Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i The Classic MotorCycle

The Yorkshire Classic Motorcycle Club enjoyed one of its biggest ever turnouts since launching its charity show 18 years ago. Hundreds flocked to see a record number of motorcycles down the decades at the event on July 24, 2024, at the Country Manor pub in Keighley. The event raised £2600 for the club’s chosen charities – the Yorkshire Air Ambulance, Manorlands, supporting people with life limiting conditions, and their families; and The Cellar Trust, the Shipley-based charity supporting people with their mental health and well-being. Club member and European Trials Champion Dan Clark, who runs Xtreme Stunt Team, was a guest at the show, and also the main judge of the Best Bike in Show – David Batty’s 1975 Honda CB750, which also won the Best Foreign Bike Class. Other…

Published in The Motor Cycle on April 9, 1959, this picture accompanied George Wilson’s account of riding Norton’s new 249cc Jubilee twin on a long-distance, short-time ride to France, the purpose being to cover the two moto-ball (sort of football on motorcycles) matches between the west of London-based Border Club, and French side Courbevoie. Launched for the 1959 season, the Jubilee was unquestionably a modern-looking machine, while it was one of the few, true ‘clean sheet of paper’ designs to emerge from the British factories in the 1950s. Designed by Bert Hopwood, the Jubilee was a parallel twin with bore x stroke of 60x44mm, with the engine built in unit with the four-speed gearbox. It had a nodular iron crankshaft, separate iron barrels and alloy cylinder heads. Two gear-driven camshafts…

Of the 650cc twins that made the high watermark of the British motorcycle industry, the Rocket Gold Star – for many – left the highest impression of them all. Only 1584 Rocket Goldies were made in its 18-month production run, but the splash they made was so sizeable, the ripples can still be felt today; few British bike aficionados would walk past an RGS without pausing for an admiring gaze. Whether they’d be looking at a genuine one is another matter, as so potent (and beautiful) was the Super-Rocket-engine-meets-Gold-Star-frame combination, that to this day builders still can’t resist replicating it. The vast majority are conscientious enough to admit to their fabrication, but a small number aren’t quite so forthcoming. As my fellow scribe Andy Westlake pointed out in a previous…

In a first for the event, the number of motorcycle and sidecar combinations exceeded the number of cars on the 1.5km closed street circuit that annually hosts the Grand Prix Rétro in the small viticultural town of le Puy Notre-Dame in Western France. Divided into four classes, the riders of over 120 machines enjoyed a weekend entertaining the crowds that thronged the circuit by day and night. The largest class was the ‘moto lente’ (less than 350cc), which numbered 45 entrants. The ‘moto rapide’ (350cc or more) class was almost as large with 38 machines. Even the smaller ‘moto courroie’ (belt drive) class attracted 16 entries. And the ‘voiture de côté’ (sidecar) class saw, with 23 entrants, probably its largest field ever. The format was broadly unchanged from previous years.…

‘Big things come in little packages’, so the saying goes, and I can think of nothing more appropriate to start a feature on Giuseppe Pletersky, who is better known as ‘Joe the Carb’, because he is the exact opposite. Despite his name coming from his mixed European heritage, he was born and bred here in the UK, and he literally towers over most people, including me, and I’m 6ft 3in… Carburettors though, are, in the great scheme of things, relatively small, and Joe’s workshop makes most people’s single garage or shed seem like a warehouse, not helped by its – to the untrained eye – total disorganisation, with all available space and ceiling filled with boxes of carburettors and parts of the same. Lathes and milling machines, along with boxes…

In July 2024, this red rocket of a motorcycle returned to Japan to grace the infamous Honda, Suzuka Circuit 60 years after the 1964 18 Hour Endurance Race. Ridden by Hideo ‘Pops’ Yoshimura’s son Fujio in the Yoshimura 70th Anniversary demonstration run, this was a really special homecoming, a true celebration of Pops and his instrumental part in the birth and development of road racing in Japan. Before the races Known around the world as a motorcycle tuning brand, Yoshimura was founded by the one and only Hideo Yoshimura. As a child, Hideo – born on October 7, 1922 – grew up on Kyshu island in the Fukuoka prefecture. His childhood was spent dreaming of becoming either an aviator or baseball star, but family funds could not afford the fees…

Published in The Motor Cycle on September 14, 1911, this photograph shows five riders who were taking part in the Essex Motor Club’s 24 hour run, which started at The Eagle Hotel, Snaresbrook, running to York and back, a distance of 403 miles. Quite some going then – and now. Our intrepid quintet is pictured at the Windmill Hotel, York, having reach the halfway stage, preparing to head south, back to Snaresbrook, which is about 10 miles to the east of central London. Competitors – there were 18 who set out – left the start at 7pm on Friday evening, at two-minute intervals. Most elected to light their gas lamps before embarking, though one competitor was forced out early by lamp trouble. There was a compulsory 15-minute stop at Cambridge,…

This picture of a jolly looking crowd was published in The Motor Cycle in 1926, with the caption: “C W Okey and the 249cc Dunelt on which he made his 75-mile climb of Birdlip,” while an article earlier on expanded on the story some more. Under the heading ‘75-mile climb by 250cc Dunelt’ it was explained: “An unofficial ‘stunt’ believed to have been brought about by a bet consisted of the climbing Birdlip hill, near Gloucester, 60 times without the engine being stopped. This feat was recently accomplished by C W Okey on a standard 249cc Dunelt.” It went on: “Birdlip hill is 1¼ miles in length and has a gradient of 1-in-7 ½, rising to 1-in-4¾. The total distance covered was 10 miles and at least 20 of the…

In a quirk of fate, Steve Wilson has supplied, for this issue, his thoughts on riding the new BSA Gold Star, while I, too, have had the opportunity to sample such a machine, one being resident in my garage among the lovely, leaky, oily, character-filled old Brits, and one clean and efficient, modern BMW. We didn’t plan that Steve would say what he thought too, it was just he’d been to the BSA rally and ridden a machine there. But it does mean two of us are talking about riding the same machine. See what Steve reckons, in his feature starting on page 62. My reason for tagging this bit about the new Gold Star onto the Rocket Gold Star feature, is simply that the new machine is of 650cc…

Melbourne-based brothers Ken and Barry Horner are the can-do kids of Australian road racing – whether ancient or modern. Over the past 20 years they’ve amassed an enviable roster of race wins and podiums with the various Irving Vincent V-twin racers they’ve created in their Hallam, Victoria, machine shop SE of Melbourne, racing against much more powerful four-cylinder Japanese Post-Classic Superbikes. Then, in 2008, their enlarged 1600cc air-cooled two-valve pushrod V-twin ridden by Craig McMartin rumbled away from a full grid of liquid-cooled multivalve race replicas, including Ducati superbikes, to win the world’s premier ProTwins race on the Daytona bankings, on what was the team’s first appearance outside its Australian homeland. The Horners’ exquisitely engineered bikes are based on the classic Vincent 50º V-twin motorcycle and are built as a…

A few years ago, I watched on as Dale Walksler downshifted his 61-cubic inch Crocker, wound the throttle open and sliced through the line of Harleys rumbling up Main Street, Daytona. Most of the crew on the sidewalk clapped and cheered, but one man turned to me and said flatly: “That bike should be in a museum, not on the road.” With less than 100 Crocker V-twins built in the six-year production run, and only 49 known survivors, he might have had a point. But motorcycles are for riding, not gawking at. Anyway, Dale could park his bike in a museum any time he wanted. And the Florida Harley-fest was the perfect place to show off the Crocker. When Harley-Davidson started churning out the 61 cu-in Knucklehead in January 1936,…

In common with most forms of motorcycle sport, grasstrack racing was big back in the 1960s and 70s. It attracted large crowds and got significant coverage in the weekly Motor Cycle News and Motor Cycle. There were regular club events all around the UK, along with British championship meetings, and the sport was strong enough to sustain international events like those promoted by the Auto 66 club in East Yorkshire. That’s where a clubman like myself could race against the likes of world speedway champions Ivan Mauger and Peter Collins. Not, I hasten to add, that I ever saw anything but their rear wheels disappearing into the distance after the start tapes let go. It was an exciting time; fast and furious four-lap heats and finals, with methanol-fuelled high compression…

Classic lifeTriumph | Unit twin rebuild Body text: With fabulously machined seal holders now made and in the workshop, the fiddly work begins. This involves sorting out the bits which make the Triumph stanchions fit in the BSA sliders and still give some reasonable amount of fork travel. There was a slight hiccup as one of the seal holders wouldn’t screw down but as both holders went easily on one slider and neither would go on the other one, clearly there was a thread problem… which was cured by a few strokes with a thread file. Mixing and matching components was the way many enthusiasts built something different or modified what they had, in an attempt to improve things. Obviously, the better at engineering the modifier was, then the better…

Event report | Ardingly show The theme for this summer’s Elk Promotions show at Ardingly was ‘Women in Motorcycling’, fitting for an event headed up by Julie Diplock, who has for many years been responsible for numerous shows and jumbles. On this occasion Julie was joined by Blue Miller, editor of Old Bike Mart, sister magazine to The Classic MotorCycle, while another special guest was Joan Hall, whose husband Ernie was engaged in countless motorcycle magazine projects in the 1960s and 1970s. Joined and supported by Joan, Ernie’s tasks even included making the original trophy for the British Superbike Championship. The show’s theme this year proved to be a good one, as it attracted a number of female entries with a variety of bikes, weighted towards the bigger British twins.…

If you’re going to organise the first BSA rally in Ireland for many years, then you need a decent venue. The campsite a few miles outside Adare, Co Limerick, fitted the bill, and owners Hugh and Mary Dougherty are both motorcyclists themselves. The large camp field at the end of a track is shielded inside and out by high hedges, and quiet enough to hear the constant birdsong. There’s occasionally further wildlife in the form of a fox, so wise campers secure their food; the fox is particularly partial to sausages. There’s ash trimmings for the firepit, as well as a large shower/toilet block and a laundry room. Further details from adarecc@gmail.com. A bonus was that despite 2024’s apparently permanent monsoon spring, the May weekend of the rally saw fine…

THE SPECIALIST Hitchcocks Motor Cycles is almost synonymous with Royal Enfield. The company can certainly help with parts for the wartime WD CO model. The Enfield policy of commonality of parts also helps with brand-new spares. Hitchcocks also keeps some second-hand stock for some currently unavailable lines. Thanks to company principal Allan Hitchcock for helping with this guide. ■ Hitchcocks Motorcycles: 01564 783192; www.hitchcocksmotorcycles.com MODEL HISTORY Like so many manufacturers, Royal Enfield was supplying bikes for the war effort from the start of hostilities. These were mainly model C machines, a 350cc side-valve that had been part of the manufacturer’s comprehensive prewar road-going range. Responding to reports of problems arising from a lack of performance, Royal Enfield changed focus to its CO option, a model that had also been sold…

In the first parts of this series, we’ll look at a range of common electro plated finishes employed by motorcycle and components makers, starting with silver plate. We’ll then progress through nickel, chromium, brass and copper. For millennia, craftsmen have understood some metals corrode while others don’t. Initially, anti-corrosion methods involved coatings of animal fat, then paint-type finishes gained favour, before electro plating began to gain popularity in the 1830s. Researchers claim the first electro plating processes were carried out in Iran, sometime during the Parthian era (247BC-224AD), with many stating the first ‘modern’ electro plating was carried out by the Italian inventor Luigi Brugnatelli in 1805. This involved submerging silver medals in a dissolved gold solution on wires connected to the negative side, and applying an electric current through…