Classic Bike Guide - September 2014 - Preview

LIVE2 RIDE || CONTENTS

FEATURES

LIVE2rIDE

008 foUnDErS DAy

034 VIEWpoInT

VMCC commemorate the First World War

Reaction and opinion from you

010 monTLhEry

036 SUBSCrIBE & SAVE

Cafe racers on the French banking

016 DrAGSTALGIA Classic drag racing at The Pod

020 JACKS hILL Ton-Up

OPINION

040 SArAh BrADLEy

026 pACIfIC moTorCyCLES

042 GEorGE CohEn

030 WhAT’S on GUIDE

BrooKLAnDS Ton-Up DAy

056

BSA B32

064

EmU BSA B66

072

TV presenter Henry Cole writes for CBG

Comp-engined, go anywhere bike

Two B33 top ends on a V-twin crankcase

A prIDE of VInCEnTS

Stevenage motor power for classic specials

038 pAUL D’orLEAnS

Cafe racers and classic at the A5 truckstop

Kiwi builders do classic Brit resto

044

128 frAnK WESTWorTh

All the great classic events in September

RIDE2LIVE 100 VonZETI

116 hoW To GUIDE

Classic custom seats and subframes

Fitting swinging arm bearings

108 mArqUE hISTory

120 BUyErS GUIDE:

Honda’s CB500/550 fours

British 250 singles and twins part3

080

ThUnDErBIrD rESTorATIon Attention grabbing Triumph restoration

#

281

september 2014

CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE || september 2014 3

LiVE2 RIDE || Editorial

|| who’s who || EDITOR || Gary Pinchin gpinchin@mortons.co.uk pUBlISHER || Dan Savage asavage@mortons.co.uk DESIGNER || James Duke REpROGRApHICS || Simon Duncan GROUp pRODUCTION EDITOR || Tim Hartley DIvISIONAl ADvERTISING MANAGER || David England 01507 529438 dengland@mortons.co.uk ADvERTISING || Leon Currie, Jane Farquharson 01507 524004 lcurrie@mortons.co.uk jfarquharson@mortons.co.uk ARCHIvE ENQUIRIES || Jane Skayman 01507 529423 jskayman@mortons.co.uk SUBSCRIpTION MANAGER || Paul Deacon CIRCUlATION MANAGER || Steven O’Hara MARKETING MANAGER || Charlotte Park pRODUCTION MANAGER || Craig Lamb pUBlISHING DIRECTOR || Dan Savage COMMERCIAl DIRECTOR || Nigel Hole ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR || Malc Wheeler

GARY pinchin an eventful month THIS MONTH WE have the pleasure of TV presenter Henry Cole writing in CBG. Henry presents the long running series, World’s Greatest Motorcycle Rides on Travel Channel and heads up The Motorbike Show on ITV4 (new series starts on August 13!) – and wanted to do a TV show from the Brooklands Ton-Up Day – working as a journalist for us. Is this man mad?

With Henry’s attention span of a gnat (his words not mine – I’d be far more disparaging), it was a tough day in the office but we got the job done – eventually. I say ‘we’, since as a journalist, Henry makes a great TV presenter – if you get my drift. But he got his TV show done and we have a feature with his name on – and 10 pages of lovely bikes from the event.

Other great events this month at CBG included Dragstalgia – an overdose of 1970s drag bikes; celebrating Rocker culture at the Jacks Hill Cafe Ton-Up Day; and the VMCC’s Founders Day show/autojumble.

This issue could have been bordering on a BSA special – with the glorious B32 all-alloy competition bike from Phillip Tooth. And then there’s a BSA ‘that never was’ gracing this issue too – another of Doug Fraser’s Emu BSAs, this time a B66, two B33 top-ends on his homebuilt crankcases. It’s the bike he thinks the British should have built to trounce Harley’s new Sportster in the late 1950s. Plus a collection of Vincents from the Ace – and a beautifully restored Triumph Thunderbird.

Enjoy the issue.

illustration by martin squires

More froM CBG...

CONTRIBUTORS IN THIS ISSUE Sarah Bradley, Alan Cathcart, George Cohen, Steve Cooper, Gary Margerum, Phil Mather, Mykel Nicolaou, Paul d’Orleans, Joe Dick, Ludovic Robert, Phillip Tooth, Frank Westworth.

EDITORIAl ADDRESS Mortons Media Group, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincs LN9 6JR WEBSITE www.classicbikeguide.com GENERAl QUERIES AND BACK ISSUES 01507 529529 24hr answerphone Email: help@classicmagazines.co.uk Web: www.classicmagazines.co.uk SUBSCRIpTION Full subscription rates (but see page 36 for offer): (12 months 12 issues, inc post and packing) – UK £47.88. Export rates are also available – see page 36 for more details. UK subscriptions are zero-rated for the purposes of Value Added Tax. DISTRIBUTION COMAG, Tavistock Road, West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 7QE. Telephone 01895 433600.

USA SUBSCRIpTIONS CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE (USPS:002-674) is published monthly by Mortons Media Group Ltd, PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincolnshire LN9 6LZ UK. USA subscriptions are $54 per year from Motorsport Publications LLC, 7164 Cty Rd N #441, Bancroft WI 54921.

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ISSN No 0959-7123 ADvERT DEADlINE || Wednesday, September 3 NExT ISSUE || Wednesday, September 24 © Mortons Motorcycle Media, a division of Mortons Media Group Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

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6 SEPTEMBER 2014 || CLASSIC BIKe GUIDe

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More fun than a barrel of monkeys Motorcycling TV presenter Henry Cole sets himself up for a fall yet again. This time he spends a day at Brooklands attempting to be a journalist for Classic Bike Guide. He can talk the talk. But talking and writing? That could be problematic...

WORDS BY HENRY COLE. WITH A BIT (NO, MAKE THAT A LOT) OF HELP FROM GP PHOTOS BY MYKEL NICOLAOU

BSA B32 COMPETITION

S

ABOVE

The BSA B32 Competition gets backs to its roots in this rugged Irish landscape

OPPOSITE

John O’Regan on his way to a waiting glass of Murphy’s

in an alloy tower which was held at the top by a large gland nut. Developed from the B29, the postwar B models used coil springs to close the valves.

As befits a bike with off-road pretensions, the B32 came with a high-level exhaust pipe and wide-clearance chrome plated mudguards, a 21in front wheel and a 4.00in section rear tyre which increased ground clearance to 6in, a bashplate to protect the crankcase, and a smaller engine sprocket to deliver lower gear ratios. Billy added his own cams and altered the fork trail, and soon he was cleaning up in English trials and – with a Beeza modified to swingarm suspension by his friend Rex McCandless (another Belfast man who would later design the Norton Featherbed frame) he was winning scrambles as well.

With his riding ability and engineering skills gained at the Short & Harland aircraft factory, Billy Nicholson was just the sort of man that Perrigo wanted on his team and he joined BSA’s Competition Department in 1946.

At that time, factory-backed competition resources were reserved for the ISDT and one-day reliability trials. Trials riding was hugely popular, but scrambles was only just beginning to develop its international appeal. Works riders like Billy were allowed to contest scrambles on their own specials to gain experience in high-speed off-road riding, which would prove useful in the ISDT. When scrambles started taking off on the Continent, Billy was despatched to Belgium to show how good his BSA was.

Back at the Competition Department he worked with engine wizard Jack Amott and together they pulled out one of the 12 experimental B29 engines that Val Page built in 1939. These 350 singles had magnesium crankcases,

♠

eagulls were squawking and swirling overhead as fishing boats pulled out of Kilmakilloge Harbour on Ireland’s craggy west coast, but it was the gentle thump from the exhaust pipe of a 350cc four-stroke single that grabbed my attention.

Helen Moriarty wasn’t going to close anytime soon, but John O’Regan was hungry and the ZB32 Competition Model was taking him to a bowl of freshly steamed mussels and a glass of Murphy’s stout. When he stopped outside the pub the alloy engine settled down to a tick-over as reliable as the Atlantic tide until John pulled up the valve lifter lever on the handlebar and turned off the petrol.

Ireland is a good place to be talking about BSA’s pretty little road and trail bike, because much of its early development was down to Billy Nicholson, the short, stocky trials and scrambles ace who hailed from Belfast. Billy started trials riding on a Tiger 80 in 1939, but by 1945 the Triumph had been replaced by a 350cc girder fork BSA B25 with home-made cams and an altered steering head.

For scrambling he used a B29, which had a Val Pagedesigned engine with hairpin valve springs – unique in a BSA – housed in a cast iron cylinder head with integral rocker boxes. Again of 350cc, the B29 used the crankcase and timing gear of the 500cc M20 side valve.

That year Billy won every trial he entered, which brought him to the attention of Bert Perrigo, the BSA competition manager, who then sent him a new B32 Competition Model. Described in the catalogue as ‘specially built and equipped for strenuous trials conditions’, the B32 Competition was basically a B31 road bike with the same iron cylinder head and barrel, and the push-rods operated

1951 BSA B32

EnginE: Four-stroke ohv air-cooled single BorE x StrokE: 71 x 88mm ComprESSion: 6.5:1 powEr: 18hp @ 5000rpm CArBurAtion: Amal 376 Monobloc (originally Type 276 Amal) trAnSmiSSion: Four-speed wide ratio gearbox, chain primary and secondary tyrES: 21in x 2.75 front, 19 x 4in rear BrAkES: Half-width drum, 7in front and rear SuSpEnSion: BSA telescopic fork, plunger rear whEElBASE: 52.5in FuEl CApACity: 3 gallons top SpEEd: 75mph

CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE || SEPTEMBER 2014 59

ride2LIVE || howto

Install swinging arm bearings Got a swinging arm? Then you’ll have some of these as well

Words and Photos by Steve Cooper

Outside Of a flat tyre, little makes a motorcycle handle worse that worn swinging arm bearings. The nauseous hinge-in-the-middle feeling can swiftly transform the best handling bike, making it feel substantially less stable than a drunken cow on roller skates.

Even apparently miniscule wear at the pivot can adversely impact on roadholding and as the wear accelerates everything goes from bad to worse. A few thousandths of an inch at the bearing can translate to an awful lot more at the wheel spindle.

With radial and axial loads to deal with, the swinging arm bearings, their mounts and the transverse pivot shaft, handle some fairly substantial forces. You only have to look at modern machines to see just how much effort manufacturers have dedicated to minimising flex in this crucial area.

On our classics we’re unlikely to be reinforcing the mounting area so it pays to ensure that what we have is in the best possible condition. Dead or dying swinging arm bearings generally fall into one of two categories; either totally worn out or seized beyond belief.

Here we’re working on an example from the former and the pivot shaft has simply fallen out. If you have to deal with the seized type we’ll be looking at how to remove the arm from the frame in a later feature. Although the actual bearing replacement is straightforward there are a lot of preliminaries to address beforehand.

The bike needs to be well supported, the rear brake will need to be removed/immobilised, the shock absorbers have to come off and possibly one or more silencers taken out of harm’s way. Assuming all that is in hand and the arm is on the bench, we’ll crack on.

Swinging arm bearings come in a variety of materials and each has its various pros and cons. Many older machines run phosphor bronze or similar, either as standard or as an aftermarket upgrade. The material has much going for it in terms of the application but it can also fail in short order if it’s not properly and regularly lubricated.

Installed in a steel housing, subjected to moisture and denied grease the non-ferrous alloy will be subject to galvanic corrosion. It’s quite possible to seize and/or wear out what is recognised as the ideal substrate for the job by simply omitting the grease.

skIll

level HHHHHHH

Resources and skill levels equipment required:

Press or vice, mandrel, sockets and general tools bearings, seals, grease

116 SEPTEMBER 2014 || CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE

SupplierS

www.wemoto.co.uk Franchise dealers eBay

Our thankS tO: Crooks Suzuki for the components

This often overlooked fact may also be the very reason why the Japanese factories opted to use nylon or similar for the swinging arm bearings. Despite its acknowledged lack of longevity, its saving graces were that it didn’t seize solid in situ and could be very easily removed and replaced.

Perhaps Honda et al realised the new customer base were unlikely to be servicing their machines in the same manner as the outgoing generation had.

Perhaps the middle ground in all of this was a metalastic bush that was used on many lighter machines.

With an inner steel tube for the swinging arm spindle to pivot on and an outer bush that located snugly in the arm the annulus between was filled with a high density rubber.

With each metal portion held tightly in place the suspension pivots via the elasticity and twisting of the rubber bushing.

Normally such fitments should last the intended original service life of the bike but come restoration time metalastic bushes are often only removed via junior hacksaw and blow torches. The smell of the burning rubber is something that has to be experienced to be believed!

The subsequent adoption of needle roller bearings as detailed here might well be viewed as technically dubious.

Although they are undoubtedly structurally stronger than any of the above and unquestionably capable of handling much higher loading, both axially and laterally, they aren’t actually being used for their original purpose of supporting a perpetually rotating shaft as might be found in a transmission or similar.

Unlike a little end eye, the bearing, which experiences full rotation in most instances, a swinging arm needle roller bearing is seeing perhaps 25-30 degrees of rotation at most. Therefore the roller at the top and bottom of the unit will see substantially more wear than those fore and aft. Add in the general parsimonious lubrication during original assembly and it’s debatable if there was any real long-term benefit in using what is theoretically the best solution to the problem.

All of which only goes to underline that once again most of the average motorcycle is a compromise in one way or another. And, as we all know, we wouldn’t have them any other way. CBG

Grease seals, needle roller bearings, shim washers, distance pieces and spacer tube all evicted. Providing the tube isn’t damaged it can be cleaned and reused but a replacement is always best.

The source of our problems; one bearing has the rollers falling out of the internal cage and the other has rollers that have worn down by almost half.

Nothing worth saving here then!

New grease seals and distances pieces. For specific stuff like this, main dealers are the best option and it’s amazing what is still available for our late 70s Suzuki test rig.

To push in a bearing we need a suitable mandrel just slightly under the size of the bearing outer. This offcut of copper has been turned down specifically for the job in hand.

Undoubtedly the best way to do it; two pairs of hands and a fly press. Both bearing and swinging arm have been well greased. Heating the bearing mounts and freezing the bearing overnight make the job easier.

Alternatively a vice, an old box spanner and a suitably sized socket can be pressed (sic) into use.

Whichever method it’s vital to ensure the bearing goes in square and true.

Almost there but not quite; always measure to overall width when disassembling. This is especially important on arms such as this that have no internal register to drive the bearing down on to.

Fitted in and true. The distance pieces and spacer tube need to be greased and dropped in place before the second bearing is pushed home.

Back in place, with the new seals installed, we’re forcing in more lubrication until the entire assembly is full and all air evicted. When the grease pops and crackles out from behind the seals we’re done.

CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE || SEPTEMBER 2014 117