Innehållsförteckning för June 2021 från Real Classic

Looking for even more RealClassic reading? You’ll find brand-new and previous unpublished features at Real-Classic.co.uk; the articles we couldn’t quite fit into print. The internet has all the room required to give our expert and experienced contributors the space to explore their subjects in depth. For instance: AJS ADVENTURES: a slightly supernatural excursion through the Forest Of Dean in the dark of night on a Model 18 ENFIELD’S ELECTRA: an argument in favour of the less-loved lean-burn Bullet All this and much more at www.Real-Classic.co.uk BEEZUMPH UPDATE: postponed again – but on the calendar for 2022 BSA BANTAM D7: as if a mighty 175cc wasn’t enough, one reader recalls the modifications made to his sporting lightweight which nigh-on doubled its power output. Cluck! RC readers write, rant and rattle on...…

I do admire those who take a lifetime to create their perfect bike, but I am not one of them. I am possibly more of the FW school, in that I want to ride it but, truth be told, I have very little patience and am easily dissuaded from restoration if it is likely to take more than a few days. I have enjoyed FW’s ongoing fight with springs and am glad he overcame them. It reminded me of my first bike, or at least the first bike that I could take on the road and ultimately pass my test; a Montesa Impala Sport available in 1968 in kit form for the bargain price of £185. The kickstart return spring was on the outside of the timing side engine cover…

Thought I would drop a note after seeing my mighty Terrier in the articles by Mike Estall. I have been the Terrier’s proud (new) owner for some time and enjoy the bike every ride. In fact it’s probably my go-to bike for our lovely Hampshire lanes. It always brings a smile to my face. The people who stand and watch me potter past seem to be expecting a Goldie or similar due to her beautiful bark. The Terrier is now back to a mighty 150cc as the Kawasaki piston was pretty tired and the 150 really suits it. Hopefully people will see me out and about at long last so stop and say ‘Hi’ to this little bit of history.…

It’s funny how things turn out, don’t you agree? There I’ve been, chattering away about the strange dilemmas which can infect the most resilient of us: such as whether to buy back a bike you sold off a while ago to finance something else. Chatter chatter chatter. The previous pre-owned machine was the Harris T140 Bonneville we featured on the cover a couple of months back. I decided against it. Not sure why. One of the more amusing aspects of increasing decrepitude is that I tend to remember only positive events and their backgrounds. So I remember vividly the good times when justifying my recent acquisition of a machine similar to but different from two other machines of the same marque and model which I’d sold earlier. A long time…

I’m running out of bits for my bikes! And that’s a statement I never thought I’d make. But it’s true. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to scour the stands at jumbles that I’ve just about run out of decent useable original bits for several of my bikes. And even that well-known online auction site appears to have dried up. Whenever possible, I like to seek out and acquire NOS bits and bats. I maintain a sort-of mental list of the things I’d like to replace on my old machinery and when the opportunity arises I attempt to remember bits of the bits list and set off clutching tenners around any handy jumble. Sadly but predictably, I rarely find what I’m looking for, even if I’ve managed to…

I came across an old issue of which mention problems with clutch slip when attempting to kickstart a B40. Many moons ago I started road racing on a Tiger Cub, long before the current state-of-the-art Cub trick parts. I probably built my competitive bike for less than you’d pay for a clutch in the 21st century! I seem to remember paying no more than £5 for an SS Dell’Orto carburettor. A GP worked the best; slides and needles were more ready available than those for the Italian carburettor, and cheaper too. Back to the plot. Before I had enough experience to appreciate what the effect of an alternative oil might have in the primary drive, I experienced clutch slip when trying to bump start at the beginning of nearly every…

What did the legendary Hollywood actor James Dean and the even more famous character of Arthur ‘The Fonz’ Fonzarelli from Happy Days have in common? Answer: they both rode a Triumph Trophy. Why? Because, like the Hollywood legend himself and the actor that rode one in the TV series was often heard to say on the show, the Trophy was cool. Ayyy… At this point it would be perfectly acceptable to ignore the rest of this article and just spend a moment admiring the pictures of this 500cc twin; without doubt it has to be one of the prettiest post-war motorcycles ever made. For all his well-documented personal failings Edward Turner absolutely knew how to design an eye-catching motorcycle, and even a jaded old hack like this writer, hitherto immune…

Over the past 50 years, my A10 has changed appearance so much that some members at the Worcester Auto-Cycle Club have wondered if it was more than one bike which shared a registration. Obviously, these allegations are totally unfounded! But the BSA 650 has gone through many incarnations since first acquired in 1968, when it was swapped for a 250 Greeves Challenger. Although it was re-registered in August 1967 as a Rocket Gold Star, I discovered that the A10 was actually a 1958 Super Rocket engine housed in a 1958 Goldie frame. It was presented in café racer trim, complete with an 8” front brake converted to a twin-leader, Taylor Dow Superleggera alloy top yoke, clip-on bars and rearsets. Its crowning glory was a glassfibre combined petrol and oil tank…

Dynamos, like magnetos, are unfairly blamed for all kinds of electrical problems. The dynamo can be a very reliable device, but as time has gone by so owners have found novel ways of abusing and misusing these trusty devices. The first dynamo was demonstrated by Faraday in 1832. It used fixed magnets to create the magnetic field and the voltage was varied by how quickly the generating coil rotated in the magnetic field. The first breakthrough in creating a practical dynamo for industrial application was replacing the fixed magnets with an electrical-magnetic (field) coil, powered by a separate small dynamo. Then came the discovery in the 1850s that a dynamo could self-generate. They noticed that with the dynamo disconnected and the field coil disconnected a small residual magnetic field in…

I had seen Scott Pearson’s bike a couple of times, usually from a distance or occasionally flashing past me, but I finally got a close look at it last summer. It rolled into the gathering in neutral. Soon a small group were fixing a clutch cable with pliers and a cook’s blowtorch, borrowed from a chef running a nacho stand. It was clearly a remarkble thing, this Suzuki T500 that uses Jack Difazio’s hub-centre steering system, so deserved further investigation. In his workshop in Frome during the 1950s, Jack Difazio decided that the telescopic fork didn’t work terribly well and decided to do something about it. That something was his hub-centre system. At first it was used in a racing sidecar outfit, and it was only when the disc brake…

Few other Vintage-era British manufacturers offered as extensive or as varied a range of motorcycles in the late 1920s as Ariel, one of the pioneer brands in two-wheeled history, which was by then part of the Components Ltd group owned by the Sangster family. Charles Sangster had purchased Ariel back in 1902, but it wasn’t until his son Jack – who’d duly prove to be one of the most astute management figures ever in British motorcycle industry annals – took over running the company after WW1 that the Birmingham-based marque really began to flourish. This especially came after Val Page joined it in 1925 from JAP as Chief Designer, then from 1926 onwards produced a flow of good-selling new models powered by Ariel’s own engines of his creation. Previously, Ariel…

To complement the interesting feature of the Wallaby in RC205, here’s a photo from the Royal Enfield Owners’ Club archive of NSW residents being terrorised by a Redditch oddity. If there was ever an example of using up old stock… The REOC owns a healthy library of professional factory photos of most models; a few thousand high quality photos are safely stored. The club is open to all enthusiasts – you don’t need to own a Royal Enfield. All you need is an interest in the marque. Robert Murdoch, member Observe all those sheep running in terror before the mighty Royal Enfield! Even more exciting than the BSA Rough Rider, although… Frank W…

During 1959, I was serving my National Service with the RAF and was posted to Wiltshire for training as an air radio mechanic. For 15 weeks we were allowed home most weekends and my 1955 Terrier coped well. I travelled from Melton Mowbray, picking up my pal Terry for the 125 mile trip on Sunday night and back on Friday, other duties permitting. This was before a lot of bypasses and motorways existed, so we rode through Leicester, Coventry, the Cotswolds to Swindon and the A4. The little bike seemed happy at 50-55mph, and given a downhill run might make 60. I was still on L-plates but Terry had a full licence so we were legal. If you read the account of Mr Turner’s ride from Land’s End to John…

In the article about my CZ which appeared in RC186, I mentioned that I had another CZ 250 in my garage. I had some ideas about fitting it with a fairing and altering some other bits and pieces – but a friend of mine really wanted it, so I sold it to him. Probably more to save it from my madcap designs than anything else! With that CZ safely out of harm’s way of my spannering efforts, there was a space in my garage. What would fill the gap? I started to look around for a similar motorcycle, a two-stroke twin of around 250cc. I have always liked quarter-litre two-stroke twins, much more so than any other class of motorcycle. I like all sorts and sizes and have owned many…

Why is it that when we think of classic bikes, invariably our thoughts produce visions of older machinery? Classics surely aren’t created by age alone. They are still being created in our lifetimes, just waiting to see if, further down the road they qualify for that magic title. Who knows if BMW’s R80 G/S model will ever qualify as a classic? After 21 years of living with one, I feel that it is a good example of a bike that just might one day qualify for that lofty designation. It was the late 1970s and BMW’s motorcycle sales were floundering due to a weak dollar and a perception that BMWs were too conservative against the growing threat from Japan. With BMW’s new three and four cylinder K-series models still in…

Over the years I’ve found some machines because I went looking for them. Others have found me. Thus it was at the Kempton autojumble, before lockdowns started. I was helping on my mate’s stand, looking at the opposite stall where a handsome Ducati was displayed. The owner started it up and it sounded as good as it looked. I just had to go and have a look, as you do. Just as a punt I made an offer, not expecting it to be accepted… and it wasn’t so I thought no more about it. People stopped to look at the 350 but no one bought it. While we were packing up the owner walked over to say he might consider my offer after all. Later that week the phone rang.…