Innehållsförteckning för February 2024 från Real Classic

Even after more than a half-century of motorcycling, during which time I've somehow managed to ride just about every machine I've actually wanted to – and a few of the other kind – you might have expected that I would be pretty familiar with pretty much all of the more mundane and practical classics. Add your own definition of'classic’ here, please. Let's not argue. I was reminded only recently by an old school chum (and yes, we really were at school together!) that I had advised him against buying a Triumph Bonneville. It's true: I had so advised him. My suggestion was that a TR6 would be the better bike, mainly because I've shared the delight of millions of Triumph riders by riding rather more excellent TR6 twins than T120…

ROYAL ENFIELD 250 Recently, I worked on a rather rare post-war Clipper, as made from 1953, and not to be confused with the later, unit-construction models. Seldom seen these days, the engines clearly display their ancestry, which derives from Enfield's ohv pre-war models. The pre-unit Clippers are rare enough not to appear among all the models covered by the online parts books on Hitchcocks website. I've worked on similar Clippers before, like a greenlaner a few years back that was a bit of a head-turner in its own way. I even owned one briefly, although about half of that one had decomposed through being parked up in a garden for 50 years! My recent encounter was with a complete and rather tidy example. It came to me for the clutch…

Norton Dominator Service Notes Once upon a time there was a remarkable movie called something like Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Socks, But Were Afraid To Ask. As I already know everything there is to know about socks, I never bothered to watch it. My loss, possibly. To my knowledge no-one has previously produced a book focussed on Norton Dominators rather than socks, but… but now they have. A big fanfare of trumpets, please, for a brand-new publication from the Norton Owners Club with the rather shorter title of Norton Dominator Service Notes. It really is everything you always wanted to know about… Norton Dominators. Every time I receive a request for the best reading for an owner of Norton's most excellent Commando I recommend a somewhat smaller…

Old news this month, from last year in fact (although not last year at the time of writing). Events have slackened off somewhat, for PUB is not the trials or scrambles type, especially with advancing age. But Motorcycle Live at the NEC takes place not so far away and remains on the list of shows to attend. Or it does for the present, but with a ticket price over £30 it may not in future. The free bike parking, inside a hall (for changing out and back into motorbike clobber in the dry) does help, but if PUB had to pay for car parking her mean streak would surely take over. This year, however, she was quite keen to see the new Triumph ‘Speed 400’ which promises an acceptable 170kg…

I've taken a keen interest in your coverage of new bikes that are suitable for the more, ahem, ‘classic'reader. While living in Italy in the 1990s, I developed an accidental, parallel career importing Morinis, Guzzis, Ducatis, Gileras,Vespas et al. Of all of them, I thought that the Guzzi Imola and Monza were the best of the lot. Compact, light, stable, flickable, solid, reliable, economical, no messy chain and with perfectly adequate power and superb brakes. I bought my fourth when my Velocette Venom was at the doctor's for a lengthy spell recently and reminded myself why I liked Monzas so much. I went off on a bit of a tangent a few years ago and bought an MZ Skorpion Traveller, thinking that it would be an ideal single, as it…

Constructing one complete motorcycle entirely on your own, engine and all, would be enough of a challenge for most mortals. This would especially be the case if the result turned out as well as the vintage-era BSA Empire Twin M46 created single-handedly in Melbourne, Australia by Emu Engineering's one man band, electrical engineer Doug Fraser, as featured in the February 2023 issue of RealClassic. That 30s-style tribute to the historic BSA marque, in the form of a rigidframed girder-fork 50-degree V-twin what-if motorcycle based on doubling up the Val Page-designed M23 Empire Star single which debuted in 1936, was Fraser's attempt to build a bike he wished the British firm had produced in the prewar era, except they never did. Its year-long construction took 1400 hard hours of spare time…

AUCTION ACTION It started over breakfast, as good things often do. My dining companion mentioned a bike he'd put into a motorcycle auction and tossed the catalogue to me. Flicking through, my first impressions were of a weakening market. There were lots of Triumph and BMW twins, many with attractive-looking guide prices. Skimming past the more exotic lots, which tend to have a page to themselves, I found myself in the more… ‘unloved’ section of the sale. This is where the real fun is for me; the bikes that have been dragged from sheds after decades of slumber, often with no or low reserves. And, one of those bikes caught my eye. ‘I might pop along with you’, implied moral support and ersatz coffee stirred with a dolphin-friendly spoon that…

PROJECT PANTHER REANIMATION PAST THE FIRST It seemed pretty much dead. There were obviously parts missing, such as a front wheel, and what there was did not look healthy. In short, this was going be challenging / interesting (delete as appropriate to your level of optimism), if only because it was the first time I had attempted this much work on an old British motorcycle. My experience of working (frequently!) on my Tiger 750 back in the early 1970s does not make me any kind of engineer or skilled mechanic, but I knew enough to realise the Panther was a challenge; possibly one that was too much. Remembering all those magazine warnings about unrealistic optimism – from thinking with your heart rather than your head – caused me to spend…

You may have assumed from the lack of comments about the supremely glorious Mk3 Commando I bought in the USA last year (actually the year before last by the time you read this) that life has been entirely blissful for months and months now. Has it? Well yes, but not necessarily where the Commando is concerned. And as it's the deep midwinter (late December as I write this) I thought I'd bring you up to speed regrading Norton's finest. I would like to claim that many many happy and fulfilling miles have passed beneath its wheels since I wrote it up a few issues ago – but that would not be entirely true. The Woodsman, however, is running as well as only a Royal Enfield can, and is indeed providing…

PO BOX 66 BUDE EX23 9ZX NURSE! THE SCREENS! I had an interest in motorcycles before I met my husband, David. While living in London, I bought a 50cc moped to get out and about. Having come off it a couple of times as they're really not stable, I then bought a 125cc Honda. I had a job working on the telephones for various minicab companies. One of them also ran a successful motorcycle courier side, and this began to interest me. A few months down the line I'd ditched the keyboard for an all-in-one leather suit (don't get excited: leather clothing for ladies wasn't really available then, so I had to get the smallest men's size, which still swamped me), and went on the road for a summer as…

I enjoyed Rowena's Member's Enclosure and laughed out loud at the mention of racing wildlife in 1923. I can just imagine a tweedclad country gent racing a snipe on his Sunbeam. Sadly they're shot because they fly very fast; most'hunters'don't even bother retrieving them. Last year a hare ran out into the narrow country road and I clocked it at 35mph before it finally had the sense to pull off into the hedge: impressive! Robert Murdoch, member I was once brought down by a hare running alongside my BSA A10. Inexplicably, it turned and ran straight into the front wheel. We both survived the encounter, too. Frank W…

Great content in RC237, especially if you are an Enfield fan as I am. I was especially interested as I have direct experience of both the REs in the last issue. While a dohc 250 might never have been one of Enfield's future models they were interested in the concept, building prototype 175 and 200cc versions. The 200 has disappeared (unless anyone definitely knows its whereabouts?) but the 175 survived factory closure and was built up into a complete bike via L & D Motors in Bristol, who were very close to the factory in its later incarnation as Enfield Precision Engineers. The bike was sold at auction a few years ago to a fellow REOC club member who kindly allowed me to ride it. What a beauty it was…

Sometimes the big questions are asked: ‘Why am I here? What is my purpose? Where are my socks, and why do they never match? Where do all the Tupperware lids go?’ And in the two-wheeled world, or indeed sometimes the three-wheeled world, there are some questions that may come to us. Not the normal ones, such as: ‘Where are my keys,’ ‘I wonder if it will start?’ and ‘Do those little lumps of lead / mysterious potions I put in my petrol tank actually do anything?’ And there are motorcyclists who ponder other more intriguing questions. Those who cannot look at an old motorcycle without thinking that they should do something very silly with it indeed. This maybe something akin to: ‘Shall I fit a supercharger to this 1954 engined…