Classic Bike Guide October 2016 preview

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TW WO THRUXTO ONS

ARIEL FOUR || GUZZI T3 || NORTON DOMINATOR || SUNBEAM!

CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE || CONTENTS

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NEWS All about shows and bike lifts and shiny parts and… things like that

SUBSCRIBE! Save money, get the magazine early.

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PAUL D’ORLÉANS Wheels and whatsits

MARK WILLIAMS The rich man’s game?

Thrills undiluted. Excitement intense

TRIUMPH THRUXTON R The current best of the current breed?

TRIUMPH T120 THRUXTON The best of the last

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NORTON DOMINATOR

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BMW R nineT SCRAMBLER

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BSA A65 REBUILD

generation of Bonnies?

026

SUNBEAM S7

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MOTO GUZZI T3

048

106

Built for gents. Few gents bought them, of course

109 110

Long legged, and affordable too

ARIEL SQUARE FOUR Always a delight. Mostly

for (whisper) Christmas

LETTERS Much congratulatory stuff.

More complaints required

is its own reward

Boxing clever with a boxer

Challenge is its own reward

CAFÉ RACER HONDA Take a sad CB450 and make it badder

CLUBBING There are lots of bike clubs. Here’s a few

INFO ARCHIVE Great knowledge here. Surely

READER ADS Send us bargains. We need many more bargains.

We do, we really do…

BOOKS! Plenty of great reading. Ideal

Long term ownership

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PAUL MILES The carry tool kit

BENELLI 900 SEI Something grand and pretty wide too

129 130

INK WHEELS Café Noir by Brett Breckon

FRANK WESTWORTH Never buy a project…

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RIDINGLIFE NEWS || EVENTS || LETTERS || INTERVIEWS

Stars at Stafford

FOUR OF THE racing celebrities who starred in the iconic film On Any Sunday will be reunited at the Carole Nash Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show on October 15-16.

Nominated for an Oscar, the documentary portrayed the riding lives of hotshot motorcycle racers of the early 1970s. Directed by Bruce Brown, it was produced by Steve McQueen who also appears in the film, along with champions and rookies from desert racing, short-circuit competition and d moto-cross.

Mert Lawwill’s appearance at Stafford will be his first visit to the UK in four decades

EVENT SHOW PREVIEW

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David Aldana, Don Emde, Mert Lawwill and Gene Romero not only found fame on the big screen but also participated in the massively popular AngloAmerican Match Races, held in the UK in the 1970s at circuits such as Brands Hatch, Mallory Park and Oulton Park. Show-goers can expect to see the stars interviewed on stage and there’s usually an opportunity to secure a precious autograph or two.

Modern classics of the 1960s, 70s and 80s take centre-stage at the autumn Stafford event, and there

RIDINGLIFE || TRIUMPH THRUXTON

Hot 100 The Bonnie which blitzed the 1969 Production TT WORDS BY FRANK MELLING PHOTOS BY CAROL MELLING / MORTONS ARCHIVE

Above: In 1969, Malcolm Uphill rode a Thruxton-spec T120 to victory in the Production TT at the Isle of Man, recording an average speed of 99.99mph into the bargain

IN 1958, MIKE HAILWOOD and Dan Shorey won the Thruxton long distance race and a year later the Thruxton Bonnevilles were born. Strictly speaking, the name Thruxton only applies to the 49 machines made for homologation purposes in 1964/65.

However, it was Triumph practice to put a ‘Thruxton’ note in the build book when the bike was a 650 intended only for racing. These bikes were nominally available with a whole list of optional extras from the High Performance List; high compression pistons, carburettors, cams and followers and, with a good tuner, it was possible to build a quick Triumph.

There was some criticism that the factory was not keeping to the spirit of production racing, so Triumph decided to build a batch of true production racers to works specification. The key modification was to provide a positive oil feed to the exhaust

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cams, which were prone to seize under extreme conditions. This was done by fitting an external oil pipe to feed them directly. There were also wider front brake linings, 19in alloy wheels and chopped Monobloc carburettors with a central float chamber.

Interestingly, although the bikes had been built for homologation, the Triumph race shop immediately improved them by machining standard crankcases internally so that the oil feed was kept inside the engine. The original aim was to build 50 Thruxton Bonnevilles, but apparently someone ‘mislaid’ one of the special big-valve cylinder heads and so the 50th bike was broken for spares.

This brings us to the most famous of all the Bonnevilles, four bikes carrying the numbers MAC 231E to MAC 234E. These were arguably the finest production racers of their day, as demonstrated

RIDINGLIFE || READING RIDES

bike books Classic

Our eclectic selection of recent publications reveals well-written reads about rides, dazzlingly detailed marque histories, and books which aren’t even about bikes in the slightest…

VINCENT MOTORCYCLES: The Untold Story since 1946 GIVEN THE VINCENT’S reputation as one of the most remarkable motorcycles ever manufactured, any book which attempts to cover the subject needs to be similarly accomplished. This massive hardback, which runs to 400 factpacked, full-colour pages, is the most comprehensive volume currently available. It discusses why and how the brand declined into bankruptcy, and why the big Vin inspired – and continues to inspire – generations of mechanics and engineers.

The dense and detailed text reveals why the design is still capable and competitive today, on track and on the road, and presents a comprehensive view of Vincent derivatives up to the present day, including café racers, chops, and bobs. It also covers

Y YOU BELONG TO THE UNIVERSE: U Buckminster B Fuller and the fu uture

racing and competition, Fritz Egli’s achievements and the potential future of the Vincent. A mammoth book which should satisfy even the most well-informed enthusiast.

Author Philippe Guyony.

Publisher Veloce.

ISBN 978-1-845849-02-3. £100

THE FLYING PENGUIN: More stories of a freelance motorcycling journalist IN THIS SECOND part of his autobiography, Frank Melling continues telling the ripping yarns which he started in A Penguin In A Sparrow’s Nest.

The Flying Penguin takes the reader on a personal journey through a remarkable and highly eventful life. There are plenty of near death stories, from almost drowning when trapped under a Honda enduro bike to looking down the business end of a Colt 45 in the backwoods of Missouri. Melling’s well-known humour permeates every page, including how to imitate a world champion –

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TH HIS ISN’T SO MU UCH a biography of the radical thinker Buckminster Fuller, moore a philosophical disscussion of how thee concepts which inteerested him have become themes and attributes of the modern world. If you’re a materials scientist, or if you are already well acquainted with the life, work and theories of Fuller, then it provides a fascinating launch-point for further debate and contemplation.

The greater part of the book takes examples of mechanical and social engineering which Fuller espoused and shows how they have become commonplace, integrated into modern society.

These include topics as diverse as cardboard shelters for civic emergencies to the role that war-gaming plays in many aspects of defence and development. The text is considered and erudite yet perfectly easy to read and naturally breaks into easily digested sections. However, it doesn’t offer an overview of Fuller’s life and works as a more conventional biography might.

Author Jonathon Keats.

Publisher Oxford University Press.

ISBN 978-0199338238. £16.99 when there are free hotel rooms on offer!

Along the way there are broken bones, broken bikes, broken relationships and the international success of the Thundersprint.

Frank also reveals the close friendship he enjoys with motorcycling legend Jim Redman. But

The Flying Penguin is far more than a book of motorcycling memories: it provides a fascinating insight into the last 30 turbulent years of British social history.

Author Frank Melling.

Publisher frankmelling.com ISBN 978-0952798736. £12.99

NORTON DOMINATOR 88

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Dominating

DECADES Cliff Rees, born into a motorcycle family in 1938, Norton Dominator 88 purchased in 1959. He’s riding the same bike in 2016… you do the numbers!

WORDS AND IMAGES BY GRANT FORD

A

chance meeting at the Waterlooville Motorcycle Club run in Hampshire unravelled a motorcycle legacy nearly a century in the making. It would be my privilege documenting the full story; two biking characters that have been together for 57 years. A tale of the era when if something was broken you fixed it, you didn’t throw it away, a motto Cliff Rees has lived by – it was a case of having to make do in wartime New Malden, Surrey.

“My earliest memories were of my parents with the Indian Scout my father bought in 1918. Both he and my mother rode it. Unfortunately, I didn’t aid its longevity when I put sand into the crankcase as a toddler and it was sold for half a crown.”

Cliff’s first job post-school meant passing the Villiers Showroom in Regent Street, where display models from both Francis Barnet and James cemented his decision to head for two wheels, the rest was just a question of savings. Borrowing his father’s Southport-built Super Corgi, the bike test was dealt with at 16. A BSA C11G soon followed, a 250cc single purchased new from Meeton’s Motorcycle Mecca at Shannon’s Corner in 1955.

Four years on Cliff was considering something more potent and one Norton advert had already caught his eye. He still has that copy to this day announcing ‘The World’s Best Road Holder’. The bike was the model 88 Dominator.

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TRADINGPOST || BS SA STAR TWIN 1962

ar a sta It is

Fifty-one years and still going strong.

The story of one man and his A65…

WORDS BY ROB DAVIES PHOTOS BY BARRY TAYLOR (HIS OLD PRINTS), MODERN PICS FROM BARRY, ROB, AND ROBIN HORTON 1: A closer look at the rear to see the extent of the rust was a little dispiriting 2: Down to the bare frame and forks. Check out those ace bars: you don’t see those so often these days, but during the 1960s they vied for popularity with the ubiquitous clip-ons 3: A view of the right-hand side, displaying truly shocking shocks and well-exhausted exhausts

BSA HAD THE CANNY – you might even say crafty – knack of making many bikes out of one product.

Oh, they changed the size of the bores to make the 500 and the 650; the gear ratios were tweaked by producing differently sized cogs; there were high or low compression pistons, and high or low rise cams, and they played with the cosmetic elements of tank, seat and side panels, but in essence they were all pretty much the same bike. For instance, there were the A50 and A65 Star; the A50 Cyclone Road and Cyclone Comp; The A65 Rocket, Thunderbolt Rocket, Lightning Rocket, Spitfire Hornet and Clubman models, not forgetting the more exotically decorated models such as the Firebird Scrambler that mostly

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went to the US, designated a ‘desert sled’ with its high rise glittering exhausts, exhaust guard, and latterly an oil in the frame novelty.

However, this is Barry Taylor’s own account of his fifty-one year relationship with his very own well-cherished A65. He’s got to know it well.

“I was a mere 18-year-old rocker when I purchased my three-year-old 1962 BSA A65 Star Twin. It came from Grays Motorcycle Showroom in Perry Barr, Birmingham. The bike was going second-hand, having had one owner from 1962, and it came with a full Avon fairing and Candy Apple Red paintwork as an optional extra to the standard Nutley Blue or Black, and was one of the earliest off the production line. It

TRADINGPOST || HONDA CB 450K CAFÉ RACER

CAFÉ

CREATION

WORDS BY ROB DAVIES PHOTOS BY ROB DAVIES, MARTYN WILKINS AND ROBIN HORTON

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Above: From this to – well, something else. The raw material, a rather dreary Honda CB 450K ready for stripping

WHEN ROCK CHIC Avril Lavigne wrote in one of her punchier and angst-ridden songs the line ‘I’d rather be anything but ordinary please’ she may well have been writing for all those guys beavering away in their sheds to produce their own unique motorcycle. And that is exactly what Martyn Wilkins has produced in his first real attempt to manufacture his own take on the café racer scene. There has always been an underground movement to individualise one’s machine, but in recent years this movement has increased, and not just from the traditional areas such as the UK, America and Europe, but also, ironically, from the heartland of the mass modern production bike – Japan.

Martyn’s introduction to bike restoration started many years ago when he and his dad worked on an old BSA Sunbeam scooter dating from 1963. Some time later this would be the impetus for the CB450 project he completed in 2015. When I asked him what motivates a biker to take on such a daunting project, he answered that it’s a combination of many complex feelings. Watching Café Racer TV for inspiration helped to focus on what was already being produced on the custom scene by such worthies as Australians Deus Ex Machina and the like, but it’s really the desire to create and ride a bike that no one else has.

That BSA scoot had been a project to restore what was original, but in the end Martyn found that process very restrictive.

However, a purely custom project would allow him to use his creative and engineering skills to the limit. Deep in many a biker’s psyche lies the feeling that the 1960s and 70s were the glory days of motorcycling. This was no doubt influenced by a new era where young men, and maybe some young women too, had that brave new thing – disposable income, and they were going to use it in the pursuit of style and freedom.

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