legal vehicle that money could buy — on two wheels or four. Officially timed at 122mph, it outsped the Jaguar XK120 two-seater, then the world’s fastest production car, making the shadow the first true Superbike of the modern era. The ultimate Vincent was the Series C Black Lightning, a production version of the bike Rollie Free rode to break the AMA’s land speed record in 1948 on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Available only by special order, the standard Black Lightning was supplied in racing trim with a tachometer, Elektron magnesium alloy brake plates, racing tires on alloy rims, rearset foot controls, a solo seat and aluminum fenders. This reduced the Black Lightning’s dry weight to…

Sometimes, everything old is still just old. If it was new, it would run. What fun would that be? And therein lies the charm of vintage motorcycles. As a cure for the incomprehensibly complex world of rider aids, traction control and even fuel injection, old bikes offer that most elusive quality — simplicity. Simplicity is just the thing for new riders, the gateway drug to the harder stuff. It’s easy to see why new riders are drawn to old bikes. To the uninitiated, a free basket case or a $200 project bike is just a weekend’s worth of work away from tearing down country roads or sparking motorcycle lifestyle photo shoots. All you need is gas, air, spark and elbow grease to hurtle you down lonesome highways. Right? Most of…

Trickle charger Q: I have recently obtained a 1970 BSA A65T Thunderbolt with a 12-volt positive ground system. I would like to keep a trickle charger on it if possible. No fancy lithium batteries here, just a plain old sealed unit. The gentleman who owned it previously had a pigtail connected to the battery for a trickle charger. He explained that the positive connection on the charger went to the grounded, positive side of the battery, while the negative side went to the, well, negative side of the battery, which is not grounded. When I connect my Battery Tender to it, the indicator light says that the charger is incorrectly connected and so it won’t charge. How can I correct this situation? If it matters, I have a Boyer ignition…

We know the problem: You just finished that perfect restoration of your Norton Commando or Honda CB750, and nothing will do except for the factory- correct handlebar grips. The problem is, the factory items weren’t always that good. The Norton grips were often “pillowy” and the Honda items stiff — not exactly conducive to longrange comfort. When the factory grips on my 1983 Laverda RGS finally gave up the ghost after years of service, I decided it was time to try something different. I’d never really liked the originals to begin with, and since my bike’s a rider, comfort is king. But I didn’t want foam grips, and most of the other grips I found just didn’t look right for the RGS. Enter Randakk’s Cycle Shakk’s GEN II Amazing Grips.…

Shortly after Kenny Roberts won his third Laguna Seca National road race in 1982, he declared that this AMA race, above all others in North America, was “a happening.” The race weekend on the Monterey Peninsula had, over the years, morphed into a festival of speed and sound, and the 1982 race was special because beyond the horde of privateer Yamaha TZ750s in the field there was a squadron of factory-backed 500cc Grand Prix race bikes on the grid, giving the weekend the festive feel of a Grand Prix. But 1982 didn’t mark the beginning of Laguna Seca Raceway’s claim to being America’s road race happening. Things had been heating up at Laguna Seca — which, by the way, is Spanish for Dry Lake — during the years prior to…

The Superbowl of Motocross I read with interest your article on “The Superbowl of Motocross.” It was well written, with lots of information about the rise of supercross. My disappointment is there is no mention of attendance. Even today’s races at some of the biggest venues in the country, the announcers never tell the attendance figures. Football and every other sport makes sure the world knows about the attending crowd. Supercross may not sell out every meet, but still gets a respectable crowd. It’s not on the front page, or even a sidebar somewhere in the local papers — but, you have to think, it’s only a motorcycle race. By the way, what was the attendance at that first motocross race? Richard J. Mack/Lombard, Illinois Richard, Our research found a…

Given their reputation for poor reliability, you might expect used Triumph TR25W Trophy 250s to be thin on the ground. Surprisingly, that doesn’t seem to be the case, because in only a few days of looking we found at least a half dozen for sale. That’s the good news. The bad news is, most of the ones we found were rebuilders needing a great deal of attention. With an average asking price around $1,000, they’d all quickly become $3,000 bikes once you tended to their needs. That led us to the bike here. Non-stock but in very nice shape, it shows an indicated 11,117 miles on the stock speedometer. The aluminum tank and the bars are non-stock, as is the seat, but the bike’s very clean and tidy, an otherwise…

The 2nd Annual Motorcycle Classics Ride ’Em, Don’t Hide ’Em Getaway at Seven Springs Resort in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, is just around the corner, Aug. 4-6, 2017. Joining us this year is special guest Mark Mederski, the former executive director of the American Motorcycle Association Motorcycle Hall of Fame and now special projects director at the National Motorcycle Museum in Anamosa, Iowa. The weekend event, centered in Southern Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands, includes two days of riding, eating and just generally hanging out with like-minded vintage motorcycle enthusiasts. With help from Tom McKee, organizer of the annual All Brands Motorcycle Event at McKee’s Sky Ranch in nearby Terra Alta, West Virginia, we’ve mapped out a great Saturday ride taking us through the region’s mostly unknown Amish territory, an area punctuated by…

Forty summers ago, a home-brewed Ducati created a legend in racing. This is the inside story. Daytona International Speedway, March 11, 1977. The moment of truth. Cook Neilson is sitting on the front row of the grid for the 13-lap Superbike race. Around him are more than 30 bikes, including Steve McLaughlin and Reg Pridmore’s winning BMWs of the previous year, highly tuned Kawasaki fours, Laverda triples, several Ducatis and a Honda. The first three rows of the grid are packed with America’s top riders on factory-supported machinery. Cook has earned his place on the front row. All week his Ducati has held a two-second advantage over the field. But now the rider, who came third in 1976, has mixed feelings as he looks around at his rivals. “It seemed…

Discoveries of really old motorcycles are supposed to involve a barn. There aren’t a lot of barns in the suburban area where Mark Harrigan, the owner of this 1916 Excelsior, lives. But there are good neighbors who help each other, which led to this bike’s recovery. This Excelsior has survived thanks to a little help from many friends. Once upon a time, there was a telephone lineman named Dick who knew nothing about motorcycles, but liked old things. While out fixing telephone lines one day, he saw a pickup truck headed for the dump, with an old motorcycle and a bunch of parts in the bed. Our hero intercepted the pickup truck — and got the contents of the truck for free. He then stowed the lot in the back…

Exactly 25 years ago, the most exotic and most expensive series production motorcycle yet produced by any Japanese manufacturer was launched in the marketplace as a 1992 model, embracing a level of technology that even today seems extreme — even compared to Honda’s recent limited-edition RC213V-S, a MotoGP racer-with-lights. The Honda NR750, aka RC40, was the first — and so far the only — opportunity for even a few wealthy customers to experience the fruits of Honda’s high-profile focus on pursuing the holy grail of oval-piston engineering. It began as a rule-bending exercise, but by October 1991, when 16 select journalists were invited to sample the results, had been determined to offer significant mechanical advantages. It’s strange that as an engineering-led company, Honda has so far failed to follow up…

Who among motorcycle historians can forget Dick Mann’s landmark 1970 Daytona 200 win aboard a factory-prepped Honda CB750? Mann’s ride was impressive then, and it remains so to this day, even if, in recent years, the iconic 200- mile race has lost its luster and importance for the industry. But few enthusiasts today know about a handful of Americans who enjoyed Honda sponsorship several years before Mann’s amazing race. This story is about three young men — Dale Coffman, Mike Chapman and Mike Wood — who enjoyed the benefit of what amounted to sponsorship from Honda Motors back in 1963 and 1964. In Japan. And who the hell are Coffman, Chapman and Wood, you might be asking? If you’re a student of motorcycle racing history, you know for a fact…

Straddling the Columbia River on the border between Washington and Oregon, the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area is not so much a destination as it is a region, and one that should be on every rider’s bucket list. It’s an 80-mile stretch of heaven along one of the mightiest rivers in America, framed by first-rate riding and stunning scenery. Twisting two-lane roads, 4,000-foot-deep canyons, magnificent views, wildflowers, wildlife, waterfalls, massive hydroelectric dams, quaint towns, beautiful bridges and more: The Columbia River Gorge has it all. I’ve visited the Columbia River Gorge five times and I know I will return again. My advice? Take a full two days to circumnavigate this magnificent area (you’ll need at least that time to explore both the Oregon and Washington sides). You’ll be retracing…

1967-1974 Ducati 250 Scrambler The Ducati 250 Scrambler was a perfect example of what Triumph was up against. For about the same money, Joe Biker could buy a high-tech, far more reliable overhead cam-engined 250 with a 5-speed transmission. The downside? The usual Italian electrical and cosmetic issues from that era. ntroduced for 1967, the “wide case” 250 featured a beveldrive, spring-valve overhead cam unit-construction engine with alloy cylinder and head, and gear drive primary. Dell’Orto provided carburetion until 1973 (27mm SS or 26mm VHB), replaced by a 27mm Spanish Amal for 1974. Ignition was battery and coil with a 6V/70W Marelli generator before Ducati switched over to electronic ignition in 1973. The power unit slotted into a single downtube open-loop frame stressed through the engine, with 35mm Marzocchi forks,…

Vintage dirt bike fans won’t want to miss the 6th Annual All Brands Motorcycle Event at McKee’s Sky Ranch July 27-30, 2017. Held at vintage bike enthusiast and former motocross racer Tom McKee’s 200-acre dirt bike refuge in the mountains outside Terra Alta, West Virginia, the four-day event features three days of AHRMA vintage offroad racing including Vintage Cross Country, Enduro, Vintage MX, Post Vintage Cross Country and Post Vintage MX. Former ISDT gold medallist Fred Hoess is this year’s Grand Marshall, and he’ll be racing as well, defending his title win from last year! The weekend kicks off Thursday morning, July 27, with the Dual Sport Ride, a three-hour, moderately challenging ride offering mountain trails and varied terrain from single track to unimproved dirt roads, with elevation changes and…

At Daytona Bike Week 2008, the Barber Vintage Museum’s Brian Slark and Jeff Ray were talking shop with Ducati restoration expert Rich Lambrechts. “It just sort of materialized,” Slark recalls. “Jeff and Rich and I were talking, and one of us said ‘what if?’” The “what if” was to build a replica of Old Blue, which would make a perfect addition to the museum. The real bike wasn’t for sale, so why not have Lambrechts build a replica? It turned out Lambrechts had a thing for Old Blue and had been pondering a build for some time. “I had the bones to make the bike,” Lambrechts says. “It took me all of two minutes to think about it.” Cook would be Guest of Honor at the 2008 Barber Vintage Festival,…

Dan, Terry and Tom Hanlon dreamed of building their own motorcycle. In 1993, after securing the Excelsior and Henderson trademarks, they designed a V-twin cruiser. A prototype was ready by 1995, featuring a double overhead cam, 4-valve, fuel injected V-twin engine, antidive front suspension and a rigid, lowslung frame. The brothers raised $100 million and built a factory in Belle Plaine, Minnesota. The non-running prototype first went on public display at Sturgis 1995, and was brought to Daytona the following year. A repeated question at both rallies was, “Why don’t you fire it up?” FIREITUP became the company rallying cry. Bikes started rolling down the assembly line in 1999. The first model was the Super X, named after the iconic midsized speedster of the 1920s. The Deadwood, a limited edition…

The inspiration behind Honda’s ovalpiston technology was driven by racing regulations. In 1969, the international racing body, FIM, passed new regulations limiting engines in the 500cc class to four cylinders. However, the new regs actually stipulated four “combustion chambers,” not cylinders, the latter being implied. In 1975, Honda engineer Soichiro Irimajiri (responsible for Honda’s earlier multi-cylinder GP bikes and later the spectacular 6-cylinder CBX) designed a 500cc V8, with paired circular pistons sharing a common combustion chamber. Worried that Honda would be criticized for a too literal interpretation of the regulations, Irimajiri turned a new direction, conceiving of a single oval piston instead of pairedcylindrical shaped pistons. Honda wanted to create a 4-stroke, 500cc GP-winning machine, a class Honda unsuccessfully pursued in the 1960s before pulling out of GP racing…

If you’re actually riding your old Norton Commando 850 — and we hope you are, because they’re one of the great bikes of the ’70s — chances are good that at some point you’ll have to replace the clutch plates. The original setup used five alternating bronze friction plates keyed to the center clutch hub, with four plain steel plates keyed to the outer clutch drum followed by a pressure plate and a single diaphragm-spring plate compressing the plates. It’s a fine setup, but eventually the plates wear. Slippage and overheating take a toll, as well: Once the steel plates start to blue, they’re toast, and both the steel and the bronze plates can warp from overheating. The good news is, replacement clutch plates are readily available and the design…