Real Classic - September 2020 - Preview

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YAMAHA STRIDENT BEATER /allegedly/ 1

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Craven Equipment Est. 1951

Vintage luggage for a modern age

01986 891096

ww www ww.craven-equipment.co.uk w

Open Monday - Friday, 9.00 - 5.00

WHATL

YAMAHA XS750 ............................................

6

When is a triple not a Triumph? When it's a Yamaha. Frank Westworth heads down memory highway aboard an XS750...

MOTOBECANE 175 ......................................

22

Vintage motorcycles don't come cheap especially not chic machines which are old enough to take part in the hobby's most prestigious events. Yet Odgie has found a classic bike old enough to take part in the Banbury Run, rebuilt to a very tight budget.

This takes make do and mend to a whole new level. ..

BSAB31 .......................................................

46

Which classic motorcycle would you suggest for a younger rider, eager to experience the delights of an old British bike? Rowena Hoseason plays safe with one of Small Heath's sturdy stalwarts CAFE RACERS..............................................

52

How and why did the cult of the cafe racer take hold? Stuart Francis explores the background to the breed and recalls some of its most memorable creations ROYAL EN FIELD'S BIG TWIN ....................... 62

TRIUMPH 1160 TRIDENT ............................ 30

BSA-Triumph triples tend to divide opinion at the best of times, and the T160 may be the three-cylinder superbike's most controversial incarnation. Rowena Hoseason reminds herself just why that might be so ...

MOTO GUZZI VlSTT ....................................

38

If you ride all year round then you definitely need a winter hack. An Enfield Bullet was the obvious choice, so Martin Peacock didn't buy one ...

Roger Slater reveals how Enfield 's big twin was so smooth and powerful, and shares his experience on how to make the most of this mighty motor ...

NORTON F1 SPORT .....................................

70

If you've ever wondered what goes on inside a water -cooled Norton rotary engine, be prepared to be amazed as Richard Negus rebuilds one with expertly accomplished insouciance ...

PROJECTWORLDBEATER ........................... 76

Odgie is building a flat-track racer based around a Can-Am military machine. Now comes the really tricky bit: machining critical components in the two-stroke motor. Did someone mention squish calculations?

ELECTREX WORLD LTD Classic Road, Trials & MX Ignition Systems Self generating CDI ignition systems for strong reliable spark Individually developed for each model, lighting options available for most kits Timing advance is fully electronic with advance curve Very low speed spark output from only 150rpm Optional flywheel weights - please ask

STK-010 fitted to B40 engine

STK-009

- Royal Enfield Crusader

STK-010

- BSA: B25, B40, B44, B50, C15

STK-012

- Triumph: 3TA, 5TA, Unit 650, T120

STK-1257

- BSA: Bantam D1-D7

STK-154

- Bultaco Sherpa Trials

STK-175

- BSA Bantam Trials: D10, D14/4, B175

STK-200

- Triumph Tiger Cub: T20, T205

- Fantic Trials: - 301, 241, 303, 243 STK-402 - Yamaha: TY250, Majesty STK-405 - Yamaha: XT500 - Race/MX STK-300

- Yamaha: TY175 Trials STK-960 - Villiers: 8e, 7e, 6e STK-970 - Villiers: 197-280cc engines STK-475

STK-980

- AJS Stormer 370 & 410cc

STK-200

STK-1257

STK-175

43-46 Vanalloys Business Park Stoke Row Oxfordshire RG9 5QW T: 01491 682369 - F: 01491 682286 - E: info@electrexworld.co.uk

www.electrexworld.co.uk

Made in UK

FROM THEFRONT Here's a thing. I really enjoyed my day out aboard the Yamaha triple you should find elsewhere in these pages this very month. It ticked pretty much all of the boxes in the big long questionnaire What Makes A Bike Classic?

It hailed from the 70s, started itself, delivered plenty enough power to make riding it at modern roads speeds achievable, steered well and was even comfortable . I'll not even mention the shaft drive and triple disc brakes, nor indeed the characterful three-pot engine.

And on the long ride home aboard my own modern machine, I found myself puzzling over how it could be that I'd enjoyed almost everything about the Yamaha, but still would be very unlikely to actually buy one. I didn't when they were current, and I don't think I would now . There are several reasons for this, not least that it simply didn't pluck on the heart strings - although it was a good bike, and indeed very good to ride, my aspirations were unfired, acquisitive mode remained switched to stand-by. But I could easily see how it would make a really sensible purchase for someone else. Massively practical, most wearing spares are readily available, it's comfortable and competent, and supported by the VJMC, which is always a bonus.

But for me? No, no thanks.

Nothing remarkable there, I hear you say.

Except ... I would never argue that simply because a machine doesn't appeal to me that it therefore follows that it shouldn't appeal to others. We are all different. We all have opinions, some shared with almost all others, some shared with hardly anyone else. For years and years and many more years I ran a succession of rotary Nortons , both as my modern machine and indeed as my alleged classic transport.

Many, many clueless commentators insisted that I was stupid somehow, that much better machines were available and any sensible person would ride one of those instead of the considerably unusual Norton.

I found this to be mostly entertaining.

Mostly. Sometimes it was amusing , as when I was chatting with a devout bunch from a noted British marque club who were sneering at the somewhat tired Norton parked outside the diner - and who entirely missed my point when I remarked that they'd all arrived at a bike meet by car. No, they knew, they just knew that rotary Nortons were really bad bikes - even though not one of them had actually ridden one. They just knew that the bikes were bad bikes. Their loss.

My purpose here is to share my ongoing incredulity that so many otherwise decent folk

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are so keen on criticising other riders' bikes.

And when challenged, the reasons they offer in support of their negative opinions rarely make any sense. A particular favourite of mine is that modern bikes are character-free somehow.

I can't remember the last motorcycle I rode which didn 't have character - but I suspect that they mean that modern bikes are reliable, and that reliable translates as somehow boring . Not in my world.

One of our long-time readers has recently acquired one of my own dream machines. It 's a Velocette, and one of the very few examples of that endlessly revered marque which I would add to the Shed. A Thruxton? A KTT? Nope, a Viceroy. I even offered to buy it from him, but he refused . Smart chap.

Electric start, flat twin , radical transmission, two strokes and a great swoopy beak of a front mudguard. I can hear in my imagination the mockers, the knockers and the endlessly opinionated experts revving up already. Make it so ...

Ride safely

Frank Westworth Frank@realclassic.net

THE NEXT ISSUE (RC198)WILL BEPUBLISHED ON OCTOBER5TH, AND SHOULDREACHUK SUBSCRIBERS BY OCTOBER9th

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Compactand understated.

Yamaha's750 triplemade no pretence at being a supersportster

6 I SEPTEMBER 2020

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SEPTEMBER 2020 I 7

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Whenyou knowhowl),ey're I built,you'll buyaYamaha.

The_twin camshafts are driven by a cha,n ~ram this side of the engine, while the primary drive by Hy-vo chain is on the other side. Final drive, famously, is by shaft

veryone I know indulges in harmless obsessions. Many of my own involve deciding that I absolutely need a particular motorcycle, whereupon no advert, no auction, no online enthusiasts' group is safe. I plot and I scheme and I find a few, make a shortlist, consider the familial and financial outcomes and .. . do nothing.

Usually.

Sometimes I even abuse my happy position as a Top Magazine Chappie and go ride one of the chosen few, but mostly I resist that wicked temptation.

Mostly .

So it was when Rowena of this parish remarked that she was prepping a feature on my almost-favourite Triumph, the T160 Trident. All things being equal, you should be able to read about this elsewhere in this very issue, and a truly handsome machine it is, as are all T160s. I've ridden lots of them and owned only one. Why only one? Because for some time that Tl 60 - nicknamed Smoky Joe by friends and colleagues because of its studied emulation of a Soviet coking oven when nice and hot and under throttle - held the sad distinction of being the least reliable, most costly motorcycle I had ever owned. But when it ran well, it ran outstandingly well.

When I gave it away (really; in a magazine reader competition, although I did get paid for it) I swore I would never have another.

So did the lucky winner of the machine .

He loved his free British classic, his first

8 I SEPTEMBER 2020

Moreold bikesonline:Real-Classic.co.uk

British bike, in fact, and lavished money and attention on it. This generosity was repaid in full about six months later when the Trident's oil pressure gauge fell to zero and the engine lunched its several shell bearings.

Plainly, with the advent of great age and in this age of uncertain futures, it was finally time to get myself another triple. I mean: electric start, fab looks, disc brakes, fab looks, left-foot shift and fab looks - how could anyone resist the lure?

'You don't want one of those ; said an email from my friend Chris. 'This is what you want: He'd somehow failed to attach an image to the email, so I assumed that he meant to

~ YAMAHA

say that I didn't want any more motorcycles, which is a profound thought indeed.

Impressed, I was, and replied to tell him so.

Two minutes later a mail with 'sigh' in the subject line landed in the inbox. Attached to it was a photo of the bike you can see here -

Yamaha's advertising for their touring triple was occasionally eccentric, even for its time

hopefully. You should observe right away that this is not a Trident. It 's not even a Triumph.

them. That is a good excuse, no?

A tiny addition to the happy families anecdote is that when I first failed to keep up

weeping rain clouds and the excellent Salopian hills visible only through the morning mist. A real world ride, then, none of this golden dawn

This is in fact a Yamaha.

It's been at least a couple of decades maybe even three - since I last rode a Yamaha XS triple. My brother bought a new XS850 back then, and a brother-in-law rode an XS750 at the same time . They were the reason

with my brother and bro-in-law I had been riding a Commando, the best bike ever, as you know . It broke a lot while travelling at the same speed as the two Yamahas, only once returning home on a train. The CB750 was such a joy that I swapped it for a T1SOV

nonsense. The truth of this is visible in the

I bought my only big Japanese bike - a CB750 K6 Honda - so that I could keep up with

Trident. I couldn't keep up with my brothers on that, either. This made me understand that I ride very slowly whichever machine I'm on. Understanding is profound, Grasshopper.

Which has nothing to do with the Yamaha you are even now gazing at in

YAMAHA XS750 FACT PACK Engine

Acrossthe frame,air-cooled 120' dohc triple

Bore & Stroke, Capacity

68 x 68.6mm, 747cc

Comp Ratio

8.5: 1

Carburetion

3 x 34mm Mikuni 0/

Max Power

64bhp at 7200rpm

Max Torque

46 ft/lb at 6000rpm

Top Speed

117mph

Clutch

Wet, mult iplate

Primary dr ive

MorseHy-vo chain

Transmission

5-speed,shaft drive

Frame

Steel, duplexcradle

Weight (dry)

5311b

photos. No sun when we need it ...

Photography can be a challenge at times like this, as can riding an unfamiliar machine belonging to someone else over wet cowslurry roads while Proud Owner follows closely aboard my own motorcycle, keeping a stern eye on proceedings.

The XS is not a low-seat mach ine. In fact,

>-

awe and wonder. Awe and wonder? Yes of course: electric start, left-foot shift, disc brakes at both ends; the stuff of dreams. Throw in double overhead cams and a shaft final drive and we have one seriously epic motorcycle, certainly by the standards of the mid-late 1970s, surely?

So you would think, for that specification reads like the very stuff of dreams to a touring-type motorbicyclist such as I. It

Wheelbase

58.75"

Width

27"

Seat Height

33"

Front Suspension

Kayabahydraulic telescopic

Rear Suspension

Twin shocks,preload adjustable

Tyres

3.25 x 19front,4.00x 18 rear

Brakes (front and rear)

10.4"discs,floating callipers

Fuel Capacity

3.75Imp gallon

did back then and it still does today. What, as the youth endlessly ask, is not to like?

Of course I booked an appointment , rode a mostly modern machine up into the Herefordshire Marches and baked in the sun all the way, pausing only for a moment to share lunch with Ollie of this parish and to have a coffee with a long-lost chum who has inexplicably acquired a brandnew Harley-Davidson tricycle and plainly needed a sympathetic ear.The following day of course found the skies black with

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SEPTEMBER 2020 I 9

RealClassic

its 33-inch seat height is quite enough for most of us. It's taller than the catastrophically tall 1971 BSA/Triumph range, which reveals how times change. However, once aboard, it proves to be decently slim, softly-seated if not sprung, and the view ahead is genuinely enticing. Some bikes somehow make me want to ride them. Others ... not so.

DDHC 75D

Check that the fuel tap is switched on, turn key and observe the few loonie lights, then work out all on my own where the choke lever is, and operate it. A display of notable expertise like this impresses everyone, you know. And the engine fires up immediately, and - good heavens - it sounds exactly like

The much-praised shah final drive. Oddly enough, road tests of the day blamed it for an atypically (for Yamaha) noisy gear shih. FW didn't notice, of course

10 I SEPTEMBER 2020

course the brakes work and the engine ticks over like an off-beat metronome as soon as I

sounds surprisingly familiar, which can only

demote the choke and wait for a hole in the traffic. Wait a minute! What 's that most unJapanese rumble? Main bearings? A fault! On a Japanese bike! It's Chris on my own bike behind me, trying not to tell me to get a move on ...

The triple engine pulls like the proverbial, no fuss, no fandango, it just pulls. It's cold

be because I've ridden lots of BSA Group triples, which share the Yamaha's 120-degree crank layout and which are dimensionally similar, with the Yamaha's 68 x 68.6mm a little closer to square than the Brits' 67 x 70mm.

Of course the clutch is light. Of course there

so I short-shift, hitting top gear while the speedo reveals a speed below 40mph, which would have seen my old T160 spitting and expressing its displeasure by clanging the final drive chain against the chainguard. The Yamaha of course is fine, and accelerates

was no need to free it off before clicking it almost silently into first. Of course there was

smoothly from less than 40 straight up to an indicated 70. And then we have corners - familiar corners, the best kind . So we need brakes and we need engine braking, because I am an old school motorbicyclist and like to do the braking thing properly .

a 3-cylinder 4-stroke. Uncanny but true . Of course it's running on all three cylinders straight away, a trick none of my BSA I Triumph triples managed, and is decently smooth, like a Trident. In fact, it feels and

The view from above is as competent as the rest of the bike. Big clear clocks and controls which are simple to use. The indicators are self-cancelling, too, which must have surprised many riders

Over-confidence is not a virtue. Of course there's akickstart

no tug from the drivetrain when first gear engaged. And of course there was neither slip nor drag - of course the first hesitant pull-away was trauma-free and completely smooth. Of

(I YAMAHA XS750 And it is really good . The brakes may be twin discs, but there's no overkill, instead they're pretty gentle in the way they haul the bike up. You get the feeling that even if

about right, and propels the bike's 5301b or so with very little fuss or effort ... or indeed excitement. It's

the machine was fitted with ABS it would be entirely unnecessary and would never trip in. They demand a decent squeeze, but work well enough. Like much of the machine, the brakes feel competent, if unexciting.

This is also true of the engine, about which the very best thing is the sound. The quoted

a really pleasant engine, but unlike a Trident, you're unlikely to lie awake in the wee small hours making vroom-vroom noises, scaring the cat, while counting down the hours

64bhp (at an almost restrained 7200rpm) feels

until you can get out there

Although the seat looks pretty big, and is certainly comfortable, a promo pie of the bike 2-up suggests that it was in fact a little cosy for two and fire it up again. Which is a small surprise, because its spec is excellent. Like three cylinders , two overhead cams, a totally reliable electric hoof and proper mid-70s Oriental engineering and construction. All of which make it very worthy, but they do not make it thrilling to ride.

There are no thrills in the steering and handling departments, either. It steers easily, instinctively, and the handling is predictable and pretty good. It'sjust not ... entirely ... thrilling.

Don't get me wrong, I had a great time with it, but was vaguely surprised at how unsurprising it was. It sounds really good and it goes very well, but it's not easy to see how someone who was in the market for a 750 in 1976/77 would have clambered off, say an sohc Honda or a dohc Suzuki and decided to go for the Yamaha. Maybe the shaft drive would have swung the argument?

Certainly Yamaha's advertising and press puff emphasised the 'quality' of the shaft drive, which is indeed very neatly accomplished and entirely unremarkable in use. How can this be? BMW twins of the period exhibited several interesting characteristics which we all put down to the shaft - the meisterschaft according to their ads of the day. Plainly we were all wrong - and Honda's CXSOOwould confirm that wrongness . The Yamaha shaft works perfectly and perfectly unobtrusively too.

In fact , I can't find anything to waggle a critical finger at. The XS rides well maybe the much-vaunted at the time Teflon fork bushes really did ease their operation ; it goes well and it steers well.

It even boasted odd practical touches, like a giant tool kit complete with a loop of steel wire to allow the home mechanic to compress the rear suspension

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>-

SEPTEMBER 2020 I 11

RealClassic to help with dropping out the rear wheel and the rear mudguard boasts a swivelling

fairing and hard luggage, but tou rists are no more prepared to put up with even perceived

A-roads with modern A-road t raffic. It was fine.

But fun? The jury is still out on that one.

section to further ease things. So of course

reliability issues than are cafe cowboys , and an

Back in those historic mists, I would have

Yamaha's excellent XS took the 750 world by

atypically short production life was the result.

bought a Trident. Nothing has changed . I'd still

storm and sold in millions - correct?

Sadly not. Early models enjoyed a

Today? Ignoring all of what I've already said, I

buy a Trident , and there is no logical reason

would in fact consider one of these if I was in the

for this, because Yamaha's take on a 750 triple

remarkable number of problems - genuine engine failures in some cases,and although

market for an unusual middleweight Japanese machine from the mid-1970s. It ticks most of the

makes more sense in all departments. That said, when were motorcycle purchase decisions

Yamaha burst into action with a series of

boxes that we all line up to either encourage or

based on sense?Quite so. I rest my case. Re

fixes, including con rods, clutch, camshafts ,

prevent us buying a bike. This particular

oil pump and most bearings - the bike never

example gave me a totally enjoyable

sold in the numbers predicted. Which is a

day out. I didn 't need to worry about

shame, because built into this machine is a very well thought-out tourist's delight. Yamaha

whether it would start, stop or straggle

themselves acknowledged this later on, by

fuss. Or whether it would be too slow

advertising their triple complete with a vast

or too cumbersome to handle modern

through crawling traffic without any

Yetanotherarea wherethe Japanese revolutionised motorcyclingwas the under-seat scenery.Everythingis easy to accessand sensibly laid out, completewitha manualand an 18-piece (!) toolkit. There'seven a smallinternalbutty box...

,q,

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#48

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Forty-eight Autumn 2018

OCTOBER 2018

No. 330 October 2018 £4.30 UK Off-sale date 31/10/2018

MOTO MEMORIES // TECH TALK // MONTESA COTA 200 // BULTACO MATADOR

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