Innehållsförteckning för December 2025 från Real Classic

Much has been written, spoken and posted online about the current slide in some old bike prices. It's certainly happened, and I was in fact caught out by it earlier in the year, when one of my old lorries sold for far less than half what it had actually cost me. This is decently unhappy-making, although I had understood that I'd bought a pup within 48 hours of its arrival in the Shed. But never mind, these things are sent to try us, and trials are surely character building. Or so I tell myself. What amuses me, in a dark kind of way, is that the sorts of bikes I still really rather fancy owning and therefore buying – and there are still a few of them, remarkably – seem…

Paul Henshaw's articles are regularly my favourite reads in RC. Having grappled with so many of the issues he writes about in his T120 article in RC259, I hugely enjoyed The Best Bonnie? Paul is always so positive about his work. Some would moan about the old bike's foibles, but not Paul. They are challenges to be overcome on machines he obviously (generally!) loves to ride. His suggestion that bikes need to be ‘enjoyable’ hits the nail perfectly on the head – I couldn't agree more. So thank you Paul for another excellent piece. I have read it twice and will read it again! Martin Hughes-Games, member My second owned and first ‘big bike’ – making me one of those, in the day frowned-upon, 650-riding 16 year-olds – was a…

I've just seen the triple beautification article on page 22 of the new issue of RealClassic. I was surprised and delighted to see a photo of both of my bikes. Both are well known in the TR3OC, but maybe not so much by the general public. Some simple facts if you are interested. First, the TT Marshals bike. I built this in 2016 from a rusty wreck which had been off the road for 34 years. It is a1973 T150V retro converted to represent a 1970 model but with a 250mm Fontana brake as fitted in ’71. The ‘faux Rob North’ standing behind it also started life as a standard T150V which I bought new in August ’73. At the time I hankered after a North for the road, but…

I wouldn't have taken Don Rickman, former British and European MX champion and creator together with his late brother Derek of the hallowed Métisse brand, for a Veteran bike man. But his passion for his 1903 Ariel is evident immediately when he talks about it. So how did he come to buy the bike in the first place? ‘Owning the Ariel takes me right back to my very early competition days in 1959, when Derek and I were racing a lot on the Continent,’ says Don, who turned 90 in July. ‘We wanted to take a couple of bikes each to these meetings, so we needed to make a trailer to attach to our pickup. We went down to our local scrapyard, Durnford Motors in Southampton, to buy an axle…

Do you remember about…. Oh, let's think… about three months ago, when I got the chance to take the BSA A65FFS for its first decent spin after having expended what felt like thousands of hours and millions of pounds on it? I'll remind you - this isn't a memory test. The BSA, I discovered only a half-century after its 1971 launch, was simply too tall and oddly unwieldy for me to feel confident on it. A shock. I've ridden - and indeed owned - several other oily framed BSA twins before, and don't recall any struggles with them. There's an easy way to check odd concerns like this: I can always read my old stories again. This is often a surprising experience in itself. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll…

Never have I attempted expending restorative effort on a more bewildering machine than this one. Every time I stand by it to take a harder, longer look, I end up sitting down and staring. And when I started to pull it apart, the sitting and staring grew ever more prolonged. Hence the need to sit down while staring. Ideally, I'll put a stool each side of the bench so at least my knees don't suffer as much as my eyes as they consider my endless misunderstanding of motorcycles. It is, gentle reader, quite a challenge. There is a sort of grim understanding developing here – along with a certain distant sense of déjà vu. I've owned bikes like this before, and lots of them, to be honest. Long ago –…

Think of Velocette and hotblooded singles spring to most people's minds, but Velocette have always made humble devices for the working or family man. Their production originated with simple 2-stroke utilitarian motorcycles before the Great War. In the mid-1920s Velocette developed their famous ohc 350 ‘cammy’ engine, originally designed to shoehorn into their existing 2-stroke bicycle. From this decision came the foundational design choices that necessitated a very narrow engine and a pancake-thin clutch mounted inboard of the final drive sprocket. These design fundamentals resulted in a crank with minimal flex allowing higher revs, and the accessible drive sprocket which allowed racers to easily experiment with gearing ratios. Having swept the board at the Junior TT with the cammy 350 (1926 and 1928, ridden by Alec Bennett, and 1929 by…

After reading Rowena's insightful pieces on the Triumph 400 (RC247) and on the new BSA Bantam 350 (RC258) I have been pondering about things 400, in particular on my recently purchased Triumph Speed 400, and in nostalgic mood, reflecting on my Yamaha 400. I rebuilt and rode the RD400 in 1985, so forty years on, I am back on a 400. Looking back, how did we use these 400s? The answer: for everything, everywhere, all the time! We were never off them. The early to mid-1980s really was a fantastic time to be young, to have a few quid and to have a 400cc motorcycle. We were spoiled for choice. My first 400 was a GT380. Three cylinders, two-stroke, and what a step up from a Suzuki TS185 and before…

Fancy a howling, screaming, manic, antisocial wheelie machine? You do? Best look elsewhere, then. The Suzuki T500 isn't any of those things. It is a two-stroke from an era when the majority of such machines were feisty, lunatic devices. But while Kawasaki H1s, Yamaha YR5s and the like were terrorising neighbourhoods with their front wheels in the air, making a smoky racket (lovely!), the T500 just frowned from its armchair while relaxing with its pipe and slippers. No hooligan machine, this. I remember one such bike which lived near me in the 1980s. It effortlessly hauled a sidecar around to allow the owner to run a larger than 250cc machine on L-plates. It later morphed into a solo, matt black (of course) rat bike, before meeting its demise and was…

It was like this; who'd have thought being retired could be so busy? Even during the heatwave in early 2025, I was hardly finding time to ride either of my road bikes. When I did ride Mr Shadowpants he was still as fabby as ever, and when I did get an even rarer chance then bimbling about around the lanes and moors on the little XT was fine, with the occasional squirt up to a decent speed on the odd farmer's track. But dirt bikes are really for razzing across dirt, and I fancied a chance to give it a bit more than a bimble. Then I saw the Midlands Classic Enduro Club were running an event again. Aha! I'd done this race last year on the Starfire – just…

Part One of this tale concluded with the decision to fit a Smiths digital speedo. That led to a further decision: which one? There is an extensive range, particularly if NOS items that are scattered around t'internet are included, most of which are variations of the desired period look. The number of possibilities was reduced by deciding definitely not to use a 160mph item. Sad to say, the 23 is no Black Lightning, therefore 110mph of a 160mph speedo would never be visited by the needle's movement (which would be embarrassing), so I found a more appropriate 80mph item. That was the easy part. Shortly after receiving the new speedo, I plunged down a rabbit hole of new learning. While the purchased speedo had an age-appropriate range, it lacked an…

Do you remember back in the 1960s when you were a young lad (or lady), developing your lifelong love of two-wheeled machines? Of course you do. Do you remember seeing all the Royal Enfield Interceptors on the road, in the dealerships, and filling the magazines? Of course you don't. I never saw one on the road, never saw one in the dealership, and saw a scant few articles in the magazines. So, of course, I fell in love with them sight unseen and knew one day I had to have one. These bikes were a mystery to me; 750cc of raw British iron, bigger than most bikes on the road at the time but far out of reach for a 15 year-old. It was the winter of 1974 when I…

I took my Enfield Meteor for its second MoT recently. Hard to think it's four years old now! I part-exchanged my Guzzi California for the smaller Enfield because of my knees, and it's been brilliant. The Meteor has really got me enjoying biking again. It's fun to ride, dead comfortable and easy to move around. By old bike standards it's not really ‘light’ at 185kg but, after the Guzzi's 275kg, the Enfield feels featherweight. Well, until you put it on the badly designed centrestand, that is… I've also enjoyed tinkering and customising the Meteor to my own taste with touring seats and footrests, crash bars with running lights, Givi rack and saddlebags, performance air intake, improved gear linkage and a few other little bits and bobs. Probably the biggest improvement…

In the article on Simon Huntingdon's Honda in RC258, he comments on his ‘trusty Gilbow tin snips’. I have a pair that somehow appeared in my toolbox after my last day at my local technical college, at the end of my day release course, in 1972. Have never sharpened them and they cut through anything. While I'm here, can I mention that the surgeon who found transplanting a Jag engine more difficult than a human heart, forgot to also say that he kept the heart running while he did it. Try that with a Jag. Please keep up the good work. Edwin Webb, member Steve the Surgeon was one of life's truly unexpected characters. We enjoyed several remarkable conversations! Frank W…

Ariel was one of the pioneer brands in two-wheeled history, dating back to 1847 when Whitehurst & Co. in London's West End began marketing the so-called Ariel Wheel, named after William Shakespeare's Spirit of the Air from The Tempest. This was shod by what's widely recognised to be the first-ever air-filled tyre as we know it today, the so-called Thompson's Pneumatic Belt, as a means of cushioning occupants of horsedrawn carriages against the rigours of the primitive road surfaces of the day. The name was adopted by Coventry-based entrepreneurs James Starley and William Hillman in 1871 when they invented the wire-spoke wheel which allowed them to build a lighter weight Penny Farthing bicycle, naming it the Ariel Ordinary. In 1874 their Ariel Works factory was opened in Coventry to construct…

Before clapping eyes on the beautiful cammy racer you see hereabouts – the one bearing the No3 race-plate – I knew close to nothing about the English Excelsior company. It's fair to say that I was more familiar with the American Excelsior-Henderson concern, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the British marque formed by Messers Bayliss, Thomas and Slaughter in 1874. Excelsior, I mused; didn't they make the Wellbike during the war? And then a range of Villiers utility machines to keep the demobbed happy? It turns out that there's rather more to the story than I'd previously understood… For starters, the company which became Excelsior could claim to be Britain's first commercial motorcycle manufacturer. Bayliss et al attached an engine to a bicycle and touted it for sale…

I previously owned a Himalayan 411 and was waiting with expectations for the second-generation Himalayan 450. I certainly was not disappointed. Launched in 2023, the 450 was Royal Enfield's first foray into water cooling, with their ‘Sherpa’ 452cc engine. And what a great job they have made of it! From the get-go, care of Cooperb Motorcycles, I had to watch the revs as it really picks up mid-range. The first service is at 300 miles, which is an oil change and a check around. With this model, Royal Enfield have increased the previous 3000 mile service requirement to every 6000 miles. Some dealers change the oil and filter at 3000 miles, contrary to what the service book states. As usual, the single-cylinder, fuel-injected dohc engine is not fully loosened up…