Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2022 i Classic Motorcycle Mechanics

If we are lucky, we are healthy, happy and – at the very least – content with our lot. And I’d like to say I consider myself in that camp. But, sometimes, I think about the ‘what ifs’ in life. I don’t ‘what if’ as far as some people (no, I don’t want to run a marathon and no, I don’t want to scale Everest), but as I’m in my 51st year, my ‘what ifs’ are more about growing a beard (never had one), having my hair long (ditto), and losing some weight. I’ve tried the first two (itchy chin, the stubble had to go) and the second (annoying), so the third is something I’m going to have a shot at. It’s prompted by seeing the svelte and lovely Yamaha…

Tested ARAI QUANTIC Quite possibly, this is the best motorcycle crash helmet I’ve ever worn. Released last year, the Quantic is marketed as a sports-touring helmet, despite looking rather quite sporty, which is right up my alley as at 51 I still wear trainers so I look sporty, too… The initial fit is superb. The luxurious brushed-nylon lining is akin to putting your favourite, fluffy slippers on your head, and we all know we would if we could. Arai says that the actual aperture you stick your noggin in is larger than on other models – as you’re often taking your helmet off and on when on a sports-touring machine. All I will say is that the transition to on your head and off is much easier and less of…

Post to Mechanics, PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincs LN9 6LZ or email your pictures to editorial@classicmechanics.com We love to hear from you, so why not let us know what you like, or dislike in YOUR magazine. Simply get in touch by sending emails to: letters@classicmechanics.com or direct to the editor at BSimmonds@Mortons.co.uk or post your letters to the normal address. The good old days! This morning I settled down with an old copy of Classic Motorcycle Mechanics (number 325, November 2014) and imagine my surprise when one of the featured bikes, a lovely Kawasaki GPz 750 Turbo, came from a dealership I worked at in 1984, 38 years ago, and it was still wearing its original number plate and dealer stickers. There is a 50/50 chance I sold this brand-new,…

CLASSIC RIDE Our Andy places his posterior on a perfectly lovely little two-stroke that he’s been gagging to ride for years: Yamaha’s SDR200. PICS: Well, today I’m standing in front of one of my teenage crushes and I’m pleased to say she has aged well; very well in fact, so much so that I’m in awe of this skinny little machine! Again we are looking at a bike not destined for our own shores which is such a shame as I think it would have sold well. All we can say is thank goodness for the grey importers of the day! That said, while the likes of Honda’s CBR400s of various hues and even NC30 V4s, Kawasaki ZXR400s can be relatively plentiful coming in by the container load, the little…

The winter weather brings its own challenges when riding a motorcycle with ice, wet leaves and muddy country roads, but my trusty Honda ST1100 Pan European is a great motorcycle for all-year-round riding and especially good at keeping me warm and relatively dry behind its large fairing and tall screen. When I’m riding I constantly think about what could happen at every bend and even down the straights with deer, rabbits and birds often making a dash across the road in front of me on my 75-mile country lane commute. Then the other day I felt a sharp bump through the seat halfway through a bend and I went into an immediate back end slide like on a speedway bike! My motocross training kicked in immediately and I managed to…

Up until quite recently I believed that my old bikes were perfectly suitable for day-to-day travel, just as they had been when they were new. Unfortunately, that took a bit of a knock when five of them proved to be rather unreliable as it turned out. The first issue was with the Honda CL350. I was returning home after a ride and the engine started to die. This was not unexpected as I knew the fuel level was a bit low so I turned the fuel tap round to reserve. I was not in the best place at a busy traffic light junction in three lanes of traffic, but I knew the engine would pick up in a few seconds. Except it would not go again. Motorists where I live…

BUYER’S GUIDE This is Yamaha’s first response to the 1982 125cc Learner Law… PHOTOS: Back in 1960 learners suddenly found themselves restricted to a 250 until they’d passed their test; allowing a 16-year-old to ride a Vincent on L-plates was genuinely asking for trouble. And thus the status quo was maintained until some 30 years later when someone in government realised accident rates were on the rise. Come 1978, Suzuki’s X7 was almost touching the magic ton and in 1980 Yamaha’s LC250 was, theoretically at least, exceeding the magical three-digit barrier. Shouting the mantra, ‘Speed kills’, the bureaucrats stepped in and slapped a 125cc learner law on us… miffed doesn’t even begin to explain the level of teenage anguish if you were of a certain age. Yet, of course, the…

Cmm Archive PICTURE: “I literally laughed when they asked me to ride the Norton at the 1992 Isle of Man TT,” said Steve Hislop, in his autobiography. “I didn’t think that bike would last one lap of the Isle of Man, let alone six to win the Senior.” The bike in question was Norton’s NRS588, an almost ‘home-built’ superbike compared to the Japanese machines of the time, such as the Honda VFR750R RC30, the Yamaha OW-01 and the Kawasaki ZXR750. And yet on the short circuits back in 1992 the likes of Terry Rymer and Robert Dunlop had shown that it could run at the front. Rymer, a late draftee into the JPS-backed squad, was even leading one of the two main British national superbike titles that year. The secret…

BeMoto, the multi-bike and modified motorbike insurance specialists, has launched BeLotto, a free-to-enter competition to win a Ducati Panigale V4 S worth £25,000 along with a £10k prize pot of motorcycling goodies. Basically, if you’ve got a BeMoto policy by April 18, 2022 (the closing date of the draw) you will automatically be entered with two tickets. Further improving the chance to win is that every additional bike insurance in a Multibike road insurance package along with any live SORN, Annual Travel or GAP Insurance Policy on the closing date also counts for an additional two entries per policy. For those who aren’t insured with BeMoto but desperately want to win this incredible prize package, they can gain an entry into BeLotto by filling out a short and simple online…

News  This year marks 50 years since the first Kawasaki Z model, the iconic Z1. In tribute, Kawasaki has launched four Z50 celebration models – and we love the colour schemes! The 50th anniversary edition of the Supernaked Z900 is clad in the Firecracker Red of a number of Z models, and we love it! Adding to the effect are fork tubes finished in gold (not real gold, obviously) and the frame in gloss black. Kawasaki also has the A2-licence friendly Z650 in a similar scheme. Meanwhile, the Z-aping Z650RS and Z900RS have really returned to the Zed’s roots with a real candy diamond brown paint recreation of the original Z1. Available from March, the Z900 is priced at £9799, Z650 is £7349, Z650RS is £8049, and Z900RS, £11,449. For…

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. Mark Van Blommestein’s Honda Africa Twins I’ve had my Africa Twin from new, now with nearly 70k miles on the clock. I had a Ural chair fitted a few years ago by Watsonian for six months of travel around South America. The only work I’ve done, aside from routine maintenance, has been fitting of a new Nitron rear shock; new bearings on…

CLASSIC RIDE Honda’s VTX1800 emerged on the cruiser scene in the early noughties, promising more grunt than that heard in a VHS porn film and pistons the size of dinner plates. Bertie Simmonds waxes his moustache in anticipation… PICS: Big is beautiful when it comes to Honda’s VTX1800… and BIG just oozes from the bike and brochure all at once. We’re talking 1795cc of 52-degree of liquidcooled (yup) V-twin muscle, with 115lb-ft of torque at a lowly 3000rpm, peaking at a half-decent (for the time and now) of 95bhp at 5000rpm. Just look at that motor: you could eat your dinner off the huge clutch cover or the 101mm pistons which splodge fuel towards two inlet and one exhaust port. These are fed by fuel-injection, 42mm throttle bodies and fired…

RETRO SPECTIVE Other than the Boxer twins, most BMWs left our Bertie cold – until the Munich massive went a bit more contemporary… PICS: It’s fair to say I never had the best of relationships with anything other than the Boxer twin motorcycles in the BMW range. The 1980s-90s triples never did it for me and the late 1990s K1200 RS and LT models left me cold. The 1997 RS was (for me) too big and clumsy and without a characterful powerplant; being on the updated launch in 2001 where the bike was ridden next to the-then new R1150 RT and 1150 R Boxers only proved my point, well, in my mind anyways. So, being asked to ride the 2008-09 K1300 series wasn’t really going to spin my crank, so…

After many months of waiting for delayed new parts, recycling old parts and stripping three engines, Bruno finally has a two-stroking, smoke-blowing, power-banding parallel twin installed! Gat the time I listed what we needed, and I ordered the ’day! A while back we ran the engine strip part of our HB resto. parts that I could find were available. Then the delays started, mainly due to Covid-19 restrictions Down Under and in Europe. The few parts I had been able to find took a long time to arrive, so I moved on to other things. In the end everything I was able to source showed up and I could get on with things… The first surprise for me was to get a call from my regular cylinder rebore service to…

This issue Ralph opens up the very heart of the big Zed to work out what’s occurring with the oil-pump. Last month I smashed the two crankcases together on the fourth iteration of big K’s mighty Zed One, the king of the classics. The Z900A4 was the first big Zed I ever saw. When I was 17 and tearing up the roads of Somerset on my ‘Race Developed’ 200cc Yamaha stink-wheel on L-plates (that’s what I believed RD stood for back in the day), I was lodging in a house where my landlord’s friend had a 1976 A4. He had the obligatory four-into-one Harris and a Dresda box-section swingarm, and I was smitten by its beauty. Obviously, he made the most outrageous claims for its performance and any sound deadening…

Send us your nostalgic snaps of you back in the day with your steed! Either send to me at bsimmonds@mortons.co.uk or via our vibrant Facebook page. C’mon! Paul Lieberman says: “I love the mag but I can’t seem to throw them away after reading, so I need a bigger wardrobe to keep my collection – the wife has too many clothes anyway! Here’s perhaps something different for ‘The Way We Were’. I’ve lived in the Surbiton area for 50 years. Tippetts Motors has been a local landmark, and always had dozens of motorcycles parked out front. A major part of the local biking community, their open days were legendary back in the day. The great staff in the parts department helped me rebuild my 400/4 engine in 1979 – cam-chain…

CLASSIC RIDE Three decades ago, the once-humble Zephyr was seen as a cheap retro bike, whilst others saw it as a blank canvas. Roland Brown takes us back in time to his ride in the eye of a storm… PICS: Crack open the throttle at about 60mph in top, and the Cyclone responded like a hot Zed always did. Momentarily nothing much happened, as the smoothbores spluttered at low revs. Then at just below five grand the motor breathed deeply, the four-into-one pipe started screaming, and the wide bars tugged at my shoulders as the big air-cooled four leapt away. Seconds later I was holding on tighter still, wind tugging at my helmet and the engine pulling hard at well over the ton. A curve loomed up, and the bulky,…

So, our Pip is stung by things said by CMM readers and so decides to head out and prove ’em wrong! What a trooper! Iremember feeling a bit aggrieved after catching a bit of flak from one of CMM’s readers. I think it was something like: ‘And that Pip Higham knows nowt about two-strokes!’ Fair enough, I thought, my knowledge of bikes sans valves may not be up to El Scoop’s level, but after selling anything Suzuki made between 1968 and 1975 I’ve cleaned a fair number of stroker baffles and set a few sets of points on everything from M15s to GT750s. To be fair, we didn’t need to do much else, they just didn’t break. So, rather than taking to my keyboard to redress this heinous slur I…

After parting company with two fully restored GSX-R750F models, which he had slaved over for years, Jeff did shed a tear or two... then his mate Chappy turned up... It was hard to part with my fully restored 1985 750F when family funds required a top-up. The pain subsided when I managed to get a second one and restore that, but like two blows from a twin swirl combustion chamber, that too had to go. Would I ever own a 1985 GSX-R750F for good? With four kids in private school the likelihood was low, I figured, so I’d kind of given up on the idea… Much like my RG500 dream that was short-lived… Then the call came through one hot Friday afternoon. It was Chappy (my old mate with the…

Tony and pal Andy are sorting out their Lockdown LCs with their respective engines: which way will they go? With both LCs taking shape and up on their wheels, the next big part of the puzzle is the engine. Although we are both building 350LCs, our adaptations on the engine front are totally different. Andy has an RD350 YPVS engine in his. This was a very common modification back in the 1980s and a pretty easy way to gain power, as the YPVS engine in standard form will make 10bhp more than an LC. The YPVS engine itself bolts straight in the LC chassis. That’s the easy bit. It is the electrics that make things a bit harder. Back in the day you just bought a crashed Powervalve and took…