Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2021 i Real Classic

Back when I was blatting along on the diminutive Ariel you’ll see further inside this issue, I was trying to remember the last time I wrote about a smaller capacity bike in these smudgy pages. It is a while. I know perfectly well that I could sit down with a stack of back issues (or a set of page proofs, which live inside this very PC and involve no grubby page turning – or I could even use the ‘search’ facility in this very word processing software) to locate the exact machine and date, but… but I’m relying on my memory. This is at best unreliable and at worst entirely wrong. What I want to remember is which were the most memorable. If you see what I mean. Velocette. Velocette…

Thirty years ago in Italy, the early 1990s saw a cutthroat contest for the boy racer buck – OK, lire – among the host of manufacturers enjoying relative prosperity after the boom bike years of the 1980s, despite a brief blip caused by helmets becoming compulsory in 1986. Each competed to attract orders from a pretty fickle customer base with their latest and greatest ring-ding racer, on road, and off. Some smaller ones like Fantic, Malaguti or Ancilotti opted out of the performance race by focusing exclusively on 50/125cc enduros and street scramblers, often with great success. For others the significant size of the race replica sector in a country still passionately enamoured with GP racing led them to develop ever more appealing racers-with-lights. These were updated annually, powered by…

BOURNEMOUTH BANTAMS carry lots of stock and are very knowledgeable VILLIERS SERVICES are great for rebores, big ends, etc, and they also do brake shoe re-lining with lovely grippy material which will get the least worst from your brakes F2 MOTORCYCLES sell Brisk spark plugs which have been infallible on Fred’s Bantam ELECTREXWORLD offer an electronic ignition and voltage regulator set. Not necessary, perhaps, but this upgrade has improved Fred’s bike no end VEHICLE WIRING PRODUCTS have supplied everything for rewiring (including the Japanese bullets which Fred loves) at very reasonable prices with really fast delivery LED BULBS are great for reduced power consumption and for being seen during daytime. However, some find that the bluey light disappears in the dark when it comes to actually seeing where you are…

This is about tuning a Goldie, a 1957 DBD34 in American road trim. But it’s not a story about tuning a fire-breathing monster to extract every last horsepower; it’s about tuning a road bike’s carburettor for rideability and good manners. Those of you who think that a Goldie should only wear a GP carb should look away now, because the carb in question is an Amal Mk1 Concentric, a 1036 with 36mm bore. This carb probably started life on a large Spanish 2-stroke because these and the Velocette Thruxton were the only models to which they were originally fitted, and the carbs are no longer made. Why a Concentric? GP carbs don’t have an idle circuit which makes them difficult to ride in traffic, even the relatively light traffic that…

It’s been around forty years since I last swung a leg over a 250 as a teenager. That was my tatty old 1965 BSA C15 SS80, which got me to work and back most days before I stepped up to a Norton Model 77. I really can’t say I’ve ever looked back until very recently when this Royal Enfield came my way. The 1965 Continental GT (Gran Turismo) represents the pinnacle of the unit construction 250’s lineage, produced from late 1956 until 1966. It’s easy to think, as I did, that it’s just a Crusader with some cosmetic bling bolted on. Rather, over a decade in production, the unit construction 250 was constantly being evolved and power rose from 13bhp to 20bhp. The iron head became alloy, the inlet valve…

Readers interested in the W3 article may like a look at a 1965 W1 I rebuilt with a lot of help from my son during lockdown. Frame #0052, so an early one. It started as a long fork chopper with many parts missing, so we decided to build a nice, riding bike as near standard as possible. Interesting facts? We found a full roller-ball pressed-up end-feed crank; an engine shock absorber and another one in the rear hub; duplex primary drive; confusing gears with neutral above first so it’s N, then 1, 2, 3, 4 down; a replaceable paper filter in the oil tank, and many more nice touches. Everything over-engineered and listed as built by Kawasaki Aircraft Co. Neil Williams I found Alan Cathcart’s write-up about the Kawasaki W3…

Time was that when motorcyclists started a phrase with ‘winter’ the following word was usually ‘hack’. It is entirely probable that as soon as we riding types developed our financial clout to the point at which we could afford to buy and run a decent motorcycle we started to seek excuses to acquire another. A great excuse, as we gazed smugly over the glittering chrome of our sporting twins or snorting singles, was always the sensible suggestion that as winter riding can reduce the gleam to gloom within a very short time, we of course needed a second machine. A ride-to-work machine. A machine for all seasons. A winter bike, then. In my case it was Commando ownership wot dun it, m’lud. Prior to the appearance of the first Commando…

Although this little bit of comment is plainly a spoiler in the ‘will he ever make that Sunbeam run again?’ story, I must reveal that I’ve just returned from a couple of miles with it. On the road – not on a trailer or in a van. Sorry about this, a little doubt and suspense helps keep things a little more interesting, but I simply needed to shout out what a remarkable machine this is! The journey to reach its renewed and probably temporary mobility will take a while to discuss in these only slightly grimy pages, but I simply had to reveal that not only does it run, but it rides as well. How remarkable. The next comment I must add is this: if you had ever entertained the…

A friend has a Triumph 3TA that smokes mainly on the right hand cylinder. The longer he rides, the worse it gets. First thoughts were valve guides and/or rings so we had a look. On start-up, oil returns to the tank – but in a constant stream and not the intermittent bursts I normally expect from a Triumph. It carried on far longer than I thought it would to empty a crankcase full of oil. We took off the filter cap (which had been put on with a chisel by the PO…) but there was no debris, despite the fact the gauze screen had a hole in it! The pressure relief valve was gungy but the piston seemed to move. Why is there so much oil being pumped back? Is…

When Suzuki launched their range of three-cylinder bikes in 1972, the clear intention was to create a family of machines that appealed to the widest possible audience. Like the bikes being built by arch-rivals Kawasaki, they were all two-strokes, a proven and popular technology, and something with which Suzuki already had considerable amounts of experience. Starting with the delightful GT380 in the ultra-competitive 350-400cc class, and culminating with the imposing water-cooled GT750 superbike, Suzuki were well placed to compete with new designs that distinguished themselves from their then-current twins. Suzuki also had a model slap bang in the middle, the GT550 triple. The early 1970s were an odd time for the Japanese factories. Ranges tended to be well-stocked in the ‘up to the 400cc’ range and the CB750/4, GT750 and…

Years ago in RC136, I compared two Sunbeam sidevalve machines. This wasn’t really fair on either machine, since one was a 350 made before the Great War and is the second oldest Sunbeam known to exist and get used regularly, and the other was a 500 sportsman machine made ten years later. That comparison looked at the developments made over ten years, just when WW1 restricted such developments. The economic situation after the war meant that procuring materials and men to make motorcycles was difficult. The 1913 machine was the first motorcycle Sunbeam made, apart from an early attempt to evaluate a Motosacoche-engined Sunbeam bicycle in about 1903 on which an employee had a fatal accident. John Marston, the owner of Sunbeam, then forbade further development of dangerous vehicles such…

OGRI: ORIGINAL AND BEST by Paul Sample This full-colour softback reproduces 102 episodes of the Ogri strip cartoon. Originally published from the 1970s through to the creator’s retirement in 2013, the vast majority of Ogri’s adventures have been made available in recent years in high-quality compilations. All apart from a few… the ‘lost originals’ which had apparently disappeared entirely. And then Paul Sample found a final portfolio, tucked away in his spare room; one hundred of Ogri’s adventures plus the final pair of original strips which weren’t published when first drawn. They’ve been scanned at high resolution and are presented here on top-quality paper, in a 72-page, large-format collector’s edition. £15 plus delivery from ogri-book.co.uk DO IT WHILE YOU STILL CAN by Nick Adams At 170 pages, this isn’t a…