Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Classic Motorcycle Mechanics

Competition makes us better – it’s a truism, isn’t it? If there’s someone else, a competitor, geeing us on, we’re going to do our utmost and strive to be better. Sometimes we will win, sometimes they will, but that’s life. While I’ve always loved a bit of competition, I’ve also had respect for my rivals. You’ll see many magazines on the shelves and I know how much effort it takes to get a magazine out there and I know how much energy and, yes, love, is poured into each and every one. Then, sat next to each other on the shelves, we need to stand out. Sometimes we do, sometimes they do. You make the buying choice and then the next month we all start again… Our main competitor was…

The Triumph Hurricane, the first British factory produced custom, was the bike of my dreams when I left secondary school at 16 in 1972. At that time I had been riding various old British hacks around fields and disused railway lines for quite a few years and suddenly had to wait another year to pass my test on a 250cc Matchless. The Hurricane waited for many more years after quite a few British, German and American bikes, but was patiently calling me over the years and the opportunity to get closer finally came in 2021. But first a few words about the original Triumph X-75 Hurricane. This was a factory-built special, based on the BSA Rocket III/Triumph Trident, which, the story goes, wasn’t a big hit with the management of…

Anecdote time: It’s the launch of the 1999 model year Kawasaki ZR-7, a modest naked middleweight, using old technology. It’s the 1990s, so sports-bikes are the machines of choice and the assembled journalists are preening, postulating peacocks, where ‘looking good’ in pictures was important. One such journo complains to a Kawasaki PR bod that the ZR-7 is impossible to wheelie. Just then, Martin ‘Wild’ Child from Bike Magazine (their road tester and former stunt rider) wheelies past the pair, laughing while sat on the fuel tank with his legs dangling over the bars. It’s a story, but a true one – and it tells you to write off the ZR-7 at your peril. Sure, the basics were – well, basic. The motor was air-cooled and derived from the likes of…

Before I’d started this series, I’d always assumed that spraying bikes was the preserve of God-like beings of far superior cerebral and motor skills than myself. My good friend Jak Goodyear dispelled such beliefs, telling me that it was perfectly possible to paint bikes to a high standard at home without the need to cash in one’s pension to build a professional spray booth in the back garden. Jak regularly paints custom builds in his garden of enviable finish and encouraged me to give it a go. I had set my heart on metal-flake for this bike and that’s when I had the good fortune to discover Lisa at airbrushes.com whose enthusiasm and encouragement, not to mention supply of paints and an airbrush, made this project a reality. Oddly, my…

I know that given time and money I can sort out the CX’s running issues with parts bought in from the States and Australia – more on that later. First, though, I'm more concerned about sorting out comfort, handling, and especially the braking, and that starts a lot closer to home. Riding position first. The US-spec high, pull-back bars are horrible – everything from the angle of my wrists to the angle of my arms and the way it puts all my weight down through my spine is just plain wrong. I want the more natural (to me) position of standard UK-spec bikes. Fortunately, along with the CX came most of another UK bike in bits, and there's a set of bars in there which will do until I can…

There’s never anything good on telly these days, is there? Well, nothing with as many 1970s dirt bikes as they have on eBay, anyway – unless, of course, someone happens to be showing a repeat of Little Faus and Big Halsy, the 1970 movie starring Robert Redford and a Yamaha DT250. But they weren’t, so eBay it was. I can’t remember why I wanted one, but it may well have been vague memories of the film, or it may have been that one of the big kids in my village had one when I was one of the little kids (I had a secondhand Raleigh Falcon). So with Mrs. H away on business, I got down and dirt bikey on the auction site with the mostest. I didn’t actually mean…

Is it really 20 years ago since Neil Hodgson became the UK’s second World Superbike Champion? A former schoolboy moto-crosser, Neil never described himself as ‘a natural’ on two wheels, but nevertheless by the time he was 13 he was winning everything there was to win, until a big accident saw him break his tibia and fibula aged just 14. Dad Mark got Neil on a Yamaha TZR125 and he started Tarmac racing – on the proviso he didn’t ride on the road. He soon made an impression, and aged 18 in 1992 became the British 125cc champion on a Honda RS125. Under the guidance of Roger Burnett, Neil went into GP racing and back then was the youngest rider on the grid. He would take a best finish in…

Bicester Heritage welcomes its flagship Flywheel event back on June 17-18, a weekend of classic wings and wheels in both four- and two-wheeled variety. The event promises to be a suitably spectacular tribute for the former Second World War RAF bomber base’s 10-year anniversary celebrations – made all the more special as the event is on for the first time since 2018. With a total of 20,000 tickets set to be released for the two-day extravaganza, 10,000 members of the public will be welcomed to the Bicester Heritage site each day. Adult tickets will be priced at £27 per ticket, with entry for children up to the age of 15 priced at £7.50. Flywheel will see a host of classic motoring and motorcycle marques join the displays along the tree-lined…

Last issue we looked at a general history of BMW – who celebrate their 100th birthday this year – this time we choose a bike (sometimes two) from each era as bona fide classics. Feel free to complain at our choice! Inter-war period: BMW R32 You’ll have to be a pretty serious collector and vintage machine fan to delve around here. But fair play if you want to commute 25 miles down the A5 each day on a 100-year-old bike… If we were going to pick a super-classic BMW to own, it might as well be the R32 – BMW’s first motorbike. Just over 3000 were built in the three years between 1923 and 1926, and it pioneered the Boxer engine and shaft final drive still used by the firm…

I have been attempting to accommodate a rather too large collection of bikes in very much too little space for some time, so I have taken the hint and started to bring the numbers down. I realised that I was never going to finish the Mobylette moped and the Honda CB175 so they have gone to better, more deserving, homes. The BSA Bantam had been intended to see whether it might be refreshing to have another British bike after 40 years and it did serve its purpose: I have got that out of my system now. One real issue I had was that in addition to the space problem, I had an attack of stinginess when it came time to renew the Hornet’s road tax and discovered that it was…

ENGINE Never known bac k then as a paragon of virtue even when new. Back then it was poor quality control that would see big variations on engine tolerances. Some bikes emerged from the factory with barrels which were of varying heights, leading to piston slap (and associated knocking from the top-end on start-up.) Gaskets also leaked. The later KR-1S had new pistons, revised porting, ignition amendments and different exhausts; some more modern bits end up in earlier engines. WHEELS Very hard to get good tyres in the right sizes now. Some bikes have bigger tyres on the rear rims – so be wary. Both KR-1 and S models had 18-inch rears with the S up to a 140 rear section from a 130. ERGONOMICS If you’re a bigger chap…

Those legends Rob and Darin at CBT have finally confirmed their calendar for 2023. And here it is. Get to them on: www.classicbiketrackdays.com/ APRIL 15 The Classic Bike Burn Up, Castle Combek A laid-back season opener at the South West’s premier circuit, where all riders including groups from the Vintage Motor Cycle Club and Brooklands Museum Members will be in action with some real vintage beauties both on track and in the paddock. Free entry for all spectators. MAY 27-28 The Welsh Classic Motorcycle Festival, Anglesey The Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club will be joining CBT again with a great array of machines and all exhibitors at the event will have the opportunity to join the ride-out on the ‘Chippy Run’ through the beautiful Welsh countryside with the Anglesey Motorcycle Club,…

Clive Edwards says: “Thanks for publishing my comments last issue – here are some more! First up, my Suzuki GT750. I went to school in the old Vincent factory and George Brown’s motorcycles, he of world record fame on Nero & Super Nero, was over the road. I’d been looking in the windows since the age of four. Anyway, I went in one day and asked Tony if he had anything interesting to sell me and the GT750 appeared from under the sheet: £400! It had an incredibly loud Piper three-intoone. The high bars were changed from high to drag bars as we called them, with foam bar grips, and I found these incredibly light three-into-three spannies in one of the bike mags. It was totally transformed and it went…

Do you often wonder where all of those 1980s Kawasaki 750 four-cylinder four-strokes went? There was a 750 for every pocket, and every rider back then. The Z750E and L models were the comfy ones; the shaft-drive GT750 was the sensible one; the Turbo 750 was the bonkers one; and the GPz750 A series Uni-Trak bikes were the popular ones. Then there were models like the GPz750R1, with its bikini fairing and red revolution GPz paintwork... lovely! With water-cooling becoming more common towards the end of the 80s and necessary for various reasons, the air-cooled Kawasaki 750 looked like it was heading for the exit. Wrong! In the 1990s Kawasaki dug the machinery required to build the air-cooled motor out of the skip and tooled up for the Zephyr 750,…

Saving money on a restoration is great – in the right places. You’ll see elsewhere in this august organ my final part on painting the non-stock Z900 at home and I also enjoy powder-coating from home. I find saving beer tokens this way is better than what some people do, most notably not using decent torque wrenches or using cheapo versions of a Heli-Coil kit… So, powder-coating smaller items is a job that’s enjoyable and helps me save money. The powders are cheap. All you need is a method of applying the powder to the parts and an oven to cure the coating. The oven is easy, just look on eBay, FaceBook Marketplace or just drop a subtle hint to your mate’s wife that her oven isn’t very fashionable anymore…