Innehållsförteckning för June 2017 från Classic Bike Guide

LAVERDA, LIKE MANY OTHER Italian motorcycle companies, has seen its fortunes wax and wane several times over the years. The Breganze factory, famous for its thunderous triples, finally abandoned motorcycle manufacture in the early 1980s, leaving thousands of Laverdisiti bereft. Around 1992, after a break of over a decade, new investment from the Zanini group (and subsequently industrialist and two-wheeled enthusiast Francesco Tognon) was found and Laverda rose from the ashes with a completely new model, the mid-size 650 Sport, built in the town of Zane. At the time this market segment was popular and 600cc sporting class machines were among the bestsellers worldwide. It made sense for the new company to avoid a re-hash of the horribly outdated, litre-plus triple so associated with the Laverda name. Instead, it launched…

THE VELOCETTE VIPER and Venom sports singles were introduced in 1955. Charles Udall designed both bikes to share the ohv singles’ exceptionally sturdy bottom end. The 499cc Venom used a 86mm bore and stroke, while a smaller 72mm bore gave the Viper 349cc. Renowned for being largely vibration-free, the Viper was seriously speedy for a 1950s 350 pushrod single. It offered smooth, swift acceleration which was aided by a close ratio gearbox, and a top speed of over 90mph was easily reached. Velocettes were run and tested by managers and staff so any issues were quickly identified and sorted out, which obviously benefitted the buying public. In 1961 a Velocette Venom set the record for the first motorcycle to average over 100mph for 24 hours. A team of riders including…

Before establishing a modern day entente cordiale by teaming up with Brough Superior company owner Mark Upham to design and construct the born-again SS100, a quarter of a century ago Thierry Henriette created the only one of his numerous Boxer Bikes two-wheeled works of art to be powered by a British engine. When he did so in 1993, it was as a conscious act of promotion for his new Road Masters dealership specialising in Eurobikes, located in a plush, modern building on the outskirts of Toulouse. Besides selling Bimota, MZ, Aprilia, Cagiva and Husqvarna models this was also not only France’s largest Ducati dealer, but one of the top outlets in the country for the newly-revived Triumph marque, which John Bloor had brought back to the marketplace only three years…

you ll quite possibly have similar feelings about tank liners and the people who use them. Little is more soul destroying than rolling your bike out for a ride to see a blistered patch of paint and that tell-tale weeping brown stain that flags up a leak. DR JOHNSON IS said to have opined that ‘patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel!’ If you’ve ever had to endure a poorly repaired motorcycle fuel tank you’ll hav i il For a raft of reasons, tank liners seem to have an inherently bad name which, on the whole, is not really justified. Properly installed they can be a godsend; if a seam is leaking and a welded repair isn’t viable then your potentially irreplaceable tank has just got another life. On…

Saddleup! MOTO GUZZI SPARES specialists Gutsi Bits have managed to source a limited supply of replacement seats for 1970s V-twins. The replica T3 seats replace the originals which have been unavailable for many years. Gutsi Bits say the seats are of good quality, include the standard latch mechanism and are made in Italy. Gutsi Bits also offer replica Le Mans Mk.2 seats with the original foam design and T3 California seats, as well as V7 700 single seats and 750 Special and V7 700 dual seats for bikes made in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The shop sources parts for the older Guzzis from around the world as well as supplying day to day essentials to keep more modern Guzzis on the road. See gutsibits.co.uk CCMSCRAMBLES SPITFIRES CCM HAVE…

EVENT PREVIEW HILL CLIMB THIS HILL CLIMB ‘demonstration’ is one of the best kept secrets in the classic motorcycling world. Rétro Moto St-Cergue also offers a huge display of classic race bikes and an enormous celebratory meal rolled into one enormous festival. And, incredibly, spectating is free. St-Cergue is a tiny village which sits up in the Vaud mountains, 22 miles from Geneva. It’s worth going to St-Cergue just for the view overlooking Lac Leman and on to the Haute-Savoie. However, although the village is picture postcard pretty, the key attraction for motorcyclists is that St-Cergue is at the end of the Route de Nyon which snakes up from the valley below. At one time, St-Cergue was the finish of a full-on racing hill climb which dates back to 1901…

DEVELOPED DURING THE late 1930s, BSA’s first parallel twin was launched in 1946. Triumph’s 500 Speed Twin may have been faster but the A7 quickly gained a reputation for being quieter, dependable and significantly more oiltight. Proving popular, the A7 was given one significant revamp and then continuously tweaked and improved throughout a 16-year production run. The early A7 twins featured a cast iron cylinder head and block with a bore and stroke of 62mm by 82mm to give 495cc, reaching 27bhp at 5800rpm. At a time when most manufacturers were using twin camshafts, BSA cut costs with a gear-driven single camshaft operating overhead valves via four pushrods. Two separate aluminium alloy rocker boxes were fitted with Edward Turner-influenced screw caps. A neat ‘semi-unit’ gearbox was bolted to the rear…

HUNTING FOR A CLASSIC motorcycle is as much part of the ownership experience as actually running one. But while shed collections grow, fewer are offered for sale, and many which do come onto the UK market are either restored to within an inch of their lives or have every component worn out As the finite number of available runners goes down, and every barn in the UK is scoured for a decent example to restore and ride, many people try the import route. Picking up a bike from less inclement foreign climes can be an attractive option. Bikes may be stashed away in storage when the owner moves on to other things, rather than sold. This is especially common in the USA. When the latest shiny thing is acquired then…

REPUTATIONS ARE part and parcel of classic motorcycle ownership. Reputation says that 1960s Bonnevilles are brilliant and oil in frame 1970 Bonnevilles are unreliable and leaky. Kawasaki triples don’t handle. A Ducati is hard to live with. Norton’s 750 Atlas has a reputation for not being as good as its 650 Dominator sisters. Popular lore says the Atlas is vibratory, over-stressed, bulky and unreliable. It was a stopgap, says the legend, a bike that sat uncomfortably between the Dominator and the Commando. It was built for Americans who wanted a big engine on a big bike – a mile eater. The Atlas was the last-but-one Norton to feature the featherbed frame and had the penultimate incarnation of Bert Hopwood’s original 1940s 497cc Dominator engine which had been stretched out to…

One good reason for the death of the British motorcycle industry might well be the BSA / Triumph triples – a tragedy which would have made Shakespeare proud. Currently, the three-cylinder machines have a fanatical following and their acolytes will hear no wrong of them. However this is what Bert Hopwood, BSA Group engineering director, thought of the model in 1981: “The triple machine which found its way to market in 1968 was a flop and it was not until we reverted to the original prototype style that it started to sell and earn revenue. It (the BSA/Triumph triple) should have been in production in 1963, thus five years of production were lost, the Japanese became ever more firmly entrenched and our reputation suffered yet another severe setback.” So what…

TAKE A LOOK at this well loved and maintained Jota, and remember that it’s been owned by the same rider for over 40 years… Laverda distributors have always been a bit thin on the ground, but my research tells me that it was our own British branch – Slater Brothers of Bromyard – who not only encouraged the production of this Italian stallion, but also gave it its name, so ten out of ten for British ideas. Laverda as a company produced agricultural vehicles, but there is absolutely nothing agricultural about the Jota. I picked up the well-thumbed and oiled Jota workshop manual with its lime green covers, looking for facts, facts, facts, as Dickens wrote in Hard Times, and found some very interesting sentences. I quote from under the…