Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 74 Spring 2025 i Classic Dirt Bike

Requirements for a dirt bike test: A dirt bike – pretty obvious, really; a handy rider, two is better; finally, somewhere to test it. Oh, and freezing weather… Seriously, all dirt bike tests are done in atrocious weather. Want to end a drought or herald in freezing temperatures? Organise a dirt bike shoot for a paper. In March 1974, MotorCycle filled these requirements when it conducted a test of Montesa’s latest Cappra VR, which was to be raced in the coming season by Peter Mathia. While Peter did take to the track, impressions of the bike were to be given by Midlands all-rounder Arthur Browning and the place this would happen was Cuerden Park near Preston, Lancashire, where a Siberian wind was blowing in and making things fresh. This test…

Here’s a question for you. When was it that water-cooled motorcycles appeared in the off-road world? No, I don’t mean when your mate dropped his bike in a river crossing and you all laughed as the cloud of steam enveloped said mate, but when an actual hi-tech, water-cooled-by-design machine lined up to compete in an actual event? Dead easy, it was when, er… Well, the date you’re grasping for is pre-First World War when Scott water-cooled two-stroke twins were used in all sorts of competitions as early as their 1908 launch. To say an engine is water-cooled is a bit of a misnomer as there’s more than water circulating the cooling passages of such engines, but liquid-cooling doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily. The main reason for using…

Body text: Let’s face it, the reason we tap into the dirt bike scene is because we like riding motorcycles and pitting ourselves against the terrain. It could be in any number of sporting events and in CDB we’ve covered all sorts of things which involved older motorcycles getting dirty. For this issue we’ve a series of pics from Andy Withers who has covered the classic scrambles scene as run by the AMCA. Meanwhile, Peter Futers had a trip out to Costa Brava and passed on a few snaps of the trial, so, enjoy… 2024 AMCA MX championship A selection of the action from various rounds and showing the variety of machinery and terrain which make up a cracking series. Costa Brava It must be quite a culture shock for…

Write to us at: ClassicDIRTbike, PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincolnshire LN9 6LZ. CDBeditor@mortons.co.uk The way it was… Your recent editorial page in issue 73 of Classic Dirt Bike generated a flashback at your mention of the Newcastle Motorcycle Club. Having decided to have a go at this scrambling game, I duly bought a so-called ‘scramble’ from our local AA patrolman. As was common way back in those days (1958), the bike was affectionately and appropriately known as a ‘Bitza’. It was fitted with an AJS R7 engine. Yes, you read it right, not a 7R! Anyhow, my pals Ian and Bobby removed the ‘Ajay’ motor and replaced it with a 250 BSA Empire Star engine. At that time, a majority of bikes were powered by the 197cc Villiers unit. Having…

Showtime at Telford and Stafford It’s a bit odd to be writing about the Hagon Shocks backed CDB show at Telford International Centre in this issue as it is still a couple of weeks away. Yet by the time the production process happens it will just have gone on sale as the show opens. Still, in case you get your copy on the morning of the show and thinking, ‘Should I, shouldn’t I?’, if you do go along, you’ll see loads of great dirt bikes from all eras, and lots of people with the same mind-set as you. There’ll be plenty of bits and inspiration plus our two special guests, Graham Noyce and Mick Andrews. If you don’t go along, read about the show in issue 75 and see what…

The catalyst for this archive piece is Mike Bowers’ superb 250cc BSA trials bike which came under my care for the Highland Classic Two Day Trial in 2024. I’d already ridden the 350cc B40-based machine developed by Mike for owner Simon Chell on day one and its tale was in issue 73. However, the organisers of the event kindly let me swap bikes for day two and I jumped aboard Mike’s 250cc model as a comparison. Quarter-litre Beezers are no stranger to the trials scene and in C15 form would be ridden to Scottish Six Days Trial wins by Arthur Lampkin in 1963 and Alan Lampkin in 1966. Their younger brother Martin, himself a future SSDT winner, made his trials debut on a 250 BSA. We’ve featured all three Lampkin…

I admit it, for a couple of reasons over the past month or three I’ve not cast my leg over a bike in competition, so I’ve not managed to wear out or break anything – on a motorcycle at least. This has meant instead of tacking what was urgently required and in front of me, some of the detail issues on various bikes have been looked at. The ongoing assembly of the unit Triumph bits I’ve been lugging around various workshops since the bare bones came my way when buying a 650 pre-unit Triumph in 1981 has progressed to the stage where a rear brake lever now has a bit welded on so is fitted to where it should be and, as I set to and pressed buttons on the…

Traditionally in the UK a pre65 motorcycle has generally meant British based, mainly because the sport was developed to encourage riders to haul out such bikes as AMC, Ariel, BSA, Norton and Royal Enfield singles with a smattering of pre-unit Trophy Triumphs or ‘big bikes.’ Some considerable time has passed since those early pre65 trials so the denomination has come to mean all motorcycles made before 1965 and including C15 BSAs, Triumph Cubs and a whole load of Villiers engine machines but in the main, still British. There’s no real reason why a non-British motorcycle can’t be used, trials elsewhere in the world use their own home market machines, it’s just there’s been more than enough home manufactured machines to satisfy the needs of the sport here in the UK.…

There is little doubt classic sport has a wide range of motorcycles in it and the reasons for choosing a particular make or model can vary considerably. Sometimes the choice is to do with seeing what’s winning, other times the choice is simply because a bike is available and could be pressed into action. One of the biggest reasons for settling on a certain model though is because it fits in with what’s already being raced. Just such a situation happened with Micky Allen, whose Gold Star we featured last issue. The Goldie is a fine motorcycle, the mainstay of scrambling in the Fifties when anyone who was anyone had to be on the sporting single to have any chance of winning. Problem is, the Goldie was never an easy…

By 1967 the era of the big-capacity, slow-revving, single-cylinder motorcycle was pretty much over in the feet-up world. Arguably, it ended in the Fifties and such bikes being used to any success in the Sixties were more to do with who was on them rather than what they were. Even those bikes – we’re talking about an Ariel and an AJS here – were a long way from what their parent factory’s ideas of a successful trials bike should be. Two-strokes had been in the ascendancy for a number of years and really upped their game when Bultaco entered the scene in 1965. There were other anomalies in this ring-a-ding world, one of which came to light when collating a bit of information on BSA’s C15 for the archive feature…

Mick Andrews’ win in the 1974 SSDT meant the Derbyshire ace was the fourth member of the select club of riders with four SSDT wins to their name. By winning on a Yamaha, he became the first rider of a Japanese machine to carve their name on the JR Alexander Trophy, which seemed to herald the Japanese dominance of another branch of motorcycle sport. Mick joined Hugh Viney, Gordon Jackson and Sammy Miller in Club Four, but the membership was not 100 per cent certain as his riding number put him at a disadvantage compared to his biggest rivals whose starting times would become progressively later as the week went on. Knowing this, Mick devised a plan which hinged on his gaining a 10-mark lead early in the week and…

Body text: The name American Eagle cast into the side case of Sprite’s 405 MXer might, or might not, raise an eyebrow here in the UK as there will be those who recall the connection Frank Hipkin’s Sprite concern had with Jack McCormack’s American Eagle company in the USA. Sprite aficionados will know the full story, but briefly American Eagle was the trading brand of McCormack International Motors Inc. in the USA, a company formed by Jack McCormack to market motorcycles. McCormack had considerable influence in the USA motorcycle world, having started as a dirt track racer before going on to work with Triumph after his military service, then joining the Japanese maker Honda’s fledgling USA operation where he was responsible for Honda’s ‘You meet the nicest people on a…

Graham Noyce certainly has many accolades to his name since taking his first tentative steps in the world of MX in the late Sixties. He was undoubtedly a top star in one of the most hotly contested eras of this frenetic sport, an era when the Japanese factories were pouring seemingly endless amounts of money into teams with what appeared to be a desperation to win. Suddenly nothing was too much trouble to try, nothing was too expensive, no idea too wacky as each factory strove to outdo their competition. Into this world came Graham Noyce, having progressed through the youth aspect of the sport when it was known as schoolboy scrambling to dominating UK adult MX and signing a works contract with Maico before he was 19. The young…