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Running, Riding & Rebuilding RealClassic Motorcycles
ISSUE 155 MARCH 2017 £3.60
WHAT LIES WITHIN
32
BSA SILVER STAR ..........................................6
NORTHAMPTON’S MOTORCYCLES ............60
BSA’s famous sporting single is so wellknown that if we say ‘Gold Star’ you might actually start snoozing. But before the postwar CBs, DBs and DBDs came the prewar M24, and its almost invisible 500cc ohv sports sibling, the Silver Star. Rowena Hoseason has been stargazing…
Richard Jones continues his tour of the motorcycling midlands, celebrating those British bikes built in Northamptonshire. There are rather more marques which fit this bill than you might initially imagine: this month a Scorpion scuttles onto the stage
NIMBUS TYPE C...........................................26
MZ CLASSICS...............................................66
Always one to be totally in tune with modern trends, Ace Tester Miles presents what might be the ultimate in Danish hygge. A cosy motorcycle? Whatever next?
Last time, MZ enthusiast Nigel Shuttleworth traced the marque’s origins back to DKW. This month we enter the post-war period when the Iron Curtain descended and East German ingenuity converted a two-stroke commuter into an international winner…
BELTIN’ BRACE OF BULLETS .......................32
Indian-built Bullets offer owners an exceptional opportunity to convert and customise without wrecking an iconic classic. Ian and Stuart, Bullet owners both, have adopted very different styles for each of their big singles. In a fair fight, which one would win? MOTO GUZZI SP1000..................................42
It took several stabs for Moto Guzzi to perfect their V-twin tourer. Raceco in the USA took development in the opposite direction to give long distance riders more taut performance. Nolan Woodbury, no stranger to the SP, tells its story… MATCHLESS G15 Mk2 .................................50
AMC 750 hybrids. All outrageous desert sleds and café racer hooligan machines, right? Wrong. Frank Westworth remembers their brother, the sidecar tug
REALCLASSIC 155; PUBLISHED IN MARCH 2017
RC REGULARS
ROBBIE ALLAN............................................72
Last month, Odgie celebrated his 60th birthday by surviving (mostly) the enduro event at the Robbie Allan Memorial Meeting. Can our sexagenarian survive the subsequent pre-65 trial and classic scramble?
THE CONTENTS PAGE ....................................4
Typically eccentric collection: the great, the good, the bad and even the ugly! WE’VE GOT MAIL! ........................................18
Masses of variety here. Happiness is a warm Honda, apparently…
BSA B21 BUILD............................................90
EVENTS ........................................................82
A couple of trial runs reveal just how much fine-tuning John Lay’s 1938 250 single still needs. This month he tries to find all four gears and a front brake; fettles the forks and fixes a fuel leak, then discovers the gears have gone AWoL again…
Already the calendar is clogging. Got your MoT yet? Insurance? Straw hat? Wellies? READERS’FREE ADS ....................................88
A curious collection. Not so many as when there were more PUB TALK ...................................................102
SUZUKI GT750 PROJECT.............................96
Winter workshop inactivity, and the Bristol Show…
Canadian Ian R Sandy converted several wrecked Suzuki two-strokes into one working Kettle. His aim was to build a fully functional motorcycle which looked like it’d never been taken apart in the first place. Did he succeed?
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TALES FROM THE SHED .............................108
Frustration. A familiar word to all shed dwellers, and especially to Frank at the moment…
TURNTO
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P114
TODAY & SAVE
BSA’s famous sporting single is so well-known that if we say ‘Gold Star’ you might actually start snoozing. But before the postwar CBs, DBs and DBDs came the prewar M24, and its almost invisible 500cc ohv sports sibling, the Silver Star. Rowena Hoseason has been stargazing… Photos by Kay Eldridge of FocusedImage.com.au and the RC RChive
6 I MARCH 2017
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BSA SILVER STAR
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MARCH 2017 I 7
RC readers write, rant and rattle on...
Summat to say? Send your comments, hints, tips, tales of woe and derring-don’t to: RCHQ@RealClassic.net
HAPPINESS IS AWARM HONDA Thanks for an excellent February issue. Can I add a few comments to John Shearer’s interesting CB250RS article? I was always surprised that a company that produced a gutless slug like the 250 Superdream could come up with such a lightweight charmer as the RS (282lb dry against 367lb) but then what do I know? They sold zillions of Superdreams… During the 1980s I was a partner in Good Vibrations, a small London motorcycle repair and hire company, serving the courier industry. As you’d guess, a great many RSs passed through our doors. Our riders were of course thrashing them hard at low road speeds so they had a much tougher life than most. Nonetheless they were pretty reliable, with the big proviso that you had to watch the oil level. Capacity was only 1.5 litres which didn’t leave much reserve if it got low, and in London courier conditions they inevitably consumed oil.
Cylinder heads were usually OK for about 40,000 miles on the kickstart model, then they would start to crack between the valves with consequent compression loss and hard starting. The electric start versions had higher compression heads and these could fail very quickly. I’d definitely advise buying the kickstart version if you intend to use the performance. Honda’s automatic compression release system is superb. Provided you keep the cable adjusted, kickstarting is a pushover (sorry). If you remove the top end you will almost certainly need to repair some of the threads for the rocker cover screws. We found Timeserts best if you have room; they’re a solid part so the end doesn’t jump out as can happen with Helicoils. However, the latter need less space so sometimes there’s no choice. Whichever you use, grease the screw threads before refitting. Ordinary high temp grease is OK, you don’t need copper.
Ignition had an odd quirk. It was selfgenerating and shut the engine down by shorting the low tension side to earth. The contacts on the back of the ignition switch were exposed and a build-up of crud combined with damp weather could cause just enough current leakage to ruin the spark when starting. If your bike doesn’t want to run and the compression’s good then try cleaning the back of the ignition switch. The earthing wire is the black one with a white tracer. The front brake is Honda’s single sided, sliding caliper device. We didn’t see too many problems with these as the bikes were in constant use, but the sliders definitely need to be kept greased. Again, you don’t need copper grease unless your nickname’s Vale and your carbon discs glow orange. Ordinary hmp grease is fine. As Rowena said, the CBX250 was a real disappointment. We only had one. There wasn’t any noticeable performance improvement over the RS; it was much more complicated (radial valves? really?) and while the ball bearing camshafts should have been long lived, our bearings failed at very low mileage. Then we found that Honda wouldn’t sell the odd-sized bearings without the cam,
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prizes
This month’s winners in our subscriber prize draw are RIC PIRSON (member 51) and VIAN CURTIS (member 4244). Congrats, chaps: your surprise RC prizes are en route! Our monthly winners are drawn from all current subscribers: it’s our way of saying an additional ‘thanks’ for joining us for the ride. More winners next month…
18 I MARCH 2017
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FLIGHT BUMBLEBEE Always one to be totally in tune with modern trends, Ace Tester Miles presents what might be the ultimate in Danish hygge. A cosy motorcycle? Whatever next?
26 I MARCH 2017
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1954 NIMBUS TYPE C
W
inding his window down to speak to me, the van driver remarked ‘Your vintage scooter goes really well. What is it, a 125?’ I told him the capacity. He looked very confused before adding ‘It’s a bit rubbish for a 750 then mate’. In a nutshell, this brief exchange sums up the incredible contradiction that is the Nimbus motorcycle. Built by the celebrated Danish electrical motor and vacuum cleaner manufacturers (among other things) Fisker and Nielson, the four cylinder machine first saw light of day in 1919. The earliest models had a large diameter‘spine’containing the fuel and are kno own today as the Stovepipe machines. Updaated in 1934, the Nimbus Type C remained virtually unchanged until the compaany ceased motorcycle manufacture comp pletely in 1959, having made about 12,000 examples. The fact it was esse entially unaltered for such a long period d of time is important and something we’ll return to later.
Photos by
The 185kg, 18 or 22bhp Nimbus was powered by an inline four cylinder ohc motor of 750cc capacity. The motor utilised a car-type distributor and all the electrics were bespoke items, designed in house by F&N themselves. That’s the first conundrum. How could such a technically advanced engine of three quarters of a litre capacity and made with four cylinders be so puny? In the power struggle it would barely match a contemporary 350 single from one of the British manufacturers. The frame itself is predominately a series of flat steel lengths that are riveted together, with some slightly more complex metal pressings completing the design, such as the integrated top yoke/ handlebars. The Nimbus had telescopic forks, nothing unusual by the 1950s but they appeared on the earliest models, too, pre-dating BMW by several months to claim a world first. It even has an ignition key, as well as lights operated by a rotating left twistgrip.
Paul Miles
32 I MARCH 2017
ENFIELD BULLETS
Indian-built Bullets offer owners an exceptional opportunity to convert and customise without wrecking an iconic classic. Ian and Stuart, Bullet owners both, have adopted very different styles for each of their big singles. In a fair fight, which one would win? Photos by Stuart Urquhart
Ian and his customised big single. Better than a basic Bullet? He says so!
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MARCH 2017 I 33
It took several stabs for Moto Guzzi to perfect their V-twin tourer. Raceco in the USA took development in the opposite direction to give long distance riders more taut performance. Nolan Woodbury, no stranger to the SP, tells its story‌ Photos by Nolan Woodbury
42 I MARCH 2017
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MOTO GUZZI SP1000
S
tand by to be surprised. A great many enthusiasts in America now regard the 1970s as motorcycling’s golden years. Speculation as to why leads precisely where one might think: the Honda Four. Important on many levels, the 750’s biggest contribution might have been the adrenalin it injected into an industry still woozy from the cheap compact car which stole the bread-and-butter sales of most motorcycle manufacturers. Yet while the Asians ushered this change, Japan’s corporate encore consisted mainly of builders attempting to perform a better version of the same song. Harley survived by adding more sugar to their existing offering, but Europe’s contrasting approach launched a succession of road rockets which proved the Continentals would not go quietly into the night.
Few active participants during the following 1980s have forgotten the popularity of the punk scene, but move past the razorblades and safety pins and you find a motorcycle industry fizzing with innovation. That’s where our feature bike fits; a flashy, slightly dated traveller that made its debut way back in the disco days of late 1977. The flow reached US shores a year later and the SP was selling well, until techno wonders like Honda’s V4 and the BMW K100 pushed it into the small print. This pale performance was not acceptable to the passionate Guzzisti, enthusiasts and owners who were well aware that competitive balance might take the Italian factory years to restore. The ability to push back created an opportunity for tuner Manfred Hecht in Brooklyn, who went on to develop a catalogue of aftermarket sports options for the Mandello twin.
In 1977 Moto Guzzi intended to steal some of BMW’s customers with a luxury sports-tourer. Predictably, the SP wasn’t sporting enough for confirmed Guzzi riders and so Raceco started offering tuning kits to give the beast some bite
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MARCH 2017 I 43
AMC hybrids. All outrageous desert sleds and cafĂŠ racer hooligan machines, right? Wrong. Frank Westworth remembers their brother, the sidecar tug Photos by Frank Westworth / RC RChive / Mortons archive / Charterhouse Auctioneers
50 I MARCH 2017
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MATCHLESS G15 MK2
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MARCH 2017 I 51
BUILTIN B BRITAIN B R TA RIT T N
PART TWO
Richard Jones continues his tour of the motorcycling midlands, celebrating those British bikes built in Northamptonshire. There are rather more marques which fit this bill than you might initially imagine: this month a Scorpion scuttles onto the stage Photos by Richard Jones, Nick Holt, Ben Falconer, Bonhams auctioneers, the VMCC
A
lthough many of Northampton’s motorcycles came from the first half of the 20th century, there is one that first saw the light of day in the 1960s, although it started life further south in Hertfordshire. In May 1963 Motorcycle Sport magazine featured an article about a 26 year old man in Bishops Stortford
60 I MARCH 2017
who made the courageous decision to design and manufacture a trials bike. Paul Wright, for it was he, worked on chassis development with a ‘well-known firm of sports and racingcar manufacturers’ (Lotus perhaps?) but his focus appears to have been more attuned to two wheels. In 1961 he won a competition to design
a bike with a 300cc parallel twin two-stroke design. Based on his experience of riding a Francis Barnett trials bike, he was motivated to take his design flair several steps further. Wright’s main thrust was that trials machines Below: Lousy pics of the Scorpion in the hands of Motorcycle Sport – back when it was a newspaper!
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