Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 73 Winter 2024 i Classic Dirt Bike

By the end of the Fifties BSA’s Gold Star scrambler was at the peak of its development and it seemed anyone who was anyone in scrambling needed a Goldie to win. One of the reasons for the Goldie’s success was that BSA was keen to be seen winning and in Jeff Smith they had someone who not only was a brilliant rider but, having served an apprenticeship at BSA, had some idea on how to go about keeping the bike in tip-top order. It didn’t hurt that he and competitions department manager Brian Martin had a good working relationship and were able to make improvements to the bike as needed. Ultimately this working relationship would result in BSA and Jeff Smith winning a world championship or two but long after…

To take on the manufacture of a motorcycle you were importing and selling is a brave move but this is what Luigi and Piero Frigerio did in the Seventies. Their Milan-based business took over making a variety of models but in particular the enduro versions and once production was started the brothers added ‘Frigerio’ to the Puch name. Based around the Austrian Rotax engine units, early models were air-cooled but by 1986, when our feature bike was made, Rotax was supplying water-cooled power units. The switch to water cooling means an engine can be kept at or closer to the optimum operating temperature required for the best performance in competition. What this means is there are fewer temperature fluctuations affecting the carburetion which means, for a two-stroke, less chance of…

The small town of Laubuseschbach, about 50km north of Frankfurt in Germany with a history dating before 900AD, seems an unlikely place for a hotbed of motocross. Yet for a few heady years in the Seventies and Eighties the Kramer marque was produced there, in the ballroom of a guesthouse. The story of Kramer as a manufacturer begins when Fritz Kramer took on Maico into his family motorcycle business. He’d been actively involved in motorcycle sport and felt the fellow German make could be usefully improved. A talented engineer, Kramer produced a new-style frame which took advantage of the developments happening in MX as the Seventies dawned. Gradually this led to him producing his own machine with Rotax engines and taking the step to manufacturer rather than modifier. First off…

All eyes were on the weather in July as Castleside Trials Club hosted a round of the Rockshocks series at its Baa Classic venue in Edmundbyers in County Durham. Two days of traditional northern terrain and rocky section on a decent length course awaited riders who gathered at the start on Saturday, July 20 with the hope the weather would remain dryish. With the first day’s early sections in the river at the bottom of the start field, those who had experience of the slime in the river held back a little, in the hope someone else would remove the slippery stuff from the rocks… faint hope… Still the trial moved on and out of the woods, on to the moors which are a feature of North West Durham. With…

Classic Dirt Bike Show 2025: motocross maestro stars at Hagon Shocks-sponsored extravaganza Hagon Shocks is in its 11th year of sponsoring the Classic Dirt Bike Show and, like the rest of us enthusiasts, the Hagon team is looking forward to being at Telford in 2025. The past 10 years have seen the best of bikes, clubs and special guest stars from all parts of the off-road scene in the halls at the Telford International Centre and 2025 is likely to continue the trend. The dates to mark on your calendar are February 8-9 and the shows team tells us a massive 20% saving on the ticket price is available for early booking. Guest of honour will be Graham Noyce, who took his Honda over the line at Namur in August…

It seems scrambling has been a part of motorcycle sport for ever but in reality the term came quite late to the competition scene. The idea of pitting motorcycles and their riders against one another and/or the countryside was already nearly a quarter of a century old by the time members of Camberley and District MC announced their intention to hold an event to rival Yorkshire’s Scott Trial in 1924. Prior to the centenary event, which would be held on March 29, 2024, there had been much serious and lighthearted discussion in the pages of The MotorCycle over who was better at riding on rough country – northern motorcyclists or southern motorcyclists. Naturally the CDB editor, having been born north of Darlington, knows the answer to this often-pondered question but…

With CDB’s IT465 off to pastures new there’s a chance to look at some of the editor’s neglected personal appreciating classics and there’s quite a bit to look at. As the IT and Project Triumph has taken up quite a bit of time for one reason and another my own bikes have had little more than cursory attention recently. This has been partly due to ‘the path of least resistance’ ethos as I’ve enjoyed loan bikes from trusting owners – the Velocette for example – and my lad’s Fantic being in the workshop. This latter bike is the most modern in the place as it is circa 1986 and boasts such fabulous developments as monoshock suspension and a disc brake. It’s also reliable and easy to use, requiring little more…

There are many things in MX which attract the description ‘legendary’ – perhaps a motorcycle, a racer or even a clash on track – however, occasionally, the track itself attracts legendary status. Most MX fans can reel off quite a few tracks which can be classed as legendary but the one which concerns us here is Farleigh Castle, where many a championship has been held. In common with many legends, Farleigh Castle has had its ups and downs since racing first took place there immediately prior to the Second World War. The track, located on the Somerset/Wiltshire border a few miles from Bath, went through periods of frantic action then lay unused for long periods before its resurgence in the Golden Era of MX in the UK when names such…

There’s little doubt BSA’s B40 has been a popular and successful machine in pre65 trials, much more popular and successful than ever it was in the day. Thanks to technical advances in ignitions, suspension and tyres it performs way better in classic events than BSA ever got it to work when it was being seen in action in the Sixties. This points the finger at the real issue; BSA was spreading itself pretty thinly in the Sixties and the company’s focus may well have been more on Jeff Smith and the MX world championships than making the B40 work in trials. In any case all the works team bar one didn’t really get on with the B40 and the C15 was still winning major events such as the Scottish Six…

To define what a Gold Star actually is takes a bit of doing… to some it is a trials bike, to others a road racer, still others recall in awe its legendary 70mph in first gear folklore. So is it a roadster, racer, dirt bike or what? The answer is yes, it is all of those and more as it helped British teams win gold medals in the ISDT, trounced the opposition at Daytona and won American flat-track races. The simple truth is BSA’s Gold Star is the ultimate sporting motorcycle of its era. The Goldie was a machine which could turn its wheels to any discipline and with some degree of success though the actual results often depended on who was riding it. BSA played to this multi-use role…

Graham Noyce became world 500cc motocross champion when he crossed the line in fourth place in the first moto of the GP at Namur in Belgium. Arriving at the famous citadel circuit, scene of the 11th round of the 12-round series, the Hampshire lad was 40 points ahead of second place man Gerrit Wolsink and Noyce needed 21 points to secure the title. In the end Wolsink crashed at the start and retired, leaving Noyce needing six points – which 6th place would have earned him – to win the title. Noyce rode a careful and calculated race to finish safely in race one and was crowned world champion… Honda’s first ever 500cc MX champ and Britain’s first champ since the Smith/BSA days more than a decade earlier. In race…

Motorcycles are made to be ridden, off-road motorcycles are meant to be ridden hard and get dirty, dinged and dented; then we spend hours in the workshop to fix them and start the process all over again. We can’t get everything in CDB but we do try to give a flavour of off-road sport in this section. So, with a bit of indulgence as the editor’s home club’s two-day trial is first up, followed by Nick Haskell at Farleigh for the Vets MX and rounded off by the editor at a timecard enduro in north Northumberland, CDB offers a selection of events which will hopefully encourage you to maybe try something new or get back out there.…

With a timecard enduro on Saturday and Hare and Hounds on Sunday North East Vinduro Club’s weekend at Fowberry in Northumberland on September 21/22 attracted a decent entry. Some were there for only one of the days while others were there for both. The course was testing enough with a variety of terrain to keep riders on their toes and a special test to add some excitement and racing to the proceedings. Like many organisers in 2024 there were anxious eyes on the weather forecast, something ultimately beyond their control; but while a misty start the climate did play fair and it was almost ideal for riders… not too hot, not too cold. CDB was up there having a look at who was riding what and what was going on,…

By their very nature these ‘moto’ memories pics are a snapshot in time and while not an ‘eyes closed, random dip’ in the folder there is sometimes an element of chance in their choosing. Sometimes there is a clear direction to go: perhaps an anniversary is to be celebrated which demands a certain selection or, as in this case, not having featured a sidecar on the Moto Memories spread for a while. Here in the UK, sidecar sport in any discipline is one of those polarising things and people seem to either love them or not; there’s no in between. Elsewhere in Europe, sidecar MX is more popular… take Switzerland for instance, which happens to be the home country of our picture subject this issue. Taken at Beenham Park in…