Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Classic Bike Guide

Welcome HOPE YOU’RE ALL WELL, THAT GRITTED roads are no longer, and the sun is shining on your patch. Our month has rapidly disappeared in a pile of thick jumpers and pets on laps (sitting on one’s backside in front of a computer screen is chilly work, you know) and looking out at mainly damp, uninviting roads, seemingly laughing at our thoughts of merry riding. We’ll have the last laugh soon, damn you. A brief mild turn did see us get out on the modern bikes. Maria sorted a route after my ridiculed navigational skills took us miles away last time and based it around a new-found tea shop (Poppylands, near Horsey windpump, just north of Great Yarmouth, if you’re local). The clouds were elsewhere and the sun kept us…

Norton ‘Silver Fish’ Kneeler at Sammy Miller’s Museum A rare opportunity to see and hear an exotic racing Norton being ridden by a modern TT racer is coming to Sammy Miller’s Museum in Hampshire. James Hillier is an Isle of Man TT winner, former TT lap record holder and nine times podium finisher of the North West 200. On April 2, he will be pushing the limits of the museum’s very own 1953 Norton Kneeler. This year, the Norton Kneeler marks its 70th anniversary since it broke a host of world speed records at Montlhéry, France. The Kneeler broke with Norton’s principle of racing the same bikes anyone could buy in an attempt to enable the single-cylinder Manx engine take on the multi-cylinder machines emerging from Europe. It used the…

Honda CL100 Fun on the road, and fun on the grass SOME CLASSIC MOTORCYCLES ARE FAST, AND some are ponderous. Some snap round bends like switchback cars, and some run on rails. Some snarl, and some thunder. Some are huge behemoths, and some are as lithe as a racing snake. And some are just a hoot. This little Honda CL100 definitely fits the final category. The pint-sized trail bike is just grin-inducing. You can chuck it about on the dirt, slide it sideways on the grass, thrash it unmercifully on the tarmac... and it’ll keep coming back for more. With a frankly ridiculous redline and dry weight of a Tesco sandwich, the little Honda was a prime example of the adage ‘It’s more fun to ride a slow bike fast…

Modern RETRO OLD IS GOLD. BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE REAL gold – it can be fake gold, wearing a shiny suit that from 10 yards away looks similar to the real thing. In biking, Triumph has been the master of faux classics. Kawasaki tried with the W650 and W800 and were very good, dreadful brakes aside, and now has a foot in the 70s/80s club with its Z900, as well as Suzuki and the Katana. Ducati has the odd special (Paul Smart edition), and Moto Guzzi succeeds by still producing the bikes it always has… And now we have three of the oldest names, but new faces behind the badges: Norton, Royal Enfield and the new boy, BSA. Or is that the old boy? I’m confused. In a…

Little is known about this wonderous image we found in the Mortons archive. It shows three people enjoying the wonderful scenery in Scotland... but what else? Why are they there? Why does it seem to have been posed? The weather looks poor in the background, the lady driver seems to be squinting, and the rider is certainly dressed for rain! So, when cameras of this quality were still rare, my guess is the stern gentleman has set the lens on a timer and has run back to look calm – while his damp friends giggle. We do know this was taken in February 1939. This helps work out what the vehicles are. The car is, we believe, a BSA three-wheeler, the front-wheel drive obvious due to the mud splattered up…

IT’S NOT SOMETHING A MERE MORTAL WOULD CARE TO contemplate, restoring and showing a classic motorcycle. And entering a concours d’elegance restoration must be both rewarding and frustrating in equal measure. There you are in your workshop, garage or front room, sourcing obscure parts from mysterious sources, assembling the beast with the care of a surgeon, careful not to leave so much as a spanner mark on an unseen bolt head, polishing, painting and buffing the thing to within a millimetre of its life, carefully cosseting it in the back of a van on the way to a show where you hope to get the recognition for your work you so richly deserve, sweating at each corner or sharp bit of braking, bouncing into a bleak and wintry showground, unloading…

BEING TOLD TO CEASE AND DESIST BY A GIANT like BMW is a backhanded compliment, especially when to tell them to get stuffed… That’s what self-confessed techno-freak Paul Taylor and his band of chums did in 1991. The Bavarians saw a photo of their latest Motodd Laverda Mk.5 streetbike in the press, and its radical front suspension contravened BMW’s patents. Only one thing, said Paul & Co – here’s one we did earlier, depicted in another bike magazine some years before your allegedly valid patents! After that, the Motodd Laverda indeed blossomed in terms of public awareness, both in Japan and in Europe, thanks to the decisive 37-second victory registered by the ‘works’ Motodd Laverda Mk.5 in the 2V2+3 event for two-valve, twins and triples, run at the International four-stroke…

THIS IS NOT A TRIUMPH TR5 TROPHY. IT’S NOT even an M+S TR5 Trophy. It might look a lot like one, but it isn’t. And it’s none the worse for that. Anyone owning a real TR5 might be loath to take one on to the dirt, slide it sideways through the mud, wrestle it over rocks, or drop it into ditches and heave it out again, with both rider and machine steaming quietly, both grinning. This is a bike for treating in the same way legendary ISDT champion Jim Alves would have done. You can just imagine some flat-capped, greatcoated rider riding it 100 miles to a meeting, ripping off the QD lights, pouring in some five-star, going out and obliterating the opposition on track, then riding it back to…

An early magazine photo shoot outside some modern services with two Commando variants and an Atlas…

I AM – AND I CANNOT DENY IT – A dedicated follower of ‘for sale’ ads. It has always been thus. This is possibly related to the, at times, large collection of the halt and the lame elderly motorcycles I accumulate from time to time, but who can tell? Maybe that was down to bad luck and trouble. I always did enjoy trad blues lyrics. Ads have another side to them, however. As well as the Bike For Sale, which of course I pore over all the time and in various media while I’m supposed to be working, there are a decreasing number of Bits For Sale, which is probably proof that nobody rides old bikes any more, but a growing number of Bikes Wanted. This, gentle reader, is a…