Innehållsförteckning för December 2023 från Classic Bike Guide

GREETINGS, OH WONDERFUL PEOPLE.Firstly, those of us here at CBG hope you’ve all been able to stay dry and warm as the various weather fronts have battered certain parts. We’ve been lucky here, even though the road floods and the missing slates mean heading up into the loft to change towels! It is funny in a pitiful kind-of-way, seeing the psychology of the drivers going through a flood: turn around, petrified of anything different, have some naughty fun by speeding through, or the most worrying, don’t change anything and carry on as normal – including some electric cars! Your mood changes when you realise we share the roads with these people; never assume… This month started off with the Stafford Show and it was great to see it so busy,…

A NEW SPORTY GUZZI V7 Moto Guzzi has launched a restyled version of its V7 Stone with an even more retro look than previously. The new-old interpretation has been dubbed the V7 Stone Corsa. With a new nose fairing and a single-seater style saddle, the Corsa has a faint air of the original Guzzi 850 sport tourer, the Le Mans. Moto Guzzi says the bike has been inspired by the Moto Guzzi Fast Endurance competition, a single-brand trophy held in Italy that gives riders the chance to race on the track on tuned V7 twins. The new V7 Stone Corsa has two-tone livery, with a retro metallic grey colour scheme livened up by an aggressive red stripe that runs vertically along the top fairing, then continuing along the lower part…

George Shuttleworth was born in Wigan in 1904 and brought his TT Racer to the show, where he picked up best Grand Prix Display. George was a hit with young and old alike. What’s the bike, George? “It’s my Shuttleworth Snap. I built it mesel’.” Have you bought anything? “I bought an ice cream.” Will you be buying anything else? “I might buy another ice cream.” Well, there were no little sticks of Blackpool rock. Turned out nice again, George… (Many thanks to George’s manager, Graeme Hardy). John and his son (and ‘hooligan’) Will came down from Huddersfield. John has a 1250GS BMW and a Ducati ST4. “I’ve been spotting all the bikes I started on when I was a teenager, like the Suzuki AP50 and Honda CB175, and the…

IN THE 1960S, HARLEY-DAVIDSON OWNED HALF OF Aermacchi, Italian maker of small and medium-sized bikes. And Harley wanted a scaled-down Sportster to sell in the USA. This is what the Italians delivered: the Aermacchi Harley-Davidson Sprint 350SS, a blend of late-1960s American cool and Italian flair. The look is pure Americana. The petrol tank apes Harley’s Sportster and originally would have come in striking shades – Radiant Blue, Midnight Black or Candy Orange, the same as the big Harleys of the day. There’s Harley-style matt black on the fittings and a tiny Sportster headlight. Hardly a touch of vibration from the 350cc single gets through the official Harley ‘Coke bottle’ handlebar grips, and there are H-D levers, switchgear and throttle. It is a single, but has two silencers for visual…

With massive thanks to Paul Goff (norbsa02.freeuk.com) and Paul Lambert (classicbulbs.co.uk) for their help and expertise. What they don’t know isn’t worth worrying about WHEN WE BEGAN RIDING, THERE WAS NO light. There was also little to hit, nor be hit by. Some bright spark had created Carbide acetylene gas lamps, mainly for the mining industry, so these were duly attached to our motorcycles and bicycles. They were bright, but needed regular cleaning and filling. Shortly after, electricity became the thing to have, and engines were fitted with dynamos and batteries so incandescent bulbs could be used. These were more efficient and reliable, if not a lot more output than a good gas light. Focusing the light was the solution. A quality reflector behind had been used since the gas…

WE’VE TRIED TO cover the British industry’s output from 1945 to the mid-1990s. It’s not definitive, and it’s not a story of the British bike industry, and it’s not a buying guide. It’s just here as a brief insight into the many models made in the UK that may be of interest to our readers. We’ve grouped together models based on whether they used the same platforms and selected a small number of bikes for special treatment. Whether prices are rising or falling is always up for debate; auction prices are slightly down, but to more realistic levels, and private sales seem fairly static right now as sellers are reluctant to part with machines they have invested time and money in. Every buyer wants the best price and every seller…

CBG Workshop THE ORIGINAL REGISTRATION document for this regularly used 350cc single gives a 1946 date, as do the despatch records from York Road, the now demolished Velocette works in Birmingham. But what actually goes into making up the bike? After all, at first glance, this MAC looks pretty standard. Owner and archaeologist Tim Gent takes a closer look.…

I RARELY LOSE THINGS IN THE HOUSE, BUT outside, in what I occasionally and humorously refer to as the workshop? Things are different there. I know where everything is but can still fail to find it. I would claim to be a chap of relentless good humour, but a half-hour wasted online ordering parts that I’ve not only ordered before but can remember receiving, using, and then storing carefully away does produce a certain irritation. This attack of the irritables almost forced me to listen to BBC News for an update on current affairs, just to help me get my irritation at lost parts into some form of proportion – but I changed my mind just in time. Anyway! I possess a mostly modern Triumph for those rides during which…

The story of Paul Smart taking Ducati’s first headline victory at the Imola 200 in 1972 is a corker. Maggie, Paul’s wife, takes a phone call from a fledgling Ducati, asking if Paul would be able to race its new 750 V-twin for £500 in Italy, and while he is on his way back from racing ‘an evil-handling’ Kawasaki at Atlanta, USA, on his behalf, she says ‘yes’. Smart’s career is taking off, with TT podiums, a Hutchinson 100 victory, and a place in the Transatlantic team, all in the last year. And now he’s on a flight to Italy, to race a bike from a little-known manufacturer he’s never seen, let alone ridden, that others have turned down, and a racetrack he’s not ridden. The rest is well-documented. The…

MUSEUMS HAVE EVOLVED. IT’S not enough to just stick stuff in glass cases or up on plinths; curators must explain just why what you’re looking at is important and its place in the world. This is what the new Life on Two Wheels motorcycle gallery at Haynes Motor Museum tries to do. The story of British motorcycling is told with penny-farthings, flat tankers, exotica like an OK Supreme and a Brough Superior outfit, a handful of more prosaic models like a Francis-Barnett, a cutaway A10, a display about rocker (and mod) culture, the end of the line for the old British industry, the impact of innovations from Japan, and modern-day developments. There are a bunch of the interactive features that a modern museum needs, including a physical explanation of why…

IF YOU FOLLOW THE MODERN BIKE SCENE, YOU WON’T have escaped the veritable deluge of large capacity, parallel twins that are now the new must-have. Of course, most CBG readers know this is old news, as many of us are already suitably besotted by the set-up. Similarly, it won’t have escaped many people’s attention that the Japanese historically made a decent enough job of the genre either; even if their takes on the concept have been slightly less than orthodox on occasion. So, perhaps it won’t come a huge surprise that the subject matter herewith is yet another variation on the existing theme – the only thing is, it’s rather special! At the time If you’ve monitored Yamaha over the years, you’ll be aware that the firm is something of…

Pre-unit and unit construction A pre-unit motorcycle is one in which the engine and gearbox are separate ‘units’, connected by a primary chain. They tend to be earlier bikes, whereas a unit construction engine is one made with the crankcase and gearbox in a single casting, yet the gearbox is a separate item within that casting, still driven by a primary chain. Pre-unit motorcycles had largely died out by 1969, though a few manufacturers such as Velocette and Norton persevered. Primary drive This is the method by which the engine sends the drive to the gearbox, via a chain and the clutch. The chain usually runs in a chaincase with an oil bath and can be adjusted for tension, in the case of pre-unit models by moving the gearbox, or…

AFTER OWNING MANY BIKES IN the last 50 years or so, mostly Japanese, plus four Hinkley triumphs and two Ducatis, I decided I needed to restore a bike this winter, inspired by the many features I read. Bearing in mind (or despite) my knowledge of the above bikes, I bought a 1969 Triumph Tiger 100 from an auction. Of course I did (idiot). My friends were quick to point out that this made no sense, but this concern was, naturally, brushed aside. No surprise, but on initial investigation, the Tiger is a heap and a non-runner; possibly has been for decades. So, the first job was to acquire what we used to call some ‘bed spanners’, which I did at Stanford Hall VMCC Founders Day, also doubling my knowledge of…

CBG Workshop Oli’s Starfire cylinder head and pushrod woes BACK IN THE GARAGE, IT WAS TIME to look again at the B25 and attempt to stop the unholy racket it made. At first, I used the three pushrods that nice Mr Westworth sent me, which may have been Starfire pushrods, but may have been B25SS or TR25 oil-in-frame pushrods; they are similar, but things still were not right. Indeed, they were even more wrong. The engine appeared to have lost all its compression. Although the pushrods were the correct length according to the Rupert Ratio bible, B25 model pushrods are not interchangeable. They did, however, look identical to the old ones, apart from, obviously, the damage the bottom of the old inlet pushrod. Anyway, I ordered a pair of new…

DUCATI HAS WON 15 WORLD SUPERBIKE TITLES since the series began in 1988. But until an Italian spring day in 1972, the Bologna factory, then owned by the Italian government, had precisely zero big-bike credentials. Ducati was instead known mainly for producing small-capacity, four-stroke singles, some with the quirky addition of desmodromic valve gear such as Mercedes-Benz had used in winning the 1954/55 Formula 1 world titles. But the late Paul Smart’s Imola 200 race victory on April 23, 1972, with Ducati teammate Bruno Spaggiari a close second, changed all that. By winning the first big-bucks 200-miler held outside the USA for the new generation of cubed-up bikes embraced by Formula 750, Smartie not only put Ducati on the map, but he also kick-started the development process, leading to today’s…

HENRY COLE AND CHUMS ON STAGE, AIDED BY good weather and free entry into the collection, crammed people in by their thousands for the annual open weekend. Car parking is £15, which all goes to the museum, but bikes are free, leading to some impressive sights outside. To witness the museum jam-packed was a heart-warming sight – and shows how our world is not getting any smaller! On the huge stage, as well as the usual banter with Henry, Skid, Fuzz Townsend and Allen about their finds and fun while making the different TV shows – a talk that saw the enormous conference hall standing room only – there was also rotary genius Brian Crighton, TT master John McGuiness, the FHO BSB and TT race team, who are working hard…

THERE ARE GENUINELY FEW DOWNSIDES TO borrowing bikes from proud – and indeed trusting – owners, as you may have guessed already. There’s the risk of falling off the thing, but given a decent level of riding competence and a familiarity with both the bike in question and the roads, it’s fairly unlikely. Over the last three decades of borrowing bikes – some of them considerably expensive, I think I’ve only dropped a couple. I dropped a BSA Gold Star in full DBD34 Clubmans kit simply because my left trouser leg got caught on the rearset footrest and my right foot skidded on deep gravel. No damage. Even the owner laughed as he helped lift the fallen Goldie. A recurrent concern is that something expensively mechanical might let go. This…

BMW R80 G/S Forty-three years ago, BMW took a gamble in struggling times. And it struck lucky. The quirky bike released would become the grandaddy of one third of all the motorcycles sold in the UK in 2023 – the Adventure Bike. The BMW R80 G/S wasn’t called that at the time; the term had not been invented. The pundits didn’t know what to call it, and most thought that an 800cc shaft-driven bike designed for trips on and off-road was a bit too much, and might have been better left in the hands of ISDT experts. Was it a street/trail bike? An on/off-roader? Dual purpose? Even BMW didn’t have a name for it and apologised to the press that there wasn’t a buzzword to hang on the new machine.…

CBG Workshop Back to basics STARTING A MOTORCYCLE IS obvious, isn’t it? No. Getting used to your motorcycle is essential, as they are all different beasts depending on whether they rolled out of Bracebridge Street, England or Bologna, Italy, but the principles of their engine operation are essentially the same. Here, then, is a quick troubleshooting guide to things you might experience when approaching a bike, particularly for the first time, from cold. Let’s start with the obvious... ■ Is there petrol in the tank? Take off the cap and have a look. Rock the bike around a bit and see if it sloshes about. Does it smell bad? If in doubt, drain it and refill with fresh petrol. Modern ethanol-rich fuel can start to go off in just a…