Innehållsförteckning för January 2017 från Classic Bike Guide

A VAST ARRAY of custom crafted motorcycles were displayed at Kickback London last autumn. Whatever your preference to style, there was something there to catch the eye and boggle the mind. The loft at Olympia Central showcased 60 hand-crafted masterpieces alongside 80 rare classics, customs and dealer specials, while live music and an art gallery helped to keep the 2500 visitors entertained. One of the nicest aspects of the show was the sheer variety of marques and models used as the starting point for the builds. From a neon-sprayed step-thru to a street-fighting LED-emblazoned Z1000, the machines were exercises in imagination, individuality and inventiveness on the part of motorcycle enthusiasts, engineers, designers, fabricators, artists and artisans. Many of the motorcycles were clearly the vision of one dedicated builder – some…

THE MORINI 350 fits the bill in so many circumstances. For modern bike riders seeking an entry-level classic, the 3½ is comprehensible and characterful. For older riders who want something smaller and more manoeuvrable than a big old Brit twin, the 3½ is perfectly proportioned. For Britbike riders, the brake and gear levers are the ‘English way round’ on older models. For Japanese riders, later versions feature left-foot gear selection. For everyone, the 3½ promises plenty of peppy performance at a reasonable price. John Fallon at Made In Italy Motorcycles showed us around this 1976 Strada. In general, John says the 350s are “easy to manage and not too heavy, a reasonable physical size. Mechanically they’re good with a brilliant chassis; you have to ride them hard but they’re impressive…

Sitting in the pits, watching the classic racers fly by, there’s plenty of opportunity to talk about what might have been and what possibly could be. Patrick Walker, who builds modern Manx Norton replicas, and I were musing about Mike Hailwood’s early career. What if the world today was more or less as it was in 1960, but engine tech had advanced in certain areas? What sort of Norton would Stan Hailwood have commissioned for his talented son to ride? If you were building Mike’s bike today, then what would it be like? Stan Hailwood was managing director of Kings of Oxford, the biggest and most professional chain of motorcycle and car retailers in Britain, with more than 50 branches. He was both a millionaire and a very well connected…

THE AUTUMN SHOW season features not one but two events which showcase iconic bikes at the NEC, Birmingham, and few people have the stamina or spending power to attend both. If you survive the shock of the parking charge and then the admission fees, the cost of a coffee might give your wallet apoplexy. So we’ve saved you the hassle – here are the highlights from each event... The Classic Motor Show fills more than one million square feet of five show halls with some 2500 classic cars and bikes. The emphasis is very much towards four-wheelers, but what may have been missing in quantity was more than balanced by two-wheel quality. Some very desirable motorcycles were displayed by the National Motorcycle Museum, VMCC and VJMC, while marque clubs were…

SEVEN YEARS AFTER the first Triumph T150 triple was launched, its upgraded successor, the T160, came onto the scene. The British bike industry was on life support but somehow Norton-Villiers-Triumph had made more than 200 improvements to the original triples in an effort to keep up with the Oriental opposition. The T160 boasted a three cylinder ohv engine slanted forward in a sexy, aggressive style; an electric start (which actually worked); a four-into-two exhaust system so it looked vaguely like a four-cylinder powerplant; that slanting engine like the BSA Rocket 3 which looked so much sportier than the upright Triumph T150; a five-speed gearbox, a left-side gearchange and disc brakes front and rear. The T160 featured classy and classical styling in the true Triumph tradition. It produced a fabulous exhaust…

THE I-SPY BOOK of motorcycles says: “Motorcycling is fun. It is about freedom and the open air; it is about cutting through traffic jams and exhilarating bend-swinging on the open road.” It gives 15 points for spotting a CB400F, which certainly ticks all the boxes, citing it as “a little gem… with good looks allied to turbine smooth performance, sparkling acceleration and a top speed of over 100mph it became an instant classic”. Honda released its first mass-produced four, the CB750, in October 1968 to a rapturous reception. Demand was high for an alternative to twins and the CB750F’s success led to the CB500F in 1972 then the CB350F, withdrawn after two years and never marketed in Britain. The CB400F was born out of the ashes of the CB350F, its…

Visitors to last October’s Barber Vintage Festival might have been pardoned for thinking they were seeing double when viewing the bikes on display for the annual Motorcycle Classics Concours. For there, gleaming in the Alabama sunshine, were not just one but two examples of the bike that’s widely recognised as being the most iconic, the most valuable, and simply the most desirable Ducati production streetbike yet made, ever since the Italian manufacturer began selling V-twin motorcycles back in 1971. Just 401 examples of the green-framed 750SS were built in the Bologna factory’s race shop in 1973-74 – Ducati’s first customer desmo V-twin, and a close replica with lights and a horn of the factory racer Paul Smart had taken to victory in the 1972 Imola 200, even down to the…

I HATE TO use the word ‘iconic’ as it has definitely been done to death; so I’ll instead use the word ‘symbolic’ because the Kawasaki 900cc Z1 surely is one of the most important symbols of the great Japanese superbikes of the 1970s. Edward Turner, Triumph’s managing director, had the wisdom to tour the Japanese motorcycle workshops in 1960, and he saw first-hand from the advanced production facilities that the writing was on the wall for the future dominance of their machines. His (and BSA’s) top designers were conscious of the fact that their parallel twins were at the end of their development. The Japanese had also realised this, and had seen the potential of the inline four, and as a result, two of the big four were seriously and…

IT’S THE SHOW that celebrates all makes, models and eras of the classic scene, and there will once again be an eclectic mix of machines on display in two main halls at Newark Showground for the annual Winter Classic. A quick look at the clubs set to attend the January 7-8 event gives an idea of the variety visitors can expect, with famed British marques represented alongside Japanese enthusiast groups and off-road and racing organisations – to highlight just a few. Picking something special out of the line-up is no easy task, but depending on your view there may be a few standouts such as Andy Bolas’s Yamaha YSR50, possibly the smallest race rep event built (VJMC), Roger Moss’s indecently fast 1934 Scott Flying Squirrel (British Historic Racing) and Bill…

BETWEEN 1970 AND 1985, Yamaha built and sold some 40 different variations on its parallel twin 650 theme. The firm’s first four-stroke proved to be both adaptable and engaging, easy to live with in its roadster or custom configurations, and a great basis for any sort of special. The straightforward sohc 654cc engine side-stepped an entire generation of camchain calamities, and tuning shops soon demonstrated that its beefy, roller bearing big end was more than robust enough to cope with big bore kits and gas-flowed heads. For a while, XS650s stole the show in sidecar motocross competition. Then they found favour as highway star West Coast customs, were transformed into drag-bikes, trikes and choppers... and now the wheel has turned yet again. A new generation of bike builders has discovered…

IN 1919 DR FELIX WANKEL dreamed up the concept of a rotary engine and registered his first engine patent 10 years later. He achieved his dream in 1957 working with NSU; a prototype was created and he finally licensed his unique Wankel rotary engine. Fichtel & Sachs took out a licence on the engine in 1960, initially building rotary engines to use in lawnmowers, chainsaws and boats. After announcing a Wankel-engined prototype motorcycle in 1970, Hercules launched the single rotor model W2000 in 1974 using an F&S engine. About 1800 were produced between 1974 and 1977, the Hercules being badged in Britain as a DKW. Suzuki licenced the Wankel engine in 1970 and after three years of development launched its own rotary-engined machine – the water-cooled RE5 – in 1973,…

A minor puzzle in the classic motorcycling world – at least for yrstrly – has been the popularity of Triumph’s twin engines when compared with the BSA equivalents. Although it is true that they do what they do in slightly different ways, what they actually deliver is very similar. At least, that is the case with the 650s; it’s less so with the 500s, although it’s not easy to pin down the mechanical reasons behind that. BSA, on the other hand, faced no competition from its Triumph stablemates when it came to single-cylinder machines, and although there is an argument which claims that all the unit-construction BSA singles from 1958’s C15 Star all the way through until 1972’s B50 were derived from a Triumph design – the Terrier – it…

AS A SORT of reward for completing his second Norton Unified Twin, now christened ‘Dominator 650’, Anthony Curzon asked whether I would like to give his Commando Roadster the ‘once-over’ and suggest a few improvements. To be truthful, what he actually said was would I like to give his Triumph T100SS the once-over, but since I T-boned a Morris Minor van in the centre of the driver’s door while riding one in 1967 (GWD 607D where are you now?), I’ve always tried to avoid any further contact with them. Thus I became the recipient, courtesy of Motorcycle Delivery (UK), of an alleged 3,468 recorded miles Canary Yellow Roadster carrying a 1970 registration. Like me, you may at first think that it’s actually an S-Type (note the chromed ring around the…