Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2019 i Real Classic

The Regular Reader will know I like quirky. I’m always on the look-out for the frisson of excitement when you see something that knocks the normal and forgoes the conventional. So imagine how thrilled I was to end up racing against Will Bratley and his delightfully zany Levis / Triumph. We’ve raced several times now, from dirt hillclimbs to shale speedway ovals to grasstracks, the bike appearing in several different guises over the last few years. As Will says; ‘It’s a project, an ongoing one, we just keep playing with it. Bikes like this are about having fun and they keep evolving. That’s the great beauty of it, it never ends...’ The story starts when Will’s dad, Walter, picked the bike up some 15 years or so ago. It was…

It’s a little-known fact that, in 1980, a special run of modified twin-cylinder, shaft drive Moto Guzzi sports bikes was built, specifically to battle against the era’s fastest motorcycles. Given the brand’s past accomplishments the matter is not beyond imagination, even though Mandello’s chosen motor originated from a touring heavyweight. The engine spec – developed over years of endurance competition and experimental tuning – certainly demonstrates the serious intent of this endeavour. That makes the bike’s mysterious omission from history even harder to explain. Most people will never know that this V1000 Le Mans existed – yet it heavily influenced subsequent Guzzi production. Factory commissioned or otherwise, special order models have emerged in the auto industry for decades. Some spawn factory versions – think of Craig Vetter’s BSA which became…

Awhile ago in RC167, I introduced the 1956 Royal Enfield 350 Clipper which I’d recently purchased. I thought it might benefit from a top end overhaul to breathe new life into the oil-burning, low compression engine. I consulted my parts book and ordered new cast iron valve guides, valves, springs and gaskets, all in stock at Hitchcocks; not bad for a 62 year-old motorcycle. It was mid-January when I dismantled the top half, lifting the barrel carefully with a rag stuffed in the crankcase mouth just in case there was a broken piston ring. Upon exposing the piston and giving the front of the crown a scrape and clean, I discovered the good news that the piston was indeed standard. New rings were ordered. The inner component parts were very…

As I have rebuilt several small Italian bikes, so I have accrued quite a few contacts and bits and pieces along the way. Nothing really important was missing from this machine – a situation worth noting for would-be rebuilders: the more complete the bike is when you buy it, then the easier the rebuild will be. I know it sounds obvious, but when buying it’s often easy to let your heart rule your head. The main technical issue with this project was at the back of the bike where the swinging arm needed repairing. It had worn, not around the bushes in the shaft but actually in the frame mountings. This was solved by making a split sleeve and under-machining the shaft in that area; the split sleeve being a…

Unlike its much bigger 1970s rivals Ducati or Moto Guzzi, Laverda was never a major standalone motorcycle manufacturer, with the Italian firm’s bike division always just a spinoff from its agri-machinery core business. But thanks mainly to the passion of Massimo Laverda, who took over responsibility for Moto Laverda in 1964 at the tender age of 25, the family-owned firm produced a stream of high performance models, of which its iconic 750SFC parallel-twin tangerine dream was both the most prestigious to own, and the most successful on the race track. Just 549 examples were built during 1971-76, out of the 19,000 parallel-twin 650/750cc Laverdas manufactured before their mid-70s replacement by the one-litre triples and 500cc twins. Laverda began life in 1873 manufacturing farming implements, wine-making machinery and the clocks surmounting…

Some experiences stay with you for the rest of your life. Falling in love for the first time, watching your first football match, or seeing the bike that you will always want to own: you can sort the order to suit your own preferences. This happened to Pete when he was 17. At that time he was riding a Villiers 2T-engined Greeves which cost him the princely sum of £40. Pete and a pal took a riding holiday in Scotland, the friend riding an Ariel NH350 Red Hunter which had been even cheaper at £15! The adventurous young pair completed some 600 miles inside a week. Although the Greeves seemed to struggle somewhat on the hills, the Ariel with a pillion passenger romped up them, no problem at all. So…

Rewind to January 2011 and you’d see my hands thrust deeply into my jacket pockets as I waited for the show to begin. My fellow bikers crammed the hotel bar for the much-anticipated Scottish Classic MC’s winter auction – an annual event which boosts club funds by flogging unwanted motorcycle paraphernalia. To the great amusement of the room, the appointed auctioneer is traditionally hard on fidgets, coughers, blinkers and nose-scratchers. Any involuntary movement is sadistically rewarded with the lesser contested auction items – how else would the usual collection of round-robin books, DVDs and dog-eared magazines find new homes? So my hands remained firmly entrenched in my pockets and my body rigid as petrified stone. I was wise to the auctioneer’s tactics and not an itch would be scratched, nor…

CEEFER CONTROVERSY In RC180, Frank Melling was deliciously rude about the C15, even the sporty version. My memories are different, though maybe rose petals tint my glasses. Mine was the final fling of the C15 as BSA desperately offloaded stock when they brought in the C25 Barracuda 250 with its new frame, square-barrelled engine and bigger wheels. So they tarted up the C15’s tank, took the egg-shaped chrome headlamp from the Bantam Sports and gave it the name ‘Sportsman’. They even added the flip-up back dual seat to stop the excited pillion falling off as acceleration known only to astronauts kicked in. So what was it like? Was it porridge with added grey? Well, mine took me from 24,000 miles to 47,000 before I passed it on. The DVLA show…

Because that is what it is: the pursuit of perfection, the BSA way. These things were once very simple. A manufacturer would develop a new model, introduce it to the waiting world, continue to develop it in fits and starts (usually), until it was pretty much bang-on. All the flaws had gone (mostly), all the production bugs had been ironed out, (usually), the marketplace loved the things and was buying them at a financially pleasing rate (almost certainly), and all was well. At that point, the only obvious thing to do is ditch the perfected motorcycle from the range and introduce a new one, so starting the process all over again. It was almost as though someone high up the company tree was looking forward to the future, when generations…

My Norton may have left the Andover factory over 40-years ago, but it was a new bike in all important respects. With that in mind, I had followed the ‘break-in’ recommendations and decided to carry out the 500-mile first service. This began with the manual neatly summing up the real classic rider’s lot in life: ‘...the owner must pay for all replacement materials but labour and time are free’. Seriously though, the service checklist is comprehensive and well worth going through to see how the engine, transmission and running gear had fared over the first 500 miles or so. The service included oil changes, flushing the oil tank and checking fastener tightness including re-torqueing the cylinder head and barrel base nuts. Checks on the electrics, valve clearances, timing, Isolastic clearances…

I was entirely spoiled by last month’s whiz around some of Cornwall’s excellent motorcycling roads aboard one of the new Royal Enfield twins. It got me to thinking – a rare event, as I’m sure you understand. And, as always when I manage to hang a couple of semi-coherent thoughts together, I like to boast about it when out for the daily  perambulation around the cliff paths with the Better Third. So I did. I mused aloud, which is a cunning way of disguising serious intent. I mused that I’d had a brillo day out with the Interceptor, and what a shame it was that it may be some considerable time before we can get our hands on a longterm loaner from RE’s importer. Do not be shocked, gentle reader,…