Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2024 i Back Street Heroes

PaulSmith lives in the hippy paradise of Goa, in the south of India, having moved there some years ago. He and a mate started building bikes, using the plentiful supply of cheap Enfields, under the banner of Rag & Bone Customs to reflect the fact that the bikes were completely handbuilt using the most rudimentary of tools and typical Indian ingenuity and craftsmanship, and swiftly made a name for themselves on the worldwide stage for the cleanliness and starkness of their builds. These days he mainly builds for himself, still using very basic tools and services, “I can't emphasise enough how basic everything here in Goa is. In Mumbai and Delhi you can get everything; there’re CNC machines, MIG and TIG welding, milling machines, you name it, but not here…

His bike’s based around a late Seventies/early Eighties Z650 (they were built from 1976 to 1983), in an old twin down-tube frame, identity unknown, that originally was intended to house a twin-cylinder engine of some variety. It needed some serious modifications because, with the four-cylinder Kawasaki engine fitted, the exhausts fouled the down-tubes, so he converted it to single tube and, whilst at it, reworked the headstock’s rake to take longer forks, remounted the tank to change its position, and chopped a lot of brackets off to get a smoother line. That done, he stepped back to look at it, shook his head, and redid the rear section, too. As I said, serious modifications! To get it up and rolling, he scored a set of GS750 wheels (19-inch front, 16-inch…

For those of you who may’ve missed the last issue (get one from www.backstreetheroes.com if you did), let’s have a quick recap of what a GSX-8S is, shall we? It’s a streetfighter-styled 776cc parallel twin – a completely new design with not only a new engine, but also a new frame. The motor produces 83hp at 8,500rpm, and 78Nm (58-ish lb-ft) of torque at 6,800rpm, and the 270-degree crankshaft makes it sound and behave very much like a v-twin, with good low and medium revs, making power very available and responsive, and possible to drive strongly in the higher gears at low speeds without losing engine response or trying to shake itself to bits. It has KYB suspension (upside-down forks and monoshock rear); ABS and traction control; three power modes;…

Hogslayer, the twin-engined Norton that dominated motorcycle drag racing in the 1970s, is to feature at this year’s Dragstalgia event at Santa Pod on 5-7 July. A small group of seasoned racers wanted to recognise the huge contribution that US rider Tom ‘TC’ Christenson, and engineer and tuner John Gregory, made to the sport of motorcycle drag racing and, as the bike’s been on display at the National Motorcycle Museum for twenty years now, they approached the Museum about borrowing the legendary bike to display at Santa Pod’s Dragstalgia classic and vintage drag racing event. The Museum not only agreed, but suggested the bike was got running and ridden at the event, too. At the time of writing, Hogslayer’s at a workshop somewhere in Hertfordshire being recommissioned, and they’re really…

Air Ambulances UK, the national charity supporting the life-saving work of Air Ambulance charities across the UK, is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with the Auto-Cycle Union (ACU), the governing body for motorcycle sport in the British Isles. This exciting collaboration’ll see the two organisations working together to raise awareness and funds for the vital services provided by Air Ambulance charities nationwide, and by harnessing the passion and enthusiasm of motorcycle enthusiasts across the UK, the two organisations aim to make a real difference in supporting the provision of life-saving care to those in need. For more information about Air Ambulances UK and the Auto-Cycle Union, please visit www.airambulancesuk.org and www.acu.org.ukrespectively.…

I don’t know about you, but I started doing just that way back in… umm, 1985 or so – I’d see summat in these hallowed pages that I didn’t know much about, and decide to go to it next time it was held, and in this way I discovered the Kent Custom Bike Show; the Bulldog Bash; the Rock & Blues; the Magna Carta; the Mad Cow Rally; the Arse in the Grass and the Condom; the Lion Rally; and many, many more that I wouldn’t’ve known about if it wasn’t for this ‘ere magazine. I’m sure it was the same for many of you? And, all these years later, it still happens and, without fail, every event I’ve seen coverage of and thought ‘Ooo, that looks interesting’, and gone…

‘Love at first sight,’ according to Wikipedia, ‘is a personal experience and a common theme in creative works – a person or character feels an instant, extreme, and ultimately long-lasting romantic attraction for a stranger upon first seeing that stranger. It has been described by poets and critics since the emergence of ancient Greece.’ See? I mean, really? We all know what it feels like to experience the effect love at first sight has upon us; you’re quietly minding your own business, doing whatever you’re doing, when, suddenly, you see someone who, at that very moment you lay eyes on them, sends your world flying; someone who makes your heart skip a beat; someone who makes you take a sharp, completely involuntary, intake of breath; someone who invokes an almost…

It held an annual summer rally/bike show (with two almost separate crowds – the rally lot came Friday and went home Sunday morning, the custom lot came just for the Sunday), and often a winter one too, and it was also where the now sadly no more old East Anglian biker sport of stubbly field drag racing (on small cc hardtails with knobblies) was founded. These days the pub’s a very different place, and the new folk there aren’t keen on biker inebriates on minimal motorcycles ear’oling across their land so there hadn’t really been an event run by the White Horse Crew for a good few years. This yar, though, they kind o’ came out of retirement to organise a show at the nearby TTT Motorcycle Village in Sudbury…

Dave (or Mr David Batchelar Esquire, as he’s formally known), as anyone who knows him knows, is a huge fan of the 1970s digger-style chopper, and has built some absolute icons of the style over his long career and, when he and Chris were bandying ideas around for their final shop bike, both of them had a last and final digger in mind. Chris is a bit of a digger man, too, – you remember his blue Huggy Leaver-built Panhead that was on the cover of issue 423 – and one day, as he is wont to do, he was idly scanning eBay when an Ironhead-engined digger turned up as a project. It needed some (okay, quite a lot of) work, but had nice lines, and it was nothing they…

The Commando, in this form, has been around for a few years now, but we’ll gloss over its early history and the associated horror stories because the company that now owns Norton, TVS Motor Company, is a completely different entity from that which owned the brand before – TVS is an Indian multinational motorcycle manufacturer that’s the third largest motorcycle company in India by revenue with annual sales of three million units. They are, as the saying goes, not playing at it – in fact, there’s been more than 100,000 man hours, and £100 million, spent on the bike, refining it to be the icon it deserves to be; a machine that’s all about style, as well as performance. It drips with billet aluminium, hand finished in a state-of-the-art-factory in…

Now that most steel panel work’s made in a press, most of it’s stretched but, back when things were made by hand, shrinking was a commonplace skill going back as far as the first Millennium BC or so – think armour and helmets. I’ve been making mudguards for around 15 years now, and there’re several different approaches I’ve used, and the two most useful (at least with my tools) are cutting the top and sides out, ‘tipping’ the edges to form a radius (Fig.1), and welding the sections together through the radius, or hammering it out on a shrinking stump. The first method is surprisingly easy – the material has a lot of shape where it’s being welded so distortion is minimal; the welds are on a high spot so…

The 101 Run, as featured in this ‘ere magazine by Del last year, is a classic/vintage chopper event held at the Dreamland theme park in Margate in Kent (on Marine Terrace, CT9 1XJ) on Saturday, 20 July, but with parties and runs n’ stuff on the Friday and Sunday either side of that. It all kicks off with a run down the coast on the Friday, and finishes with a chill-out party on the beach on Sunday, but the main day is the show in the Hall of Dreams from 10am Saturday with 50-plus choppers, custom cars, food/drink, vendors, tattooists, music, skateboarding, and more. Tickets cost £35, and you can get them from the event website at www.the101run.com…

CLARKE GARAGE/WORKSHOPS/SHEDS Machine Mart’s range of garage/workshop/shed units come in a variety of sizes to suit your needs, allowing you to protect your pride and joy, or create additional work space, in a tight-fit, well-lit, protected environment. The CIS666 measures six feet in length by eight feet in width, with a height of six feet, and it’s great to use as a home workshop/storage area, and can house motorcycles, bicycles, garden furniture, etc. Slightly bigger is the CIG81015 – at 15 foot (long) by 10 foot (wide) by 8 foot (high), it offers the protection of traditional buildings at the fraction of the price. It’s ideal for protecting bikes or cars, but can just as easily be used as a temporary workspace. Each Clarke Garage/Workshops/Sheds feature ratchet-tight cover tensioning, durable…

“I bought this bike in 2017 from a dealer in Cheshire because I liked the ’50s-style look. It was called ‘The Hobbit’, and’d been built for a guy in Cambridgeshire who, I believe, was too unwell to ride it by the time it’d been finished, and it’d sat unridden in his garage for about five years. (I met him at a show in Suffolk a year or so after buying it, and he was really happy to see it being ridden.) I’d had it for a year or more before I took it to Clive and Jay at (then) So Low Choppers (where I was helping on Saturdays to try and learn some stuff) to get some work done, and had some fabrication done by them, and it was as I…

Gasoline Juice is a cool new(ish) venue just off the A5 in Northamptonshire that advertises itself as ‘creative event space and studio fifteen minutes from Silverstone at the heritage site at The Royal Ordinance Depot in Weedon Bec, dating to 1802’. It is cool – situated in a wonderfully old building in the Dept, there’s a café selling coffee, pastries, and rolls, and a variety of seating areas surrounded by some amazing piece of automotive art, including a small aeroplane! There’re bikes and cars everywhere in the moodily-lit cavernous space that is Gasoline Juice, and at weekends the area outside quickly fills up with vintage, exotic, and performance cars and, of course, bikes of all kinds and varieties. It’s a chilled space, great for a visit, with good coffee and…

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 Call 01507 529529 and quote BSHDPS Online: www.classicmagazines.co.uk/BSHDPS or scan the QR code to go straight to our secure online store CHOOSE WHICH BSH SUBSCRIPTION SUITS YOU BEST 1: 12-MONTH SUBSCRIPTION BEST VALUE 12 print issues…

As I said last issue, there’re now a series of BSH custom shows of our own, alongside the ones we’re already involved with, as well as the online rounds on our Facebook Page and Group. This month, July, there’ll be four rounds: ROUND 4 IS SATURDAY 6 JULY AT NCC LONDON’S DIAMOND DAY AT THE ACE CAFE, NORTH CIRCULAR ROAD, STONEBRIDGE, LONDON (NW10 7UD) ROUND 5IS SATURDAY 13 JULY AT RAW STEEL CHOPPERS, UNIT 6, PRIORS HALL FARM, CHURCH END, LINDSELL, ESSEX (CM6 3QR) ROUND 6 IS AT THE ROCK & BLUES (25-28 JULY), CONEYGREY SHOWGROUND, PENRICH, RIPLEY, DERBYS As well as an online round, too, on our Facebook Page and Group, and that’s running now! Then, in August, there’ll be three: ROUND 8 IS SATURDAY 10 AUG AT THE VICTORIA…

NEED TO AGREE, OR EVEN DISAGREE, WITH SOMETHING YOU’VE SEEN IN THE MAG? HEARD A BLOODY AWFUL JOKE YOU THINK WE SHOULD GROAN AT? EMAIL NIK@BACKSTREETHEROES.COM OR SEND IT SNAILMAIL TO THE ADDRESS SOMEWHERE IN THE MAG! DEAR BSH, Before anyone accuses me of getting all high and mighty, let me just state that in 40-something years of holding a licence, and some 700,000 miles in control of various motorised vehicles, I have done some STUPID sh*t, some of which I’ve paid the price for (two short bans and a LOT of fines), but most of which I got away with. I’ve also been blamed for a fair number of accidents, only occasionally unfairly, therefore, I’m not setting myself up as some paragon of virtue. That said, I have NEVER…

SEND PICS OF YOUR BIKE, YOUR LADY, YOUR BLOKE (BUT NOT YOUR DINNER, THIS ISN’T FACEBOOK) TO NIK@BACKSTREETHEROES.COM…

I unstrapped the tent from my rucksack frame, and put it up. Fortunately, having been a Cub Scout, and Sea Scout, I was used to doing that sort of thing. Croaky woke up briefly and grabbed his sleeping bag, crawled into the tent, and was out like a light again. I turned off the under-tank battery isolater, put my gear in the tent, and started exploring. As I went, assorted hippy types and bikers greeted me, and I admired the assorted motorcycles there: Royal Enfields; old BSA and Triumph 650s; a few Japanese four-strokes; a trike that appeared to have been made from a Messerschmidt bubble car; assorted rusty VW Campers; and a couple of converted coaches and buses. They didn’t have tents, but all the bikers and hippies were…