Classic Bike Guide August 2016 preview

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AJS TRACKSTER STRIPPED BACK SINGLE

BMW ROADSTER THE COMPLETE TWIN

BSA ROCKET 3 SHOW STAR AT STAFFORD

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TRIUMPH THUNDERBIRD || YAMAHA SR500 || BRITISH BIKE GUIDE ||

CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE || CONTENTS

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NEWS Bikes, bits for bikes, that kind of thing

SUBSCRIBE! Save money, get the magazine early.

Thrills undiluted. Excitement unlimited

BSA OWNERS’ DAY We have no idea what a collective noun for BSA owners is…

VINTAGE EVENTS Two big ones, lots of bikes, folk riding bikes

GET DRESSED! Some decently groovy bike gear here

YAMAHA SR500 Stripped of everything superfluous

TRIUMPH THUNDERBIRD One of those really nice twins

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BMW R50S Monochrome magnificence

LETTERS So we made more room this month

PAUL D’ORLÉANS

074

AJS CAFÉ SINGLE

082

BRITISH CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE

Mark’s sparks fail to fly

PAUL MILES Harleys, sporty and classic. No, really…

096

MOTO GUZZI STORNELLO A most recent, and indeed remarkable, twin

With a truly remarkable selection of

BRAKE CALIPER OVERHAUL Brakes don’t work? Time to fix that

104

KAWASAKI GPZ500

110

READER ADS

129

INK WHEELS

BSA ROCKET 3 Build your own, then. From bits

racer. All life is here

the prices real bikes were sold for

The unappreciated art of luggage

MARK WILLIAMS

Roadster, racer, café

Rebuilt, repaired, restored. An everyday tale of sprucing and fettling

Send us bargains. We need many more bargains. We do, we really do…

Hot Triton, by Ian Cater

CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE || AUGUST 2016 3

RIDINGLIFE || BSA DAY

BSA owners’ day WORDS & PHOTOS BY RICHARD JONES

WHAT’S THE COLLECTIVE NOUN for a group of BSAs? A bantam of BSAs perhaps, or maybe a lightning or a spitfire? There were plenty of possibilities at the Market Harborough Rugby Club on an overcast Sunday when the BSA Owners’ Club held an open day at its annual rally. As befits the largest UK manufacturer of motorcycles from the 20th century, and the largest single marque classic

EVENT CLUB REPORT The BSAOC run many local and national events throughout the year which welcome BSA enthusiasts. bsaownersclub.co.uk

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motorcycle club in the whole of the UK, there were plenty of Birmingham Small Arms’ products to gaze upon. The earliest bike on display was an outfit from 1923 and the exhibits ranged through the decades to models from BSA’s demise in 1972, with all the old favourites plus some specials and oddities too.

The theme of the open day was small capacity BSAs. Rather surprisingly, when the rosettes were handed out one of the most successful British bikes of all time by volume, the Bantam, only managed a third place with a strikingly red GPO Post Office machine from 1971, complete with its leg guards to protect the 175cc engine and rider’s legs from the elements. A Beagle and a Dandy pipped it to the post!

The open day provided even the most casual onlooker with a visual history of one of the UK’s premier manufacturers from the 20th century, which has to be a good thing. Long may the BSAOC continue to hold this event so we can all remember our history, and perhaps ensure that the same mistakes are not made the next time around…

RIDINGLIFE || SR500 SPECIAL

Can-do classic If life gives you lemons… build a brilliant bike and kick-start a new career, why don’t you?

PHOTOS BY TAB II CLASSICS Above: Polish, polish, polish, polish. Let’s hope this beauty doesn’t stay by the salty seas…

1: Stripping the finery from an SR reveals the slim machine beneath 2: There is no better café colour combination than polished metal and black paint. Probably…

3: All dressed up and somewhere to go…

TWO YEARS AGO, this glittering tribute to the craft of metal manipulation was little more than a basket case, a non-running junker imported from California.

Twenty-two-year-old Mark Purslow figured that the 1978 Yamaha SR500 would make a great basis for his first ever café racer build. It needed an entire engine strip as well as a complete cosmetic overhaul, and he intended to incorporate some special components to improve the SR’s cooling, suspension and stopping.

But before work could begin… he lost his job.

Enter Richard and Aline at TAB II Classics. TAB hand-make alloy fuel tanks, as well as seat humps, mudguards and such, using time-honoured traditional techniques. They start with sheet aluminium which is hand-formed, then rolled into rough shape on the ‘English wheel’, then oxyacetylene welded before hours more rolling on the wheel, then grinding, linishing and painstaking polishing to a mirror finish. Each and every component is a one-off job, individually crafted, unique.

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They’d just supplied Mark’s dad with a couple of tanks for his Ducati racer, and heard that Mark was looking for a new career – preferably something which involved motorcycles. So Richard generously offered Mark the opportunity to use TAB’s workshop facilities.

“Working evenings and at weekends, we taught him how to use the English wheel and how to weld aluminium,” explains Richard, who rapidly realised that Mark had both talent and the dedication to apply it. “It was obvious very early on that he was a natural – the tank and seat on his bike are his first ever attempt.

“We really weren’t on the lookout for any new recruits – hell, we could hardly afford to pay ourselves, much less take anyone else on. But Mark’s can-do attitude impressed me so much I enquired about some sort of Government help for training a young person. The ‘Jobs Growth Wales’ scheme was perfect and after mountains of red tape we took Mark

RIDINGLIFE || BMW R50S

Suspension of disbelief BMW’s 500 flat twin benefited from sophisticated suspension from the mid-1950s. But it only got the engine performance to match when the S models arrived in 1960…

PHOTOS MORTONS ARCHIVE Above: For many years, BMW employed a unique approach to motorcycle engineering.

This was not a bad thing 1: The speedo, with its pleasantly deco colour scheme, is certainly distinctive. As is the trip reset knob 2: Twin cylinders; twin carbs; single air filter, which lives atop the gearbox 3: The camshaft lives above the crankshaft line, so the pushrod tubes live above the cylinder 4: BMW’s take on the leading axle Earles-type front end was viewed by many riders as being the best of the lot. Neat rider touches include the tommybar for the front spindle

THE R50 AND its R69 sibling represent BMW’s postwar great leap forward. Prior to their introduction, the company muddled through with the rag-tag remainder of their prewar range. The R51/2 was little more than a wartime R51 with a coat of civvi-street colour. The R51/3 came out in 1954 and was a great improvement, and finally the R50 arrived in 1955. It incorporated the important engine upgrades which had brought the R51/3 up to date, and threw two entirely new forms of suspension into the mix.

The heart of the R50 was the square (68mm x 68mm) motor; much the same as its predecessor with alloy cylinder heads, wet sump lubrication, roller big end bearings and a slight compression ratio boost to 6.8:1. Fuel was fed through a pair of larger 24mm Bing carbs to push power up to 24bhp. A Bosch auto-advance magneto managed the sparking duties while a separate 60/90W dynamo shed a little light. The R50 abandoned the earlier multi-spring

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clutch and moved to a single-plate diaphragm set-up, feeding drive at engine speed to the revised unitconstruction four-speed gearbox. While the new ratios could hardly be called ‘close’ they were certainly on better speaking terms with each other than in the earlier BMW box, which boasted a fair few yawning chasms between cogs.

The revolutionary aspect of the R50 was its suspension. At the back, BMW introduced a proper swinging arm and a pair of adjustable, multi-rate, hydraulically damped shock absorbers. They did it beautifully, too, creating an artistic arc out of the rear frame rails and hiding the drive shaft in one of the swinging arms. Firmly cross-braced, the swinging arm pivots on taper roller bearings and provides the kind of comfortable and controlled ride which plunger pilots don’t dare dream of.

At the front end, BMW’s enterprising engineers came up with the equally elegant if substantial

MOTO GUZZI V7 II STORNELLO

A match made in

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Classic racing was once packed with bikes very like this one

they needed a lightweight 4-stroke motorcycle to rival Triumph’s Cub

BIGGER VERSION OF the Model 14, built with better forks taken from the early 1950s heavyweight but with a slightly feeble brake from the 2-stroke range. They provide a better ride than the early 250s, although by 1962 there was nothing between them apart from better torque. The 350s didn’t last long as they competed with AMC’s own heavyweight 350 singles, without being better, just slightly lighter.

Surprisingly quick and pleasant to ride.

Prices:

low £1500 || high £2750

Model 16 (Matchless G3)

348cc (69 x 93mm until 1963, then 72 x 85.5mm) ohv single || 400lb || 80mpg || 75mph || 1945-66

EN

AMC UNDERSTOOD THAT

Model 8 (Matchless G5)

348cc (72 x 82.5mm) ohv single || 350lb || 70mpg || 80mph || 1960-62

SE

248cc (70 x 65mm) ohv single || 340lb || 75mph || 1958-66

low £1500 || high £2500

AS

Model 14 (Matchless G2)

Prices

LD

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y 1950, Associated MotorCycles Limited in South London were building bikes under both AJS and Matchless badges, and at one time boasted the largest factory in the world dedicated to motorcycles production. They later acquired the Norton marque, at first keeping production in Birmingham but eventually moving Norton in with AJS and Matchless. AMC also built James and FrancisBarnett motorcycles (also in the Midlands and not at Plumstead). So the varied range of models offered under the AMC banner stretched from 98cc 2-strokes all the way through to stonking 750cc 4-stroke superbikes.

The company was also successful in two-wheeled sports, and apart from the dedicated and highly specialised road-racers they also built a lot of competitionbiased roadsters. The whole lot collapsed in 1966, and was reborn as Norton-Villiers, concentrating on the Norton Commando series and a range of 2-stroke AJS off-roaders.

Model designations are shown for AJS, with Matchless equivalents shown in brackets, as the two marques increasingly differed only in finish and trim styles.

The bikes are very solid, wellengineered and rewarding to ride. Spares are plentiful, and they boast an excellent and very active Owners’ Club.

and BSA’s C-range. Intelligently, they used a bicycle based on their James 2-strokes and designed their own new 4-stroke engine to fit. That engine appeared to be of ‘unit’ construction (where engine and gearbox are built into shared castings), but the gearbox was separate and cylindrical, attached to the crankcases by a pair of steel straps. The 250s and the similar 350s were not a commercial success and are not widely sought-after today. However, they are fun to ride (CSR 250s in particular) and offer a low-cost intro to classic motorcycling with plentiful spares and simple construction for straightforward spannering. The best are the AMCforked versions and the late CSRs. As with most AMC models, the 250 was available in standard, ‘S’ (chrome mudguards), CS (off-road styling), and CSR (café-racer) versions.

SO

AJS & MATCHLESS

AJS 18M, 500 rigid single. 1947. Good original condition. Starts easily, runs well, no smoke or nasty noises. It’s recently had a new voltage regulator and ammeter. Dynamo and magneto professionally overhauled. Engine rebuild: new conrod, big and small end bearings.

New mains, crank axle, bushes etc. SOLD FOR £3200

SOUNDLY ENGINEERED AND

THE 500 VERSION of the

finished trad Brit single. AMC singles are immensely strong, engineered to cover countless miles with little maintenance and no complaint.

They started as rigid machines very close to the wartime Matchless WD G3L, then switched to swinging arm suspension. The late 50s models with alternator lighting and half-decent brakes matched to fine handling are the most common, although the rigid-framed models have a considerable minimalist cachet. Also unusual although not particularly popular are the 1964on versions, with their (relatively) short-stroke engine, Norton forks and wheels. Rigids fetch the highest prices, but spares for the later ones are easier. Very easy bike to live with; very few faults.

very trad AMC single really is a bigger version of the 350, with a bit more of everything. Excellent riders’ machines; classic in every way. They share almost all the components apart from the piston, flywheels, barrel and head with the smaller engine, which gives them a tendency to knock out some pattern big ends very quickly. However, this is not the problem it was, as the quality of AMC spares continues to improve. This is a pleasant touring motorcycle, with good handling and comfort allied to a relaxed 60mph cruising speed. It’s easy to convert a 350 single to a 500 as the strokes are the same, but to run smoothly they need the 500’s flywheels too…

Prices:

low £2000 || high £2750 (CS comp models a lot more)

Model 18 (Matchless G80)

498cc (82.5 x 93mm until 1963, then 86 x 85.5mm) ohv single || 400lb || 55mpg || 80mph || 1945-66

Prices:

low £2400 || high £4000 (CS comp models a lot more)

Model 20 (Matchless G9)

498cc (66 x 72.8mm) ohv twin || 410lb || 60mpg || 90mph || 1948-61 AMC’S TWIN TOOK a different path to the already established designs from BSA, Triumph, etc.

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TRADINGPOST || HOW TO

Brake caliper overhaul Binding brakes, overheating disc, poor response… have a look at the caliper WORDS AND PHOTOS STEVE COOPER Above: A snug fit here is vital. Rounding off the hexheads on either the union or bleed nipple is a bad move

ALMOST ANY MOTORCYCLE made from the early 1970s onward either came with a disc brake or its successors were subsequently thus equipped. As mentioned in our previous master cylinder overhaul feature, disc brake systems are cheap to make and devilishly efficient. Better still, they require minimal maintenance and all but a very select few need any adjustment.

The business part of the system is the brake caliper, which is traditionally mounted either fore or aft of the lower fork leg on a pair of stout fixings.

When pressure is applied at the brake lever the fluid moved acts as a solid yet flexible link all the way down to the brake caliper, where one or more hydraulic pistons are forced outwards, pressing the brake pad into contact with the disc brake,

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gripping it and thereby creating a retarding force.

When the brake lever is released, a spring in the master cylinder pushes back the seal, which returns the small amount of fluid previously displaced back into the reservoir. As the fluid is effectively one continuous entity, what’s behind the piston at the caliper also gets retracted and thus the pistons release their pressure on the brake pads. Also and crucially, one or more sets of seals around the piston in the caliper are marginally distorted during operation and as soon as the pressure from the master cylinder is released the seals naturally return to their original shape and drag the piston back with them to its resting position. It’s an elegantly simple system that only occasionally requires attention – but when it does you need to know what to do.

TRADINGPOST || KAWASAKI GPZ500S REBUILD

Max’s Kawasaki Building bikes for fun and profit: a GPZ parable WORDS BY ROBERT DAVIES PHOTOS BY ROB AND MAX

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