Innehållsförteckning för July 2023 från Classic Bike Guide

Looking for information about your classic and need it now? The National Motorcycle Museum has digitised the Bruce Main-Smith Archive – an incredible resource of more than 5000 items. For 50-plus years, BMS specialised in producing high quality black-and-white photocopy sets of manufacturer’s original literature that had gone out of print. These are now available to purchase exclusively as digital copies delivered directly to customers’ e-mail addresses as a PDF file. The museum web shop contains an alphabetical listing of the items, which include motorcycle workshop manuals, illustrated parts books, annual sales catalogues and instruction books from the late 1800s to the 1980s. This archive includes workshop manuals, illustrated parts books using ‘exploded’ drawings, and annual sales catalogues usually illustrating every model in the range for the coming year and…

THERE WERE ONLY TWO TYPES OF AMERICAN motorcycle still in production by the end of the 1930s: massive, rugged V-twins or rasping inline-fours, both designed to cover huge distances over rough roads without breaking down. They were nothing like the Brit singles and vertical twins, which were quick, light and nimble – perfect for thrashing around narrow, twisty roads. The two concepts were an ocean apart, but a world war was about to change all that. Thousands of American servicemen got a taste for Brit bikes when they were stationed in England, where they soon took to the revvy engines, neat handling and modern controls, instead of Harley and Indian’s vintage-style hand shifter and foot clutch. When the war ended, the British Government told motorcycle manufacturers to ‘Export or Die’.…

‘TIME WAS…’ I BEGAN, IN A RECENT chat with Mr Editor Matt. And then I stopped. Even over the electric telephone, I could hear his eyes glazing and their lids drooping, his mind drifting off to dream of more exciting things. This is the difficulty with anecdotes from days very long ago. They either raise a sneer rather than a smile, or straightforward disbelief. In the past I have been criticised for my incorrect memories of How It Was. Except… except that my memory is decently accurate and I have always taken lots and lots of photographs, which do indeed jog the memory cell into at least some approximation of accuracy. Almost impossibly, Matt instructed me to complete the short tale I was telling, and then – after he’d almost…

This is being written the week before the 2023 TT practice starts. Already the excitement is mounting, the teams are on the Island setting up, mechanics are checking and rechecking machines, and riders will be watching on-board laps, time after time... so we apologise now, as the mag will only be on sale once the whole circus has moved on and it’s all over! But we needed to bring you a TT photo from the past, nonetheless. It shows riders on their Nortons, AJSs, Sunbeams, Rudges, Rex-Acmes, and number one, Howard R Davies, on his HRD. Still, to this day, the only man to compete on his own make of motorcycle. Howard R Davies was always a competitor at heart. Born in 1895, from a young age in Wolverhampton he…

RIDING YOUR FINEST MOTORCYCLES IN YOUR finest togs, you say – why not? Now in its 11th year, the DGR has become an annual fundraiser for men’s health, as well as a damn fine day of riding and bike spotting worldwide. Our local ride, near Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, had a goal of raising £20,000 and at the last count had achieved more than £24,300 – a fine effort for riding your bike! Maria rode her Tribsa, while Butch and John rode their Triumph and Royal Enfields and Effie on the back! Special thanks must go to Bernard and Lexi Adams, who let more than 200 participants park up on their lawn, and with a merry group of volunteers helped set up eateries for when all had returned from…

IT’S CLUB NIGHT, AND AS IS THE WAY OF these events, there’s that small yet significantly vocal group of rivet spotters. No, don’t sound off here, because having folk who know what’s what can be vital; they are veritable mines of information. It’s a great to have people around who actually know when the profile of mudguard stays changed, which saddles should or shouldn’t have a certain logo, or whether engine case covers were painted or brushed alloy. In-depth knowledge like this can determine if a bike wins Best In Show, but we’re not at Stafford tonight – perspective and context are all, etc. We are standing in a pub car park, metaphorically chewing the fat. The Anoraks of Excellence are descending upon a classic that’s recently parked up, looking…

WHEN I FIRST ENCOUNTERED IAN Henderson’s stunning BSA Bobber, I imagined I was being whisked back in time to the 1970s, to the living, breathing era of easyriders – be it the iconic film or the trendsetting American magazine for wannabe Hell’s Angels. I was simply spellbound by Ian’s Low-Rider/Black Bobber... it looked so period perfect, so very well executed, and just made for Dennis Hopper! As I poured over his fabulous all-black custom, I wrongly assumed it was spawned from the leftovers of an A10 Golden Flash. In fact, it was a cooking-model 1960 Super Rocket import from California, USA. Ian found it online, for sale from its Aberdeen-based importer. Although the BSA had been semi-chopped by the previous American owner, Ian said the bike was nothing more than…

DAVE HOLLYMAN HELPS RUN THE ROYAL Enfield Interceptor group, a tight-knit association of about 50 owners. They talk to each other and share information, and used to have a rally before Covid-19 put a stop to that. And they always turn up at the Bristol Classic Show with a fine selection of Royal Enfield’s last glorious bruiser, the mighty Interceptor. Dave’s own Interceptor Series II, which he acquired in 1983, isn’t what you might expect. Like all Interceptor II models, it wasn’t born in Redditch, the home of the factory, and while the parts might have been turned out by engineers in a cave near Bradfordon-Avon, in Wiltshire (Intrigued? See further on), they were not turned into an actual motorcycle until long after RE’s British branch vanished into history. It’s…

CUSTOM. WHAT EXACTLY DOES THAT MEAN? Does it need a peanut tank and pullback ‘bars, or is a period Triton a custom? What about a CB750 with different exhausts? It’s a personal thing, but the Bike Shed Moto Show in London has been attempting – quite successfully for 10 years now – to walk that fine tightrope. The show began in 2013, in some railway arches with 50 bikes, and attracted about 3000 visitors, proving the hunger and fashion for modified bikes. Ten years later that young scene is mainstream and its venue is not just huge but a fascinating East London building with its own charm. With more than eight corporate sponsors, the bikes number 300 and the visitors are expected to exceed 20,000. You name a style of…

“Doug Hele had been nagging at me for years to give consideration to a three-cylinder engine design for larger capacity units. One evening late in 1963, after everyone had gone home, we sat in his office and, to amuse ourselves, we laid out the basic outline of what later became the 750cc three-cylinder Trident. This drawing was filed away as a memento.” Bert Hopwood, in Whatever happened to the British Motorcycle Industry FOR ANYONE WITH HISTORICAL INTEREST IN THE collapse of the British motorcycle industry, Bert Hopwood’s book is essential reading, if occasionally light on accurate dates. It seems the engine was originally designed on paper in early 1963. The TR3OC has produced an example of a prototype triple, one of a few P1 models built in the Triumph Experimental…

CBG Workshop - Dive in and get dirty MY NEW PROJECT HAD ORIGINAL chrome exhaust silencers in good condition – hurrah! But the excitement waned once I looked underneath and saw two MoT-style patches crudely added where the mild steel had rotted away – bugger. No wonder so many owners fit the stainless copies. Two original exhausts for the scrap pile – but wait… My RS has original silencers which hadn’t holed (yet) when I restored it, but the chrome was rusty, so I ground them down and painted them to A) save money and B) look sporty like a Moto Guzzi Le Mans. They fit, they look right, and they are shaped so the panniers can fit, but they are quiet for a ‘sportsbike’. Hang on, maybe I could…