Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 48 Autumn 2018 i Classic Dirt Bike

In the Sixties, engineer Robin Humphries was less than impressed with the quality of front suspension available for competition riders to uprate their machines. So, the lad set to and made his own forks under the REH brand. CDB paid Robin a visit for a feature in issue 14 on the suspension scene of the Sixties. Fast forward a little to the new millennium and to Armac Design, a small company with big talent run by Duncan and Judy Macdonald. The rights to use REH were acquired, Duncan’s engineering talents took the Sixties designs to new levels and now the forks are THE ones for success in trials. Contact REH Forks through their website www.rehforks.com or email them at rehforks@gmail.com or telephone them on 01751 417371.…

A look at the subframes of this project show the damper top mountings have been squeezed inthanks to successive tightening and slackening of the dampers bolts. The only satisfactory remedy is to cut them off and press them flat and weld them, or, more accurately, ‘braze’ them back on. No, my welding isn’t in this league at all, in fact being honest you’d not want me to weld anything at all but luckily I do know someone who can, and he did, so the subframes – both the standard and modified ones – are ready to use. Or will be, once a coat of paint is applied. On the subject of the frame, the current workspace isn’t ideal for building motorcycles in so a few compromises and modifications have to…

We asked winner of the Joan Westbrook Trophy, Donna Fox, for her thoughts on the trial: “The Bantam was exceptional, luckily the owner of it agreed I could have it from January this year so I could get used to it, as I felt if I didn’t put the effort in I’d regret it when the result came out.” Thanks must go to my mentor Pete ‘it’s not a Sherco stop trying to go up that stuff’Archer, though I waited till he looked the other way and tried it. This was a good thing because the trial was much more technical than I imagined. Mick Grant and Vesty both offered tips and encouragement along the way. My interest in trials came from watching my dad and uncle when I was…

Though the 2018 Bultaco Revival Nostalgia Trial was alot of fun for all involved, there was a more serious side to the event and this was to raise funds for cancer charities. There are few people who haven’t been touched by this awful disease, be it themselves, a relative or friend and research goes on into its cause and cure. The Lampkin family who support this event know only too well how quickly cancer can change lives as Martin, youngest of the three Lampkin brothers, succumbed to the disease in 2016. Guest of honour this year, or one of them at least, was Alan ‘Sid’ Lampkin who deputised his son James to ride his works Bultaco in the event. James wasn’t the only Lampkin riding either as Beta importer John…

Though the Bultaco Revival Nostalgia Trial was all about Bultacos of the Sixties through to the early Eighties, the marque is still very much alive with a range of electrically powered bikes which are bang up to date. The Bultaco Brinco is a combination of the best of the modern electric power with the addition of workable pedal power. There are four colours listed with red and blue being popular, each model has three power modes – a sport with up to 50km range, a tour with up to 75km range and eco with nearly 100km of riding. There’s a three-hour charge time for the battery. Go check their website www.bultaco.co.uk…

By the time this issue reaches the outside world the results will be well known, but just in case you missed the winners, they were: Mickey Oates Over 50s: Mark Fulton Honda Burnett Electrical Under 50s: Barry Turnbull Honda Broach Construction Over 60s: Willie Simpson Maico Clubman Over 60: Steve Bircher Suzuki Wallace Power Pre-68 Unlimited: James Thompson JAP Paterson Engineering Pre-78 Unlimited: Chris Woodward Cheney BSA Hughan Builders Pre-75 Unlimited: Kris Winder Honda Clubman: Andy Malloch CZ/Armstrong Over 50: Graham Smith Suzuki Over 60: Steve Mower Maico Under 50: Michael McBride Maico Classic Team Race: Capital Glazing JAP Twinshock Team Race: The Castle Kings Grand National Classic: KrisWinderHonda Grand National Twinshock: Barry Turnbull Honda…

Super Saturno *** I have recently acquired a 1952 Gilera Saturn 500cc which is the prototype bike that Jacky Melioli modified in 1952. Apparently, there were only 30 Saturno MXers made and it was a bit of a resurgence for the model as the speed Saturno had come to the end of its competition life by 1952. As a MXer it carried on until 1956 as a production model. Vic Vaughn email Wow, talk about rare! We must come along and see you Vic, that’s a great machine. Tim Satisfied customer Well, what can I say, issue 47 of Classic Dirtbike arrived on my doormat with my other post, I picked it all up and the first thing to catch my eye was the TY Mono photo. Interest piqued, I…

Undoubtedly talented racers by all accounts, Don and Derek Rickman were rather reluctant manufacturers, or at least they’d never intended to make motorcycles for general release. However, circumstances set them on the path to manufacture when they received a brush-off from the industry to whom they’d offered their machines or requested engines and parts supplies as legitimate dealers. Eventually they did gain if not actual 'help' at least engines from AMC but too late to help the former manufacturer survive the inevitable end of the main stream motorcycle industry in the UK. Despite these ridiculous constrains placed on the brothers’ company their Rickman Metisse models – fitted with a variety of engines – helped not only club riders achieve a level of success with machines which handled well and looked…

In the picturesque New Forest area of Hampshire, Belfast man Sammy Miller has made his home and it is also the home of his collection of classic motorcycles. Naturally the trials world features highly but not exclusively in the halls as there is road racing, scrambling and ISDT machinery too, plus some really tasty vintage and veteran road bikes. There is an excellent website www.sammymiller.co.uk with opening times detailed – currently winter opening times are in action. The museum address is: Sammy Miller Museum, Bashley Cross Roads, New Milton, Hampshire, BH25 5SZ. Telephone 01425 620777.…

As we hinted earlier, most Ariels in use today owe much to Miller’s GOV132 and we’ve visited that model many times in the past. The most comprehensive feature about the famous bike was in issue eight and in the story Sammy detailed a few more bits and pieces which he could have tried to keep his Ariel competitive. He recalls spending hours fabricating an alloy kick-start which broke almost the first time it was used, these days almost all Pre-65s have an alloy kick-start from a modern machine as an example. Nor is it necessary to start with a complete bike to build a competitive Ariel as almost all parts and bits are available to build one from scratch. So, what are you waiting for?…

Of all the various blast cleaning techniques available to the majority of mechanics, be they professional or enthusiast, vapour blasting has to be the most misunderstood. We at CDB hear both sides of the story, from the customer ‘it didn’t take all the crap off, disappointed...’ to the business operative doing the work ‘they turned up with a load of filthy, rusty, oily bits and expected miracles...’ The casual user often doesn’t realise the differences in the processes used for the mechanical cleaning of bits and pieces by pointing an air-gun emitting a stream of blasting medium at them. Shot blasting is okay for the sort of metal used in oil rig construction but less use in motorcycle restoration – except for shot-peening which is out of the scope of…

❝…Bernie proved to be the best possible special guest, happy to talk to absolutely everyone, posed for hundreds of pics and signed autographs galore…❞ I have to admit that, when Bernie Schreiber was announced as the guest of honour for the Nostalgia Bultaco Revival (masterminded by Peter Remington), I could barely believe it. Bernie had been absent from the trials scene for so long – around 30 years – that Irequired quite a memory jolt. Would the urbane Mr Schreiber really leave his Swiss home for a ride around a wood in Cumbria? I'm sure that most readers of this fine publication know just as much, if not more, about Bernie as do I. First and foremost, back in 1979 he became the first, and so far only, Trials World…

There’s a word for those who haul a big rigid bike around the Highlands and it’s ‘heroic’ – there are other words but Andy Abraham is a big lad so we’ll stick with heroic. His Scott has actually more in common with the bikes in the following week’s SSDT as it’s a water-cooled two-stroke but in any case Andy proved he could get it round the course. We asked him what he thought of the trial in 2018: “It’s changed a bit since I rode my Matchless here in 2004-ish, maybe I’d best haul it out for next year as the Scott isn’t quite right for this event.”…

As guest of honour at the Classic Dirt Bike Show in the International Centre at Telford in Shropshire, Gerrit Wolsink was much in demand, but CDB managed to grab him for a chat in between his duties. First thing to ask him was how come he, a Dutchman, acquired the title of King of Carlsbad? “Hah! I just liked the track,” he thinks for a second or two and adds “well, not just the track but California in general, its racing and attitude too, for some reason I just felt right there.” It showed too, as Gerrit is renowned as the man who owned Carlsbad with five wins to his name in the Seventies. “I enjoyed staying there with promoter Gavin Trippe and relaxing at his house before the race,…

❝…he took avirtually obsolete motorcycle and transformed it into a thoroughly competitive and celebrated motocross machine. The CCM name lives on today…❞ Remember the heady days of 1973? Frank Spencer was running amok on TV, ‘Ooh, Betty!’, Austin’s Allegro had hit the streets and Sunderland beat Leeds United to win the FA Cup. A time of long, lank hair, Budgie jackets and flares, though for many motocross fans it will best be remembered as the year of the ‘Four-stroke Revival’. Jeff Smith and BSA had won two world championships in the mid-sixties and BSA narrowly missed out on two more when John Banks twice finished runner-up in the latter part of the decade. By the early seventies its competition shop was history, race team disbanded and Banks, Andy Roberton and…

If Sten Lundin hadn’t hit fork problems in the Italian MX GP in 1960, then maybe the world wouldn’t have had Ceriani forks to smooth the bumps out. Lundin was racing his Monark/Lito with Norton based forks fitted, which were the best at the time and an incident meant they needed work during the interval between races. Lundin patched them up, made them work again, won his racing and was approached by a young Italian who said his uncle made front forks and would be interested in providing some for Sten. The introduction was made to Snr Ceriani, Lundin spent a week testing various forks until he was happy and used the Italian forks from then on.…

Way back in time when the UK had a decent sized motorcycle industry, accepted wisdom decreed success in trials required a four-stroke single of 350cc or 500cc capacity, with no rear suspension – woe betide anyone who dare say otherwise. The problem with accepted wisdom is there are those who have little time for it and go against it either intentionally or because they feel it doesn’t matter. Looking at the rear suspension aspect to begin with, Royal Enfield works rider Johnny Brittain had little option but to ride a trials bike with rear springing, as that’s what his employers made. He was pitied for this as the world stayed rigid… until fate stepped in and one of his contemporaries also tried rear suspension – suddenly the world went sprung.…

If any motorcycle has a legendary feel about it, then Ariel’s big single trials HT5 has to be it. Pick up any issue of the UK motorcycle press of the early Sixties and there will be something somewhere about an Ariel trials bike winning an event. Sadly for Ariel though, such success was of little commercial value to them as the four-stroke range was dropped at the end of the Fifties. In any case, the ‘Ariel’ doing the winning owed more to the talents of its rider and developer Sammy Miller than to the factory. This situation was not unknown for Ariel as their competition models in the Thirties were very successful for the factory, with team rider Fred Povey winning such things as the SSDT and the machinery becoming…

Often viewed as a sideshow to main solo racing, sidecars did eventually gain their own championship with a series of GPs making up a European title contest which did become a world championship in 1980. Though at the time of the feature which attracted my attention here it was still a European contest and one in which the old guard of Robert Grogg and Nick Thompson were lying first and second. So, what got this archive feature to the pages of this publication? The process is hardly scientific as our archive at CDB head office is brimming with glorious images and features from the past. In the case of this particular feature the headline ‘New Boys Shake The Aces’ stood out, and to be fair we all like to see…

Great things were expected of Kinlochleven joiner Gary Macdonald as he started the 2018 Pre-65 as the reigning champ. He’d upped the ante for this year as, instead of his Bantam he was out on a Triumph – that the eventual winner was decided by a tie-break is just the way it is, as three lads, Gary and Dans Thorpe and Clarke all finished on clean. Gary took it on biggest bike, while Dan Clarke admitted to being a month older than Dan Thorpe, so young Thorpey took third place. In an event reckoned to be fairly tough, the weather did play a part and the moor crossings certainly tested the riders’ mental, as well as physical, strength. Culminating in the presentation and tales of riders who ‘…if only I’d…’…

In order to raise funds for the Cancer Care charity, there was a celebrity auction with a number of specialist items being donated by the guests themselves. As we went to press, the auction had been concluded with the final tally yet to be confirmed, but according to auctioneer Robin Luscombe the total should top £3700. Helping this total along were items such as a Bultaco Jacket from Sid Lampkin, a copy of Bernie’s book from Bernie himself and a chance to ride on the back of Mick Grant round the TT course. The pot received a further boost when 10% of the sale price of the Bulto which Bernie rode was donated to the charity.…

❝Unlike the industry, which felt the off-road scene was too much trouble and stopped making bikes for it, Don and Derek kept their eye on the market.❞ Motorcycling history is filled with tales of old models getting a new lease of life thanks to a slight change or a new development which prolongs the life of the machine in some way. Look back to the Thirties when Triumph designer Edward Turner created the Speed Twin and slipped this engine into the existing frame and forks used by the singles which were suddenly outclassed. Move further forward to the Forties when Bill Nicholson felt BSA’s chassis was past its best and created an all-welded – albeit rigid – frame which propelled the Goldie engine forward, or Norton’s race effort rejuvenated by…