Innehållsförteckning för November - December 2019 från Motorcycle Classics

While 350 Sprints still seem to be fairly easy to find, the early 250 models aren’t as plentiful as they used to be. We found three good examples that had changed hands in the past few years, but nothing for sale at the moment. The first was a “restored” 1963 250 Sprint H that popped up on eBay this past March, selling for $3,500 despite a few troubles. Next was a 1964 250 Sprint H sold by Bonhams back in 2015. Original, unrestored and showing just 86 miles, it brought $4,289. But the one that really spiked our interest was the 1967 250 Sprint SS shown here. Though the paint was roughed up a bit, it was a very original and correct bike, showing less than 3,000 miles, and it…

Trace St. Germain has a business restoring motorcycles, and like most people who have a business restoring motorcycles, he has a few of his own. Three of them are 1978 Kawasaki KZ1000’s. He has one to ride, one to drag race and one (the bike in the photos) to show. It was — literally — found in a barn. Trace and his Z1-R’s have a lot of history together. It all started when Trace started drag racing. He was a young lad then, “trying not to do it on the street. I met some guys and got interested in racing on a track, instead of on the street, like I had been. I won first time out on a Honda 350.” Racing got interrupted for a stint in the military.…

Norton’s tie-up with respected U.K. automotive engineering firm Ricardo has resulted in an all-new V4 engine. It’s the first clean-sheet 4-stroke performance model the famous company has made since the 1970s. Computer-designed and painstakingly developed, it is Norton’s new platform off which several models will spin. This isn’t the first time a motorcycle manufacturer has joined forces with the car industry. Harley-Davidson did it twice with Porsche. The first time, in the 1980s, was the still-born “Nova” V4 engine. Their second union conceived the Revolution engine range, which powered the liquid-cooled V-Rod family launched in 2002. However, Norton only needs to look back into its own history to read a cautionary tale. In the early 1970s it worked with Cosworth on what it hoped would be a world-beater, the so-called…

Horex was Germany’s leading manufacturer for almost 50 years either side of World War II, and was in many ways comparable to Britain’s older Matchless marque in terms of product and marketplace positioning, as well as in its road racing involvement. But curiously, the company is little known outside Germany, despite its products being exported to as many as 65 different countries during the 1950s (though not including the U.K.). That’s despite its wide range of models having an undeniably British air about them in terms of design, and even styling. Horex beginnings Located in Bad Homburg, north of Frankfurt, Horex wasfounded in 1923 by Fritz Kleeman, 22, whose father Friedrich owned the Rex glassware company, a manufacturer of preservative jars based there, and was also the main shareholder in…

The Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix is truly a “gearhead” event with something for everyone. In its 37 years it has evolved from a vintage race on city streets, with a car show on a bucolic golf course, to an 11-day happening with events including closed course racing at Pittsburgh International Race Complex (a stop on the MotoAmerica calendar), a rally, various exhibitions around the city, a black tie event and more. Over the years I’ve seen everything from a 1930 Bugatti Type 35B GP car (raced at Monaco, twice!) to such marques as Allard, Lotus and Elva. Present have been historic Shelby Cobras, BMW 507s, Gullwing Mercedes, a Ferarri GTO and an AMC Matador — Barcelona edition! Since 2012 there has also been the Vintage Motorbike Show (finally, he gets…

Have you heard the old joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice! Well, something similar can be said about how to get professional paint results from spray cans, but here the trick is preparation, preparation, preparation. In this How-To we’ll show you just how you can get durable professional results from modern spray cans, and how to do so safely. Cans of Eastwood’s new 2K Aero-Spray Epoxy Primer ($25 per can) and 2K Aero-Spray Chassis Black paint ($25 per can) plus shipping are available from eastwood.com. Clear coat is also available. Get a paint respirator ($25) from your local big box home improvement center, along with some blue painter’s tape. You should always use a respirator when painting, and this is especially important when you are…

Riding Royal Enfield’s new twins I’ve had the chance to ride a handful of Royal Enfield singles over the years, and while I enjoyed them for what they were, I was never really bit by the bug. Though full of character and enjoyable for an afternoon trek, after 100 miles, I never wanted another 100. Though the torque of a big single always makes for a lively riding experience, I never missed our Bullets when they were gone. I already miss both the INT650 and the Continental GT650. The folks at Royal Enfield arranged for us to borrow a Continental GT650 and an INT650 to take to Pennsylvania for our Ride’Em, Don’t Hide’Em Getaway this last August (see Page 40), and I had a chance to spend a full day…

Only a few years after the CB750 Four’s landmark 1969 debut, Honda Motor Co.’s movers and shakers determined that it was time for a replacement. The bike that had once rocked the motorcycle establishment with its single-overhead cam, 4-cylinder inline engine was growing long in the tooth. What to do, and in typical Honda fashion they did what they did best — they went racing, this time as much to develop a replacement product as to win championships. And for 1976, Honda rolled its all-new prototype open-class road racer onto the Zandvoort starting grid in the Netherlands for a non-championship 600-kilometer endurance race. The bike — actually Honda entered two race bikes at Zandvoort, one each by European distributors Honda France and Honda U.K. — was powered by an engine…

Then and now The first photo is me, a 15-year-old kid on a shining new Indian Warrior, my first real motorcycle. The second is me, an 85-year-old geezer on a shining new Royal Enfield INT650. During the intervening 70 years I have owned or ridden just about everything from a Hodaka Ace 90 to a Kawasaki Concours 14 across countries and continents for a million or so miles. The Royal Enfield brings me back to where I started, back to what first got me hooked on motorcycling. _ A lot has changed during seven decades, but, thankfully, a lot hasn’t. Randall A. Wagner/Cheyenne, Wyoming Randall, Thank you for sharing your photos with our readers. That picture of you on your old Warrior is a treat. I’m glad to hear you…

1964-67 Triumph T20SM Mountain Cub Like many of the best Triumphs, the Mountain Cub was conceived in the U.S. — in this case as a trail bike intended to out-perform Honda’s Trail 90. It married the T20S Sports Cub engine with wide-ratio gears from the TR20 Trials Cub. The factory added a tucked-in exhaust and Dunlop Trials Universal tires. An initial order for 400 units was snapped up: “We sold every one we could get,” said Johnson Motors’ Don Brown at the time, “and could have sold twice as many.” Accessories included a rifle rack, cross-braced handlebars and an oversized rear carrier. Cycle World tested one in 1964, declaring it the trail bike they’d been waiting for: “… a real motorcycle, slightly undersized, properly equipped and geared.” It handled easily,…

George Brough didn’t have to coin the cherished “Rolls-Royce of Motorcycles” slogan himself that he used to promote the prestigious range of motorcycles built under the Brough Superior name at his Nottingham works — a Motor Cycle magazine road tester of one of his early bikes did it for him first, in print. But it’s a mark of the respect with which his products were held in the pre-World War II era that nobody ever questioned the validity of such an implicit boast. Until, that is, one day a man from Rolls came calling, requiring Brough to cease and desist from infringing his company’s trademark, else there’d be legal retribution. After an abortive attempt to talk his way out of trouble, Brough hit on the plan of showing his visitor…

Way back in August 2016, we invited readers to join us at Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania for the very first Ride 'Em, Don't Hide 'Em Getaway. More than 80 readers showed up that first year, and we're thrilled that you keep coming back every year since. Our 4th Annual Getaway was Aug. 9-11, 2019, and like the first three it was another wonderful weekend of riding, wrenching and bench racing, along with tasty meals shared together. With 70 riders on classic Moto Morinis, Yamahas, Nortons, BMWs, Triumphs, Laverdas, Hondas, Suzukis and more — not to mention a trio of brand-new Royal Enfield twins — enjoying the great twisty lanes and back roads of Pennsylvania's Laurel Highlands. While our venue at Seven Springs moved from indoors at our beloved…

The Sammy Miller Museum (sammymiller.co.uk) in New Milton, Hampshire, U.K., is crammed full of interesting machines — including factory prototypes and numerous ingenious designs from all over the world. It also counts as one of the world’s largest collections of exotic racing bikes, all of them in running order and including the legendary Moto Guzzi 500 V8, the supercharged AJS 500 V4 and postwar Porcupine, and innumerable famous bikes from Triumph, Norton, AJS, Velocette and many more. There are also offroad enduro, motocross and trials icons. The museum is open to visitors daily from 10 a.m. year-round.…

The motto of the great State of Kansas, where I have lived my entire life, is “Ad Astra Per Aspera,” a Latin phrase meaning “To the stars through adversity.” This seemed like a fitting sentiment as I reflected on the happenings of this summer’s Topeka AHRMA event. Editor’s note: This story is the culmination of the Sea Beast Saga, in which ad man Shane Powers builds a Honda CB350 to go racing with AHRMA. To read the full build, head to motorcycleclassics.com/blogs/mc-dispatch. On Thursday before the race weekend began, Editor Hall and I pulled into Heartland Park with the Sea Beast in tow. We decided on our pit location and began the process of setting up camp. We made pleasantries with the neighbors, one of whom told me he had…

Vintage motorcycles are cool. No argument there. Cooler still are the people who collect and ride them, a fact that hit home again in a big way during the 4th Annual Motorcycle Classics Ride’Em, Don’t Hide’Em Getaway this past August, a two-day romp through Pennsylvania’s beautiful Laurel Highlands with 70-some vintage bike fans. Attendees are riding machines typically 40 years old or older, and more often than not they’re on bikes they’ve personally brought back from the dead, or tendered since new. That speaks volumes to owner engagement and enthusiasm, two ingredients in the old bike mix that make this such a rich corner of the world. There are plenty of newer, more comfortable and, frankly, better performing motorcycles available for pounding down the back roads of Pennsylvania than the…

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument includes 300,000 acres in southwestern Arizona along the Mexican border. Think stunning desert vistas, a remoteness so intense you can feel it, heat (it was 112 degrees the day we were there), a sense of danger (more on that in a bit) and organ pipe cactus (a plant found here and few other places in the world). There are at least two interwoven histories here, one of the namesake organ pipe cactus and the other of the inhabitants and explorers of this area. The organ pipe cactus originated in Central America and migrated to its current location more than 3,500 years ago. It evolved to withstand the Sonoran Desert’s extremes, including cold winter nights, extreme heat, torrential rains, high winds and long periods without water.…

If longevity, versatility and development potential count for anything, Alfredo Bianchi’s 1956 design for a stylish 175cc commuter bike should be considered one of the best. Though the Aermacchi Chimera was a flop, Bianchi’s simple OHV powerplant doubled its displacement over two decades, took Renzo Pasolini to second place in the 1972 250cc world championship, and launched the flat-track careers of Cal Rayborn and Gene Romero. Sixty years on, it’s still a weapon of choice in AHRMA Sound of Singles racing. Harley-Davidson may have seen this potential when they bought 50 percent of Aermacchi in 1960. With sales of its big twins faltering, the Motor Company decided that Aermacchi’s touring 250cc, the Ala Bianco (white wing) would sell well in the U.S., and certainly beat out their existing small-bike offering…

An opportunity can come at an inopportune moment. Just ask Jason Friend. When he was invited in late August 2018 to build a custom motorcycle to appear in late June 2019 at the Born Free 11 show in Los Angeles, California, he says the request came completely out of the blue. While Jason was excited about the opportunity, he’d just moved his young family from the San Francisco Bay Area to Phoenix, Arizona, and didn’t really have the funds or the time to dedicate to such a project. “But I talked to my wife, Lori, about this and asked if she thought we could pull it off,” Jason says. “I’d set a bit of money aside from the sale of the house in California to build a shop here in…

To mark its centenary in 2019, Brough Superior is now manufacturing its limited edition Anniversary model unveiled at last year’s EICMA Show, of which just 100 examples will be built costing — what else? — €100,000 each, including 20 percent French tax. So far the company has delivered 48 examples, with further orders coming in all the time, says Brough boss Thierry Henriette. This birthday bike is essentially a seriously blinged-up version of Brough Superior’s SS100 core model, whose DOHC 997cc 8-valve 88-degree V-twin engine is now Euro 4 compliant, and on the Anniversary features an array of four separate slash-cut tapered megaphone exhaust pipes. There’s a vast selection of bolt-on items milled from solid aluminum billet fitted to the bike, and all made in-house at the Brough Superior factory,…

Although best known for its thundering V-twins, Vincent always included a 500cc single in its model range. That is, until the Series D models of 1955. Vincent showed two prototypes of a Series D single — the fully enclosed Victor and a naked Comet — but neither went into production. Series D enthusiast Tony Cording decided he would build his own. First, though, a little history. In the decade after World War II, Vincent’s position as builder of the world’s fastest street bike was threatened by ever-quicker and more powerful parallel twins. First BSA then Triumph established record speeds of over 150mph on the salt. The Rapide’s 45 horsepower and the Shadow’s 55 horsepower were impressive — as was their unmatched torque — but by 1955, a street Tiger 110…

By 1979 Honda’s groundbreaking CB750 was old news, its landmark single-overhead camshaft engine considered a relic compared to the newer DOHC designs from Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha. It was time for a replacement, and with muted fanfare the CB750’s 10-year tenure as the industry icon was unceremoniously halted, treated like warm beer or yesterday’s pizza. But it deserved a more fitting send-off, and for that we turn to one of the notable motorcycle journalists of that era, Frank Conner, who wrote about the termination of the original CB750 for the September 1978 issue of Cycle Guide. Wrote Conner 41 years ago: “In 1979 the Honda CB750 will bite the dust. Think about that: It’s like saying they’re actually going to stop production of Kleenex.” Fitting words, considering the CB750’s demise…

Suzuki T20 piston kit Q: I am trying to source a piston kit for a 1966 Suzuki T20 Hustler, No. 1 oversize. I am hoping you can steer me in the right direction. Henning Tnerkildsen/Sydney, Australia A: From what little I can find out, the original pistons are unobtanium, but Suzuki GT380 pistons are available and fit, with one caution. You must use the GT380 piston pins, as they are 2mm shorter than the T20 pins and designed to fit the 380 pistons. Another option is the Suzuki RG250 MkIII pistons. Good luck with your rebuild. Jetting issue Q: A year ago I picked up a nice 1975 Suzuki TS185 and have been restoring and riding it, reminding me of my youth. I owned a 1972 and 1974 185 along…

11/2 Head to Vicksburg, Mississippi, for the 3rd Annual Vicksburg Vintage Motorcycle Show. Entry is free and open to pre-1990 motorcycles, scooters, dirt bikes, etc. The show runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and more than 15 awards will be given out, including class awards, People’s Choice and Best of Show. Enjoy live entertainment and downtown Vicksburg. The show will be held at the Farmer’s Market park at 1055 Washington St. For more info, contact Roger Harris at roger.harris@ergon.com or (601) 831-2079 or search Vicksburg Vintage Motorcycle Show on Facebook. 11/3 Join the Southern California Norton Owners Club for “the best ride by a dam site,” the Hansen Dam Ride. Now in its 40th year, the ride is a great way to spend a day enjoying classic motorcycles. Recent…