Innehållsförteckning för October 2024 från Real Classic

RealClassic LP WILLIAMS TRIDENT SPECIALS Memory can be unreliable at best, fickle when operating at less than its best. In almost four decades of borrowing other folks’ bikes to write about them I have ridden quite a few which my memory simply cannot recall. Whenever I stumble over photos of them – sometimes with me in the saddle – I still have no memory of riding them. Mysterious, no? Other times and other bikes were somehow so entirely memorable that I recall the riding event in great detail, even without the story I wrote way back to assist the grey cells. One of those machines is the very first LP Williams triple I rode. It was a very long time ago, and was indeed something of a legendary experience. That bike…

Kawasaki had every right to expect success in 1966 when they took the plunge with Japan's first large capacity twin, the 624cc W1. After all, the entire postwar British industry was based around the parallel twin design they'd 'borrowed. The W1 was unashamedly inspired by BSA's A7 500 twin, although the Kawasaki first saw the light of day as the Meguro K1, a pushrod 500. When Kawasaki and Meguro merged, the K2 was launched, soon followed by the W1 650. The W1 used a single 31mm Mikuni carb, a four-speed gearbox and, like the British twins it emulated, the W1 located its gearchange pedal on the right. But it was more like a BSA A7 than the later A50, with a separate gearbox - quite quaint for the late 1960s.…

PART THE LAST I 'd booked to attend the Norton Owners Club National Rally back in January, and it was finally almost time to pack. The weekend before, I performed my usual pre-flight checks - draining the wet-sumped oil, checking chain tension, oil levels and that lights and horn are in order. I was surprised that operating both front and rear brakes failed to produce a glimmer at the rear lamp. The front was simply one of the wires coming off the switch. Tightening the spade connector and re-connecting cured that. The rear was another matter… During the restoration I had converted Doris's 'original' switch from pull-on to the correct push-off operation and one of the alloy tabs securing the switch contact plate to the switch body broke. So I…

Compared to war-ravaged Italy, France and Germany, bombed-out Britain didn’t experience the same post-WW2 boom in new motorcycle registrations, despite a similar chronic lack of personal transportation. That’s because the UK Government prioritised earning precious foreign currency–principally US dollars – over the convenience of its population, by exporting the products of the various local bike manufacturers in return for granting them access to postwar stocks of scarce materials like steel, aluminium and rubber. So new motorcycles for British customers were hard to obtain, and much prized. It was a situation ripe for the entrepreneurial talents of a well-connected person like Kaye Don. He founded the Ambassador Motorcycle Company in Ascot, Berkshire in 1946, to provide a range of basic transportation models powered by the 197cc Villiers 5E two-stroke motor, with…

RealClassic BIG BANG BULLETS PART THE FIRST In 2004 we started racing Royal Enfields. Well, one of them at least. We had intended to catch the start of the British historic racing season but weren't ready. Instead we went to the first Imeeting of that season at Mallory Park as spectators. Before this my brother lan and I had attended the ACU course to get our racing licenses. I didn't complete the medical so never acquired mine. As it turned out, this was probably just as well. I soon found myself busy enough in the paddock with the spanners! Our idea was to show all those old codgers pottering around on their pampered Gold Stars and Manx Nortons a thing or two. We would this with our home-built Royal Enfield Fury-based…

BIKES SUZUKI 125 EN2A, 2007. New exhaust, tyres, battery. Good condition. MoT June 2025. £600.07779 068009 or swift.wol@gmail.com Telford YAMAHA 125 YBR CUSTOM. Two elderly owners, under 2k miles from new. MoT August 2025. 2 keys, tool kit, handbook. Full history. As new. Red. £1300. 07779 068009 or swift.wol@gmail.com Telford BITS MATCHLESS G2/G5 or AJS Model 14 or 8. Rear petrol tank mounting kit. 044244 T-Bolt, Sleeve spacer 044216, 2x Rubbers 044336, 2x washers and nut. Delivered UK £23; overseas at cost. Richard in sunny Dorset; 01258 454814 or richardeileen@hotmail.com (Frank has a set of these fitted to his G2CSR and is made up with them!! TP) BSA B31/33/A7 or A10 new seat cover in maroon vinyl. The earlier type for 1954/55/56 models. Made for my B31/33 but never been…

PART SEVEN Right then, that’s it. I’ve somehow managed to do pretty much all the jobs, and even better got them done in time for my deadline of a race meeting. Crikey. So this is the last ‘build-up’ episode, then next month you’ll hopefully be turning these pages and seeing the finished article. Crikey indeed. It’s been a fun build too. As ever, there have been a few ups and downs and, not very often, a couple of sidetracks in the middle that meant the focus had to be elsewhere, but we got there. What I know and you don’t (yet) is just how it’s going to look when it is all put together. And I like doing these build-ups this way, I’m not keen on you seeing the finished…

RealClassic HONDA CB1300 What is this that you see before you? I suppose the answer to that depends on your point of view. A bloated UJM? The zenith of Honda’s motorcycle building prowess? A NEW bike that doesn’t deserve to be in an old bike magazine? Or a model that can trace its genesis back over thirty years? Not only that, it is still a current production motorcycle in markets other than the UK. Yes, for only 1,562,000 Japanese Yen, you too could own a brand new, box fresh CB1300. Whatever your thoughts and emboldened by Chris White’s recent tales of the Kawasaki ZZR600, I’d like to tell you a little bit about this remarkable machine. Project Big-1, (yes, I know), was launched as a 1000cc naked bike in 1992. How…

The Sammy Miller Museum in New Milton, Hampshire, UK is crammed full of interesting machines – including one of the biggest collections of exotic racing bikes in the world, and all are runners! These include the V8 Moto Guzzi, AJS Porcupine, Mondial 250 with dustbin fairing, Nortons, Ducatis, Suzukis, Hondas, Velocettes and many more! The Road Bike Hall includes a huge collection of factory prototypes and exotic designs from all over the world, and of course there are plenty of dirtbikes and trial icons, too – over 400 bikes in total. The Museum is open to visitors daily from 10am every day at New Milton, Hampshire B25 5SZ. 01425 620777 / www.sammymiller.co.uk…

RealClassic KAWASAKI W2 If you have extra money you'd like to get rid of, beyond the obvious courses of investing in the stock market or donating to the presidential campaign (both good ways to dump dollars), I highly recommend motorcycle restoration. A friend once asked me how to restore a motorcycle. I said, 'Save some money, buy some parts, repeat forever. The old joke is: how do you make $10,000 on a motorcycle restoration? Spend $20,000. Once upon a time I thought that was funny… until I started restoring motorcycles. My Navy friends found a great way to get rid of excess $1 bills and help young ladies, but that can be hard on a marriage. What is even worse than finding a cheap motorcycle to restore? Obviously, finding a FREE…

RealClassic AN ENFIELD ACHIEVEMENT Cast your mind back a couple of months to RC242 when we learned about JP Burney and his historic cross-country canter to claim victory in a 200 mile ‘reliability trial’. That’s how it was described at the time, when racing on public roads would certainly have been frowned upon, but no one was fooled. Thirteen riders did their utmost to finish first, completing the route in a single day along largely unsurfaced dirt roads at speeds touching 40mph. Some 120 years later, more than twice as many riders assembled at the same location to travel the same route at a more leisurely pace on ancient and modern motorcycles. Among the assembled participants were brothers David and Eamon Crawford, who brought along a pair of Moto Guzzis, one…

FRANK WESTWORTH RealClassic This is all so exciting! Believe it or believe it not, it is rare for me to actually decide that I want a toy, a motorcycle plaything, and then to actually go off to find one. It may well be that the last time this happened was maybe fifteen years ago, when I decided that I would build myself a Norton Navigator entirely from spares. Why? Because I had observed with much surprise that autojumbles and eBay appeared to offer loads of Navigator parts. From big chunks of bikes down to tiny little components. Complete engines to tab washers. The latter was very important to me… A very long time ago - sometime in the 1970s - I acquired a non-functional Navigator - for almost nothing. Which is…