Innehållsförteckning för January 2023 från Classic Bike Guide

Welcome FIRSTLY, FROM OLI, MARIA, NEVILLE, Butch, John, Hutch and Chelley, Steve and myself, thank you for reading the magazine. We hope you’re having good festive time and – burp! Back in November, I went to the bike show, or Motorcycle Live! as they call it now. I believe it may be my 23rd in a row and enjoy it every time, meeting up, watching people’s reactions to new machines, and seeing new ‘stuff’. There are some exciting bikes coming out, as well as smaller businesses going strong. AJS, CCM, Mac, Herald, Ural, Fantic and even Dot were there, showing new wares alongside the big boys. Norton was in attendance, too, which was good to see. I think my favourite was the Dot Reed Racer, though the Triumph racer on…

Classic news The Classic Bike Guide Winter Classic takes place at Newark Showground on January 7/8. It’s when we get to brush off those remaining mince pie crumbs and get back to the not-so-serious but enormously satisfying business of seeing who has turned their lumps of superannuated scrap into real running metal and get lost in the warmth, exploring the hundreds of stunning classic machines on display. With a good mix of traders, dealers and autojumble plots, the Winter Classic is the perfect place to grab a box or bagful of parts and spares, as well as finding that inspiration needed to finish your restoration. It won’t be long before we are all set for a summer of riding. Hundreds of traders pitch up at the show with a vast…

AN EX-COLLEAGUE FROM WHEN WORKING IN the modern bike press once asked if the old bike world ever became boring. “After all, there’s nothing new; no exciting new models, no use of a new technology to research and report about.” I laughed aloud while vehemently shaking my head. But then I had to ask myself: “They have a point. Why is this world of oily, out-of-date, and often unreliable old hacks as much fun as we find them?” You, the readers, rightly make it quite clear that old bike magazines should be about old bikes – the metal. Selfishly, to bring this to you I experience that thrill of the model and its history, the riding impression, the restoration, added to by meeting the people behind the bikes, their reasons…

CHRIS SPAETT IS MY FRIEND WHO RUNS A business buying and selling old motorcycles. I borrow lots of these motorcycles so I can learn what they’re like and can then share that hopefully entertaining and possibly amusing understanding with you. We also get on like a house on fire, mainly due to a shared and sometimes obscure sense of humour. One thing we do not share, strangely, is our taste in motorcycles. Like most enthusiastic traders, it is hard to justify being in the old bike business if you’re not a bit batty about old bikes. Chris has a collection of motorcycles which are not for sale – he calls this his private collection, and like most private collections, including my own, it varies a little from time to time.…

Workshop YOU MIGHT HAVE WONDERED HOW Project Morini was coming along, and rest assured, so have I… In between life, there have been many months of acquiring parts and so forth and I’m pretty sure I have almost everything in need to start putting it back together. One of the jobs I needed to do was remove the rough-feeling bearings from the rear sprocket carrier and cush drive, check them, and, as bearings are not expensive, replace them. The easiest way to get a roller bearing out is with a puller, but you never seem to have the correct size or type, and these are pricy. You won’t use one that often and, in any case, on the Morini carrier there are no internal faces you can get to, so…

EVERY YEAR OR SO, I TREAT MYSELF TO another motorcycle. This is not boasting; this is a symptom of a severe condition for which the NHS has no treatment. And it is not a new phenomenon, either. Decades ago, I wrote a piece in Another Place suggesting that the number of motorcycles a chap should have is limited only by the space available in which to store them. I was living in a small cottage in North Shropshire that boasted a decent double garage – made entirely of wood. This was The (original) Shed, and was so good that all subsequent Sheds have been built from stout timber. That Shed had room for maybe a half-dozen old motorcycles, as well as a modern touring motorcycle (a Norton rotary) and a…

Here is a warming image of the works Scott team at the Isle of Man TT in 1925. It seems a far cry from today’s professional and serious garage setups, yet the work, the conversations, and the ultimate goal remain the same 97 years on. The 1925 Senior TT will be remembered by many for the only win ever by a rider on a motorcycle bearing their own name. Harold R Davies, riding his HRD, beat Frank Longman on his AJS, and Alec Bennett riding a Norton. Just four and a half minutes separated first from third. In fifth came Harry Langman on his Scott with an average speed of more than 61mph over the race, 14 minutes after HR Davies and less than a second after Tom Frederick in…

I NEEDED TO FIND A MOTORCYCLE FOR MY eldest son, who had moved from a bustling metropolis with actual public transport and rents that swallowed every penny to somewhere that the bus arrives very occasionally. With just a CBT, he needed a125cc. Second-hand 125s hold their value and sell extremely quickly. There’s a fair chance they’ll have been thrashed to death and denied any basic maintenance, too. While I was at Midlife Classics in Droitwich looking at, erm, classics, boss Tim was prepping a new bike for a customer, a Herald Brat 125. Herald is based in Cambridgeshire and is owned by an engineering company. The Brat was mid-priced at £3300, looked a cut above lower-priced Chinese-made rivals, and equal to Japanese-branded 125s as well. I was impressed. Herald even…

JO SHAW’S ARIEL ARROW SUPER SPORT WAS bought by her dad, John, in 1975. Previously owned by John, he started to rebuild it in 1976. He had a strong affection for Ariel, having started his working life in the early 1960s at a Liverpool BSA and Ariel dealership, Cundles, as an apprentice. When he bought the bike, it was partly dismantled, and he restored it to the highest standard. John had a lot of motorcycles, but the Arrow was particularly special. Jo said: “I remember it always being around, and he was always tottering around with it. We weren’t allowed to touch it, though. We could sit on his other bikes, but never the Arrow. Even today, it feels strange watching other people sit on it.” Tragedy struck in 1990…

Workshop TAKE IT FOR A RIDE You may wish to tinker over the winter season, so before they get the spreaders out, go for a ride with the intention of noting any jobs that need doing. Is the tank loose? Does that throttle cable need adjusting? Make a list you can run through so work doesn’t eat into your riding time next year. DEGREASE Old bikes have oil on them, so get some break cleaner or degreaser and some old rags and brushes to get as much off as possible before you wash it. Especially around the chain, leaks from the engine or grease from plungers won’t come off when you wash with soapy water. A DAMN GOOD CLEAN Give your bike the best clean you can. Take your time,…

your guide to MOST HARLEY-DAVIDSON OWNERS LIKE TO put their own stamp on their machines. On older Harley’s original exhausts will have been ripped off and thrown away an age ago to emphasise that signature sound. Handlebars are changed, paint schemes too, and while some owners will strip stuff off, others will add all kinds of gee-gaws and knick-knacks, and others still will customise and chop their steeds. Mark Green’s 1979 XLH 1000 Sportster is unusual as it is about as original as it gets. It has spent most of the last 43 years in upstate New York, carefully stored, mollycoddled, and rarely ridden. With just over 10,000 miles on the clock since it rolled off the Pennsylvania production line in 1979, this may be the most original late-1970s Sportster…

THE BUY-OUT OF NORTON BY INDIAN motorcycle giant TVS and the £100-million investment in a state-of-the art HQ in Solihull is a great start to this phoenix. The recruitment drive to get professionals from the likes of Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin... even pharmaceutical companies, known for their attention to detail and manufacturing experience, have been high-profile. Driving this with the parent company is CEO Dr Robert Hentschel, former director of Lotus Engineering, who we speak to next month. Production of the Commando 961 is the curtain-opener. Like the V4SV superbike, it was inherited from the old regime by TVS along with myriad problems of poor reliability and poorer customer service. TVS could, rightfully, have announced that any problems or unfulfilled orders were nothing to do with it, but…

THE 1970S WAS THE DECADE OF THE SUPERBIKE. Motorcycles were faster and more sophisticated, but also bigger, heavier, and more complicated. As far as George Silk was concerned, the fun of riding one was being eroded as manufacturers chased power and paid for it with handling problems. He believed that discerning riders would prefer a small, lightweight motorcycle with bags of torque, a decent turn of speed and race-bred handling – a modern version of his vintage Scott. When George left school, he started work as an apprentice at legendary Scott specialist Tom Ward of Derby. He later took a job at the Rolls-Royce jet engine factory, also based in Derby, but left in 1969 to set up Silk Engineering with his friend and fellow Scott fanatic Maurice Patey. They…

Workshop MAJOR OR BIG JOBS, ESPECIALLY on your own bike, can be a bit daunting. Personally, I like to mentally split the long jobs down into a series of smaller steps, but still, you have to make a start. Finding the time to do major jobs on my own bike is also always a factor. I try to allow myself quite a bit of time over Christmas to do bike jobs I just haven’t yet got round to; this has the bonus of keeping me away from the mind-numbing drivel on the telebox over the festive season. My Douglas rolling project has been sitting on the naughty step/in the naughty shed for a while, having spoilt its first test run by revealing a gearbox that is one up, two down,…

Workshop HOW MUCH? I WAS LOOKING FOR A decent, second-hand fuel tank for my BMW R100 a few years back. Not an uncommon bike and regularly being decimated by some grinder-wielding, sockless moron who thinks it’s easy to ‘build a café racer’, so there should be plenty of good, used tanks. With damaging E10 petrol and our bikes getting older, it is going to be an issue more of us will face. But I kept seeing prices ranging from £200 to £400 – for 30 to 40-year-old fuel tanks. Have they been sniffing the contents? BMW ones may last longer than most as the factory sealed them from new (a red oxide-style finish inside), but they can still suffer from pin holes if they have been left with fuel in.…