Innehållsförteckning för May 2023 från Classic Bike Guide

Welcome MAY THE GIFT OF CHOCOLATE EGGS, the days getting longer and a bright light in the sky bring you happiness and glory in all you do. However, the Classic Bike Guide gang will happily swap their chocolate stash for riding weather! Over in the West Country this month, Oli has been mostly complaining about the blimmin’ rain and resenting the fact that he couldn’t take the Bantam Club’s lovely little D7 out in the deluge, much. And after he cleared some space for it in the shed and relegated the Starfire to the other shed, too. There’s also been a jolly nice day at an autojumble and another jolly nice day at the South Wales Sunbeam Club’s splendid Classic and Contemporary Bike Show, where Oli tried to buy a…

Celebrating the great Giacomo Agostini, winner of 122 motorcycling Grands Prix on his way to 15 world titles, Agostini: On the British Circuits, by The Classic MotorCycle editor James Robinson, is a stunning collection of period photographs which capture him in action on racetracks in Britain. Collated using images from the world-leading Mortons Archive, incorporating the Nick Nicholls collection, this book focuses not on Agostini’s worldwide GP achievements, but looks instead at what happened when he came to the British circuits and raced – not only the TT and Ulster GPs, but the circuits up and down the country. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, Agostini, or ‘Ago’ to motorcyclists worldwide, was the poster boy of two-wheeled sport, his winning combination of bravery, skill, and style on the machine, coupled…

I HEARD IT WAS CALLED THE BATTERY HEN, THIS remarkable little electric sort-of classic, the bike that won Most Technical Interest at the Bristol Classic Show. It’s a BSA Bantam, but not as we know it – it’s a BSA Bantam brought up to date. The electric Bantam has a frame from a D1 Plunger Bantam from 1954, which at some point was converted into a schoolboy speedway bike, shortened and lightened. The bike’s creator, Bill Dutton, decided to stick the electric motor from a Sur Ron electric off-road motorcycle into the D1 frame. Bill said: “I got the idea from an article I read about a luxury yachtsman who wanted a bike he could carry on board so he could get from ports to town, and he didn’t want…

I’VE BEEN BUYING SPARES AGAIN. WELL, it’s a continuous process, isn’t it? Bits of rubber, assorted gaskets, pumps for this, drives for that, windings for the other. The cost of all those grommets and washers is something to consider when selecting one’s next project. I mean, when I had the engine rebuilt on my Yamaha XS650, (a process about which the less is said, the better – and which still causes me to wake up in a cold sweat when I consider how much it cost, what the result was, and how it has ensured that in future, if I want to mess up a rebuild, I’ll do it myself, thank you very much), I found that the big issue with Japanese motorcycles is that they are all different. If…

THE NORTON COMMANDO. WHEN FIRST released in 1967, if you didn’t have one, you wanted one. Or, as a BSA/ Triumph fan, you hated but secretly admired them. Designed and brought to market in record time by the amalgamated AMC, the bike was in production for about 10 years and won the Motorcycle News Best Motorcycle Award five years in a row. Ironically, for a bike rushed through the development process, the Wolff Ohlins-designed bodywork was futuristic to look at, and it was innovative, with the Isolastic engine mounting (another award-winning feature) trying to tame the ancient-but-canted-forward Atlas-based engine and swingarm mounted to the AMC ‘box. It won hearts and it won races, in the UK and over in the all-important United States of America – and would become one…

From our archive When foraging through the Mortons archive, forgetting that time exists, I found a selection of photographs all with a theme – birthdays. First is Geoff Duke OBE, from his early days as a handy trials rider on his birthday, March 29. How cold do you think that water is! Another poster boy follows, with Mike Hailwood at Snetterton on his 21st birthday, April 2, 1961, celebrating with his biggest fan – his father, Stan! George Brown’s birthday meant a lot of hard work. The FIM had an age limit of 54 for riders attempting land speed records, and George’s 55th was approaching. At Greenham Common, over three days and with three different bikes, Brown achieved 16 world records but never beat his goal of 200mph. An amazing…

I HAVE NO QUALIFICATIONS WHEN IT COMES to rebuilding, servicing, restoring, fitting tyres, modifying, painting or machining parts for bikes, cars, locos, houses, stationary engines or harmonicas. I do have decades of honing my non-skills, an-oft unhealthy want to try something, fix something, rebuild something or modify something myself, the ability to work out how to do it within my parameters, and how to learn as much as I can from my elders and betters around. And it helps being tight. To do the above takes an elephant-like thick skin for when it goes wrong, and the control not to tell folk what you think when they merrily point out how it ‘should’ve been done’. Insult-throwing is a hobby I’m good at. To do something you don’t know about needs…

ABSA A7 IN NICE ORIGINAL condition or oily rag, depending on your turn of phrase, landed on my bench for a little resurrection and to have a couple of pre-known issues looked at, the bike having sat dormant since before the lockdowns. Before I could think about the basics of oils, sparks and fuel, the gearbox – or rather the kick-start quadrant – needed at the very least a hard stare. The gearbox oil was drained and the outer cover removed; this came apart almost exactly as described in the book (manual), which is exactly as you would hope from a mass-produced machine like a BSA. With the gearbox outer cover on the bench, the kick-start quadrant was removed and the problem of broken teeth obvious. The first half-tooth, which…

RESEARCHING OBSCURE MOTORCYCLES IS OFTEN considerably entertaining. In the case of a prototype bike, it can also be seriously frustrating – and when all that remains of the original factory project is an engine, maybe a gearbox, and a frame to hold them, the best we can hope to find is an approximation of what the factory actually built. Or indeed intended to build, because some experimental engines appear to have run only on a testbed in the factory. Until, of course, a better, more enthusiastic researcher supplies a photograph of a complete bike running and being ridden on the road. That can be a little sobering. Things are a little different when the factory went as far as actually tooling up for production – which is a seriously scarily…

SUPER GUIDE TO HERE’S A PUB GAME FOR YOU: WHAT IS THE most important postwar British motorcycle? The Vincent Black Shadow? The Triumph Bonneville? The Featherbedframed Manx Norton? The BSA Gold Star? If the question was ‘greatest’, then one of these would surely be at the top of the list. But for ‘most important’? The motorcycle that got the world – or at the very least, the British Empire and Commonwealth – moving, that provided transport for teenage tearaways and the solid, stolid working stiff, that helped farm the Australian outback, and without which the wheels of industry and high finance would have stumbled and functioned irregularly? The one that, almost overlooked, kept Britain’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer going, had 23 years in production, half a million produced, and ensured that…

ON JULY 11, 1960, AT 2.55PM. LORD Aberdare delivered a speech to the House of Lords regarding the second reading of the Road Traffic (Driving of Motor Cycles) Bill. At last, Her Majesty’s Government was officially concerned about the rising death toll among teenagers riding motorcycles in general and, more specifically, the demise of so many learners. Until the new ‘250 learner law’ was passed later that year, 16-year-olds were allowed to buy any capacity of motorcycle. Statistics gathered from the late 1950s onwards clearly showed that youthful exuberance and powerful machines equated to serious injuries and/or death. According to Hansard (the reports of such parliament debates), “it would mean, if enacted, that from July 1, 1961, no one will be able to ride a heavy motorcycle with ‘L’ plates,…

I AM A PATIENT FELLOW. MOSTLY. I LEARNED long, long ago that when surrounded by maniacs, the best policy is either to leave quietly – which is not always easy on a decently vocal motorcycle – or to stay silent. Which is also occasionally problematic when the decently vocal motorcycle is the subject of the maniacs’ conversation. Picture this, if you will. It is a dry, sunny morning. I have parked my modernish motorcycle – a Triumph twin – outside a convenient café and am enjoying what passes for a breakfast. You know the sort of thing: limp, pink, almost-meat that distantly resembles bacon sliding around inside a bread thing with aspirations to being a bun. Watery tomato ketchup eases the mastication a little. At least the thing is hot…