Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2021 i Real Classic

I suffer from a few blind spots when it comes to maintaining my motorcycles. I’m decently good at changing the oil and cleaning or replacing any filtration devices that the manufacturers kindly fitted. I’m OK when it comes to adjusting and lubing the chains, too, and continue a mostly cheerful campaign to maintain lube levels in primary chaincases, even those which vent to atmosphere and so … ah … breathe a little energetically should a chap open the throttle for a prolonged time. Ten minutes counts as a prolonged time with the Matchless CSR twin, but the much-maligned G5 lightweight 350 from the same factory appears to lose no lube at all. Hateful. It will never catch on. Cables are another source of the gentle satisfaction which comes with setting…

I repainted a couple of Velocettes back in the 1980s and ’90s. Years earlier I had read some articles in the VMCC journal by a noted concours-winning restoration expert. It went into great detail and by following the advice I achieved a passable finish. Extremely thorough preparation was the main item, and Teckaloid paint was the recommended coating. However the author’s method was to pour paint into a separate clean receptacle, not to dip the brush into the paint tin. After painting was done any surplus was thrown away and not returned to the can. It worked for me, but the paint seemed to remain ‘soft’ so wasn’t that durable. In recent, very slightly more affluent times, powdercoating has become my norm. Once I reached the three score years and…

I have two Norton singles. The slow one has excellent brakes. The quick one has a useless front brake. The linings are modern, and were lathe-turned on the backplate to match the drum. But I think I’ll send them off to Villiers Services to see if can they turn them to size and, if so, how? The supporting pin holes must be at the correct radius if they are to fit the drum. I just washed them with solvent brake cleaner, re-assembled, and they were worse. I slackened the thin backplate nut to help centre up the plate, and tightened the spindle with my hand grabbing the lever. Maybe I could add a bracing plate over the pins – but the support pins don’t look long enough. Are there any…

John Bloor’s Triumph Motorcycles concern is working towards launching its entry-level range of small-capacity singles in 2022. These are being developed in conjunction with Triumph’s Indian partner, Bajaj Auto, which will manufacture them in its Chakan plant in Pune. I wonder whether it’ll seem to many an anomaly today that Triumph should manufacture any model with something other than two or three cylinders? Back in the mists of time, Triumph’s range was predominantly based on an array of single-cylinder offerings, especially in the days before 1936, when it was prised away from its destitute car manufacturing parent, the Triumph Motor Company, by the astute Jack Sangster, owner of Ariel. He founded a new motorcycle-only concern, the Triumph Engineering Co. Ltd, and installed Edward Turner, then heading up Ariel’s design team,…

I find it strange that otherwise clever people shrink away and start mumbling into their beer when confronted with motorcycle electrics. Or they think that, somehow, old motorcycle electrical systems must necessarily be unreliable. Not so. Yes, electrics on modern machines such as certain BMWs are very complex, and I for one wouldn’t touch such systems. However, the electrical systems on our old clunkers are very straightforward, and it’s a doddle to make them both reliable and efficient. That said, I’m no electrician, but I was a computer programmer and figuring out problems in an electrical circuit is far easier than debugging a 20,000 line program. I’ve rewired my 1968 Bonneville with a ready-made loom, but was irked to have to modify it to incorporate electronic ignition and relays for…

My dream bike is a top quality, small capacity roadster. Not a budget bike, built down to a price, but a high-spec well-equipped all-rounder. A proper motorcycle, one which is simply smaller in every respect than the brawny great barges which purport to be middleweights these days. I want all mod cons but in miniature: a compact machine which is easy to manoeuvre, has plenty of performance and can cope with crowded roads, and which is ready to rev at the push of a button. Oddly enough, Norton made just that motorcycle… …almost 60 years ago. We can thank Joe Berliner for coming up with the concept. The US importer was struggling to sell Norton’s lightweight twins to his sophisticated customers. The average American wasn’t keen on kickstarting his mo’sickle…

After a gap of ten years, my lovely wife Jackie insisted that I get another motorcycle. I bought this 1971 BSA B25. I started riding with a BSA C15 – perhaps I should have learned my lesson then! Back in the 1970s the bikes and parts were so much cheaper. But the B25 has a good front brake, excellent handling and is a good starter when hot. It makes a lot of top end noise, but they all do that sir… Excellent magazine. Can’t wait for next month. It’s nice to know I am not surrounded by experts! I am 60 years young and still learning thanks to the RC Crew – thanks to everyone for their efforts in this brilliant magazine. Ned Thompson, member Never fear, enthusiasm for the…

As you’ll see from the photos of my Norton Commando, it still had the original 1969 front end with the 2ls brake when I started racing it. This made life very difficult, as even the AM4 linings faded under duress. The 1970 front end improved matters but the disc still needed hand-numbing pressure to be effective. Anyone doing a rebuild should never use a 4.10 front tyre as this ruins the handling – stick to 3.60 maximum. Early on I loaned the Commando to my friend Andy Sargent so that he could practice at Thruxton, as the gear linkage on his Triton had failed. Andy ran wide at the right-hand curve after the start, and the Commando did a 180-degree end-over-end, landing flat upside down! I was back out on…

Once upon a time, in a country far, far away, a shiny new 1970 Triumph Bonneville rolled off the Meriden production line and ended up in Canada. No doubt in those early days, it was someone’s pride and joy, kept spotless, and only ridden when the sun was shining and the roads were dry. As the years went by, we can imagine that the paint faded, rust spots appeared on the nuts and chrome, and the bike lost its lustre. Perhaps it lingered in a shed for a while. Perhaps it was dropped, parked and ignored, its carbs becoming gummy and its tank full of stale fuel. Sadly, such things happen – even to the best motorcycles. It probably changed hands a few times, moving from one storage place to…

You know how it goes. You’ve done over 80 miles on your old bike earlier in the week so it should be good to go for the Sunday run. 25 kicks later… it still won’t start! By the time you’ve cleaned the carb and finally got started you will have missed the others. I usually check where they are going so I can catch up, but I thought it might be nice to have a bike I could just put the key in and push the button. The next wet day I sat down with good old flea-bay to see what I could find. This is where the filters come in handy. I could select between 25 and 30 years old to be VMCC eligible, but not too old; eliminate…

No, of course it wouldn’t start. Somewhere along the line the spark had gone AWoL. The PO had converted the machine to 12V with a new regulator and electronic ignition. I took one look at the wiring and decided I might have to start again. The fault was soon found. A wire had come away from a crimped connector. If one can fall out then the chances are that others will as well. It was lucky that it happened when it did, and not somewhere out and about. Finding and fixing it involved the fuel tank being removed, not something I would want to do alongside the road. Clearly the chocolate-block connectors and the doubtful crimps had to go. There’s nothing wrong with crimp connectors provided they are put on…

Although the Norton light twins are almost never compared favourably with their Triumph equivalents (the 3TA and 5TA), in fact the engineering is much more modern, not least because it was a clean sheet design rather than a 1950s upgrade of a 1930s original. It’s a clever and compact design, with a slim central flywheel keeping the width down and with very short pushrods splayed at a wide angle to keep the height down. Note also the lack of external top end fasteners and oil lines. In common with AJS and Matchless twins, the cylinder heads are separate, and use eccentric spindles to adjust the valves. Wide joint surface areas mean that they shouldn’t leak, while the rocker supports are cast into the rockers to the covers are under…

I was very interested to read that FrankW owned a Triumph bicycle. When I was 14 I was given a new Palm Beach Tourist for Christmas. It had 3-speed Sturmey-Archer gears and a speedometer which once showed an optimistic 42mph when riding down a steep hill. The bicycle lost its appeal at 6.30am on the 31st May 1962 when I took to the roads aboard my 2-speed NSU Quickly on my 16th birthday – and have been a confirmed two-stroke enthusiast ever since. My mother only let me have a moped because she thought they ran on clockwork… and I didn’t bother to correct her! I did return to the Triumph fold with a Tiger Cub, a Twenty One, and various cars. My favourite bike was an Ariel Leader bought…

There is no mistaking the fact that the bike between the knees is a boxer from BMW. OK, it could possibly be a Ural, but if it’s mechanically smooth and quiet it’s probably German rather than Russian. If in any doubt – maybe you’re pondering that you are actually perched above a Moto Guzzi V-twin rather than a BMW flatster – give the throttle a decent twitch while stationary. BMW – no doubt. Sound and shake confirm this. For the entirely of my riding life I have been surrounded by fans of the Meistershafters. I still am, remarkably. Back when we were able to attend lots of events it was a rare day indeed that at least a few cheery souls would fail to amble over and enthuse about their…

My mate Fiona is no stranger to motorcycles. When I first met her some 25 years or more ago, she was riding an 850 Mk2A Commando Roadster. As her sole transport. When I tell you she is slight and slim, not much over 5 feet tall, and was also working as an ICU nurse (her shifts consisted of early mornings, late evenings and nights, sometimes all in the one week – and her bike got her to work throughout the winter, snow or no snow), you’ll be even more suitably impressed. It wasn’t just a ride-to-work machine though; she’d be up and down the country to the big biker events, or across to the Isle of Man for the Manx or the TT. And when the Commando wouldn’t keep up…

The AJS 16 which has been unexpectedly occupying both these pages and the bench in The Shed is actually very pleasant to ride. While we’re thudding along, delighting in the steady beat of the original (made in Slovakia) silencer and admiring the neat handling on the new (made in two separate faraway countries) tyres, I find myself oddly reluctant to return to RCHQ, where the customary practice is that I am greeted by the Better Third with displays of unlimited admiration, compliments, and things previously familiar only to the conquering hero, whoever he was. These delights of course still happen, as is only right. However, the fulsome praise falters when that considerably Better Third first observes and then unkindly points towards the pool of oil forming beneath the bike’s gearbox.…