Innehållsförteckning för November 2024 från Real Classic

‘I was looking round for a smaller bike as a daily rider. I put in an order after a look-see at the showroom. Could I get my leg over, did it feel right? I never bother with a test ride; I feel like it needs a few months of riding to decide how a bike suits. I bought the Speed 400 as the X was too tall and not really what I need for road use. I use it to explore the Kentish lanes and usually invent some errand that really needs a long circuitous ride. ‘I’ve added a Powerbronze fender extender, a Dart screen (very good) and a Triumph headlight protector. The latter is really a styling thing and was a pain to fit. I have also ordered a…

RealClassic BMW F650GS I’d never bimbled outside the UK on a motorcycle. With time seemingly accelerating faster than a scalded Hayabusa, I decided an oversea trip was on the cards. Which bike to take? It seemed far too sensible and easy to take my nearly-new KTM 890 Adventure. I sold it and started looking for a mount that would tour well and do some light off-roading. The Enfield Himalayan appeared to fit my requirements, so I bought one from a neighbour who found it too tall. At first I enjoyed the Himmy… until I tested its touring credentials on a trip up to the Flow Country in the far north of Scotland. That’s where the brief love affair ended. It was fine on the lanes near home but didn’t have enough…

PART THE LAST Er, here it is done. The end. OK. Maybe you’d like to know a little bit more than that… but basically, this is it. A bunch of hours down the shed each week spread over two or three months. If you’ve done everything right you get to wheel out yet another race bike. Hurrah! Putting it all back together after paint was simple enough. That’s the great advantage of building it all up into a running stage first. But before I stripped it down, I thought it best to actually run the engine. Which meant it would have helped if it actually had some compression. And I discovered it didn’t. Ah, so much for rebuilt motors off eBay then! I wasn’t going to pull the motor out…

RealClassic CONCOCTING A SPROCKET When I bought my little Moto Guzzi Cardellino, the drive chain and front sprocket were obviously very worn. The rear sprocket initially looked to be OK. However closer inspection showed considerable wear to the tooth sides, not easy to see with the chain in position. Running a new chain on worn sprockets quickly results in a worn-out chain, so something needed to be done. That something would happen in my workshop. The front sprocket was relatively easy to sort out (see RC177). But there was no way an 8.25” diameter sprocket could be held in the chuck of a 3.5” lathe. For those engineers who have dividing heads, rotary tables and milling machines in their workshops, none of this would be very difficult – so if you…

PO BOX 66 BUDE EX23 9ZX WINNER! WINNER! As regular readers will know, you get more than justa magazine when you take outa subscription to RealClassic. You’re automatically enrolled in the RealClassic Club which gives you access to the membersonly Facebook group, and you’ll receive the monthly Members’ Enclosure newsletter with your magazine (digital subscribers should continue past the final pages of the issue and it appears as an extra page at the end). Extra entertainment at no extra cost! We also try to make your lives a tiny bit more interesting with subscriber-only giveaways and competitions. Earlier this year, members had the chance to win one of half a dozen brilliant bike books, from JeffClew’s biography of Edward Turner to the history of the Clubman’sTT races. This obviously caught…

‘When the new Triumph 400s came out I saw some online articles and was intrigued. Then I was in Fowlers, having the fuel tank on my BSA Gold Star Legacy changed under warranty. I wandered around the Triumph section and the Scrambler was there in all three colours. I was attracted by its somewhat classical style, like the analogue speedo, but in a modern context. After looking it over I knew the Phantom Black one would suit me so I resolved to get a test ride. ‘Fowlers gave the keys and said I had it for a couple of hours. Down the A-road we went and straight off down the lanes. It did not disappoint. The engine is revvy but also quite torquey, while the suspension felt plush compared to…

PART THE LAST It was all coming together nicely, but as the bikes became faster, the brakes and handling became more of an issue. This was easily dealt with on the 500, which still ran in the specials class, by fitting a disc brake. That also did away with a lot of unsprung weight on the front end. There was no 350 specials class so our 350 ran in the pre-1962 class and needed to be more original. It had to use what appeared to be components made by Royal Enfield back in the period. A 7” sls front brake was the best the 350 could have. As our results with the 350 improved, there were mutterings in the paddock about its 5-speed gearbox not being within the rules. When…

FRANK WESTWORTH One of the many features of the A65 which appealed to me was the small headlight – not standard for a Lightning or Thunderbolt, but fitted to the Firebird Scrambler. Another incentive to waste money was the pair of folding rider footrests – also stock for an A65FS but not A65T or A65L. The final straw in this logic-defeating exercise was the entirely non-stock exhaust system. The downpipes appear to be from a Triumph, requiring a truly creative bodge to hold them in place, while the silencers are Dunstall Decibel copies, I think. Though they do sound good. How could I resist these obvious temptations? You know the answer to that. But basically, I really liked the colour and how ‘together’ it appeared to be. You know when…

RealClassic EGLI ENFIELD 624 CAFÉ RACER All good things must come to an end, and after inventing the V-twin café racer more than sixty years ago, Swiss performance guru Fritz Egli, now 87, ran the gamut of two-wheeled excess, with a series of bikes he and his team constructed to the highest engineering standards in the converted hilltop lumber store south of Zurich which comprised the Egli factory. He powered his creations by a variety of engines ranging in complexity from one to six cylinders. The roughly 3000 hand-built performance motorcycles Egli created from 1968 up until his 2012 retirement, when he handed his business over to the Frei family, included esoteric two-wheelers of every extreme. They ran it until last year when they finally shut up shop. These machines ranged…

You know how you wait ages for a bus, and then three turn up all at once? That’s me and the motorcycling zeitgeist. All my riding life, I’ve hankered after a pocketsized bike with plenty of performance which isn’t built down to a budget. And for most of my motorcycling life, that simply hasn’t existed. The majority of lower capacity and physically compact machines tend to be ‘entry level’ and ‘cheap and cheerful’… which often turns out to be ‘cheap and nasty.’ I don’t want a tatty little hack: I want a proper, prestige machine from a mainstream dealer – at two-thirds normal scale. For four decades I’ve been working around this – it’s not beyond the wit of (wo)man to adapt a big bike to suit a smaller frame…

This is an R65GS, possibly one of the rarest BMW machines, especially in the guise it left the factory. It’s an ex-French gendarmerie bike which used a 48bhp version of the engine with 32mm bore carbs. Only a very few R65s were made in that guise, otherwise it would have been fitted with a 28bhp engine and 28mm carbs. I understand that the Danish army had the lower-powered version, while the Danish civil defence and French gendarmerie used the 48bhp motor. Perhaps the low-power motor would run better on the army’s low-quality fuel? The R65 joined the GS dual-sport family in 1987. Around 1727 R65GS bikes were produced, mostly 28bhp variants. I understand that just 110 of the 48bhp bikes were dispatched from the factory – like I say, this…

RealClassic A SHETLAND SOJOURN Some ten years ago I made the journey from Daventry to Lerwick to attend the Shetland Classic Vehicle Show. This splendid event is held every other year, giving you the opportunity to view lots of machinery that are rarely seen on the mainland, including many motorcycles. On that occasion I started from Daventry riding an MZ TS250 and planned a route avoiding motorways as much as possible, visiting relatives and friends along the way to the ferry from Aberdeen. The trip was a great success and I yearned to repeat the experience. This time I would start This time I would start from Shaftesbury riding my Moto Guzzi T3; one owner from new, a member of the family almost. The plan was to take two days to…

THE MOTO GUZZI MAN This new hardback book by Alan Cathcart recounts a near-mythical legend filled with passion and ingenuity, the motorcycling life of American John Wittner, better known as Dr John. It chronicles his unique contribution to Moto Guzzi's history over several decades, starting when dentist Wittner decided to buy a Le Mans - because he thought it looked neat. The Guzzi also utilised a pushrod motor like the Harleys Dr John was familiar with. He'd originally trained as a mechanical engineer and so appreciated Guzzi's rugged engineering which combined performance and reliability… making the machines the ideal steed for endurance racing. That's how Dr John's race team was formed, which in its debut season won the 1984 US Endurance championship middleweight class with a perfect 100% finishing record.…