Innehållsförteckning för April 2018 från Classic Bike Guide

CHIMAY IN BELGIUM is well known for its Trappist beer, cheese and castle. This July it will once again be the home to classic motorcycle racing. Located a few kilometres from the French border, the circuit of Chimay has been established since 1926 as one of continental Europe’s most prestigious routes. The road circuit is, like the Isle of Man TT course, held on public roads and in the 1970s the original track was one of the fastest and most dangerous in the world. A revised circuit is now used. The Trophée de Motos Classic 25th anniversary event is to take place from July 20-22 and is expected to attract most of the UK’s foremost classic racers. As well as classic solo and sidecar racing there’s a swap meet, bike…

MY BSA A65 needs new rings. And pistons. Chris at CDS Motorcycles is a nice man, I trust him to do a great job for me. But, can I also trust the spare parts? Go onto any internet forum and there will be endless posts bewailing the death of the British motorcycle industry, before going on to complain about the terrible quality of replacement parts (usually available off the shelf, but that’s what we expect in this digital age) required to keep our half-century old clunkers on the road. And its not just engine spares. What about modern fuel? It’s awful! We complain that its difficult to get our old nails to run properly using the foul brew, why, it would barely even light a bonfire if more than a…

CRIS JAMES HAS been keeping BMWs on the road at Yorkshire’s Motorworks since 1989, selling used and new parts for the whole BMW range. He says the R65 and its smaller brother sits outside the traditional BMW range. “The thing with BMWs is that the models change by year, not by capacity. Changes to the bikes occurred when they changed the model numbers. They built their bikes in a modular way. In the early Seventies the R50, R60, R75 and so on were all essentially the same bike with a different top end, carbs and gearing at the bevel box. Things only really changed when you got to bikes like the R90s. “When the R45 and 65 came along the bikes were essentially outside that category and made from 1978-84.…

SHOULD YOU BUY A T140? There are plenty of options for the big twin buyer, but each comes with its own challenges. Most of the AMC twins, apart from the Norton Commando, were out of production by 1968. Royal Enfield Constellations and Interceptors are mostly for those with deep pockets. A BSA unit twin is an option, but good ones are getting pricey and harder to find. As for pre-oil-in-frame Bonnevilles, they’re either eyewateringly expensive to start with or going to be similarly so to restore. There are lots of 750 Triumph twins about. Spares availability for a T140 is about as good as it gets – better than anything of the period from the Japanese. You can probably get anything you want for a basic T140 off the shelf…

I bought my first Moto Guzzi V50 in 1989, from a bloke who kept it in a lock-up off a dark, dank alleyway in the backstreets of Croydon. I wanted a Triumph, but I’d been thinking of a Guzzi after having seen police T3 Californias on duty on the tough streets of South Philadelphia the year before. Then, when my brother went and bought a T3 Cali too, I was simply smitten and envious, but I didn’t have the money to afford a round barrel ‘big block’. I really couldn’t see much of the black V50 when it was rolled out of the Croydon lock-up, but as soon as it was started up and I heard the motor’s deep V-twin rumble through Busso silencers, I just wanted it. £400 later…

There has been a new breeze blowing around motorcycling for a few years now and it seems to always include the word ‘adventure’. Adherents to the classic scene may have thought that this was, like all fads, something that would pass and bore little relevance to the pages of this magazine. Well, it’s been that way till now… Readers may well be aware of a bike trip that happened 20 years ago, named ‘Mondo Enduro’. This was the first group of riders from anywhere in Western Europe to ever reach the legendary eastern Soviet prison town of Magadan, along the fabled ‘Road of Bones’. It was even on Discovery Channel and viewers would have been right to be perplexed by the ragtag bunch on the screen before them, riding small-capacity…

Someone once told me that no one is interested in James motorbikes. Maybe they have a point, for they were not great bikes when new, and certainly wouldn’t come under the ‘classic’ banner. Yet one or two of us have fond memories of having our first motorcycle lessons on these flimsy, unreliable creatures and those youthful memories are worth treasuring, surely? Secondly, they do have a niche in the story and development of British motorcycling manufacture – in what I like to call The Good – The Bad and The Ugly – you make your own mind up. This ‘lightweight’ as it was popularly advertised – was therefore important to Terence Robinson, the rebuilder of this bike; for he not only learned his basic riding techniques from this machine of…

APRIL 2018 1 LE Velo Lancs & S Lakes, Slaidburn. Meet main car park. Tel: 01772 782516. 1 Scooter Show. White Lion, Baldock. Tel: 07963 609143. 1 Ace Cafe London, Bike Day. Ace Corner, N Circular Rd, Stonebridge, London NW10 7UD. london.acecafe.com 1 Reading MAG Easter Bike Show. Reading Abbey Rugby Club, Peppard Road, Emmer Green, Reading, Berkshire, RG4 8XB. readingmag.org.uk 2 APRIL ISSUE OF REAL CLASSIC 2 Ashford Classic Motorcycle Show & Bikejumble. Ashford Market, Orbital Park, Ashford, Kent, TN24 0HB.www.elk-promotions.co.uk 6 MAY ISSUE OF THE CLASSIC MOTORCYCLE 7 APRIL ISSUE OLD BIKE MART 7-8 The Carole Nash MCN Scottish Motorcycle Show. Rescheduled at the Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh, after ‘The Beast From The East’ caused it to be cancelled, Tom Siddall, event director, said: “The safety of visitors…

IT WAS NEVER high on my list, visiting China, but a friend was opening her art gallery in Shanghai, and offered to organise a week’s visit to her home city. That included meeting with her artists in Hangzhou, spending a few nights in the Aman hotel where her gallery was featured, and taking a sidecar tour of old Shanghai. It was the sidecar bit that intrigued me most, although if anyone savvy offers to organise a week’s holiday for you in their hometown, it’s silly to say no. Our friend Han Feng is a fashion designer, costume designer for operas and movies, and, tiring of the fashion biz after three decades, moving into the global art market, so she knows very interesting people, and has impeccable taste. Suzie and I…

“IT’S COLLABORATION,” SAYS Clinton Wright, Sales executive at Lind Motorrad in Norwich, Norfolk. “We saw in our Harley-Davidson dealership how the customers like to get involved in the dealership project bikes, so we wondered if it would work with a BMW.” The idea is simple. Buy an old BMW bike, then restore it in the way the majority of customers want it to be. There’s been a large amount of older BMs turned into scramblers and café racers, modified to within an inch of their lives. “But equally,” adds Clinton, “they may want to see it restored to as-new condition because so many have been chopped about.” It took some time to find a bike that was within budget, but complete and still interesting. The only criterion being it would…

UNTIL RECENTLY, CLASSIC motorcycle auction houses were playing catch up with the internet when it came to selling or picking up your classic. Websites like eBay seemed to be scooping up the private sellers and the private buyers, but this has its own pitfalls, including the sniping systems that can deny you your purchase at the last moment, because of their strict time limits. You cannot know what the bid is you must beat; websites are packed with bikes that seem to rapidly skyrocket in price or have a decidedly dubious provenance, that’s if they exist at all and aren’t the product of a scam artist. The traditional auction houses use commission or proxy bids for absent buyers – where the bidder sets their personal limit with the auctioneer and…

“Best thing – extremely light, neutral handling that shocked the hell out of my mates on many occasions. Worst thing – electrics from the charging system, suicidal tail-light bulbs and that b*****d starter solenoid!” – Chris. “My dad bought one brand-new in 1980. Great little bike, except when the rear differential exploded when the bike was new. Pulled it apart, the locking tabs on the bolts had not been flipped up. Must have been built on Monday. Other than that, fantastic bike.” – Mark. “Lovely little bikes. Solid, reliable and handle like they’re on rails. Mine did 100,000 miles before I swapped the power train for a 750. They’re not the best bikes for motorways but they’ll tramp along at 70 if you want. I love mine – I’ve had…

Stripping an engine is one thing, evaluating what you find is completely different. If your engine and gearbox is down to the last component, then it’s worth measuring, inspecting and deciding whether a part will be good enough to put back, be refurbished or replaced. Matt, Charles and James at BDK engineering showed us how to determine the condition and what tell-tales you need to look for. Our Honda CL350 engine has come from a bike whose clocks show less than 6000 miles, but the cycle parts look decidedly tired and the engine itself was seized, despite copious diesel poured down the plug holes (diesel is great for freeing stuck piston rings). There was nothing for it but to strip it down and see why it was seized. Although this…

ACCORDING TO WRITER Phillipe Guyony, the first Norvin was conceived by a very famous name. It was built by John Surtees, who worked at Vincent and whose father, Jack, had a Vincent dealership. Writing in his book Vincent Motorcycles – The Untold Story Since 1946 – Guyony tells how in 1953 a young John Surtees was racing against Geoff Duke on a Featherbed-framed Manx Norton, and quickly realised what a world-beating package it was. The Featherbed-frame Manx had been launched in 1950 and the short-stroke Norton Engine in 1953. The machine was sweeping all before it, with privateer Manx Nortons crowding the grid at most meetings and the Matchless G50 making up most of the rest of the field. The following year the Surtees father and son team bought a…

BRINGSTY GRAND PRIX is to return, reviving a series of scramblecum-enduros run just outside Bromyard. The events were last held in 1946-47 when the local Herefordshire economy and people in general were trying to recover from the battering of the Second World War. Run over a lengthy and challenging one-and-a-half mile course on Bringsty Common, which includes bogs, water splashes and the steepest of hills, the event is exclusively for vintage and classic bikes and is allied to the biannual Bromyard Festival of Speed. Owing to rationed petrol and the fact that new machines and tyres were unavailable back then, the entrants were all mounted on older machines, namely whatever competitors could lay their hands on, and there was a special prize in the 15-lap final for ‘the best performance…

PRESCOTT BIKE FEST 2018 will kick off the classic biking season in just a few short weeks. The popular, family-friendly event will return to the Gloucestershire hills on April 14/15. Saturday will be all about wandering the paddock, enjoying the spirits and sounds at the Gin and Jazz event or Brews and Blues in the orchard marquee. Racing will take place on Sunday, with a host of machines from the sublime to the ridiculous taking to the hill climb track. There will be extensive displays of historic, modern and racing motorcycles throughout the weekend with a Paddock Specials Show ’n’ Tell featuring the best in historic, customised, road, race, factory builds, prototypes, shed builds, wacky, jet powered and record-beating machines – literally everything from a 1903 Royal Sovereign, Salon Privé…

THE BMW R65 boxer twin and its smaller sibling the R45 were launched in 1978 to sit alongside the company’s reliable, high quality big twins, beloved of touring motorcyclists and police forces. BMW had decided that if it was going to get more people buying its motorcycles, it needed to start them on the breed earlier, or get them back on to two wheels after a break. Unlike the UK, where entry level in 1978 was a 250cc machine of indeterminate power, Germany had a sub 27bhp class. The R45 was designed as an entry level BMW for this market. It was built to look as much as possible like a compact modern version of their big boxer twins. Despite costing the equivalent of £1600 in Germany when Honda were…

WE LOVE THIS picture, even though nothing is known about it. Can you help? It’s a wonderful scene from a Manx Grand Prix, with a rather fettled Grey Flash in the foreground (look at the crudely reshaped tank and perhaps different rear wheel?), an early Matchless G45 behind it, a Manx Norton, two BSA Gold Stars and a nice AJS 7R with mammoth carb. The camaraderie of the Manx has always been there, but the smiling faces and hotchpotch of machinery give this photo a lovely feel of days gone by. We’ll delve into the archive to find some more info if we can, but should you know anymore about this image, please let us know at editor@classicbikeguide.com Mortonsarchive.com…

During any restoration there comes a time when parts need refinishing. Most restorers try to do as much spannering as possible, some have the facilities and skills to paint but most of us elect to contract out plating, after all it’s as cheap as chips. But if you don’t have a zinc plater locally or have had parts lost in the past, you might want to consider doing the job yourself. This month we look at a typical kit from Caswell Europe, a name familiar to some readers. So, without further ado, it’s gloves and goggles on, sleeves up and get stuck in! Basic kit and sub units The plating kit comes as a primary unit for zinc or ‘copy cad’ and includes the necessary tank, heater, two-part plating salts,…