Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2024 i The Classic MotorCycle

You can’t get an earlier start to the year’s events than Stony Stratford’s classic vehicle show on New Year’s Day. It’s 9:30 am on January 1, 2024, and classic motorcycle riders, many on prewar machines, have started to arrive at the annual Vintage Stony event in Stony Stratford, Bucks. Stony Stratford’s High Street is also Watling Street, and the town was formerly an important stop for stagecoaches; as an ancient transport hub it’s just the right place for this show. It’s a classic vehicle show, and the bikes are in the Market Square, with the prewar cars and any other vehicles. Usually, the motorcycles are all together, but this year we were scattered in and around the square; I was directed to park my BSA M33 behind a 1950 Landini…

Triumph | T120 Bonneville In the autumn of 2022, I became convinced that my life would not be complete unless I got a 650cc Triumph T120 Bonneville, vintage 1971-73. These obsessions have roots too deep to fully fathom, but there are some parameters. Despite enjoying traditional singles, I’d come up on twins, first bike a 350cc Norton Navigator, significant long-term keepers a 1973 750cc Commando, and a 1956 BSA A10, Anneka, which I’d recently, reluctantly, let go due to persistent hot-starting problems. Triumphs Rule? Test machines over the years had taught me that 500 and 650cc Triumph twins felt the liveliest, and were generally easy to kick-start. I’d put a toe in the Meriden waters in 2018 with the outstandingly smooth 1981 single carb TR65 Thunderbird 650, which, after fettling,…

In the 1950s, West Germany was a nation in flux, as it struggled,with the aid of a $1.39 billion handout from the USA via the Marshall Plan (equivalent to $24 billion today), to recover from the internal depredations of warfare brought about by Adolf Hitler’s psychotic delusions of grandeur. Thanks to the hard-working determination of its populace, and the astute leadership of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and, especially, his Minister of Economics, Ludwig Erhard, West Germany rebounded from devastation to economic dominance in Western Europe in little over a decade, via the so-called Wirtschaftswunder, aka the Economic Miracle. Before this, just as in war-ravaged Italy and bombed-out Britain, postwar West Germany initially saw a significant hunger for cheap personal transportation, which meant a huge demand for whatever motorcycles could be produced…

Riding speedway is a hard habit to break if the Veterans’ Championship meeting held at Lydd Speedway is anything to go by. For those still keen to have a competitive skid, there are three classes in which to compete. Those of a minimum of 30 years (rider, not the bike) can compete in the Laydown class, using the more modern style of speedway machine. At 40 years or more, then a dive further back into speedway history is permitted with a four-valve, upright engine. At 45 years of age, then it’s the two-valve, the mainstay speedway powerplant for many decades. In practical terms, most riders could have ridden in any class, many of them long retired from the hectic lifestyle of regular league competition. Lydd, a traditional-style track near minimum-length…

A major problem for anyone deciding to do anything with an old motorcycle is time. Jobs always take longer than the few minutes allotted to them, and in a busy life, it’s not always easy to justify time in the workshop. Yes, the job could be shipped off to someone with the casual comment ‘make these fit on there please, here’s a vast pot of cash.’ Which is okay, but people out there who can do this normally have a backlog of work and there’s not always a pot of cash. Anyway, I like doing these things and have some facilities to do certain jobs myself. Swapping forks and bushes and the like isn’t something which can be done in a few moments, nor can it be done when there’s…

This fascinating machine, which now resides in the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham, is possessed of what is, perhaps, the most visually beautiful – or, if not beautiful, dramatic perhaps – engine of any motorcycle ever made. It’s pictured here in probably 1936, with Charles Mortimer in the saddle, who had bought it from the Colliers, then owners of AJS. The story of the machine begins in 1929 when AJS – still in the ownership and control of the Stevens family at that point – decided to build a machine to have a crack at the motorcycle speed world record, which was, at that time, in the possession of Germany, owing to BMW rider Ernst Henne’s 134.67mph, recorded on September 19, 1929. There was stiff competition for the honours, with…

This wonderful picture shows a trio of early Matchless G50s outside the Associated Motor Cycles (AMC) works, while, as a backdrop, a host of swaddled twins wait to be delivered wherever they were due. Now, it could be an optical illusion, but the wrapped machine on the left looks to have the megaphone-type exhausts used on Matchless, with, next along, the more regular pipes as used on the AJS. What is not in doubt, though, is the trio of G50s, the splendid 496cc single overhead camshaft single which was developed from the AJS 7R, though it took 10 years before AMC did what was seemingly obvious and simply enlarged its successful 350cc single, to make an instantly competitive, light, neat and competitive half litre category competition iron. And while the…

Elk Promotions set a high bar for the last show of its 2023 season. This was scheduled for the familiar surroundings of the South of England Showground at Ardingly in Sussex, but the theme was to be ‘sporting Vincents’. Sadly, most of the high achievers that originated from Stevenage are in museums or elsewhere around the globe, but with help from Ardingly regulars and enthusiastic input from the Vincent Owners’ Club the resulting display achieved an interesting variety, with some familiar and some less well-known success stories there for everyone’s delectation. Among the sporting and touring Vincents on display, arguably the best known of the competition Vincents were the drag racers ‘Mighty Mouse’ and ‘Super Mouse’. These had been campaigned by Brian Chapman, truly a legend in his own time.…

With much of the country’s road system half-choked by traffic, it is easy to understand the popularity of track days where limits of bike and rider can be explored. Whatever is achieved, it will not be at any cost to the licence, allowing the owner to ride away in the big outside world. With older machinery, the potential for high-speed progress on the wide open spaces of modern race tracks can well be a bit too much of a good thing. The Sunbeam Motor Cycle Club (which, incidentally, celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2024), with its focus on older bikes, has found a fine compromise in the scenic South Downs with the Campbell Circuit, a kart track at Filching Manor Motor Museum. This event, in July 2023, provided attendees with…

Winter is the time for club night quizzes and a favourite question is often: ‘Who made the first ‘whatever’?’ If I were a question master, I’d always avoid this topic, because someone will always know of earlier examples. However, me being me, I will now break this rule. Thirty years ago, and then successively more recently, I’ve penned: “BMW designed and manufactured the first modern-type, oil-damped telescopic front fork, which many rivals later examined before designing their own Roadholder, Teledraulic, BSA et al variations on the theme.” At least half a dozen souls will respond that this accolade should go to the Danish maker Nimbus and there is some value in their claims, but I’ll stick with BMW, who first used them on factory racers before later, in 1935, offering…

Building up to the Bristol show After being originally held in the centre of Bristol, the now Shepton Mallet-based show has grown and evolved into Britain’s greatest annual West Country celebration of all that is best about the motorcycles of yesteryear. The event is a magnet for enthusiasts, club members and traders alike – attracting thousands from all over the country. It features the finest themed club displays with fierce competition for the much-coveted ‘best stand’ award and cash prizes too. Held over February 24/25, 2024, compere Steve Plater will be joined on stage by ex-British champion and TV commentator James Whitham. Bristol always attracts a diverse entry, with some high-quality machines which aren’t necessarily seen elsewhere. Among them this year is a spectacular V-twin Vincent, owned by Simon Shirely,…

This year’s Newark ‘do’ took place on the first weekend of the new year, January 6/7, 2024, with a healthy turnout, despite some ‘problematic’ weather in the days leading up to it. Indeed, the River Trent had burst its banks and it looked like there might be a threat to the show taking place, but, in fact, the only thing that overflowed were the car parks, and with vehicles not water, emergency parking being pressed into service, such were the number of visitors. It helped that Saturday dawned bright and light, not as cold as one feared, especially considering that the site is an old airfield – and as anyone who has been to anywhere such as Snetterton or Silverstone will attest, these vast open spaces have their own ‘special’…

International | Nortons Despite actually having a wide, varied motorcycle CV, some people become so closely associated with a particular marque and in some cases model, thanks to either sporting success and or knowledge, that one forgets or ignores the fact that, basically, we all start from scratch. It might be a parent or close relative that shapes our enthusiasm for a particular machine, or a complete accident, but, in the main, depending on cost, we all try every type and style of machine, until we find one or two that ignite a real passion. Barry Stickland is quite rightly regarded as an expert on all things International and Manx Norton, but, like most, he started his riding career on far less esoteric machinery, taking his test aged 16 on…

In the early 1920s, it seemed there was a motorcycle maker for every letter of the alphabet – in fact, many more than one for the vast majority. Nor was it just every letter of the alphabet, pretty much every city and many larger towns had its very own constructor, too. Take this subject Warwick, a machine about which very little is known but, owing to its name, we can assume where it was built, or at least assembled – but we’ll come to that later. When our own Richard Rosenthal compiled his Buyer’s Guide – which was later brought together to form a comprehensive reference book, published in 2012 – in the section he mentioned Warwick (number 109, Warwick-WFM), over three pages there was also mentioned ‘Watney,’ ‘Waverley;, Weaver’…

In the 1930s, most motorcycle manufacturers produced sports and touring versions of their models. But most manufacturers still tried to make the slower bike as attractive as possible. BSA had the hot Gold Star in its line-up, but if you weren’t rich enough to afford one of the hot-stuff 500cc singles there was always the handsome Empire Star. And Rudge gave riders the choice of an Ulster – named after a famous victory in the Irish road race – or the Special, which wasn’t that special at all, certainly not as special as the Ulster. But at least the lesser model’s name didn’t advertise the fact. Not so the Bianchi Freccia D’Oro. The model name might translate as ‘Golden Arrow’ but the quick version of the 250cc single was tagged…

THE SPECIALIST Our specialist for this guide is Burton Bike Bits, trading as British Bike Bits. The company holds a surprisingly comprehensive inventory of NOS parts for the TRW, including kits to build complete new engines! Enthusiasm for the model even extends to the creation of an owners’ register. We are grateful to BBB’s Carolyne Page for helping with this guide. ■ British Bike Bits: 01530 564362; www.britishbikebits.com MODEL HISTORY The TRW is a Triumph oddity, often under the radar, simply because it was never sold directly to the public. At the start of the Second World War, Triumph was getting into production with the 3TW for the military, but that halted when the Coventry factory was bombed. Eventually, the company supplied numerous bikes, of various models, but was also…