Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2020 i Classic Motorcycle Mechanics

The lure of the big Kawasaki… I’ve come over all unnecessary this month thanks to a raft of mad Kawasakis! This isn’t unusual – I was brought up on a diet of Kwaks as a kid, as my uncle owned a fair few. But this issue so many seem to have popped up out of the woodwork, so to speak. Firstly, there’s the Big CC Kawasaki Z900RS Turbo that our mate Alan Dowds has ridden. This is a 200bhp machine with all the mod-cons of a retro replica of the original Zeds of old… but it can trickle through traffic or go ballistic when the traffic lights go green. I wish I’d gotten a go on it… Then there’s our chosen ‘Retro-Spective’ this issue – the original Kawasaki retro, the…

Prize winner Not a Royalist! What on earth is going on at CMM towers, may I ask? Now, I’m not sure if the editor knows, but CMM should be – really – the home for Japanese old classics, maybe going back as far as the 1950s and maybe as recently as the early noughties. But a Royal Enfield… a ‘new’ Royal Enfield? Have you all gone barking mad? If I want to read about classic British bikes, then I’ll get a bike magazine about classic British bikes, and if I want to know about modern British bikes I’ll… well, you know by now. I’m also not that enamoured with seeing modern-ish Triumphs in the magazine, such as the projects you guys have going. I’m a Japanese bike enthusiast through and…

MAIN TEST Stroker Ace! Andy Bolas rides a very special Honda NS250R two-stroke with some pretty impressive race heritage, and comes away most impressed… WORDS::ANDY BOLAS PICS:GARYDCHAPMAN,MORT ONS ARCHIVE This road test is a little bit more special for me as this isn’t just any old NS250R (which is rare enough), but this is one of eight apparently which were used at the TT in 1985/86. This particular bike was ridden to 8th place in the 1986 production Class D by Kevin Mawdsley. Now the bike was road registered in 1986 or 87 and has not had a sheltered life at all. Its first custodian after the TT used it on the road and for various track events; he even managed to put it through a farmer’s hedge and into…

HAYNES PRINT & ONLINE Yamaha TX750 part 5 Taps dancing! Mighty Mark is back with his Yamaha TX750 project and has some fun sorting out the brakes, pedals, fuel tap and tank. WORDS AND PICS: MARK HAYCOCK To complete the front brake set up I got this ready-made HEL hose kit (Photo 1) made to my specification, complete with stainless fittings and new copper washers for a reasonable price. I am not too worried about originality so I could make do with a single flexible hose to extend from the junction block (which contains the brake light switch) directly to the caliper. The rear brake drum seemed enormous on this 18-inch wheel (Photo 2), so I hope it is not over-powered like that on the TX500. The drum surface was…

Project Triumph 1200 CRK Roadster part 9 Odd job man! Just when Nutters thought that the CRK 1200 would be let off the leash, lockdown was imposed. So, more time for garage jobs rather than riding. WORDS AND PICS: JOHN NUTTING It had been more than a year since I started converting the Triumph 1200 Trophy into a CRK 1200 Roadster, a metamorphosis that involved ditching the touring bodywork and turning the bike into something that evoked my preference for the unfettered style of the 1970s. The Hinckley factory never produced a version of the T300 series that exposed the 1180cc DOHC 16-valve four-cylinder engine because it provided the power for the Trophy tourer and the more potent Daytona 1200 (see page 62), both of which were…

Project Kawasaki GPZ500S part 1 Pipe dreams! Our Andy is back with his Kwak parallel twin – and it’s time to change pipes! WORDS AND PICS: ANDY CATTON The first work I did on the GPZ this year was a much needed oil change, cleaning up around the engine underside. I noticed the seriously corroded connecting pipes on what is probably the original exhaust system fitted in the factory by Kawasaki, 24 years ago. For a steel system it had certainly lasted well, but it had had its day. As the GPZ is here to stay I decided it would be sensible to go with a Delkevic stainless two-into-two option. Delkevic offer either a two-into-one, which can be fitted with one of Delkevic’s own silencers for the…

Fast Freddie! The UK first got a glimpse of Frederick Burdette Spencer Junior at the 1980 Transatlantic Trophy, held over that Easter weekend at Brands Hatch. According to his biography of 1986, written by Nick Harris and Peter Clifford, that weekend was the 18-year-old from Shreveport, Louisiana’s first trip outside the USA and the first time he’d seen British cuisine. As he looked down at the steak and kidney pie, cooked by the Kentagon’s finest chefs, he turned to his team-mate Richard Schlachter and said: “You mean they put real kidneys in pies for people to eat over here?” History doesn’t record what he ate that day, but he had something to keep him going as he won his first race out of his home country and every fan who…

News STAFFORD... AT THE DOUBLE! It’s our October issue, so we need to remind you all that April’s postponed Carole Nash International Classic Motor Cycle Show will now be rolled into our own show in October... which is still GO for SHOW! But... and here’s the vital bit, you need to get your tickets in advance. The 27th Carole Nash Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show will be a double whammy. The show will contain not only the best of our interest (15 years or older, European and Japanese motorcycles) but the vintage/older side of motorcycling too. Mortons Media Group, which runs the shows, has closely followed the current advice from the UK Government on the coronavirus pandemic (see page 32 for more.) With the safety and well-being of visitors, exhibitors, partners,…

Duchinni D1300 helmet TO BE IN WITH A CHANCE OF WINNING THIS GREAT HELMET... 1. Go to www.classicmechanics.com 2. Fill in your details 3. Press enter 4. Sit back, relax and wait We’ve teamed up with our friends at Duchinni to offer you the chance to win a Duchinni D1300 helmet worth £159.99. Find out more at thekeycollection.co.uk Competition closes: 14/10/2020. Good luck! There are no cash alternatives available. The winner will be the first name drawn at random. Terms and Conditions apply. To view the privacy policy of MMG Ltd (publisher of Classic Motorcycle Mechanics) please visit www.mortons.co.uk/privacy…

POP TO OUR SHOP! Over the last few months we’ve been beavering away uploading more interesting features for you to download. These are more of our ‘older’ features from the archives of Classic Motorcycle Mechanics, including such gems as an ‘Albion Gearbox Rebuild’ – the whole series over 21 pages by Don Morley, and Bruce Preston’s 24-pager on rebuilding a knackered air-head Boxer Beemer. Many more are being added all the time, so head to www.classicmechanics.com/shop/ Don’t forget that if you subscribe, you can get access to CMM Extra! This is a portal where we have more than 10 years of back issues (that’s many millions of words) so you can peruse and read any article, road test or rebuild at any time. So, do go check out www.classicmechanics.com/extra/…

Vere is da SS? Vere is da SS? I was really enjoying Ralph’s progress with the restoration of the BMW R1100S, but unfortunately there haven’t been any updates of late. Are there any more episodes in the pipeline? It will be really great to see the bike finished. Mike Blanchard Ralph says: “Thanks for your interest. Starting with Covid-19, there have been a number of setbacks with this project. After a mishap in the shower, I now have a compression fracture of my L1 vertebrae, which means I can’t work on anything heavy. The owner of the bike may be prepared to wait for me to get back to fighting fitness, but backs do not heal fast.”…

READER’S RESTO IN ASSOCIATION WITH Shed Scrambler! CMM reader Andy Taylor’s wife gladly handed over her potting shed for the build of ‘her’ Kawasaki Z400-based Street Scrambler! WORDS AND PICS: ANDY TAYLOR bought this Kawasaki Z400 as a stop-gap, because I was so despondent having seized up my Yamaha R3.5 Special (see CMM April 2015). It was supposed to be a quick custom project, but I wasn’t sure on which direction I was taking it. A set of modern Triumph Scrambler exhausts appeared on eBay which I bought and I decided that if I could make them fit, that would confirm the destiny of the build – and so it started! The engine sounded fine with no knocks or rattles, so after I checked it over I just had to…

RETRO RIDE RS-kicker! Kawasaki’s modern retro Z900 RS Café is a big softie. But this one comes with a proper hard edge – a low-cost turbo install that more than doubles its power output from Big CC Racing! WORDS: ALAN DOWDS PICS: JOHN GOODMAN Of course, we love the Japanese bikes of the 1970s and 1980s here at CMM; from little two-stroke buzzbombs like the Yamaha RD350LC, to big, hairy-chested inline-fours like Kawasaki’s Z and GPz range. Good, honest bikes with great performance and timeless styling. We’re also pretty fond of the modern retro bikes which pay tribute to those machines – none more so than the Kawasaki Z900 RS Café. The big K got the styling of that bike just right from the start, with Z1-styled badges and paint…

BOLOGNESE SAUCE! Two bevel-head chefs from Australia cook up one Michelin-starred motorcycle. What a Ducati dish… Words: Jeff Ware Photographs: Phil Aynsley What you see here is one very special bevel.You see, the builder, Tony Hannagan, is a legend down under in the secretive world of those that worship at the altar of the bevel-driven Dukes. Tony owns BevelTech, Australia’s go-to bevel place, where over the decades, many amazing race engines have been built, original bikes restored, customs created and dreams made into reality. Great things can’t go on forever, though, and a few years back at the young age of 60, Tony decided to build his last customer creation and concentrate on engines while enjoying his own many bikes… It just happened that at around this time, the owner…

RETRO SPECTIVE Kawasaki Zephyr Range Strange to think that the Zephyr range is now more than 30 years old… But are they classics? WORDS: BERTIE SIMMONDS PICS: MORTONS ARCHIVE I can still recall seeing the Daytona Kawasaki Cyclone in the early 1990s and it was (pardon the pun) a breath of fresh air… That chunky JMC swingarm replaced the spindly box-section unit, while the performance from the motor was improved and it needed to be… After all, the bike was based on the 1100 Zephyr, a big cuddly bear of bike which was simply designed and built to loosely resemble the sexier Zeds of old. The Zephyr 1100 could claim that its motor came from the old Z1000 from way back when, and it showed… But first let’s talk about…

BUYER’S GUIDE Honda CB750F/CB900F They’re arguably Honda’s forgotten fours, says Steve Cooper, but what are they like as buyable, bankable classic bikes? WORDS: STEVE COOPER PHOTOS: STEVE COOPER If your memory goes back to the Sunday evening satire show Spitting Image, then you may just recall the foam latex Sir John Gielgud nodding off and being poked with a stick when he fell asleep. Pretty much the same happened when Honda finally wrenched itself from the arms of Morpheus in the late 1970s. The apparently slumbering industrial giant had, in the eyes of its two-wheeled fans, variously gone catatonic, lost the plot, and/or taken its corporate eye off the very market sector upon which it was founded. For far too long The Big Aitch had focused on its four-wheeled…

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. We’ve teamed up with SDoc100 which manufactures some of the best bike cleaning kit in the business! So, send in your pictures of your bikes and you could win an SDoc100 Chain Care Kit worth £50, which includes their new White Chain Spray 2.0 that offers four times more wear protection for chains and sprockets than the competition. Find…

SUPER STAFFORD! With 2020’s biking event calendar being emptier than a hermit’s address book due to Covid 19, the 27th Carole Nash Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show this October will be most welcome! That’s right folks, the best classic bike show in the world, The 27th Carole Nash Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show is officially ON, so we’ve (at last) got something to look forward to this autumn. After what seems like an eternity since a ‘proper good’ show, no thanks to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, we’ll be welcoming you (safely) to the Stafford County Showground over the weekend of October 10-11, and what better time to give you something to look forward to. But you must get a ticket in advance... At the show we will be celebrating all things classic…

TURBO TECH! Part of the simplicity of this kit is down to the base Z900 RS motor – Kawasaki dropped the compression ratio right down here to get the softly-tuned, low-revving power characteristics. Out of the crate, the compression is just 10.8:1, and that’s the perfect start for a turbo motor. Since the blower is pressurising the intake air, the actual pressures inside the combustion chamber quickly rise under boost, taking it far above what the ‘static’ compression ratio would achieve. This so-called ‘dynamic compression ratio’ causes big problems with detonation, pre-ignition and overheating once you start to really increase the boost. Normally, on an engine with a 12:1 or 13:1 compression ratio, you’d have to strip the motor and fit lower-compression pistons. Another option is to fit a riser…

CLASSIC RACER YAMAHA FJ1200 AIN'S NO DINOSAUR! Check out this very different T-Rex Yamaha FJ1200 racer from Down Under and listen to it ROAR! Words: Jeff Ware Pics: by Steve Duggan & Russel Colvin The FJ1100 on release in 1984 was a groundbreaking machine – one of the first true ‘hypersports’ motorcycles and one that remained popular for over a decade. When it hit the dealerships it was an instant hit despite strong competition from the likes of Kawasaki’s GPZ900R. Where all manufacturers offered naked bikes, full sportsbikes or touring bikes, Yamaha managed to build a bike that had all of the benefits of the above in one awesome package. The FJ was seriously powerful at 125hp, capable of over 140mph, with a 10 second quarter-mile time, grunty and reliable…

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 mo KTM SUPERDUKE 990 Q: Hi, really informative magazine, thank you! As the owner of a Superduke 990 and having always done any work on my own machines, I bought a KTM workshop manual, part no: 3.206.160, which is not used by KTM dealers, but there is no information on the Superduke. This has been verified by two KTM personnel, one of whom is a workshop technician. Where can I obtain this essential information? KTM has the information, but only for KTM dealers, which doesn’t seem very fair! P. Peacock A: Go to: www.superduke.net and you will find quite…

HAYNES PRINT & ONLINE Project Triumph Daytona 1200 part 3 Lockdown lovely! Our Andy B is back in action with this Triumph Daytona 1200 during lockdown – what’s he been up to? WORDS AND PICS: ANDY BOLAS So things kind of stalled with the old Triumph, but with a little down time from the day job due to the current pandemic, we’re on our way again with some free time as the day job isn’t too busy! With our bike now a rolling chassis I took to the internet and purchased lots of stainless fasteners which isn’t something I would normally do, but with the zinc plating issues we had previously I thought it would be wise to just replace what I could. I also had a good chat with…

Project Kawasaki H2C part 7 Pump Friction! Oh dear! Block up your ears, a puddle of crude Anglo-Saxon is about to tumble from our Ralph’s lips! WORDS AND PICS: RALPH FERRAND My copper-bottomed investment is still lying on the operating table with its guts spewing out for all to see. One of the big complaints with this bike was the bleeding of two-stroke oil from various of the arterial delivery systems of the bike, even at rest. A two-stroke engine is dependent on a regular supply of 2T oil, so multiple haemorrhages can be seen as bad news for its longevity, not to mention making it embarrassing to park it up anywhere public. The first bleed was found to be coming from the semi-rigid plastic pipe system…