Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 41 Winter 2016 i Classic Dirt Bike

Were you at the very first Hawkstone Park Festival of Legends in September? Did you enjoy it as much as everyone else? Mind you, the weather helped as it proved to be one of those fabulous late summer weekends where the rain held off, the winds died down and the sun shone. The organisers tell us 2017 will be even better than this year as already many legends who missed the first one are determined to do the next one. The dates to note are September 2/3, 2017 and the venue is of course Hawkstone Park in Shropshire which is effectively the home of British MX. Learning from the first event the team will make a few tweaks to ensure 2017 is even better. The popular interview session with racers…

Combined events seem to be on the up at the moment, and CDB was recently invited to the inaugural demo trial at Claydon House in Berkshire, where a celebration of things motoring was taking place. The invite came via CDB regular advertiser and trials spares dealer Richard Allen. Richard had been allocated a small area, similar in size to where our Stafford demos take place, and laid out a testing course to show those people who might not have seen a motorcycle observation trial just what it is we do. There was a good mix of machines, from Julian Wigg’s very special Norton featured inCDB a few issues ago, to the editor’s TY250 Yamaha with all manner of twinshock and Pre-65 machines too. The event was deemed a success and…

Mick Andrews’ record with OSSA motorcycles is an excellent one and as well as European championships the Derbyshire ace notched up three consecutive SSDT wins to prove the motorcycle was good enough. Those wins – 1970, 1971 and 1972 – were made with factory bikes, albeit ones designed by Mick, and would lead to the MAR – Mick Andrews Replica – which pretty much was what Mick would be riding. However, unfettered by the need to be seen on a standard product though still with a soft spot for OSSA, Mick was involved in a build which allowed a few tweaks which would probably have been refused by the factory. It is the nature of us club riders to assume a factory bike is the be-all and end-all of brilliance…

Looking at the machine it was obvious the Japanese company had come to play seriously in this off-road lark and clear too was Pettersson’s influence. Now, as we discussed this bike the level of commitment to its build emerged, as it started from an engine and a few parts. “I’ve no idea what happened to the rest of the bike,” says owner Clive Bussey, as he listed what few parts he started with. “I’d love to find out but typical of those days, once the team were finished with one season’s machines, they were often broken up.” The engine arrived with Clive about 15 years ago, along with some rear dampers, a front wheel and the right-hand fork leg, plus the unusual bottom fork yoke and a few other bits…

When talk turns to tyres the discussion can often get heated – what one rider swears by another may swear at – and it is even more complicated when tubed or tubeless is chucked into the mix. For classic and twinshock riders, certainly in the trials world, remaining on tubed tyres is limited to IRC really. One of the problems is that a tubeless tyre doesn’t always stay on a tubeless rim, there being a slight difference in the tyre well which prevents it seating properly. However there are those who use tubeless tyres quite happily on a tubed rim – including one recent winner of the Pre-65 Scottish – and claim no problems. The easy answer is to change rims to tubeless type and the problem goes away. Okay…

Oh boy, is interest in the Classic Mechanics era taking off or what? Enthusiasm for machinery from the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties has grown ata rapid rate as those of us who rode the things in that era indulge our passion. At first this interest in ‘modern’ motorcycles was dismissed as a mere fad while the serious classic enthusiast fettled up their traditional machines. But, hold on, isn’t that what happened when groups of people started rebuilding old motorcycles? Didn’t the general public dismiss their efforts as a passing fad? The thing is, we here in magazine land defy you to say which machine is more classic than another – it is an impossible task. To one person a TY250 Mono Yamaha is the ultimate expression of Eighties two-wheeled desirability…

The CDB/Rockoil backed Northern British Bike Championship has a new sponsor. Rockshocks have joined the list of businesses prepared to put their names to our traditional trials series. It helps of course that Gary Fleckney at Rockshocks is a Pre-65 trials competitor and many riders use Rockshocks on their bikes. The presentation of awards for the 2016 series will take place on stage at Telford during the Classic Dirt Bike Show in February 2017. Check out the Rockshocks website www.rockshocks.co.uk or see their advert in CDB. For a list of NBBC trials and how to enter, see the website: www.northernbritishbikechampionship.co.uk…

On the face of it Triumph’s twin, designed in the 1930s, ought not to have still been at the forefront of competition 30 years later, but it was. There are a number of reasons for this, firstly it’s a great engine, flexible, easily maintained and actually very reliable, plus it has a range of parts and accessories associated with it which can make it perform extremely well. Unlike a traditional four-stroke single the twin is a shorter engine with its weight lower down and it is easier to start too. The chassis they were slotted into wasn’t always the best as they were connected by a lot of bolts and studs and could flex or twist, plus Triumph stuck to the brazed and lugged construction method for a long time.…

Progress has been pretty slow since last issue but there has been some and it’s all been on the lines of ‘now where does that bit fit on again?’. It is at such times the sketch, note or photograph proves invaluable and I don’t care how good your memory is, things will be forgotten. Luckily at the strip down stage regular photographer Gary Chapman was on hand to take lots of photos and film the whole procedure. For the times when Gary wasn’t there my other half was on hand and is used to my ridiculous requests to photograph things and the incredulous exclamation ‘you want me to take a picture of you doing what?’ is heard less frequently these days. It soon became apparent that several dry builds are…

“…I’d like to extend my thanks to both Jeff and Tim for the chance to follow the legendary ‘JV’ and I hope you will all enjoy reading my quarterly contributions…” Ian Berry When Jeff Smith announced to the motorcycling world that he was emigrating to Canada in early 1972, following the closure of the BSA Competition Department, his close friend and rival, Arthur Lampkin, was quoted as saying, “I wish he’d emigrated 17 years ago when I first met him, I’d have won a lot more trophies.” Now, as you may well be aware, after several years of penning his ‘Smith’s Tales’ column here, not to mention almost 60 years of writing for the likes of The Motor Cyclist, Motor Cycle News and Motor Cyclist Illustrated, Jeff has made the…

Long before Jeff Smith earned the world championship reward for his and BSA compshop boss Brian Martin’s patient development work on the Gold Star’s successor, another BSA star was laying the groundwork for the legend that would become the DBD model. Bill Nicholson had been making a name for himself in Irish events, trials and short road races mainly, and had even come to mainland UK as part of an Irish team for the Colmore Cup trial soon after the end of the Second World War. On his own interpretation of what a BSA competition bike ought to be like, Nicholson managed to beat all but BSA’s star man Fred Rist in the important national trade supported event. This led to an invitation by then BSA competition shop boss Bert…

Cast your mind back to the MX world of the Seventies and early Eighties when development seemed to happen at a phenomenal pace; each factory strove to outdo the other with this tweak and that mod, then next week it was all change again. It really was a frantic pace forced on the world by the Japanese makers who had gone from not really understanding the off-road world to virtually dominating it. All areas of the machine were scrutinised minutely to see what could be improved on, what needed altering and what should be dropped. Take the world championship-winning Honda we featured last issue – air-cooled and twinshock. Top of the world… but by January 1981 The Motor Cycle had a brand new Honda on the front cover and what…

A victorious Team Belgium celebrated a sensational double victory at this year’s Vets MXdN at Farleigh Castle in Wiltshire on September 3-4, as they claimed top honours in both Twinshock and EVO MXdN team events. An elated Jan Geboers, clutching the prestigious Georges Jobe Trophy, made the most of his presence on the top step as he milked the support of the crowd. “I’ve been waiting 10 years for this,” joked the jovial Belgian. The infamous Grand Prix circuit, which has been the scene of many a memorable race, including two home wins in as many years, was not a happy hunting ground for team GB this year. A disastrous opening race in appalling conditions left team GB well down the order, with a bleak outlook of attaining any kind…

With all that’s best in the modern dirt bike scene on display at the International Dirt Bike Show at the end of October, enthusiasts of the older, classic dirt bike had to look a little harder, but there were a few such machines in the halls. Our stand in particular had three super special Sixties BSA trials bikes on it… three genuine factory BSAs in fact. They were built for Arthur, Alan and Martin Lampkin and the two elder brothers both won the SSDT on their versions – Martin of course would win the SSDT three times on Bultaco in the Seventies. We have to thank Alan Lampkin for arranging the three bikes for us and he reckoned it was the first time all three had been together since the…

A 15,000-strong crowd at the 1976 British MX GP – at Dodington Park near Bristol that year – witnessed the highs and lows of the MX racer. Though it was reigning world champion Roger De Coster’s day, had it not been for chaos at the first corner in the second leg then the UK would have seen the first home GP win in nine years. Teenage sensation Graham Noyce rocketed his Maico round the track, time and time again fending off De Coster’s challenge in the first moto. The gap between Brit Noyce and Belgian De Coster was at times as much as 35 seconds, at others as little as two, but at the flag Noyce was way ahead of the field and the noise of the crowd drowned out…