Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i Classic Bike Guide

One of the few opportunities to see classic motorcycles on the television is to return with the screening of series 12 of The Motorbike Show, scheduled to start on ITV4 from June 12. Presenter Henry Cole will be attempting two land-speed records and Allen Millyard will be shed-bound, restoring a 1970s superbike. Henry will ride some of the UK’s best roads, visit the Banbury Run, celebrate the 75th anniversary of the BSA Bantam and much more besides. Six hour-long episodes of The Motorbike Show will be broadcast on ITV4 weekly, starting on June 12 at 9pm. And for those who think an hour a week of Henry and Allen is not enough, there are 10 new episodes of Shed and Buried, in which they join Fuzz Townshend and Guy Willison…

LUCIFER’S HAMMER, SAYS IRISH LEGEND, WAS A comet sent by the Devil to destroy a village invaded by foreigners so evil that they made Lucifer himself jealous. The first Milwaukee-built V-twin to carry the factory’s colours at Daytona in 10 years, Lucifer’s Hammer scored a convincing victory on its debut appearance at Daytona in March 1983. The dirt-track great Jay Springsteen, a legend in his own lifetime was the winner of more AMA dirt track Nationals than anyone else, ever, en route to three Grand National titles by the age of 25. Springer was a god-given expert road racer, if only at that stage with just four such races under his belt in the previous seven years. He dominated the Cycle Week ’73 50-miler, defeating a field including the Ducati-mounted…

FOR SOMEONE WITH A WELL-DESERVED reputation for being a Nippophile, here’s the killer punch – I’m also something of a fan for British bikes! I may not automatically go frothy at the mere sight of yet another Bonneville, but I do like what I like. The trouble is the machines I covet in terms of ‘Bikes from Blighty’ tend to be variously too expensive, obscure, ruined, esoteric or non-existent. Perhaps I should explain. Few who possess a pulse could fail not have been captivated by a Velocette single, but they were expensive then and remain so now. Also, I doubt I’d have the necessary skills to fettle such a capricious device. I almost tripped over my tongue when I first saw a Silk 700S in the later 1970s. However, they…

CBG Workshop THE BEST WAY WE’VE FOUND TO find out about old bikes for sale is to ride around on old bikes. Things just get offered to you. Most you’ll politely refrain, but occasionally, one may well attract more attention. In our case, it was a journey to a friend’s engineering shop and the offer of a well looked-after BMW R80/7 of 1978 vintage. ‘I may be interested…’ TEMPTATION First of all, do you really want it? Will you use it, can you afford it and is there room? Does it give you what you want more than any other bikes you have? And if you’re seeing a ‘quick buck’ at the end, are you sure? Do sums – will there be a ‘tickle’ at the end? Break down the…

The highbrow world of Pall Mall, London, doesn’t seem quite as it should in this image. Mr Ray Cox has got himself a puncture in the rear wheel of his scooter, so Jay, from the Pall Mall RAC, unit has come to his aid. While the image looks staged, it is only a few hundred yards from the Motor Cycle paper’s offices, so it may have just been taken on the off-chance. Mr Cox, in his very nice overcoat, just looks on as he thinks about the reasons why he was late, while ‘Jay’ seems to have found the perfect solution with fixing punctures on scooters – drop it on its side! There seems to be no fluids leaking, and Mr Cox’s lunch bag(?) doesn’t seem to be a problem.…

AS A CALLOW YOUTH I WOULD DROOL AND dribble over the road tests in Bike and SuperBike, revelling in the words carefully crafted as the writers, these gods among men, imparted their wisdom upon we mere mortals (and they were never goddesses, because heaven forfend that a woman should be allowed closer to a motorcycle than the pillion seat, unless she was wearing a bikini and draped over it in studio... or, in the case of Superbike, half a bikini). There we would be regaled by the likes of Calderwood, Nicks and Williams with tales of their debauched lifestyles, where they were given vastly powerful motorcycles by cringing marketing men who handed over the keys as easily as they handed over the martinis, while comely wenches lit hand-rolled cigars for…

SPECIAL EDITIONS CAN BE THE VERY LIFEBLOOD of small, struggling manufacturers. Maybe that should be lots of manufacturers, in fact, not all of them small or struggling. Hmmm. For oddly similar reasons, I possess a Ritchie Sambora signature Fender Stratocaster – that’s a guitar, in case you thought it was a new breed of Chinese motorcycle. I bought it because it’s stunning to play, and when connected to a Marshall amplifier it has a wild range of earsplitting abilities that can penetrate my increasing deafness and terrorise the family cats. When I bought it, I had no idea who or indeed what Ritchie Sambora was. When I owned the shiny black Bonneville which is hopefully featured in photos nearby, I had no idea what ‘Royal… strange symbol’ on the side…

THIS 1971 THUNDERBOLT HAS NOT strayed far from its Cardiff home since 1971. We spotted it at the South Wales Sunbeam Club Classic Show and thought you may like a closer look. Jim Harding has owned this 650cc BSA Thunderbolt since 1993, and he’s the third owner. And it’s his second bike. The first was an MZ 150 he used to get to work on. Jim didn’t know anything about British motorcycles when he bought from a local owner at a time when oil-in-frame BSAs were about as unloved as it was possible for a motorcycle to be. And it was the A65 at its most basic. Not so much as a rev counter was fitted to this bargain basement model. When Jim got the Thunderbolt, it was a frame,…

Sunbeam Owners Fellowship The Sunbeam Owners Fellowship is a loose global collective of Sunbeam twin owners, as opposed to a club. Rather proudly, they don’t have a show committee. The fellowship was founded in 1963 by a trio of owners, and as it was the 60th anniversary, it pulled out all the stops to fill the stand with S7, S8 and special Sunbeams. The group took on a stand twice as big as normal and filled it by “phoning around a few mates,” according to Paul Stebler, from the fellowship. “Nothing happens unless someone makes it happen. If everyone wasn’t as friendly as they are, it would be a headache to keep it all running!” Gold Star Owners club The Gold Star club won the prize for best club stand.…

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN I WAS QUITE good at buying and selling motorcycles. Not professionally, you understand, he said, hurriedly, in case someone from HMRC is reading. There were £30 MZ ES250s and £50 Superdreams. I drove 250 miles to buy a near-perfect Honda CB400/4. I paid £200 for it from a Velocette enthusiast in Melton Mowbray who apologised for fitting an Alfa 4-1 to it and tried to reduce the price as a result. It was so beautiful that I barely used it for fear of damaging its immaculate paintwork and sold it to someone who would look after it properly, with some regret. I did manage to purchase an XS650 with an original fund of £50 by buying and selling assorted clunkers for tiny profit margins in…

What is it? The American West Coast loves a dirt bike. In the 1960s and 1970s, Honda sold tons of CL72s, CL350s and CL450s, all based on its 305, 350 and 450cc roadbikes but with larger front wheels and longer travel suspension, wide handlebars, flat bench seats and a signature high-level exhaust to behave better on the large number of ‘unpaved’ roads, as well as that minimalist Baja desert vibe. All looks, little substance maybe, but younger riders loved them. I still have one… Honda’s new CL500 follows the same ethos, partly to engage with those new riders again, partly because that care-free look is en vogue and partly to make a great do-it-all bike. It’s based on Honda’s trusted 500 Rebel platform, using the 500cc parallel twin-cylinder engine, mated…

CBG Workshop Hints & tips FROM HUTCH'S WORKSHOP MY DOUGLAS BITSA HAS STOOD dormant on the bench since Christmas, when I managed to get the replacement gearbox fitted and the unit (engine and gearbox) mounted back into the frame. The general plan with the bike is to have it running again and, hopefully, selecting four gears this time. Then ride it to shake down a bit while doing a few other jobs until I am happy before attending to it cosmetically. I much prefer this small, continuous improvement approach to my bikes when I have the option. When stripping the bike to change the gearbox, a few issues became apparent that I felt I really needed to address upon reassembly. Number one on my list was better, or additional, support…

SEMI-SERIOUS QUESTION: DO YOU EVER actually finish a project? I mean, completely finish it? Stand back, allow any passing strangers to mutter congratulations (and if they don’t, utter them yourself), and bask, maybe preen a little at a job well done. Or at least a job completed. That sort of thing. I was simply wondering whether this actually ever happens or if it’s some kind of insanely optimistic personal fantasy. My reason for asking is my own utter failure to ever complete a project. This has somehow been the case for more than half a century – and not many folk can claim that, I’ll wager. As I stepped back from one of my recent attempts at finally finishing a project I started in … ooh, let’s do sums ……