Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 78 i Old Bike Australasia

At first sight Phil Price’s latest Velocette looks like another well prepared 350cc KTT from his collection, however on closer inspection, if you know about racing Velocettes, you realise that this is a very unusual machine. It is a copy of a 1936 Double Overhead Cam (DOHC) works engine housed in a replica of a 1952 works semi-duplex frame. This extraordinary Velocette is a product of Phil’s long-term friendship with Nick Thomson, Velocette aficionado and engineering guru. The inspiration for this 350 Velocette came whilst Phil and Nick were watching Bill Swallow, aboard the 250cc DOHC Eldee Velocette, compete in the 2014 Isle of Man Classic TT. It was becoming clear that the 250s were being sidelined and to be competitive in the 350 class (with ‘later’ model twins and…

Tony’s workshop is fairly bristling with projects, many of which have their origins in the collections of his late father Cliff, an identity of the Newcastle dirt track scene. Cliff saved many an apparent pile of junk from the scrap heap, but it transpired much of it was rare and valuable, provided of course you had the knowledge and skill to tackle the job of bringing it back to life. Tony certainly qualifies in all respects, and with a particular interest in speedway and all forms of left-turning oval racing, turned his attention to creating a pair of Harleys that represent the halcyon days of the sport for that brand. In the company’s history, both v-twin and singles played pivotal roles in garnering countless wins for the Milwaukee icon, translating…

Sold under the model designation of Tourist, the Heinkel scooters quickly developed a reputation for excellent quality and attention to detail. Five models would come out of the German factory in the 13 years of production and many are still in use. Around the world, scooter enthusiasts regard the Tourists as the supreme example of the European scooter. Ernst Heinkel was born in the Swabia province of Germany in 1888. The fledging German aviation industry captured his attention, and in 1910 built his own aeroplane, which unfortunately crashed and left him with serious injuries. During WW1, he worked at Albatross building fighter planes, and later the Brandenburg Aircraft Works where he designed some 30 aircraft. After Germany’s defeat, its aviation industry was shut down until 1922, when it was restarted…

The event has been organised by Ken Vincent for the Pre-31 Section of the Vintage Motorcycle Club of Western Australia for the past seven years, and attracts machines from the 1900s through to the end of 1930. Some of these machines are rarely seen, never mind being ridden in the manner they were intended along country roads. For the 2018 event, the machines ranged from a 1911 Rover 500 to a 1930 AJS 1000. Entries came from the Vintage Motorcycle Club of Western Australia (Metropolitan and Albany Sections), The Bunbury-based Indian Harley Club, the Early American Club and the Vintage & Classic Motorcycle Club from Albany. The event is held in early April each year and 2017 was a fairly testing time for the old bikes and riders as it…

Although the Great Britain team was missing, the 2019 running of the International Classic at Phillip Island was a cracking event, with some outstanding performances and superb racing across most classes. The headline event drew teams from defending holders Australia, USA and New Zealand. 4-times AMA Superbike Champion Josh Hayes led the US team, and improved with every lap, finally snatching a win in the fourth and final encounter. In qualifying, it was 26-year old Aaron Morris, from Newcastle, who claimed pole position on a Suzuki Katana, and he maintained the form to take out race one on Saturday from Jed Metcher and Hayes. However this opening encounter was red-flagged and restarted after a huge accident at Turn 11 when US team star Jason Pridmore high-sided from his Yamaha, which…

The SHVC’s 7th Annual Tiddlers Rally for machines less than 250cc and greater than 30 years old drew 57 entries with 55 bikes participating. This was an increase in numbers from 2017 and demonstrates the increasing interest in the older tiddler. This rally is ideal for small bikes under 250cc using mostly flat roads with light traffic in the surrounds of Nowra, NSW. A complimentary meal was provided on the Friday evening at the Shoalhaven Caravan Village (SCV) for early arrivals. Saturday morning riders assembled in bright sunshine at the SCV for a run to Grady’s Riverside Retreat on the banks of the Shoalhaven River. The route followed Terara Road to Forest Road crossing over the Princes Highway then up to Nowra Hill past HMAS Albatross then to Cabbage Tree…

Telescopic forks do a great job, up to a point, but there are shortcomings. The basis of Yamaha’s twin-fork front end goes back almost 200 years – to a design by Georg Lankenspurger that was patented by his business partner Rudolph Ackerman in 1818. But that was for a horse-drawn cart, and motorcycles have an extra dimension – the ability, and necessity, to lean into corners. Basically what the system on the Niken does is to give each of the two front wheels its own pivot, controlled by a tie rod which locks the whole unit into a parallelogram-like structure, so that when cornering, the inner wheel turns less than the outer, and left and right paired forks can move independently of each other while maintaining the 410mm track between…

TX500 tales The Ariel Leader and Yamaha 500 twin articles (OBA 76) rang a few bells. As a 16 year old I learned to ride on an Ariel Leader in Dorset, England. It was my father’s and he never said a word when he found me quietly putting it away after a ride. So I adopted it and he went off and bought a very nice rigid A7. I went around all the local “Scrambles” courses following the Rickman brothers and their rivals Triss and Bryan Sharp. Triss had a satin-chromed frame alloy Tribsa with Manx (sacrilege) hubs. The courses in the south were quite fast over undulating ground, like one at Bulbarrow, Dorset. Whilst the Leader wasn’t very fast it didn’t lose much cornering speed. The build quality in…

Tony Morisset, a serious collector himself, usually organises a bunch of people who bring along their bikes for me to check out, and this visit had a distinctly Moto Guzzi theme. In fact, variations on a theme; four of the big transverse 90º V-twins in civilian and police guise, assembled on the lush lawn adjacent to the historic Oxenberry Farm Wines estate and restaurant, owned by two of the classic chaps, Michael and Filippo Scarpantoni. The engine was largely the work of Guzzi’s famous engineer Guilio Carcano, creator of the company’s all-conquering Grand Prix bikes. With the factory’s pullout from GP racing at the end of the 1957 season, Carcano was free to work on other projects, albeit more prosaic than the fabulous racers. We can thank the Italian police…

Before the shepherd Samuel Sleep arrived with his wife and seven children around 1840, the area was known as Brownhill Creek. During his stay it became known as Sleeps Hill and later Angas Park. Sleep made a quick fortune in the Victorian Gold Fields but returned to the land, only to suffer financial ruin by the severe drought of the 1860s. His weight reached 120kg by the time he died in December 1866, aged just 45. Part of the railway viaduct through the Adelaide Hills near Belair was named after him. These are known as the two Sleeps Hill tunnels and these (and the concrete foundations of the adjoining viaducts) represent one of the states major feats of engineering. Completed in 1862, these were the first railway tunnels constructed in…

It’s a design feature Peter Burn writes: Recently I took my old triumph to work. While parked in the warehouse a BMW riding work mate took offence to its charm, personality, quality and design excellence by surrounding it in an emergency oil spill kit. I just wanted to shed some light on the issue. It’s a design feature, not a leak. It’s anti-rust and anti-ageing cream, not oil. Something the German engineers are yet to master. SR500 boomerang Mark Wilkins from Airlie Beach, Queensland writes, “I thought you might like the story of my 1978 SR500 Yamaha, once owned by father. We contacted the gentleman my father sold the bike to some 35 years ago, which he still had sitting in his shed covered in black soot – location Mildura,…

The mystery dates back a long way, but from Michael’s research it appears that the two bikes – engine number 57-93741, and engine number 57-93682 were imported from USA by Trevor Standing from Mount Morgan, Queensland in 1985. Standing had actually purchased the lots as ‘NOS Triumph parts’ and were eventually shipped from USA to Brisbane and then to Gladstone under bond. Customs in Gladstone opened the boxes and declared they were not parts but complete motorcycles and therefore subject to import duty of $3,000 each. The boxes were badly damaged by Customs who “Smashed the sides out of them in examining the contents”. Trevor assembled one (57-93741) and exhibited it in the 1991 Capricornia Motorcycle Show in Rockhampton where it was awarded Most Outstanding British Bike. It was shown…

Like many years previous, the HMCCQ put together a display of historic Motorcycles for the annual Samford Museum Australia Day Fund raiser. The Museum opens its doors to the public to reveal the history of the area and Australia in general. Billy Tea and damper, a blacksmith, entertainment and a snag on the barbie were all part of the celebration. The motorcycles ranging from Dave Dettmar’s 1914 Rover through to the ‘80s had many of the visitors telling a story or two about particular models and the part played in their past lives. Motorcycles from most countries of the globe were represented and there seemed to be a dominance of immaculate Indians this year. Brands like Changjiang, Dnepr, Jawa, Moto Morini, Ducati, BMW, AJS, Matchless, Triumph, Douglas, BSA, Rudge, Norton,…

Moruya was the place to be in early November 2018 with over 70 Harley-Davidson Panheads making their way there to celebrate 70 years of this classic model. The first Panhead was introduced in 1948 with a springer front end. The “Hydra-Glide” was introduced in 1949 with hydraulic front forks followed by the “Duo-Glide” in 1958 with its rear shocks. The next major change in this iconic Panhead model came in 1965 with the electric start and now famous line of “Electra-Glides”. Group rides left from Melbourne on Thursday and Wollongong on Friday morning with other riders making their way to Moruya by Friday afternoon. Riders registered on the Friday night at the Adelaide Hotel. The Rider’s Briefing was held at 8.00 pm with details of the Saturday’s activities and ride.…

For after teasing everyone with the preview of the models at the Milan Show in late 2017, little was heard for almost a year. During that 12 months, changes were made, both internal and external, including a front end revision in the interests of better steering that was suggested by Chief Test Rider, Australian Paul Young, now resident at Enfield’s new Technical Centre in UK. So now, finally, the 650s are in dealers’ showrooms across Australasia, where orders and deposits have been piling up. There are two distinct models, albeit built on a common platform that includes engine, frame, suspension, brakes and wheels, but with decidedly different characters. One is the Interceptor – reviving a famous name from the British Enfield days, and the other the GT, a café racer…

FN – standing for Fabrique Nationale (d'Armes de Guerre) – manufactured the world's first production four-cylinder motorcycle, was noted for the use of shaft final drive on the majority of its models built from 1903 to 1923 (rather than the cheaper and less effective belts), and achieved some success in Grand Prix road racing and especially Motocross with a range of often idiosyncratically developed machines. Today it still produces a wide range of well-respected armaments – but nothing any more with wheels and an engine. In 1899, FN had begun building shaft and chain-driven bicycles as a sideline, and in 1900 experimented with a clip-on four-stroke engine to produce its first powered two-wheeler. In December 1901, the first 133cc single-cylinder FN motorcycle appeared, followed in 1903 by a 188cc model…

Leaving the Grand Prix two-strokes aside, Honda had initially embarked on a four-cylinder Vee formation four-stroke with the NR500 racer, first seen in 1980. Except that the NR500, while technically a V4 to comply with the FIM regulations that stipulated no more than four cylinders in the 500cc class, was really a V8, with eight conrods, 32 valves and oval pistons. History records that the NR500 was a humungously expensive exercise that netted just two race wins over two seasons – the first at Suzuka in Japan in early 1981 and the second, and final, at Laguna Seca, USA in July of the same year, when 19-year-old Freddie Spencer won a five lap sprint race. However, without the lessons learned in the NR500 project, painful as they may have been,…

Born in 1979 to race and preserve Pre-1963 British, European and American motorcycles, New Zealand’s legendary Classic Festival has grown to include all pre-1989 race bikes, including Japanese. The Pukekohe circuit itself has seen similar change over the years, and is now in the form dictated by the V8 cars, with concrete walls and high debris fencing. However the character of the circuit remains, and the racing, once it got under way after a lengthy delay, was as fierce as ever. I lost count of the number of times I was accosted with, “You didn’t have to bring your darned Sydney weather with you!” as the sun bore down and the humidity hung throughout the weekend, but at least it didn’t rain. Organisers were rewarded with a healthy entry of…

Friday’s traditional shakedown run via the Indigo Valley to the Barnawartha Pub went off without a hitch. Saturday’s run was through to Rutherglen for our first stop, then over the Murray River, through Corowa and onto Mulwala for lunch at the lake. The afternoon ride had a stop at Bundalong and then back to Chiltern. Sunday’s run was via a stop at Yackandandah, then through Myrtleford to Lake Buffalo for a picnic lunch. In the afternoon the rally took us up the winding mountain road from Barwidgee Creek to Stanley for a rest break, then through Beechworth to Chiltern. The rally dinner was held in the Chiltern Memorial Hall, which was large enough to cater for our record number of 68 entries. Rally directors, Alistair and Dione Douglas presented a…