Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2025 i Back Street Heroes

The club has a core of eighteen regular members who meet at the Club on the first Sunday each month, and they raise funds for charities on a five-year cycle – this year’s Year Two for Blesma, a charity helping limbless veterans to live independent and fulfilling lives. Veteran Kevin Davis attended to represent the charity in receiving a cheque from club chairman Alex White for one thousand pounds already raised and, after the presentation, he told his story and how Blesma’d helped and supported him to build a new life as an amputee, giving encouragement, support, and legal advice, as well as sourcing practical items to meet his changing needs. Blesma covers the whole of the UK, working with the NHS, and is committed to the health, welfare and…

Tom’s Kernow’s prospect – at the time these pics were taken a year n’ a bit ago, he’d been riding with them for six months, which means he’s been with them eighteen months or so now, and his’s the only one of the County’s bikes, it seems, that wasn’t built, or worked on, by their resident clever-clogs Dale at Hellstown Choppers. No, y’see, this bike was built many years ago by a builder with even more of a pedigree – Simon Harris of, then, Attitude Customs. I say ‘then’ because Attitude had a name change a few years ago, and’re now Attitude Cycles, and Simon now works in partnership (or something) with his son Carter, both building bikes in their recognisable, but distinct, styles. Tom, though, started riding with Kernow…

Organised by the Batabit, the Qatar motorcycle club, an official entity affiliated with the Ministry of Sports and Youth, the club represents more than just this competition. Batabit exists to unite the diverse biking community under one umbrella – riders may belong to their own clubs or groups, but through Batabit they come together to share a collective platform focused on community, awareness, and excellence in motorcycle culture. Unlike shows in Europe or the US, the Batabit Show focuses primarily on regional builders. Custom creators from Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and beyond bring their best work to Doha, each motorcycle telling a story of craftsmanship deeply rooted in personal vision and local influence. Categories range from choppers and café racers to baggers, bobbers,…

A day-long course with The Airbrush Company in Lancing, taught by legendary airbrush artist Piers Dowell, is, you see, broken up into two projects – a Union Jack in the morning, and flames in the afternoon, and, like I said last issue, is a real eyeopener into the hows and whys of custom painting, showing you just how much time and effort goes into creating even small pieces of art. A lot of airbrush work is, as you’ll’ve read if you saw the last article, far more about the masking than it is about the actual painting, and doing flames is definitely about that, and more. The secret’s in the use of flexible fine-line lining tape, which comes in various sizes (1mm, 2mm, 3mm, 6mm), and your ability to work…

The random FJ1200 carburettor ‘clean’ has turned into pretty much a full-blown rebuild, and I ended up having to separate the carburettor bodies to fit them in the ultrasonic cleaner I’d borrowed off Ugly Neil (Fig.1). Usually there’re two things (three holding a bank of carbs together, at least on Japanese motorcycles; there’s a ‘rail’ over the mouths, and another at the rear below the inlet ports and the choke-operating rod.) The sensible thing to do is probably to remove the choke-operating rod first, as it’s the most fragile, and bending it’d cause problems. I noticed that some of the screws on the rails looked like they’d been chewed up by being subjected to a Phillips screwdriver, instead of the correct JIS type (Fig.2), so I elected to check…

Take, for example, my first commissioned job for BSH. Up ‘til that point, everything I’d done (just events, no bike features) had been off my own back – I took my camera (or, usually, someone else’s camera actually cos I was too poor to own a decent one then) along to local bike events, took pictures, wrote some juvenile drivel (no change there then), and sent it off to, at first, Odgie and Little Mark and, later, Caz Carroll, and they either turned it down or used it as they saw fit. Then, one day, I got a call from Caz (it was, for me down over in the east, absolutely unheard of to be called by the magazine), who asked if I’d like to go and cover a Chopper…

And d’y’ know what? It was well worth the trip across the country from over ‘ere to over there, it really was; three halls of customs, bikes, and cars, plus the Two Brothers Racing Stunt Team arena, and a Harley-Davidson ride-n’-try area, too. There was onsite camping a few hundred yards away, and loads of parking, and, importantly, the weather stayed good, which always puts a smile on people’s faces. Rocking up on the Friday to unload the Spondon?, I was very impressed with the sheer number of bikes entered; there was a whole sizeable hall full of, if you like, our kind of customs, and an equally sized one housing what they call ‘Butchered Classics’, but what we’d call streetfighters, as well as scooters, and classics of the old…

Sandy’s son, James (“the one with the money in the family” he says) started this XS650 chopper project by purchasing a Fenlands Chopper frame and ordering a springer front end, with wheel, caliper, and disc, from a supplier on eBay. He’d already sourced a bastardised XS650 scrambler, with logbook, from a guy in Hastings and hired a van to collect it and to bring it back to his native Suffolk. Needless to say, he was a few grand in at this point alone, and the end wasn’t really in sight so, when one day his dad came home with a running XVS bobber, he took one look at it and ‘offered’ to swap the ongoing XS project for the completed and on the road Yam. “Somehow,” Sandy says smiling ruefully,…

“To make things worse, I start building them in my head, over and over again. I come up with parts that we need to design and fabricate for them, and how we are going to do that. Timelines’re developed, contingencies built in, partners identified, and then I build them again and again in my head. And by the time I start talking to guys in the shop about what I have in mind, it’s all worked out - it’s ‘just’ a matter of doing the work. The only problem is that I sometimes have four or five bikes on the go in my brain at the same time, and that can be maddening. “This bike started off because I was flipping through my mental library of bikes that’d left a…

Affordable, simple bikes in the 300-400cc bracket’ve been flying (well, trundling…) out of showrooms over the last few years – Triumph’s Speed 400 (as tested a few months ago), and their new Scrambler 400 (next issue) have sold well with both young riders on the way up through biking and older ones downsizing to more manageable and affordable machines, too, and the whole sector’s continued to grow even while overall motorcycle sales’ve shrunk. The mighty Honda’s latest offering into this class of bike is the CB350S. It’s an air-cooled single cylinder of 348cc, which manages to look genuinely retro thanks to its finned cylinder, and lack of radiator or water-pipes. It’s not what you’d call fast, by any stretch of the imagination, with just 20.7bhp and 21ft/lb of torque, but…

I was riding a Moto Morini 350cc, bought off by a local guy when he bought himself a Laverda – not fantastically fast, but a lot cooler-looking than most of the small bikes. Emma was on the back of a scruffy RD250LC; rusty chain, hooked sprocket, seat with splits and indicators pointing in any direction except the right one. She was wearing what looked like it was an older brother’s Belstaff, jeans and Doc Martens. We nodded at each other and carried on watching the traffic go by. Every week I’d see her and the RD, but no sign of whoever she’d got there with. She obviously wasn’t the rider, given the amount of road muck on the bike, and the little on the front of her jeans, but her…

The best letter each month wins a BSH tee-shirt Just read Norm’s column nn in issue 495, and I’m glad someone’s voiced it in public – it’s long what I’ve thought.) ught. A while ago I was reading a couple of issues of BSH; one with pics of a well-known rally, and one with The Trip Out in. The rally pics were full of old, fat people gurning and, although I probably am one (save for the gurning), that’s not my mental self-image and they made me feel slightly depressed. Based on these pics, I really don’t want to go to it or similar. And, like Norm, I can see why younger bikers aren’t coming into the scene – I mean, when you were young, would you’ve wanted to hang…

I smiled at BSH’s issue 494 write-up of 2024’s Stormin’ the Castle event, in which John from Bikersmag.co.uk noted the welcome attendance of 32 learners. MAG’s been offering discounts and incentives to young riders for many years now but, whilst we’re succeeding in drawing more to our events, what we’ve not been able to do is materially increase the number of young people entering motorcycling per se. That’s not a failure on our part because it’s simply not within our ability to change the political, cultural, and social influences that impact how the young spend their time and money. Nor do I agree, as Norm seemed to suggest in his Devil’s Advocate column in issue 495, that the young aren’t coming to motorcycling because many of us have grown old,…

Nick Eddison, you see, is the custodian, as he describes himself, of a piece of British chopper history – he’s the third owner of ‘The Original Sin’, a 1960 Triumph Thunderbird originally put together by the legendary Dick Smith of the hallowed South London workshop Baron’s Speed Shop. He’s world famous for being one of the best in putting together period correct stock and custom British bikes, especially Triumphs, and has an impressive client list which includes A-list celebrities as well as humbler customers (like Nick), too. The Original Sin was built 15 years ago to showcase the skills of Baron’s Speed Shop, and was originally owned by Del Russell, who was then part of the original set up. At that time, the bike was in a different incarnation, with…

After much pestering, nan then promised me the money to purchase my first bike if I passed all of my O-levels. With a little exaggeration of my results, dad took me to his friend’s bike dealership and I was soon the proud owner of a cherry red MZ50. Owning the MZ was never really a brag, but it did go, importantly, 3mph faster than my friends’ Fizzy and old Gilera, with that great smell of smoky over-mixed two-stroke. Bliss. My gleaming new wheels didn’t last long though… While at college, unbeknownst to me, someone stuffed tissue paper into my tank. After limping home on a cold winter’s evening, dad and I set about searching for the issue in our garage, which was heated by a super-bright arc lamp. As dad…

Y' see, the Z1000P, the police bike variant, as ridden by Officers Baker and Poncherello in the ’80s hit US TV series ‘CHiPs’, was actually made from 1982 right up to 2005 – a production run of an impressive 23 years, as opposed to the non-police version which lasted just seven.* Whether the bike before you, the amazing Z1000-powered digger you see here, is powered by an engine from one is something we’ll never really know because, like a lot of old chops, its history’s pretty much unknown – it’s rumoured to’ve been built by the legendary John Reed, of Uncle Bunt Customs, in 1979, but there’s no way of actually proving it. The quality of the work’s good enough to be one of his, definitely, but whether or not…

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 aBSH cost a fiver each, but what would you say if we could do you a special deal, and do you a BSH at just £4.08 instead of £5.40? That’s a saving of (works out on fingers) 24% – nothing to be sniffed at! Call 01507 529529 and quote BSHDPS1 Online: www.classicmagazines.co.uk/bshdps1 or scan the QR code to go straight to our secure online store 52 JUNE 2025 CHOOSE WHICH BSH SUBSCRIPTION SUITS YOU BEST 1: 12-MONTH SUBSCRIPTION 12 print issues for £49 Direct…

The Future Bike, sadly, missed its own 40th birthday party (much like its owner – my then job kindly arranged for me to work, and travel several hundred miles to do so, on the day of my fortieth) cos although it was rebuilt and running, it was so, so, so lean that Shaun at Paradise Garage, probably wisely, wouldn’t let me have it back. At the time of writing, it’s waiting for a set of new tapered needles that should cure it – fingers crossed! The Hornet (strictly, Pam’s Hornet) is still running like a watch, making its 70-mile-a-day commute into and out of London without complaint, and Pam continues to get people pull up next to her, and remark about how cool the bike is. It went in for…

Probably the best-selling motorcycle in BMW’s history, the GS BMW, as popularised by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman in their ‘Long Way Round’ TV series all those years ago, started life some 45 years ago as the 800cc R80 Gelände/Straße (unsurprisingly shortened to G/S), and was at first an underground hit until it was catapulted to stardom by the above television series. Now, in 2025, BMW have launched a new stripped-back version: the R12 GS. It features an air/cooled 1200cc boxer motor which makes 109hp and 85ft/lb of torque, and a bare bones chassis and look – no boxes, no massive fairing, no computer-aided wotsits, just a big, capable bike as they were intended to be all those years ago. Available in a traditional BMW white and blue (with a…