Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i Classic Motorcycle Mechanics

It was a weird week for me – and a wonderful one, too. I’d joined ‘the’ national weekly motorcycle newspaper, and coming from a well-organised bi-weekly local newspaper it was a bit of a culture shock… Out went the shirt and tie, in came jeans and T-shirts. Out went silence and the tapping of keyboards to the sound of boisterous banter, bikes and laughter. Trying to impress the newbie me, the deputy editor threw me the keys to a brand-new Honda CBR900RR FireBlade for a quick spin: I’d arrived! Wow… what a bike. By the end of that week I’d ridden everything that was in the lock-up and – by Friday – I was hoping to get the keys to something saucy for my trip back home to Kent, as…

Former CMM contributor and all-round two-stroke tuning legend Stan Stephens has finally retired: Again! Stan was ‘The Man’ behind the power of many a two-stroke racer and road bike in the 1970s through to modern day specials. His career spanned more than 60 years and he started out racing himself on solos and in sidecars and even on four wheels. But it was his skills as a tuner – most specifically on two-stroke machines – that led to his fame and fortune. Stan set up his first motorcycle shop in the early 1970s but by 1981 his company – Stan Stephens Tuning – was becoming legendary. Stan had formed the company on the back of his skills as a two-stroke tuner par excellence. Many an air-cooled and latterly liquid-cooled two-stroke…

Motorcycle Live 2024, in partnership with Bikesure Insurance, returns to the NEC Birmingham from November 16-24 with a new festival vibe and thrilling experiences, as well as much more classic content than ever before. Expect hundreds of exhibitors displaying the latest bikes, gear, and accessories, along with live-action performances, top trials experts and jaw-dropping tricks. The Festival Zone will debut, featuring spectacular stunts, entertainment on the Blackhorse Stage, and a fresh presenter line-up. Enjoy the festival atmosphere with gourmet street food, live music, and no weather worries. The Expert Lab, hosted by TV personality Grace Webb, will offer sessions on the latest tech and innovations, joined by expert guests. The Machine Shop team will provide hands-on engineering demos with Q&A opportunities. Riding opportunities are available for all ages and skill…

Do you want to see YOUR club featured in CMM’s pages? Then contact the editor at: BSimmonds@Mortons.co.uk Nestled in the picturesque landscape of Carmarthenshire, a unique community initiative is transforming lives, one motorcycle at a time. Since its inception in 2017, the West Wales Motorcycle Club (WWMCC) has become a beacon of support for motorcycling enthusiasts in the West Wales area, providing both a creative outlet and a mental health lifeline. The WWMCC was born from a genuine need within the community, identified through an extensive consultation with local motorcyclists and mental health organisations. This collaboration revealed a shared vision: To create a space where the therapeutic benefits of working with motorcycles could be harnessed to support mental well-being. With this mission in mind, the club was established as a…

So, you’ve seen on the preceding pages why I really loved the BMW K1300 S – now’s my chance to plead with BMW bosses why I’d love to see it return… I was 37 when the bike came out. I still owned a set of one piece ‘race’ leathers and I thought I was ‘handy.’ I was still into speed and sportsbikes and the machine in my garage was a Honda CBR1000RR-8 Fireblade. I’m older, wiser and much slower now. Heading to my 54th year means I’m ripe for a final dip into the world of performance but with a machine that does not come with a great big target on it – and I can wear two-piece textiles and not be laughed at by my peers. Personally, when I…

FRONT BRAKE Good unit and should have decent feel at the lever. If it locks or binds, service the caliper but also looked for blocked return hole in the master cylinder. FUELLING Better than the previous 250s but some owners still retro fit Mikunis of various origins. ELECTRICS A little basic but work well enough if looked after: Various upgrades common with modern wiring, components and electronic ignition. Attention all naysayers and haters – please feel entirely free to turn over the next four pages and move on. Please don’t litter Bertie’s inbox with ‘Angry of Tunbridge Wells’-type complaints – we know some cannot abide an Eastern European stroker and especially one that was made in Zschopau. However, if you know, then you know (as they say). And for those…

Back in the late 1970s I had progressed from an FS1-E and was onto an RD250 when the SR500 was launched into the UK. Even at this early stage in my biking career I was very taken with the first XT500s – so having seen a new red and black SR in the local bike dealer, I knew that would have to be in my destiny and so it proved. My first SR took me to Le Mans and Barcelona and was ideal for me in many practical respects. Time moved on and the SR gave way to a GSX550 ESD which was in (a short) time replaced by another SR – I just couldn’t get enough of the SR’s torque and fun handling (Photo 1). Fast forward several decades…

Suzuki is offering 0% APR finance across multiple models this autumn, including the 25th Anniversary GSX1300R Hayabusa and new-shape ‘retro’ Katana. This year saw the Hayabusa celebrate its ‘silver’ anniversary and the launch to mark the occasion. Available on 0% finance alongside the standard Hayabusa, the special edition is available for £159 per month with a £3725 deposit. The Katana is also available for 0%… we love it. Other retro-ish bikes – the DR Big-alike V-Strom 1050DE, with its 21 inch front wheel, long-travel suspension and off-road-focused electronics package, is also available as part of the offer and can be had for £119 with a deposit of £3033, plus it comes with a pair of free 37 litre aluminium panniers. Also covered in the deal is the new GSX-S1000GX. Launched earlier…

Riding this restored Yamaha XS1100 it’s hard to believe that an example of this huge shaft-drive across the frame four-cylinder litre-plus sports-tourer was victorious in the world’s most prestigious international production race for motorcycles in 1978. For many, including me, the bulky bike was the most unlikely of candidates to be a race winner. The Japanese factory had been ploughing its own furrow in the superbike class, and rather than offering an across-the-frame four-cylinder 750, did things its own way with a DOHC triple using shaft drive which first appeared in 1976. That firmly pigeon-holed it as a machine for relaxed touring. And if the XS750 was a cuddly friend, we thought a bigger version would be more of the same. A ride on Neil Haworth’s faithfully-restored 1981 XS1100 brought…

It’s a mediocre Monday afternoon in what’s supposed to be middle of summer, and yet outside it’s grey skies and rain, again. I sigh. I flop open my laptop and head to Facebook Marketplace with search criteria set at > vehicles > motorcycles: It’s a place I love and hate in equal measure but where I can find hours of mind-numbing comfort. OMG – almost the first thing I saw made my stomach drop through the floor, this was one of those moments I live for – a bargain! Just over two hours later, the £2250 Ducati 748 was in my van and I was heading home with a bloody big smile on my face, thinking I’ve probably just purchased the cheapest 748 I ever saw advertised. The reasons for…

Kev Raymond keeps his eye on the choppy waters of the classic world to see if any projects, donors and bargains are out there worthy of being dragged out of the surf for some mouth-to-mouth… 1987 Honda CB450SG Asking: £260 A bit of a rarity, this: Launched in 1986, if memory serves, it took an engine based on the 400N Super Dream, wrapped it in a fancy Harris-inspired frame, and added alloy wheels, decent (for the time) brakes and suspension, and a sporty riding position. The only thing was, no one could quite decide what it was for… Anyone who wanted sporty already had various two-stroke options, commuters didn’t want to pay a premium when you could always get an old Super Dream or CX500 for peanuts, and that didn’t really…

Well, it has taken a while but finally I have the ‘Goose’ bike finished. After many long months waiting for Dream Machine to finish the paintwork off, I finally picked it up from their shop in Nottingham. It was well worth the wait, Kevin Porter and the boys had made a great job of it and I was well pleased with the results. Apparently Kev and his team had spent many hours watching the original 1970s film to get the details right… I almost felt sorry for them, but then it IS a great film! The colour is an old Kawasaki colour, galaxy silver with a bright blue fogging. They painted the inside of the fairing in a matt black. To stiffen up the flimsy glassfibre construction, Kev gave it…

Every-day events back at the Village Bike Shop were, how can I put this, erm, different. There was a constant influx of pals (always welcome), customers (always necessary) and mitherers (always tolerated, even mitherers had their uses…). The kettle was always on, as was the radio and there was a constant stream of problems and things being created with ancient equipment and sheer bloody-mindedness. We had two lathes back then, one was a South Bend belt-driven antique. Was it old? You betcha, it was a survivor of the Second World War and had been a ‘Lease Lend’ item supplied by our American friends. Occasionally the motor blew up or somebody might get a little tingle through the on/off controller. The other lathe was a huge Headland, a mighty, three phase…

It’s two decades since James Toseland became the youngest ever World Superbike champion. When he took the hard-fought title at Magny Cours on October 3, 2004 he was just 23 years, 11 months and 29 days old. Still so very young and yet he’d already been racing on Tarmac for nine years, and before that racing in off-road and motocross as a schoolboy. In 1995 James won the Junior Road Race Championship and then took the 1997 Honda CB500 Cup championship. This led him to some impressive one-off rides in that year’s British Supersport Championship. He was quickly signed by Castrol Honda to take part in the World Supersport series for 1998. It was a tough and tragic year. His team-mate Michael Paquay was killed in an accident at Monza…

The National Motorcycle Museum has a spectacular event to mark its 40th anniversary later this month. Museum LIVE 2024 takes place on Saturday October 26-27 at the museum on Coventry Road, Bickenhill, Solihull (B92 0EJ) and it’s promising to be a belter. Since opening its doors in 1984 the NMM has been at the heart of preserving and celebrating Great Britain’s motorcycle heritage, and this year’s Museum LIVE event is set to be the most exciting yet. The two day extravaganza is packed with special guests, thrilling demonstrations and new attractions, offering something for everyone – from lifelong enthusiasts to newbies. To assist visitors, everyone arriving on site will be given a free timetable with a full list of timings of all the weekend’s exciting events. And Museum LIVE remains…

Mike Trimby – the British bike racing safety trailblazer – is now officially a MotoGP Legend, having been inducted into the Hall of Fame at the British Grand Prix. Mike, who passed away in 2023, becomes the first Legend inducted wholly due to their work off-track. He was the founder and CEO of IRTA becoming one of the most important figures in the history of motorcycle Grand Prix racing championing the rights of riders and helping to push for ever more stringent safety in the sport. Mike began his career as a rider and mechanic in the 1960s, but soon started to emerge as a key figure off-track by the late 1970s. In 1982, the riders – led by Kenny Roberts – then officially requested Trimby to act as their…

I don’t like four-cylinder BMWs. Never have. That’s a bold statement to make and I made it to the BMW public relations person who invited me to the launch of the K1300 family… Thankfully he and I were old friends and fortuitously he persuaded me to attend – because (he told me) “things had changed…” Now, I love BMW’s Boxer twins: The likes of the big touring RTs and the adventure bike GS range rather than the strange-looking RS models. But my dislike of the multi-cylinder German machines – the K-series – stemmed from my experiences while riding them, I’ve just never gelled with them and yet I like a triple or a four as much as the next person. My first ‘long-term’ relationship with a K was the 1997…

A ComfortAir Seat Cushion worth £69.99. Ideal for classic and modern machines alike, these seat cushions improve comfort on longer journeys. Best of all, they’re easy to both attach and remove. Duchinni Youth Michigan Jacket worth £139.99. Designed for youngsters from 6-16 years old, the Michigan is a retro style waterproof jacket made to the same high standards as adult motorcycle clothing. Rated AA for safety it comes with full CE armour. For more info visit www.thekeycollection.co.uk An MTR Vintage retro crash helmet worth £130. This is a retro full-face motorcycle helmet from the Louis Moto brand MTR. You’ve got a fibre-glass helmet, the classic double-D fastener and a comfort lining. Go to www.louis-moto.co.uk for more info. A Bridgestone Oximiser 3X. Bridgestone has been making brilliant tyres for decades, so…

This month I am starting to modify the frame of this Z900 to make it less bendy than it was when it left Mr Kawasaki’s factory in Akashi. While the big four Japanese motorcycle manufacturers had cracked building powerful engines in the 1970s, it would be a good few years before they managed to design frames and suspension to get the best out of these motors, spawning a whole new industry for the likes of Harris, Spondon and the like. I’ve always wanted to build a Big Zed that handled more like a modern bike, but using 1970s and 80s technology. It’s a bit scary attacking a perfectly good frame with grinders and saws, but you have to bite the bullet and get on with it. I got it dipped…

Alarge proportion of bikes that feature in CMM are two-strokes – those humble yet sometimes vexatious beasts that make many of us smile disproportionally to their engine’s capacity. Unlike their four-stroke cousins, ‘stinkwheels’ rely on not one but two forms of compression, primary and secondary. The latter takes place, as normal, within the combustion chamber and above the piston crown, whereas the former occurs below the piston and inside the crankcase around the crankshaft itself. If this primary compression falls below a certain level the engine becomes hard to start and may also very well lose performance. An auxiliary effect can be the unwanted pressurisation of the transmission system if the leak is on that particular side, and this appeared to be the case with this month’s subject. When your…

With the engine back together again, I was ready to hit the streets on the mighty ST70: Well, kind of. The fact was that although the engine did seem to have a bit more output (with the exhaust seeming correspondingly noisier), the running was still not right, and the trouble seemed to be associated with the carburettor. Starting was rather uncertain, and when the engine was running there was a flat-spot when accelerating. Another point was that it was never necessary to use the choke when the engine was cold. This seems like a convenience rather than a fault but it actually means that the fuel/air mixture must be too rich – at least, at small throttle openings. But the flat-spot sounded like the settings were too weak. I had…