Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2018 i Classic Motorcycle Mechanics

Doesn’t time fly by? Looking at the content of this issue I cannot believe that the Yamaha YZF-R1 is 20 years old this year. I still recall my first ride on one: a brand-new red and white 4XV test bike from Yamaha. I couldn’t get my head around just how fast it was and how quickly those numbers on the oh-so-cool LCD speedo would rise at the merest whiff of your right wrist. Little wonder then that Yamaha has lots planned for this year to celebrate and the fact the 4XV is ridden and dissected over many pages in this month’s CMM. Hell, even Niall Mackenzie wants to buy one as a project… We’re also looking at track-days on classics, with Mark Forsyth saying how to do it on the…

ANDY BOLAS’ TOP TIPS! Our Andy is a serial bike-buyer and has an eye for a good bike and a great deal. He doesn’t want to lose money on a bike, so here are his top tips. ■ Originality: An original bike is always a good starting point – it doesn’t have to be in stunning condition, it’s more about it being complete and unmessed with. ■ Must-haves: The very things we might have changed in our youth are the parts that help to make a tidy classic. Items like original indicators, screen and an uncut rear mudguard. These parts can be found for sale but more often than not finding NOS items can be time consuming – you’d be amazed how many screens are no longer available direct from…

Tested Riding kit worn, tools twirled & tyres turned TCX S-SPORT BOOTS My TCX boots have been with me now for nine years. They really are my ‘sole’ mate, but despite my best attempts to ignore the fact they’re nearing the end of their natural life, I still pull them on my trotters on a daily basis. They are so comfortable I’d often slip them on to nip to the shops even when I wasn’t taking the bike! They aren’t the lairiest looking boots in the world, and that’s another reason why we get on so well. They offer me weather protection in winter months yet cause me no discomfort on those rare hot and balmy days: they’ve been the perfect all-rounder. The black leather uppers have lasted well, and…

MAD FOR A MONKEY! The world is going mad for Honda’s Monkey Bike again – and we love it! This retro-classic will be available from £3699 in Honda Motorcycle dealerships across the UK or on PCP for just £65 a month! The Honda Monkey bike was an icon of the 1970s, but it first came on to the scene in 1961. Originally developed as a 49cc child’s plaything for Tama Tech, an amusement park in Tokyo, it proved so popular that a road-going version was developed, which was initially exported to America and Europe in 1963, with a distinctive chrome tank, folding handlebars and five-inch diameter rigidly mounted wheels. Following introduction, the machine was developed further over the years so that by the mid-1970s it saw widespread use anchored on…

Prize winner Mega Millyard! I just want to congratulate all at CMM for a corking issue last time out. I have to say, I love the bikes that Allen Millyard builds, so to get a road test on two of them and get a spread of pics of his bikes as well as his regular column, it was well worth the £4.30 asking fee alone. I’ve seen his bikes at various shows and the attention to detail is amazing. The big thing for me is how he makes the bikes look almost – well – ‘factory’ for want of a better word. It’s as if the bikes had rolled off of Kawasaki’s production line… I’m now wondering – as he’s built a V12 with two Kawasaki Z1300 lumps – whether…

The way we were… Send us your nostalgic snaps of you back in the day with your steed! Either send to me at bsimmond s@mortons.co. uk  or via our vibrant Facebook page. C’mon! Damon Hall says: “Here are some memories! My first ride at around 11 years of age on my uncle’s grass tracker, through to happy days on my Fizzy in the summer of 1988, and then going proper legit on a year-old AR50 in the autumn of 1988. “I’ve moved on a bit now and have a lovely collection of bikes, and love my Swan Yamaha R1 replica that I recently went to the Isle of Man TT on. There have been plenty of thrills and spills over my 35 years of biking and I now…

The owner’s tale: Grahame Peters I brought the B8 ES 150 off eBay in April 2009 for £386 and put it on the road in the June of the same year. After riding it for a bit, I restored it to its current condition in 2014. I rechromed all the various parts and re-trimmed/re-spoked the wheels. I have re-covered the seat and also got the shock absorbers overhauled. These parts are very scarce for these bikes and mainly sourced from the USA which means expensive shipping plus the added costs of import duty, VAT and handling fees which makes even cheap parts pricey. I have learnt that you buy the parts when you see them not when you need them off eBay. The rarer the part the less likely it…

Buying a track day snotter? Fancy joining our cheapskate track day scene? There’s a good FaceBook group, Trackday Addicts, with lots of bikes and parts appearing for sale. Other than that, popular online auction sites and actual events themselves are also good places to source sorted bikes. Don’t be afraid of Cat C or D write-offs – judge for yourself whether the resto’ work has been carried out properly. In fact, the vendor’s garage/house/front garden will probably tell you more about their personal standards than looking at the bike itself. And more importantly don’t be afraid of doing a track day. So many people are – needlessly. There are usually three groups: Fast, Intermediate, Novice and if you’re super-scared, my advice would be to enter the novice group and go…

Project Yamaha CS3C part 5 Fettle and finish It is reassembly time and things are going suspiciously rather well! WORDS AND PHOTOS: STEVE COOPER I’ve now reached the stage in any rebuild where, hopefully at least, the positives have begun to outweigh the negatives. The bike is slowly being reassembled or at least I’m building sub-assemblies ready to reinstall. Everyone has their own sequence of rebuilding but mine generally commences as follows. Install the centrestand with its associated fittings i.e. the spring, the C-shaped centre stand link, and, if applicable, the rear brake arm. Over the years I’ve been frittering away my life on old bikes it’s become obvious that if the stand and its gubbins don’t go on first they’ll be a pig to do later. It’s almost as…

HAYNES PRINT & ONLINE Project Honda CBR1000F part 1 Saints be praised! A 21-year-old range-topping sports-tourer for little more than a bag of sand? Heavens above! WORDS AND PHOTOS: DAVE BROOKING. It’s not the most normal ‘extra’ given away free with a bike, but Dave Brooking took it anyways. Y’see, he bought this rather tidy 1997 Honda CBR1000F from a man of the cloth, and – rather than nab any spares or end cans or the like, Dave received something a little bit more spiritual, rather than ‘actual’. But let’s start at the very beginning… Dave has been in CMM a few times. He’s a former racer (tricked-up Yamaha TRX850 in Sound of Thunder in the 1990s) he’s (still) got a GSX1100 EFE in bits that he (still) doesn’t quite…

What to buy and how much to pay Any form of Kawasaki 900 four is prime anorak territory. Whether period accurate parts are important to you or not is actually totally irrelevant; it’s the next potential owner who may be thus fixated. Therefore we’d strongly recommend expert input into anything Z1/Z1A/Z1B that purports to be 100% authentic. For those who were unaware it’s not only the engine and chassis that carry identification numbers. Deceptively, items such the swingarm, rear brake torsion bar, switch-gear and wheel rims all carry date codes. For many with just a desire to own any Z1 this may not be of any significance whatsoever but for the truly dedicated (obsessed?) these details may very well be a deal breaker and for this, if for no other…

Pip Higham Tuner, engineer, rider Ride a cock horse or maybe a 1929 Prester? Pillerton Priors, Shutford, Wroxton, ring any bells? Probably not unless you’ve either watched, or possibly taken part in The Banbury Run. The Banbury is basically 500 or so blokes, and a slender smattering of ladies hooning around middle England on bikes that are a minimum of 88 years old. Yup, you read that right, bikes so old that a few have even had a telegram from the Queen. A lot of the scoots sport features unfamiliar to some of you younger chaps out there; they have retardation devices (can’t call them ‘brakes’) and hand operated levers for controlling stuff such as ignition advance, fuel mixture strength and gear selection. Some have exposed valve gear, push-rods, rockers…

SEE YOU THERE! September 2018 2 VJMC Bike Day. Ace Cafe, london.acecafe.com. 2 Festival of 1000 Cars inc. the NW Classic Motorcycle Show. Cholmondeley Castle: www.classicshows.org. 9 Garstang Autojumble. www.garstangautojumbles.co.uk. 9 VMCC (Essex section) End of Summer Run. Tesco car park. Tel 01621 893450. 9 Brighton Burn Up! Ace Cafe, london.acecafe.com. 10-16 Benelli Week. Pesaro, Italy. www.benelli.com. 15 Kempton Park Motorcycle Autojumble. www.kemptonparkautojumble.co.uk. 16 Blue-Haze – Fantic & Fizzy Frenzy & Two-Strokes. Ace Cafe, NW10 7UD 19 OCTOBER ISSUE OF CLASSIC MOTORCYCLE MECHANICS 23 Normous Newark Autojumble. www.newarkautojumble.co.uk. 23 Leighton Hall Motorcycle Hill Climb. www.leightonhallmotorcyclehillclimb.co.uk. 30 59 Club Day + BSA Bantam Meet. Ace Cafe, london.acecafe.com. 30 Sand and Motorcycles. Leighton Buzzard. www.facebook.com/SandAndMotorcycles…

Super Scooper! Another corking issue was August’s and I loved the test by Steve Cooper on the K100 RS. It took me back to the one I owned in the 1990s. Like Karl, the owner of the bike tested, I took mine all over Europe from southern Spain, the south of France, Italy and ‘back home’ to Germany. Often I’d take the late wife on the back and we enjoyed some cracking trips and met many new friends – the sort you only meet when out and touring on two wheels. In around 30,000 miles on that bike I can recall only three major issues – and all were punctures when rushing to catch a boat: more haste, less speed, as my dear old mum used to say! The two-up…

CLASSIC RIDE Little Gem Scoop samples a cute little Kawasaki B8S and comes away most impressed. WORDS: STEVE COOPER PHOTOS: GARY D CHAPMAN If you are of a certain age and still riding, chances are you first saddled up out of necessity. From the mid-1960s through to the end of the 80s, socio-economic circumstances meant cars were financially beyond the reach of most of the working youth so it was either shanks’s pony, a push bike or a commuter motorcycle. It’s my contention that if the kids of the period had been able to access machines such as this month’s subject matter, Kawasaki would have had a much larger fan base and significantly earlier than it did. In camera we have an exquisite example of what the Japanese factories were…

History of small Kawasaki singles It’s really not until you pick up one of those rare Kawasaki Motorcycle Recognition Manuals that you truly appreciate just how many sub 200cc models the company offered. The J series based around an 85cc disc-valve single came in 12 facsimiles over just four model years. The subsequent G series (90cc – 100cc) offered some 34 variations over seven years but then the bikes renamed as KEs, KHs, KDs and KCs almost treble the model count. The B series to which our test bike belongs ran from 1963 through to the late 1970s in numerous guises and spawned a bigger brother via the F-series 175cc versions that would ultimately evolve into the famous trail bike family which in turn would then become the KE series.…

R1 Top Tips The R1 was a big seller in its day and this means that there are plenty of them to choose from. Some bikes will have led a pampered life, while others might have been track bikes, involved in accidents or rebuilt with the best bits from several bikes! It’s always a case of ‘buyer beware’ when shopping for a used motorcycle – here are a few things you should check before handing over your cash. BODYWORK The R1 had big power and light weight and helping to save a few pounds here and there was the use of pretty flimsy plastics. The fairing panels are prone to losing the odd locating lug, so too is the seat unit. If the bike is fitted with an aftermarket under…

HAYNES PRINT & ONLINE Q&A Our very own wizened sages, Messrs Mark Haycock and Steve Cooper are here to answer all of your woes, be they mechanical or spiritual. Every month we will be giving advice, as well as some general tips. Don’t forget to send in your own tips too. Honda MTX200 Q: I am the owner of a Honda MTX200 RII, which is a Japanese import but essentially the same as the 125 model. When I bought the bike, despite buying from a dealer who said he had serviced it, the brake fluid in the master cylinder was like jelly, so I bought a rebuild kit for the master cylinder and the front caliper. The bike has a twin piston front caliper of a sliding design with two…

Refurbish don’t just replace My original plan had been to carry out a general mechanical and cosmetic refresh of the CS3C but as you’ll have notice that’s not happened. Paint, chrome and zincing have all been redone simply because what was there was bordering on dog rough. It would be tempting to go the whole hog and carry out a full resto with new or re-plated spokes and rims but what in all honesty does it add other than cost? This is not going to be a show bike as I only ever want a tidy rider. If, at some point in the future, I feel the need to go further I can. I’ve not had items such as the gear or kick start levers re-chromed because, with a bit…

HAYNES PRINT & ONLINE Fork fings Scoop looks at old style forks and shows us how to refurbish them. Before Ceriani came up with the idea of placing springs inside fork tubes the shock absorbing element of the front suspension sat outside of the stanchions. Due to the questionable aesthetics of coiled steel and its propensity for rusting, the fork leg and spring were generally covered by some form of shroud, steel tubing or concertinaed rubber boot being the normal options. Post Second World War telescopic motorcycle forks began to feature genuine hydraulic damping which necessitated some form of seal. Almost without exception this seal was contained in a standalone, screw on, device that was known by the highly novel term ‘seal holder’. No one today makes bike suspension with…

SPECIFICATION ENGINE TYPE Air-cooled, 903cc, DOHC, four-stroke, four-cylinder BORE AND STROKE 66mm x 66mm CLAIMED HORSEPOWER 82bhp @ 8500rpm MAXIMUM TORQUE 54.2lb-ft @ 7000rpm IGNITION Points & Coil TRANSMISSION TYPE 5-speed COMPRESSION RATIO 8.5:1 CARBURETTORS 4 x Mikuni VM 28 SC TYRES Front: 3.25 -19 Rear: 4.00-18 BRAKES Front: 296mm single disc Rear: 200mm drum FUEL CAPACITY 18.7 litres (4.75 gallons) OVERALL LENGTH 2209.8mm (87in) OVERALL WIDTH 818mm (31.2in) OVERALL HEIGHT 1170mm (41.6in) WHEELBASE 1498.6mm (59in) DRY WEIGHT 230kg (507lb)…

Marketplace 1990s sportsbikes As the YZF-R1 turns 20, we check out why 1990s sports machines offer plenty of bang for your buck. Scott Redmond shows you what is available. A decade ago the thought of discussing 1990s motorcycles within CMM wouldn’t have gone down too well, but these machines offer some real bang for our buck and now some are marked as bona fide classics. Britain was sportsbike mad in the 1990s and they were the big sellers, which means if you are looking for one now, there’s no shortage still on the used market. Some will be official UK bikes and some will be ‘parallel imports’ from other countries, which at the time were much cheaper than UK bikes. On the surface they looked identical, other than a headlight…

PROMO! SEALEY HAND TOOLS Sealey’s 16-page Hand Tool Promotion has nearly 200 products on offer inside, more than 20 of which are new. It also contains products with up to 52% discount off the list price and is valid to September 30, 2018. This promotion features the growing range of Premier Black Hand Tools, which sees torque wrenches, socket bit sets and breaker bars added to this popular series. Other new products include a range of multi-coloured socket sets that are colour coded to match the sizes in the existing spanner sets. For more go to www.sealey.co.uk or call 01284 757500.…

SCOOPERMAN! The sunny side of the classic world, with the VJMC’s Steve Cooper “The trouble with experts is they think they know everything,” opined my mate Andy. He’s an ex-Norfolk boy with a dry (if blunt) sense of humour and says it as he sees it; he may be brutal with his words at times but there’s no denying he’s generally right. He’s also a lifelong fettler of anything with an engine and has had his hands in everything from 1900s trembler coil ignition tricycles through strange post-war German split-single strokers through to modern sports bikes. He’s good at what he does but never claims to be an expert, simply because he recognises one immutable fact – when it comes to old motorcycles you never stop learning. Self-proclaimed experts have…

FEEDBACK WIN BRIDGESTONE TYRES Post to Mechanics, PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincs LN9 6LZ or email your pictures to editorial@classicmechanics.com And another Pip! Hi Bertie and all at CMM… regarding the AC Sanctuary Kawasaki found in the April 2018 issue… well, I loved the punchy write-up and the two-page spread and found myself reading it time and time again and studying the pics – a great addition! Cheers! Pip Davidson Retro touring! Having read the article in the August issue on ‘Living with the Kawasaki Z900RS’, I would like to respond about the practicality of the fact that you also ‘don’t want to stick luggage on it!’ My wife and I have recently returned from a trip to Bruges on my Z900RS complete with Oxford Lifetime panniers and…

Show us yours We want to see YOUR pride and joy in our pages, so you can share what you ride and restore with fellow readers. Email your hi-res shots to bsimmonds@mortons.co.uk or mail in some photos to the address at the front of the mag. Let us know what you’ve done and how you’ve done it and send before and after shots if you can. Do get in touch. Bertie. Tom Garland’s 1975 Honda CB175 K-6 This little twin has been the focus of all my attention over the last two winters. A house move in the middle added to everything living in an assortment of boxes until I finally got around to piecing it all back together. I took this little bike as my first go at a…

SPECIFICATION KAWASAKI super 150 ENGINE TYPE 148cc air-cooled, two-stroke, single, piston-ported BORE AND STROKE 58 x 56mm CLAIMED HORSEPOWER 12.5bhp @ 6500rpm MAXIMUM TORQUE 10lb-ft @ 4500rpm TRANSMISSION TYPE 4-speed, rotary shift, chain final drive COMPRESSION RATIO 6.0:1 CARBURETION Mikuni VM20SH TYRES 3.00 x 16 (F&R) FUEL CAPACITY 2.2 gallons (10 litres) FUEL:OIL RATIO 20:1 BRAKES SLS drum (F) SLS drum (R) OVERALL LENGTH 1900mm (74.8in) OVERALL WIDTH 680mm (26.8in) OVERALL HEIGHT 980mm (26.8in) WHEELBASE 1255mm (49.4in) DRY WEIGHT 116kg (256lb)…

CLASSICS ON TRACK Tight Club If you like riding bikes fast, there comes a time in your life where only track days will scratch that itch. And old bikes make great track day bikes… WORDS: MARK FORSYTH PHOTOS: MARK FORSYTH, MORTONS ARCHIVE, ALEX JAMES PHOTO Let’s face it, speeding – proper speeding – has become about as socially acceptable as drink driving. Get caught and you’re not going to just get a ticking off and you’re not going to hear the phrase, ‘oo d’you think you are, Barry Sheene?’ any more. Nope, get caught speeding properly and you’re going to prison. And on modern sportsbikes, you don’t have to be trying particularly hard before you get your collar felt. Short shift through the gears of a Kawasaki ZZ-R1400 – and…

CLASSICS ON TRACK Virgin on the ridiculous You’ve seen how for very little outlay you can buy a dedicated track bike: meanwhile our Ralph popped his cherry on a road bike. So what gives? WORDS: RALPH FERRAND PHOTOS: JIM GAISFORD, RALPH FERRAND. You may recall last year I sorted and fettled an original Yamaha YZF-R6. I fitted braided lines, refitted and sorted the calipers and synchronised the carbs on my little classic crutch rocket: now it was time to see how all this worked. My first impression of the R6 was that she was deeply uncomfortable. I am not bendy any more and my gut and the petrol tank were vying for space; with my blubber losing the battle. My neck started to ache after a few miles as did…

Project Kawasaki Z1325 part 11 Lathe-ing around Our Ralph gets on the lathe – and gives us some basics along the way. WORDS AND PHOTOS: RALPH FERRAND This month before describing what I did on the lathe, I feel it would be sensible not to assume that all the readers of CMM have lathes and know how to use them. I thought that it might be worthwhile providing a brief description of the anatomy of a metal turning lathe and some basics in use, which may inspire you to have a go at light engineering: if you haven’t already, of course. A lathe is a truly wonderful machine, which, with a bit of imagination, can be used to make all manner of parts for projects. I had initially learned to…

Allen Millyard Award-winning motorcycle engineer! The frame game... By the time you read this, the beauty pictured above will be at Salon Prive; but how was the frame made? Allen tells all... I had recently finished making the six-cylinder engine and wheels for my RC374 and I was really looking forward to getting on with the frame. Before I could start making it, I needed to finish modifying the forks, machine up a headstock and make a swingarm. The lower fork modifications were completed when I trial fitted the hub which involved welding on new brake anchor points, removing the lower mudguard mounting lugs and reducing the length of the fork seal holders, so I just needed to shorten the fork tubes to make them the right length. To do…

Basic telescopic fork seal evolution The earliest telescopic forks had minimal damping and the crudest of the breed relied on grease impregnated felt rings to keep the elements out. Post-war, reliable fork damping was introduced by only worked in compression not on rebound. The use of screw-on fork seal holders was essentially little more than a development of a gland nut half-inched from Victorian steam technology. When someone smart looked at fork leg designs (supposedly Ceriani but doubtless others were on to it as well) it was obvious the concept could be upgraded. Fitting the fork seal into the top of the lower leg not only reduced production line build times it also axed several expensive machining costs and neatly removed seal holders from the parts lists. The integral fork…

IT’S MY BIKE: Dave Orritt A few years ago a guy came up to me on the Kawasaki stand at Stafford asking if I was interested in a Z1A. His pictures showed an American style chopper with overlength forks and a peanut tank so not exactly your standard Z1A. However, it was a genuine UK bike and had matching numbers, V5C etc.so I gave him £1300 for it. I registered the bike in my name, declared it SORN then promptly forgot about it. Come February 2017 I carried out a nut and bolt restoration to produce what you see here. I had to track down a full body kit as all the panels were missing. The fitted 4-2 exhaust went in the bin as did the chopper fork legs.…

Project Kawasaki Z1300 part 6 Slick six Time to get all six of those mighty pistons back in their respective homes, eh Ralph? WORDS AND PHOTOS: RALPH FERRAND Time to get six big pistons in their rightful home: and let’s face it, fours can be awkward enough! More of that later: first up I removed the oil restrictor jet from just behind No. 4 crankcase mouth to ensure that it was clear and without debris. It’s a curious little chap, but I washed it with brake cleaner and blew it through with my airline (while wearing safety glasses/mask of course). My tip if you’re new to tools: Google the safe use of such items before you become a further burden to the NHS. Next job was to clean up the…

Project Yamaha YZF-R1 part 1 Now we R1 He loves his Yams, does three-times British Superbike champ Niall Mackenzie. Now he’s after an R1 to restore. WORDS AND PHOTOS: NIALL MACKENZIE/ KNOCKHILL RACE CIRCUIT I guess collecting iconic Yamahas is like any other addiction: you’re hooked and before you know it, it is very difficult to stop. I already have an FS1-E Fizzy, a Pro-Am replica RD250LC, a road-going mint RD350LC and (ahem) a YZF-R7 but I still have voices telling me I need to balance things up with another four-stroke. And it is Yamaha’s fault (addictions are always some else’s fault) as in 2018 they are telling us to celebrate 20 years of the ground breaking 1998 YZF-R1. My youngest son Tarran has also just ridden his McAMS Yamaha…

Project Aprilia RS250 part 2 Harada and faster! Last issue we got the rolling chassis and the engine fitted and plumbed up. Now it’s time to get the RS on the road… WORDS: JEFF WARE PHOTOS: DAVE HERDMAN (ACTION), JEFF WARE So now my RS was looking good and I felt great about the effort I was putting in to the project to make it up to my high standards mechanically. It’s hard to fill you in on exactly how a restoration goes – as you know, it’d take every page of every issue to give a day-by-day, beer-by-beer, nut-and-bolt commentary but in short, with this bike, not a fastener went on that wasn’t cleaned and torqued to spec, lubed or Loctited where required, and nothing was rushed. Every fastener…