Innehållsförteckning för January 2019 från Real Classic

It feels a little as though I’m repeating myself, here – repeating what I jabbered away about the surprise, delight and considerable entertainment which arrived by simply riding an old bike – a particular type of old bike; in this case a 500 Triumph. You may recall that I passed some rather amusing miles aboard both our own seriously scruffy T100C and a rather more shiny Daytona last month. And they were both great, with their common features shining through, as you’d expect, despite the considerable differences in their cosmetic condition. What I failed to consider at the time was this… one of the onerous tasks of a magazine editor is deciding which bikes make the grade to make the page. We – editors – have a tendency to favour…

A big thank you to Dartford Rebore and Engine Centre. My CSR picked up slightly, very soon after a rebore by them. My fault, I had to go faster than I should have for a very short while. I took the motor to them to have a look at it. They honed out the slight score, cleaned the offending piston of score marks, trued both barrels, stayed open later for me to pick them up, and didn’t charge a thing. Nice people to talk with, too. Alan Brady, member I had been running my Norton on premium brand, premium grade fuel with no problem for a couple of years. This summer, I missed my planned fuel stop on the way to Malvern and had to fill up with some sort…

GOOD TO KNOW • MOTO GUZZI CLUB GB: absurdly friendly club, great calendar of events • WILDGUZZI FORUM: USA forum that has a good step-by-step thread on rebuilding the small-block bevel drive • V65 LARIO BRIAN: Facebook dude and Lario owner who has a valve upgrade package and claims a reliable 8000rpm on his own bike • GUTSIBITS: bevel drive rebuild kit supplies and general spares • NIKS EURO BITS: eBay seller good for hard-to-find spares including speedo drive tangs • NBS: Nigel rebuilds bevel drives with his eyes closed • MARTIN HAGEMANN MOTORRÄDER: independent German Guzzi specialist and Lario expert who can source many hard to find Lario parts…

Let’s start by being provocative. You need a certain degree of self-belief to build ‘specials’. I can say that since specials are all I ever build; I can’t recall ever restoring a standard bike in over 50 years. To embark on building a special, you need to be convinced that you’re creating something better than all the factory experts, or something that’s never been done before… or if it has been done then you’re going to do it better anyway. After all, factory engineers and stylists are constrained by legal niceties and general user-friendliness, while an individual builder has a much freer rein. So if you’re building a bike styled along custom or flat-track or off-road lines, lots of the switchgear and reflectors and general clutter can be jettisoned with…

Am I on my own when I say that I find the increasing amount of petrol stations who insist on helmet removal very frustrating? As a full-face helmet user who wears glasses, this means that I have to remove my gloves, remove my glasses (find somewhere safe to store both so that they don’t blow away) then remove my helmet, also having to find somewhere safe to place it, and then I fill the tank. Then I have to carry my helmet to the payment counter (no way am I going to leave an expensive helmet unattended on a garage forecourt), pay for the fuel, then return to the bike and replace everything again. Wouldn’t it be useful if there was a list of ‘friendly’ filling stations who don’t insist…

When retirement came a-calling and Bob could stop driving HGVs all day, he decided that a ground-up classic bike build would be the ideal project to keep him out of trouble. Little did he know… Bob already owned an Ariel Huntmaster so figured that familiarity would give him a head-start. He tracked down a 1958 frame with a V5C, paid £61.17 for it, and so began a two-year undertaking, one with quite a few bumps in the road. It took a lot of online searching and patient phone calls to track down all the components, and Bob really doesn’t want to hear that a Huntmaster is basically the same as an A10 and all the parts will fit – because of course they won’t. ‘Anyone who thinks so can purchase…

Launched at the 1983 Milan Show, the four-valve V65 Lario came into the brave new world flanked by its near-identical but smaller capacity henchmen, the Imola II and Monza II (not to be confused with the two-valve Imolas and Monzas). They shared common styling but the Imola was a 350, the Monza a 500 and the Lario topped the range at 650. The Lario was available until 1989, accompanied for a while by some four-valve oddities including the mysterious French/Japanese market only V40 Capri. This might’ve been a 350 sold as a 400. The Capri I’ve seen looked like the Imola, except it had a single seat and tail cowl arrangement. Then there was also the extremely uncommon V75 four-valve, a downright odd-looking bike with a washing up bowl fairing,…

For as long as I can remember, the pesky little devil on my right shoulder has been telling me I need an AMC trials bike. Prices which have risen steadily during the past decade have stopped me making the financial stretch to secure one. We’ve all been here: my heart says ‘yes’ but the old head gets in the way, arguing it’s too much of an investment for a motorcycle which would get limited use by this owner. Prices of genuine AMC competition kit vary enormously, but expect to pay anything from £6k-£10k depending on condition, specification, provenance and year of manufacture. 350 models are now as popular as their larger siblings. Bikes with provenance and original patina like Simon’s are becoming extremely scarce, and are naturally expensive. I would…

When Andrew was a 17 year-old apprentice, he wanted nothing more than a shiny blue and silver Ducati. In fact, what he really wanted was a 450 Desmo, ‘but I couldn’t find one. This wasn’t a bad second choice,’ he explains. ‘I just wish I’d had enough for a 750SS, but that was too expensive for an apprentice.’ Back in 1975, his £600 budget wasn’t quite enough for a new 750 GT, so Andrew settled for a year old bevel-drive V-twin, first supplied by Freddie Frith in Grimsby. In theory the bike should’ve been nearly new, but ‘the first owner was a fisherman and it spent its early days parked at the docks while he was at sea, so it was a bit tatty for its age.’ Immediate cosmetic surgery…

Check out the RealClassic Facebook page for up to date details of forthcoming old bike events, and to see if the RC Crew are on manoeuvers. Visit www.facebook.com/realclassicmagazine and ‘like’ the page. In the ‘like’ options, click to ‘see first’ in your news feed. Then you’ll always know what’s happening! JANUARY 1 ST ➤ Happy New Year! Vintage and classic cars and bikes will assemble from 9.30am until 2pm for VINTAGE STONY in the market square at Stony Stratford, MK11 1BE. Awards and stalls, free admission, donations to charity.vintagestony.co.uk JANUARY 5 TH  / 6TH ➤ The Carole Nash Classic Bike Guide WINTER CLASSIC at Newark Showground in Nottinghamshire features a huge autojumble, trade stands, packed scooter halls, and new indoor Scooter World start-up sessions. Special guest Freddie Spencer,…

I recently worked on a Mk1A Royal Enfield Interceptor 750 – in the past I owned a Mk2 and have fettled other Interceptors over the years. This time I was asked to make a very tidy (almost immaculate) Mk1A run as well as it looked. The 750’s owner, Norman, used to work at Royal Enfield and he actually saw this very machine coming down the production line. He road-tested it and even stamped on its engine number! I was asked to look at this Interceptor’s engine because it was using large amounts of oil and smoking badly as a result. Starting the engine was quite difficult and resulted in rough running and, as reported, considerable smoke. Stripping the top end revealed that the recently-fitted oversized pistons had been clipping the…

Something of a shadow is cast over the season of good cheer, with the recent death of Bruce Main-Smith that will have been widely reported by now. Not surprisingly Bruce was an acquaintance of PUB, since he had been a past Chairman and Vice President of the VOC. He then graduated from writing club articles to being a staffman on Motor Cycling, and was a good enough rider to be included in Velocette’s 24 hour record breaking team at Montlhéry. Subsequently he published various books, including a series of Vintage Road Tests by Titch Allen, and manual photocopies that are still available (from the National Motorcycle Museum). For a time he took his stall to various shows, so many readers may have seen or met him. Then more bad news…

What, exactly, can be difficult about fitting a carb to an engine? Nothing, that’s what. I must surely have fitted over a hundred carbs to over a hundred engines down this long and amusingly mis-spent life, and rarely does fitting a carb present a problem. In fact, problems arrive only around the periphery, when I decide that the mounting bolts should be studs, decide to replace them with studs, then discover when things refuse to fit that I was wrong all along and that I’ve stripped the threads anyway. Whenever I’m feeling even slightly smug I gaze at the G12 CSR Matchless, oozing malevolently beneath its grubby cover. Hateful thing. And no, it’s not for sale… This time I’d decided that I would go the whole hog, bite the traditional…