Innholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2019 i Motorcycle Classics

Rider: Doug Bottcher, Sandpoint, Idaho Age: 60 Occupation: Retired lineman Doug’s story: Starting at age 10, I have had in my possession 22 motorcycles ranging in size from 50cc to 950cc. Three years ago my wife and I had 13 motorcycles in the garage, some vintage, some modern and all in working order. We currently have and ride a 1965 Bultaco Model 9 155cc Mercurio, a 1974 Bultaco Model 115 250cc Alpina, a 1980 Yamaha SR500 and a 1973 Bultaco Model 98 175 Alpina. This bike was purchased for me when I was 15 years old. I still have the original receipt for $816, purchased from Frank Thieme at Cycle Haus. I raced a 370 Pursang when I was in high school. My love for Bultacos has kept me looking…

Ride ’Em, Don’t Hide ’Em Getaway The 4th Annual Ride ’Em, Don’t Hide ’Em Getaway returns to Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, Aug. 9-11, 2019, and we’re looking forward to another great weekend of food, fun and comradery as we continue to explore the great roads that define Southwestern Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands. Southwestern Pennsylvania is a remarkably beautiful region of low mountains, deep valleys and lush forests. Punctuated by picture-perfect farms, it’s incredible motorcycling territory, with miles of two-lane blacktop wending through it all. Last year’s Saturday ride took us from Seven Springs north to historic Johnstown, Pennsylvania, site of an epic 1889 flood that threatened to wipe the once-dominate steel-producing city off the map. There, we took a ride on the historic Johnstown Incline. Built in…

A visitor to Dean Stuckmann’s home in Newton, Wisconsin, would be whisked back to the early 1980s. At the time, new technologies were launching that changed the way people watched movies and listened to music, and Dean appreciated new technologies such as the Sony Betamax videocassette player and Pioneer LaserDisc player. He still has both of them, set up and functioning, in his home entertainment system. “I’ve always really been into new technology,” Dean says of his early-adopter status, and that passion carries over to his interest in motorcycles. He continues: “Early in 1981, when motorcycle magazines began running stories about the first Honda CX500 Turbo, I thought the bike was really something special. I went to my dealer, Wickman’s Cycle Service in Manitowoc, so I could be the first…

Next to Willie G. Davidson, Craig Vetter is the American most responsible for motorcycle design in the last 40 years. He started on his life path very early. At the age of 8, he learned about Glenn Curtiss, the early speed record-setter and motorcycle and airplane designer. He decided then that he would be a second Glenn Curtiss, a designer and racer. Now in his 70s, Vetter is involved in several different projects, most currently focused on electric motorcycles. He is also writing his memoirs, aided by several shelves of notebooks. Since 1965, Vetter has written and sketched his ideas in notebooks, which serve as an archive of his projects. Vetter often has several projects going at once, and is now up to 121 filled notebooks. Vetter has always been…

Three years ago, Triumph reinvented its entire Bonneville range of twin-cylinder retro-inspired models by presenting five new motorcycles powered by all-new liquid-cooled, parallel-twin engines — the 900cc Street Twin and four 1,200cc big twins. These were joined a year later by a revamped version of the Street Scrambler as the second model in Triumph’s 900cc entry-level lineup. Now, Triumph has introduced upgraded versions of both the Street Twin and Street Scrambler, which are essentially the entry-level models to its entire range. 17,500 examples of the Street Twin alone have been built and sold in the past three years, making it the British firm’s best-selling model. The chance to spend a 140-mile day riding both new Triumphs along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean from the resort of Cascais west of…

In their day, Norton’s Roadholder forks were among the very best. First introduced in 1946, they performed better than almost everything else on the market and influenced fork design for decades, but they do have their limitations. A damping-rod design, Norton Commando Roadholder forks employ a rod-and-piston damping tube with fixed orifices to control oil flow to regulate compression and rebound. They work well enough, but the design doesn’t allow tuning oil flow for different road and rider conditions. About 10 years ago, U.K. Norton specialist John Bould designed the Lansdowne dampers (named after Norton founder James Lansdowne Norton). These feature multiple, small compression and rebound orifices, and an adjustable needle valve to vary oil flow. Further, Bould’s approach employs a dedicated compression damper for one leg and a dedicated…

What: Mesa Verde National Park, P.O. Box 8, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, 81330, (970) 529-4465. How to Get There: Mesa Verde National Park is an 11-hour ride from Los Angeles. Pick up I-40 East in Barstow and stay on it to Flagstaff. Take US 89 North (a glorious ride) to US 160 East. From anywhere else in the U.S., you’ll want to find your way to the southwestern corner of Colorado near the Four Corners area of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. Best Kept Secret: The Farm Bistro restaurant in nearby Cortez, Colorado (their veggie burger is the best I’ve ever had). Cortez has many good hotels and restaurants. Avoid: The winter months. It’s cold up there! Visit mid-spring to mid-fall. More Photos: bit.ly/mesa-verde-np More Info: nps.gov/meve/index.htm…

What’s this, a Harley-Davidson with — gasp! — expansion chambers, not extended fishtail pipes? And no ape hangers or chromed everything to be seen anywhere? Well, yes, and this particular Harley-Davidson, the RR250, happened to win four Grand Prix World Championships, all with famed Italian racer Walter Villa on board as he topped the 250cc class in successive years, 1974-1976, his fourth title coming in the 350 class with an engine bored and stroked to 347cc. Think of Signore Villa’s 1976 double as a special Bicentennial memento to America’s premier motorcycle marque. Harley’s path to four world championships is rather interesting, the journey starting in 1960 when the Milwaukee-based company purchased 50-percent interest in the motorcycle division of Italian company Aermacchi. The union gave Harley immediate access to Aermacchi’s small-bore…

In marketing-speak it’s called a “unique selling proposition,” or USP. It’s the feature or benefit that makes your product stand out from the rest. In the era of the ubiquitous Universal Japanese Motorcycle — across the frame, air-cooled, over-head cam 4-stroke multi — each of the Big Four knew they had to be in this market: But how to give their UJM a USP? Honda set the stage with the single overhead cam CB750. Kawasaki fired back with the dual overhead cam 900cc Z1. Honda tried the undercut with 350, 400, 500 and 550 fours. Suzuki made the first dual overhead cam 750, the GS. Yamaha tried a triple. Kawasaki responded with a new capacity: 650cc (40ci). Kawi asked Z1 designer Ben Inamura to develop the KZ650. And while the…

French Vincent expert Patrick Godet, 67, passed away suddenly on Nov. 25, 2018, at his home in the Normandy countryside. His loss will be keenly felt by Vincent owners and enthusiasts around the world, many of whom used the huge array of high-quality Godet Motorcycles Vincent parts to restore or maintain their original Vincents. Others were fortunate to own one of the more than 250 Egli Vincent V-twins that Godet constructed during the past 25 years with the approval of Fritz Egli himself, the only officially recognized Egli Vincent motorcycles. Fritz has one, and thanks to its electric starter he still rides it today even after turning 80 last year. Godet became enraptured with the British marque when he bought his first Vincent, a Black Shadow, in 1974 at the…

The 40th anniversary of the late, great Mike Hailwood’s fairy-tale comeback win in the 1978 Isle of Man TT, 11 years after he last raced there, and seven since he rode a bike of any kind in international competition while he pursued a car racing career in Formula 1, was suitably commemorated at the 2018 Classic TT last August. That’s when modern-day TT legend John McGuinness averaged over 100mph on a demo lap par excellence aboard the very same Ducati that Mike the Bike used to win the TT Formula 1 race there four decades earlier. Hailwood’s victory aboard the Sports Motorcycles Ducati 900 desmo V-twin is rightly considered to be one of the most remarkable feats in the history of motorcycle racing. But there was an identical-looking bike in…

Is it a motorcycle? Is it a car? Is it a Militaire or Militor? We crack a cold case that spans a war and five bankruptcies. Motorcycling’s history involves so many myths and legends. Militaire, which spans the years 1910 to 1922, is a classic case of both. It is a myth that the Militaire was designed purely to meet America’s World War I demand for a battlefield motorcycle. But it created a minor legend by trying (unsuccessfully) to mate the virtues of both two- and four-wheeled transportation. In the pre-World War I era, there were literally dozens of motorcycle manufacturers in the U.S. But whereas many of them were simply bolting outsourced engines into their own frames, the various incarnations of Militor/Militaire/Militor made 80 percent of its product in-house.…

In early 2018, I shipped my East German-built 1970 MZ ES250/2 — nicknamed “Iron Pig” — from Denmark to Los Angeles, California. Being a Gold Wing rider trapped riding an MZ, I like to carry a lot of stuff when I tour, so I equipped the MZ with a little Czechoslovakian PAV 41 trailer to carry my excess luggage. The almost half-century-old motorcycle has been my daily driver for six or seven years, and while its vintage 2-stroke technology makes it the two-wheeled equivalent of a skunk, it’s comfortable, strong and reliable enough for a cross-country trip. Or so I hoped. It is worth noting that this bike has been modified somewhat, including the addition of a later 5-speed gearbox, a Mikuni carburetor, modern electrics and some chassis improvements. The…

Triumph troubles Q: I have a 1979 Triumph T140E with Q: 17,000 miles on it. I’m the second owner and it has been well maintained. However, I’ve been stumped by an issue lately that I hope you can help me with. The bike starts very easily and idles well. When I’m accelerating, say from a stop sign, it has a stutter and occasional mild backfire at approximately 2,000rpm. It clears up at 2,500-3,000rpm and runs strongly after that to higher revs. If I roll on the throttle slowly, it does not do it. If I accelerate briskly, it will. It started doing this one day when I noticed it stuttered once. Then a few days later it did it a few more times. Then later it did it all the…

3/2 Back for its ninth year, check out the Modern Classics Motorcycle Show. This year, in addition to a great collection of bikes from the 1960s through the 1990s, the show will also look back 50 years, featuring a selection of 1969-model motorcycles. Check out the Friday Night Modern Classics Kickstart Party from 7-10 p.m. at the show’s home, Martin Motorsports in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. On the web at martinmoto.com 3/8 This year marks the 78th Anniversary of Daytona Bike Week, which runs March 8-17, in Daytona Beach, Florida. The racing kicks off on Saturday night, March 9, with the Daytona Supercross. The American Flat Track series Daytona TT runs on Thursday, March 14. The 2018 Daytona 200 takes place on Saturday, March 16, featuring American Sportbike Racing Association’s (ASRA) 600cc…

1979 Kawasaki KZ650: $1,200 If the used market is any indicator, Kawasaki’s middleweight 650cc didn’t exactly light up the stage, as pickings are pretty slim. That could be simply a reflection of the fact that as a middleweight UJM, it wasn’t a bike anyone truly aspired to or bothered to hold onto. Like many machines of its era, once it got a few years and miles on it, a KZ650 was just an old bike of no particular value. We found this 1979 KZ650, definitely the nicest of the small number we found online, on Kansas City Craigslist. Showing a low 8,540 miles on the odometer, it was a clean survivor, but suffering cosmetically from the unfortunate aftermarket seat. Remarkably, a search of eBay turned up several stock replacement seats,…

The 2019 show season is roaring up fast, so start making plans now to join us at our favorite annual events. July 26-28, 2019, will see us return to the Road America racetrack in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, for the annual Vintage Motofest (roadamerica.com), featuring AHRMA vintage racing and the Rockerbox Bike Show. The bike show happens Saturday, and we’ll be there heading up judging and awarding, handing out the Motorcycle Classics Editor’s Choice award along with trophies for the top bikes in five other categories. Laid out in 1955 and nicknamed “America’s National Park of Speed,” Road America is without question the coolest vintage venue in North America. The AHRMA racing on the historic 4-mile, 14-turn road circuit is spectacular, plus there’s live music, a Saturday microbrew tasting, and an…

Harley-Davidson’s KHK 883cc V-twin is very much a child of the 1950s — but not the 1950s of Grade A milk, manicured lawns and Doris Day. We might like to think of the era as squeaky clean, but there was another side to the 1950s and it included illegal drag racing, Chicago blues clubs, rock ’n’ rollers like Eddie Cochran and the young Elvis Presley, and the street gangs immortalized in West Side Story. The KHK was a good match for the rebels and misfits of the conformist 1950s. Loud and fast, and just the sort of thing the Leader of the Pack would want to ride. Elvis actually bought a KH, the lower horsepower version of the KHK, in 1956, and was photographed riding it for the cover of…

For most of his motorcycling life, Al Brotz has spent the majority of his time looking through a slight haze of 2-stroke exhaust. His first bike, at the age of 14, was a used 80cc 1966 Yamaha YG-1. Al and his brother chipped in to buy the little 2-stroke, which ran, but needed some work. Al was excited, his brother, less so. “He rode it once, and then sold his half to me,” Al laughs, adding, “Me? I was hooked.” King of the field There was a 40-acre field behind the Brotz family home in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. In the future, it would be developed and a Catholic high school would occupy the site, but at the time, the dirt became a different kind of learning ground as local teens congregated…

Motorcycle sidecars constitute the motoring community’s demilitarized zone. As three-wheelers they separate the mundane and predictable world of automobiles and trucks that lumber along on four wheels from the serendipitous lifestyle that motorcyclists passionately enjoy with their free-wheeling two-wheelers. But more than that, sidecars are just plain fun to ride. Someone once suggested to me that a sidecar is a motorcycle with a little fun on the side. Perhaps that’s an oversimplification, but it’s true. There’s something magically intoxicating about a sidecar that attracts all sorts of people to admire the odd-looking vehicles. My first experience with a sidecar occurred in 1979 when I worked for Cycle Guide magazine. Our publication road tested a Harley-Davidson sidecar that summer, so I got plenty of seat time with the Milwaukee-brewed rig. During…

Two years ago, Triumph launched its revamped modern Street Scrambler. In company with the Street Twin roadster, with which it shares the same engine package, the Triumph Street Scrambler has been similarly updated for 2019. This means it shares the same engine improvements and enhanced electronic rider aid features as the Street Twin. But in addition to the Road and Rain riding modes, the Scrambler benefits from a third off-road mode that turns off the ABS and traction control completely (which can both be re-enabled on the move by holding in the mode button for one second), while delivering full power, but with a more progressive throttle response. Brakes and suspension remain unchanged, as do the wire wheels shod with Metzeler Tourance dual-purpose rubber, still with a 19-inch front. And…

Nestled in southwest Colorado’s Montezuma Valley, Mesa Verde rises to a majestic 8,500 feet. You can see New Mexico from up there, and while the ride and the scenery are magnificent, the real attractions are the Pueblo archaeological ruins. Native Americans inhabited Mesa Verde from 550 to 1300 A.D., spending most of that period living and farming on top of the mesa. During the last 100 years of that span, the ancestral inhabitants then built and lived in cliff dwellings below the top of the mesa. And then, within two generations, the Pueblo Native Americans abandoned Mesa Verde, leaving behind approximately 600 cliff dwellings and 4,700 archeological sites. Those who know say there are more yet to be discovered. The first Mesa Verde explorations occurred in the 1700s, when Spanish…