Innehållsförteckning för February 2022 från Real Classic

As a young boy, Chas grew up living quite close to the AMC factory in Plumstead. Back then, he had no real knowledge of the motorcycle factory on his doorstep. Instead, his father was a keen cyclist, so one Christmas Chas was delighted to receive a James bicycle. This introduced him to the freedom of a world explored on two wheels. Chas also developed a love of music and spent many hours gazing in the window of the Holdsworth cycle shop and Art Nash’s music shop. He promised himself that he would one day own a racing bicycle and a guitar. There was also a motorbike shop, a James dealer, opposite Chas’s school. James, the very company who had manufactured his bicycle. Each day, while waiting for the bus, Chas…

Whenever old bike enthusiasts gets together it’s not long before conversation drifts to comparing changes that members have made to their bike. On one occasion an angry member demanded to know just what I’d done to my 1948 Mark3 Douglas. ‘You left me standing!’ he complained bitterly. Well, here’s the answer – upgrades. My Mark3 Douglas is not a collector’s treasured original. Like many older bikes it was already a bit of a hybrid when I bought it, in 1996. When it was first made, just three years after the end of the war, materials were still in short supply. Bikes were made to a tight budget, often relying on low grade materials and designed to run on very poor quality fuel. One Douglas Club member told me that he…

One of the great things about biking is the chance to express individuality. Whether it’s your choice of machine, your style of gear or where you go, you stand out from the crowd as an individual. Customisation is a vivid outlet for this trend, has been pursued with vigour ever since the motorcycle morphed from a mode of essential transport to a plaything in the early 1960s. To some (mentioning no names apart from Odgie’s…) customisation implies cutting, chopping and fabrication, which in turn means access to skills, machinery and talent not available to many. But it need not be that complex. There is a thriving industry of bolt-on custom parts, decals and paints that can individualise a machine without access to the more complex procedures needed for heavy duty…

About a year ago, maybe more, maybe less, I was bowling down the local lanes aboard a Triumph. This is not entirely unusual, given that a Triumph is my go-to bike for all seasons, but that modernist machine is a twin, and I was bowling along on a single. You can see it now in the pics (hopefully), and you’ve seen it before, several times. It’s a T25SS, or ‘Blazer SS’ according to the transfers on the side panels. As I bowled along (bowling being less frantic than barrelling, in case you wondered) I rediscovered that the indicators were becoming erratic. Sporadic. Intermittent. Occasional. All of them great words to describe an increasing but unpredictably increasing reluctance to flash. They always lit up, usually flashed once then stayed lit until…

How can a Golden Flash be blue, I asked myself? Isn’t it remarkable how irrelevant thoughts can descend when we’re out and about on a rather grand motorcycle? When borrowing a bike which proves to be - how can I put this? - difficult, my mind is usually filled with worries about my ability to actually ride the thing, whether it will expire before I can return it, and whether I’d have the courage to write up its story once I’d returned to the bosom of sanity that is RCHQ. This blue Beezer was just great. The A10 range of 650 twins is right up there with my own favourite old Brit 650s, alongside their AMC rivals, and ahead of Triumphs and Nortons. Mostly. There’s something reassuringly solid about them.…

No contest. Only the most dogmatic fan of any of the other Big Four J-marques would argue against the belief that Yamaha has always been by some way the most innovative and daring Japanese motorcycle manufacturer in terms of product design. From left-field models that became legends in their lifetime, like the DT-1 Ténéré and RD250/350LC, or the V-Max, of course, and the Ténéré’s much-loved two-valve street-single forerunner, the SR500, right up to the groundbreaking R1/R6 hypersport sisters with which Yamaha reinvented the four-cylinder sportbike class. Or the WR/YZF400 twins with which they then did the same thing off-road, let alone the twin-cylinder TMax XP500 maxi-scooter which also reinvented the twist’n’go category. The house of the tuning forks has a proven track record of innovative response to market trends with…

You have to give BSA credit for try, try, trying again. Their first post-war attempt to cater to the gentleman motorcyclist with a refined touring twin didn’t quite set the world alight. It was almost immediately obvious in 1947/48 that the ground-breaking new Sunbeam 500 was just too weird and wonderful to lure buyers away from Turner’s well-proven and extremely pretty twin. BSA tried again with the revised S7 and the slightly sporting S8. Same result. Sigh. The Sunbeam experiment rattled on unremarkably through the 1950s, but it must have been deeply disappointing to the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer, particularly when potential wealthy customers were spending cash not only on Triumph but also Norton, AJS, Royal Enfield and Matchless twins. Everyone was getting in on the game – not least…

Rides, rallies, shows and jumbles! Point your wheels this way… SAT/SUN 12TH & 13TH FEBRUARY ➤ The CLASSIC DIRT BIKE SHOW is at the Telford International Centre, TF3 4JH. Special display of off-road Enfields, plus strange specials and sidecars, private entries, club displays, trade stalls, jumble and more. Advance tickets £14. classicdirtbikeshow.co.uk / 01507 529529 FRI/SAT 18TH & 19TH FEBRUARY ➤ There’s a two-day CLASSIC MOTORCYCLE AUCTION at Pughs in Ledbury HR8 2LP. Spares, projects and literature on Friday; vintage and classic bikes on Saturday. hjpugh.com / 01531 631122 SATURDAY 19TH FEBRUARY ➤ The huge VMCC BIKEJUMBLE opens 9.30 at the Bath and West Showground, Shepton Mallet BA4 6QN. Indoor and outdoor stalls. Admission £4. vmccsomerset.co.uk / 07847 430741 ➤ The GREAT NORTH JUMBLE starts 7am at North Yorks Event…

I can’t deny that the bright light of good fortune has shone on me and my life more often than anyone could usually dare to hope. When it comes to bikes, I’ve definitely been a lucky boy. I was at Dave Goddard Motorcycles (about 200 yards from Heathrow’s northern runway) in the late 1990s, trying to blag whatever death trap I was riding through an MoT, when my path first crossed with this Norton. A chance encounter with a friendly chap whose Bantam refused to start led to him borrowing my tools and Bantam knowledge to get him on his way. ‘Do you like Nortons?’ he asked through a haze of two-stroke smoke as he donned his hat and gloves. ‘My friend is selling one and is asking £1500 for…

After finishing my previous project, I was idly looking for the next challenge when I happened to see a 1988 Gilera Nuovo Saturno 350 single. It was a Japanese import for sale at West Coast Imports, who quite often have some unusual machines; Japanese home-market bikes not available in Europe. A short discussion and an exchange of funds followed, and the Gilera was despatched via courier. I bought it to rebuild it, so the condition didn’t worry me too much. The Gilera 350 Saturno was made in Italy but intended only for Japan, so it piqued my interest. I have more than a passing interest in Italian bikes and have owned and / or rebuilt many Italian machines; Ducati, Morini, Moto Guzzi, MiVal, Bianchi, Belgarda, Gilera, MV Agusta, Aermacchi, Lambretta,…