Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2021 i The Classic MotorCycle

While standing in front of the fish stall at the market, the choice of what is in front of me is always mind-boggling – simply because everything (and by that I mean everything) appeals. My weekly journeys to see Mick (whose dad used to have a 650SS Norton, I’ve learned) are also like a learning process, as I ask “What’s that?” and “How would I cook that?” and thus end up, every week, coming home with all sorts of different things, while I’ve also picked up when cockles are fished, what areas the best mussels come from and that if the weather is bad, there’ll be no fresh crab, as the small boats that are used to harvest them can’t go out. Diversity and the acquisition of knowledge. It’s what,…

GEOFF TANNER Double winner at the 1955 Manx GP, taking the Junior and Senior races on Manx Nortons, Geoff Tanner has died at the age of 93. London-born, he made his Isle of Man bow in 1954, with fifth in that year’s Junior Clubman’s race, then fourth in the same year’s 350cc Manx GP. Following his 1955 success (when he became the first Manx winner to average over 90mph, in the Senior race) he graduated to the TT, his best result being third in the 1958 Junior race, on a Norton. BADGER GOSS There will be a tribute next month to Bryan ‘Badger’ Goss, former scrambles star, who died recently, aged 80. MAURICE HALLETT Word has reached us that Maurice Hallett, whose Mondial Sogno featured in our August 2020 issue,…

Colour charting In the February 2021 issue, I see that you’ve been let loose on Peter Rosenthal’s Velocette MAC. What a gem, I’m envious. This machine was part of John Keeley’s collection. He was a big traction engine collector in a place called Knowl Hill, which is on the Bath Road between Maidenhead and Reading. When Peter was thinking about buying the MAC he asked if I could check that it was originally turned out in green. It was. Here’s the full story about Veloce’s flirt with colours. For the 1955 season, the factory offered the LE in a range of second colours – ruby red, blue and green. To identify these various options, Veloce allocated numbers to each colour – 3, 4, and 5 respectively. Numbers 1 and 2…

SOME consider it the world’s first motorcycle. Yet, despite its revolutionary mark on the world, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach’s ‘Reitwagen’ –‘riding car’ – was merely a stepping stone with which to experiment a much bolder concept: the transportation of human beings via an engine. Built in wood, the machine was never commercially produced but it was test ridden and it was the world’s first vehicle to be propelled by an internal combustion engine. And thanks to the modest, odd-looking wooden motorcycle, the wheels of modern transportation had been squarely set in motion. The Reitwagen was not merely a vessel for advancing Daimler’s engine design; it was a vessel for modernity. It was also an expression of Daimler’s lifelong and near-instinctive belief in the power of the internal combustion engine.…

There will be enthusiasts reading this who are designers, trained in the art of visualizing a concept, able to turn their vision into reality as they create wondrous forms – in this case to put an old motorcycle together. They glance, almost casually, at the space between part A and part B, their pen or pencil leaps into their hand, a sketch is created, turned to a drawing which becomes The Part. Their designed parts fit, look as though they should be part of the machine and meet the form and function requirements needed for something pleasing to the eye. Then there’s me… There are loads of reasons for deviating from what has gone before, manufacturers for instance will update, redesign, improve for reasons of sales or production purposes, competition…

In the workshop True surfaces Motorcycle enthusiasts may, for example, need to check the relative trueness of sliding surfaces such as carburettor slides, or check how flat mating surfaces, such as crankcase halves, are. Going back in engineering history, workers who wanted precise, flat surfaces would use a three plate (item) method and polishing, by checking or polishing two flat surfaces against each other then regularly and randomly rotating the pair of surfaces with the third (idle) surface, a reasonable degree of accuracy was achieved. During 1830-1840, (Sir) Joseph Whitworth (1803-1887), of British Standard Whitworth threads and Whitworth rifle, fame achieved greater accuracy of flat surfaces by again using a three surface approach with scraping methods and ‘Engineer’s Blue.’ The Whitworth techniques were well publicised in period and adopted by…

In 1883, the American Electric Company became Thomson-Houston. Three years later, Laing, Wharton and Down was set up in the UK to sell the American maker’s products. Early sales included contracts for installing electric lighting in parts of London. In America, the Edison General Electric Company merged with Thomson-Houston, becoming General Electric in 1892. During the next years, Laing, Wharton and Down bought/gained UK production rights and patents from General Electric. At this time Laing, Wharton and Down was rebranded as British Thomson-Houston (BTH), the American conglomerate its majority shareholder. UK factories were established, then in 1900 BTH bought land on Mill Road, Rugby, chosen for its rail links, to become its ‘hub.’ The first equipped factory buildings were completed in 1902 and the initial products manufactured by what became…

Author: Ian Falloon Published by: Motorbooks, an imprint of the Quarto Group Email: specialsales@quarto.comwww.QuartoKnows.com Available from specialist bookshops and Amazon. Hardback, 255 x 305mm (portrait); 272 pages with over 350 photographs and illustrations. ISBN 9780760367704 Price: £45; $60 US; $76 CAD; $80 AUD ‘The Complete Book of Moto Guzzi: 100th Anniversary Edition,’ written by motorcycle expert and historian Ian Falloon, offers enthusiasts a thorough review of Guzzi’s storied 100-year history of all its production models. Carlo Guzzi was born in Milan in 1889, where he studied engineering and worked for the motor company Isotta Franchini. However, it was not until the First World War where he served as a mechanic in the Italian Air Force, that his dream of building his own motorcycle became a reality when he met the…

Looking through the top 10 of my most memorable machines, which I did in the summer (July 2020 issue) of last year when we were under lockdown conditions, I notice that only one of the 10 is a V-twin. But it was number one… Personally, my default has always been single cylinder machines but that doesn’t mean I haven’t owned quite a few V-twins, now I think of it, ranging from modern Ducatis to a 680cc Zenith, while I’ve ridden many too, from veteran and vintage Royal Enfields, via Francis Williams’ awesome sprinter Thor, a Hesketh, a Voxan (or two) and a plethora of Vincents, Harleys, Guzzis, Aprilias and Suzukis, up to the modern Brough Superior. In these straitened times, it’s nigh-on impossible to generate original, new content, so I’ll…

I have to say a huge thank you to all the fellow enthusiasts who have assisted in this project, either by suggesting solutions to issues created by trying to assemble a load of bits cheaply, or by passing on bits they don’t need. A long time ago, I did have a set of exhaust pipes for a 3TA, but they vanished over the years. Mentioning this in one of the features saw a set of pipes arrive – the sender said they were for a 500cc Daytona but I was welcome to them. Initial thoughts of altering these pipes were dismissed as they were in good order and would have needed a lot of work to alter, and in any case another set of two into one 350 pipes came…

1921 Recent Brooklands record breaking: on February 10, Wizard O’Donovan, passengered by Rex Judd, driving a 490cc single cylinder sv Norton Model 16 with torpedo shaped sidecar, smashed eight world and British Class G (500 s/c) records. Then on February 22, Judd, standing in for the injured O’Donovan, riding a single speed 490cc sv Norton solo posted 85.35mph for the flying kilometre, enough to break Wizard’s 1915 Brooklands record of 82.85mph, but then the timing equipment failed. O’Donovan was so impressed by Judd’s riding he prepared the 490cc Norton for an FICM world record attempt to break Gene Walker’s record of 82.31mph set at Daytona Beach in April 1920. On March 22, 1921, the timing equipment confirmed Rex Judd as double world champion, posting two-way speeds of flying kilometre 86.37mph…

Race visitors to the Isle of Man have regularly made the pilgrimage to Laxey Woollen Mills, where a superb collection of TT and Manx GP photographs are exhibited for the delight of anyone interested in the unique atmosphere created by these races. The archive behind the exhibition is vast and ensures the displays are always fresh. It does require some knowledge in order to produce such displays and clearly Bill Snelling has such a depth of knowledge. Such knowledge doesn’t just appear from nowhere, it has to be learned, acquired, realised and usually involves mates and experiences. When the family you’re born into uses a sidecar as transport, you’ve not really got a chance, and as possibly befits someone with an obsession for motorcycles, Bill’s education in our world took…

Unless you are reading this because it’s the only distraction available in a dentist’s waiting room, I assume you are interested in motorcycles or motorcycling. Not necessarily both, however, because most of us have a definite leaning towards either the machinery itself or the use of it. For example, some enthusiasts reading about the BSA Empire Star which won a Brookland’s Gold Star in 1937 – leading to the eponymous clubman racer – would be fascinated by the tuning which made it so fast, while others would be more interested in how racer Walter Handley was persuaded to make the attempt. Similarly, some people read about adventurous motorcycling primarily to learn about the places and peoples visited, whereas others pay more attention to the motorbikes’ preparation and problems (or otherwise).…

Never having had any formal engineering training, most I have learned over the years has been from a combination of reading up, then setting to in the workshop, for some good old fashioned trial and error. While you can progress mightily from merely getting stuck in, sometimes ‘sitting with mother’ and being shown how to do something is the only way to learn some of the trickier techniques. My dad is to thank for teaching me about repairing metalwork and paint, but when it came to the spanners, he freely admitted that he wasn’t the most gifted in this aspect. Fortunately, over the years I have had the great luck to enjoy the wisdom of two very experienced vintage motorcycling men, that gave freely of their time and helped me…