Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2024 i Back Street Heroes

Yorkshire Pudding Rally was going ahead regardless and, by Friday afternoon you could almost taste the Blitz Spirit oozing from the crowd. As Yorkshire MAG pointed out, ‘this ain’t their first rodeo’, and their consummate planning abilities made it yet another weekend to remember for all the right reasons. Escrick Park Estate, just south of York, is 8,000 acres of open parkland criss-crossed by horse-riding trails and areas to run your dog. Rumour has it that’s it’s usually green but, after days of torrential rain, you could be forgiven for thinking that you’d been transported to a certain festival in Somerset famous for over-yer-wellies mud. A call went out to cancel those traders who hadn’t arrived by midweek as there was no way of getting their vehicles on to the…

Ant, who builds under the name of Dirty Chicken Customs (it’s a long story involving the rejection of a particularly grubby rubber chicken by his young son), is one of a number of younger guys heavily into building choppers. Just like us lot back in the day, he hasn’t got access to pots of money, and builds in a small garage/workshop near his house, and so has to rely on ingenuity and basic tools, but still manages to turn out some very cool bikes – the Fazer 600 chop you see here is actually his sixth build. He was inspired to dip a toe in the custom world after he started going round to his good friend Pete Margesson’s to watch him build a chopper from just a frame and…

SLINKY GLIDE FORK TUBES These Slinky Glide fork tubes from Wemoto are the ideal way to upgrade your front suspension components when the time comes to replace them. They’re precision-made to be a perfect fit for your machine, be it Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Suzuki, Royal Enfield, and most other motorcycle makes, and’re made with a durable, heavy chrome finish, and’re suitable for most classifications of motorcycle (street, adventure, classic, sports, and off-road). They come as a kit comprising parts to rebuild both forks; a pair of heavy chrome stanchions; inner and outer bushes; seal retainer clips; and oil and dust seals. For more info’ go to the Wemoto website at www.wemoto.com OXFORD ATLAS STRAPS Stronger and much safer than a bungee, Oxford’s Atlas Straps are adjustable self-tensioning straps. Their extra-strong,…

Now we fast forward to good old 2023! The VStrom’d gone, and’d been replaced by a rather magnificent, 27-year-old, Kawasaki 1500 Vulcan Classic. It had a stablemate, too – Paula’d passed her CBT, and had a Keeway Superlight 125. For those nay-sayers tittering away at the back, a Keeway costs the same as three pints of lager a week to buy brand-new, comes with a two-year unlimited mileage warranty, and £10 of fuel makes it run forever. It’ll do 60mph on a good, flat, stretch of road, and the fact that Joe Public thinks it’s a Harley also raises a smile – it’s a great little entry-level bike. After being on the back of my bikes forever, she took the plunge and started riding. Soon the need for more than…

Fast forward a few years (I won’t say how many as it’s not gentlemanly to ask) and, having had many bikes, some of which he still owns (including a very nice custom Triumph), he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. As if that wasn’t bad news enough, something, he says, clicked in his head and he became convinced that, even if he survived the cancer, he probably wouldn’t be able to keep riding his beloved two-wheelers, and so started to think about trikes again. Well, okay, so that’s not strictly true – he wasn’t thinking about trikes in general; no, he was thinking about one trike, or one style of trike actually, in particular. Y’see, ever since he’d been a kid, he’d been quite taken with the look of Ed ‘Big…

The C1002V is a new 997cc performance cruiser, with more than a hint of the Ducati Diavel about it, from MBP (Moto Bologna Passione) – a new company set up by Keeway, more famous for their small cc cruisers. It’s an 80-degree v-twin with a low seat; upside-down forks; wavy discs and radial brakes; a 240-section rear wheel; a big tank (22 litres); and a full-colour, five-inch, TFT digital dashboard/information centre. The liquid-cooled, six-speed, belt-driven engine makes 93hp at 7,600rpm, and 75ft-lb of torque at 6,500rpm, and has a claimed top speed of 123mph, and has a Bosch electronic fuel-injection system; two rider modes (an unnamed ‘normal’ one, and ‘Sport’ which changes the fuelling/mapping slightly for better acceleration); Bosch ABS; cruise-control; and a USB port for phones/sat-navs. It’s a good-looking…

On Sunday, 28 April the Sammy Miller Museum (at Bashley Crossroads, Bashley, Hamps, BH25 5SZ) is hosting a Royal Enfield Day with trade stands from ROSPA Motorcycle Training, MAG, the Old Boys Motorcycle Cafe & Workshop, various Royal Enfield dealers, Doc Bikes, and more, as well as live music with local artists, and a raffle with Sammy himself presenting the prizes. Anyone with an Enfield, or who likes Enfields, is welcome, and doors open about 9.30am. Get more info’, should you need it, from www.sammymiller.co.uk…

star LETTER This month’s Star Letter wins a pair of WEISE WAVE 2.0 GLOVES. RRP £99.99. Head out and explore with total confidence. Wave 2.0 is a waterproof glove, with mcFit™ technology lining fixture system and touchscreen compatible digits. Find out more at www.weiseclothing.com DEAR BSH, As I’m sure you all know, if your ride’s to be off the road for any length of time, you’re supposed to, either, recharge the battery, or remove it – especially with lithium technology batteries where it becoming fully discharged can kill the battery. Unfortunately, some motorcycles are designed in ways that make this VERY difficult. I won’t name the make, but this is on my ride: firstly, use ignition key to unlock seat lock, which allows you to remove the pillion seat. Undo…

Fairly recently, though, Hip retired (he’s been building chops since the 1970s and, just like the rest of us, he’s not getting any younger), and the mantle was transferred to Jay’s shoulders. This bike came about when, a few years back, Johan from Belgium got in contact with So Low about a CB900 chopper he had that wanted revamping by them as he’d seen a few of their bikes and loved their workmanship and styling. The plan was to replace the later CB900 DOHC motor with an earlier, and much more stylistically correct, SOHC CB750 motor he’d sourced to give it a classic look, and to give the whole bike a complete makeover. Jay and Jonny stripped down the original bike and really only kept the frame and the twincap…

His bikes’ve been featured in magazines around the world, and on numerous internet sites, too, and he’s held in very high esteem in the international biking world, up there with the likes of Roland Sands and, having met him a couple of times over the years (he’s often at the Bike Shed Show in London), he’s a nice guy, too. “I’m a huge fan of the bikes from the ’90s/2000s chopper era; West Coast Choppers, Motorcycle Mania, the guys from the Biker Build-Off, etc., were all my heroes when I was still in school, and I really like the wild, fat rear tyre/high handlebar/’Frisco tank, etc., bikes they built – they’re the very pinnacle of badassness in my idea of custom bikes. A guy came into my shop the other…

Eee, hasn’t the world changed, eh? When I first started drinking (semi) legally, a beer (Younger’s Tartan bitter if you remember it) cost 79p in the local biker pub, and BSH was, I think, 95p. These days both a beer (well, round my way anyway) and a BSH cost a fiver each, but what would you say if we could do you a special deal, and do you a BSH at just £3.83 instead of £5? That’s a saving of (works out on fingers) 23% – nothing to be sniffed at! NIK SAMSON, EDITOR CHOOSE WHICH BSH SUBSCRIPTION SUITS YOU BEST 1: 12-MONTH SUBSCRIPTION BEST VALUE 12 print issues for £47 Direct Debit 12 print issues for £52 credit/debit card SAVE £15.40 2: SIX-MONTH SUBSCRIPTION 6 print issues for £25…

The bike you see here is his latest build; a neat little (relatively…) bobber built out of one of Honda’s seminal 600 Shadows that he bought a few years ago to turn into exactly what you see here in front of you – in fact it was actually the first bike he ever started to modify as, because there’re virtually no aftermarket parts available, everything had to be handmade, or adapted, and he’s not a professional bike builder, just a (very talented) amateur spanner-twirler. It wasn’t built in a workshop, big or small, but in his garage at home, and he had a lot of help from his father, Christian. Although the Shadow, as standard, has a very neat, very hardtail-looking, frame that needs not that much doing to it…

The new Motorcycle Storehouse V-Twin catalogue, now in its 18th edition, continues to be Europe’s biggest and most comprehensive H-D aftermarket catalogue available today. Weighing in at a colossal 1,840 pages, it features more than 55,000 replacement and custom parts and accessories, from hundreds of international brands you know and trust. Exciting additions to the hallowed yellow pages include, amongst others, US performance-pros Kraus; Öhlins suspension; and premium Italian exhaust manufacturers, Zard; plus the powerhouse that is MCS’ private label line just keeps on growing – LED headlamps, MotoGlo cleaning products, and their recently rebranded Vspec oil are just some of the highlights of this continuously expanding assortment. From Flatheads to M8s, choppers to performance baggers, the Motorcycle Storehouse V-Twin catalogue has it all – it’s the go-to resource for…

A little-known (to a lot of folk anyway) name in the motorcycle exhaust building world is Den Tietze of Alldens Exhausts in Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, who specialises in creating replica and one-off exhausts in stainless steel. He’s been doing it a few years now, and has built up a solid reputation for creating very high-quality, but still affordable, bespoke exhaust systems for classics, cruisers, choppers, streetfighters, trikes – you name it, he can probably make an exhaust for it! Contact him on 07595 448713 or through his Facebook page (Alldens Exhausts).…