Innehållsförteckning för Issue 76 Autumn 2025 från Classic Dirt Bike

The pace of development in the off-road world upped significantly from the glory days of the British factories in the sixties. In part this was driven by the smaller European factories who could adapt to changing needs easier than the traditional factories could. Neither did it hurt that the factory management was still involved in the sports it was selling motorcycles for. By this we mean there was interest at the top and ideas flow down a lot easier than they can be pushed up. In the pre-World War One era, for instance, factory owners were actually racing their own products, but by the sixties those who were still around from the dawn of motorcycling were long retired. Enter the slightly more successful Spanish Armada who tapped into the skills…

Motorcycles can be polished, cossetted, restored and made gleaming… Then we get them dirty again, which is the right and proper way to do things in our world. There are trials, scrambles – or MX if you’re a modernist – enduros and all sorts of other activities to do on all ages of dirt bikes. It doesn’t actually matter what age the bike is, or the rider either. What does matter is that you’re out there doing it, whichever ‘it’ you do. Bill Brown Classic Scramble Way back in April CDB went along to the Westmorland County Showground where Westmorland MCC lay out a pretty tasty scrambles course. Sometimes it’s wet, sometimes it’s dry, sometimes they name it after a legend; for April 2025, the legend who is Bill Brown…

There’s not one of us who hasn’t cast an envious eye at those fortunate souls who are factory team members. Not for them the daily grind getting in the way of prepping bikes, nor the sourcing of spares or waiting while a mate has time to do a bit of welding or machining. No, simply rock up to the factory and tell them what you want and it is done in the blink of an eye… Or is it? The reality is something slightly different, or at least it was when the British factories were at the forefront of sport. Factories are there to make money; they make a product as cost effectively as they can and sell it on as attractively priced as they dare. Often the factory team…

As the temperatures soared and Great Britain baked under the relentless sunshine of what would be remembered as the long, hot summer of 76, there was a young lad doing his best to raise the temperature in the grasstrack racing scene. During what was regarded as the hottest month of the period, 15,000 race fans sweltered under the baking sun in Herefordshire and watched Peter Collins produce some of the hottest racing ever seen. Armed with his 500 Weslake, Collins arrived at the British Grasstrack GP with something to prove; he’d lost out to his two main rivals, in the shape of Ivan Mauger and Don Godden, the month before due to a technicality. Now, most racers can take being beaten fair and square; they might not like it and…

Save the date! Telford 2026 Once upon a time we would scream “Mark the 7-8 February, 2026 on your calendar now!” as we announced the dates for the 2026 Classic Dirt Bike Show at Telford’s International Centre. Actually, we just have screamed it… but there are different values of calendars these days. It used to be something with a pretty picture – motorcycles, woodworking machines, leeks – with a numbers underneath denoting days of the month and possibly space to write the important notes associated with each day. Not anymore. These days there are electronic devices such as phones, tablets and computers where dates can be programmed in and announced with a day’s warning… just remembering them is old hat! It is probably possible to programme in a reminder to…

As the dust settled on the 1964 International Six Days Trial, held in Erfurt, then in East Germany, speculation was rife over where the following year’s event would be based. The speculation was because the FIM – motorcycle sport’s international governing body – had a rule which prevented the event being held in the same place on consecutive years. East Germany had won the right to host it by winning in Czechoslovakia in 1963 and had won again in their own country, but were debarred by the FIM ruling from hosting again. So, technically the second-place team’s country had first dibs on running it, The UK was second, but despite this the smart money was on the trial being in either Spain or Finland. There were a number of reasons…

Personally, doing workshoppy stuff is generally enjoyable for me, even tasks such as washing Child Three’s Fantic off as Storm Floris hit my part of the northeast was okay. Why was I washing the offspring’s bike? Am I an indulgent parent who wraps his kid in cotton wool? No, I’m not, he’s 35 and quite capable of washing his own bike, but I got it dirty at the weekend when pressganged into observing at my club’s two-day trial. The Fantic had ascended to OWBTH – Only Working Bike To Hand – status in the workshop though to be fair the Bultaco I was planning to use didn’t have much wrong with it but needed skills I didn’t have to repair it. Friday afternoon was spent simply giving the Bulto the…

Write to us at: ClassicDIRTbike, PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincolnshire LN9 6LZ. CDBeditor@mortons.co.uk Mistaken identity I spoke to you at Kendal about a picture taken at Drumlanrig you carried in Classic Dirt Bike. The pic was of Shaun Muir but with my name on the caption. Here is a pic of Shaun Muir and his son Stacey. It was Stacey’s first time racing but a crash resulted in a thumb injury and a second crash broke his clutch lever. Shaun was third against 500s on his SpD Factory Developments 250 red rocket. Thought it might be a little fill-in story if you’re trying to fill any spaces. Gary Wolstenholme EmailThanks Gary, a case of mistaken identity; saw ‘29’ on the plate and found ‘29’ in the programme… It…

Spain had embraced the off-road sporting world by the Sixties and was part of the new European guard who would bridge the gap between the traditional British manufacturers and the might of Japan. Less restricted by the past, these newcomers from Spain were happy to develop ideas and move the sport forward. For Montesa, their early MX models were based on the Impala sports machine, and factory development engineer Pedro Pi was more than aware of the shortcomings this sort of conversion had. Realising there had to be a starting point from which to progress, he set too and addressed the issues. His work resulted in the 250 Cappra model, the prototype of which helped him win the 1966 Spanish MX championship. This actual machine was displayed at the UK’s…

Most factories looking to enter a team into the International Six Days Trial would take a long, hard look at their range which would include roadsters, scramblers and trials bikes, then select the most appropriate components from each to assemble a suitable machine which resembled their catalogue motorcycles. Why so few continued this theme into a production model rather than just a factory special is a bit of a mystery but may have a lot to do with the lack of ISDT-type events in the UK, whereas trials and scrambles were on throughout the country every weekend. Greeves, however, were one company who did tap into the idea of a production ISDT machine and for 1962 it entered their range as the ‘24INT’ which looked pretty much as the works’…

Asking a mate to store a bike for you isn’t unknown in the bike world. There’s no problem sticking the bike in the shed of a mate who has a bit of space, and particularly if you’ve raced together since you were kids. Not everyone has unlimited space to hand and generally such circumstances arise when the owner is moving house and needs somewhere for the bike. Just such a thing happened to this BSA Victor raced by Geoff Anderton in the seventies. He and Owen Wignall did a lot of sand racing in those days when there were quite a few such meetings, and the lads saw action on beaches from Wallasley on Merseyside to Redcar on Teesside, and took in Southport and Filey, plus others for good measure.…

There are lots of reasons why a bike is neglected and lies forgotten in a shed, barn or garage to deteriorate further after leading a hard life. Some of these reasons include simple expediency as technology overtakes the current machine and it’s not worth trading in, while other reasons are more complicated. However, for whatever reason the bike goes from being ‘the’ one we use every week, the one which receives all the care and attention of a regular race bike, to becoming a hack, used and abused, rarely, if ever, washed or maintained before, if it’s lucky, finally being shoved under a sheet to be sorted later. Just such a thing happened to this 1979 400cc KTM GS80 when after a period of hard use, it was pushed into…