Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2021 i The Classic MotorCycle

After so long of so little going on, to be returning to Stafford showground was a strange experience – it was indeed even a bit nerve-racking, as I, like so many of us nation and even worldwide, have quite simply not been in such environments for, well, what is fast approaching 18 months. Plus there were the practicalities to consider too – numbers were to be limited, show size was to be somewhat diminished, what would it be like? Actually, it was as much of a success as it could be, given the circumstances. Limited to 5000 on site per day (with 1000 indoors at any one time) it probably gave people a gentle breaking in, and while of course it wasn’t as busy as a normal year, it certainly…

The elder of the brothers who were two of the top scramblers in the sport’s ‘golden age,’ Derek Rickman, passed away on July 3, 2021, aged 88. That Derek should become a motorcyclist was not a surprise, as before the Second World War his father Ernie was an accomplished cinder star for the Southampton speedway team, and after watching a couple of XHG scrambles, Derek decided to have a go himself. From the start he looked a natural and by the end of his first season he was upgraded to the expert class and was then approached by Harold Wakefield, who sponsored him on a works specification Gold Star. The Goldies brought Derek numerous wins in both the Southern and Wessex centres and also saw him make his first trip…

The ultra-rare 1940s AJS 497cc E90 ‘Porcupine’ Grand Prix racing motorcycle, previously owned by postwar AJS works rider Ted Frend, set a new auction world record for the model, selling for £293,250 at the three-day Bonhams Summer Stafford Sale, which achieved a 98› sell-through rate, realising a total of £3,585,000. The Porcupine led a cavalcade of motorcycles of all eras which found new homes at the first Bonhams Stafford Sale since the autumn of 2019. An extraordinary Brough Superior SS100 1000cc Supercharged Special recreation (though featuring a genuine Brough frame) which was the brainchild of master craftsman and engineer Ewan Cameron, achieved £126,500, the second most valuable lot sold, and an earlier 1914 Brough 497cc Model H, offered from the National Motorcycle Museum, accelerated past its top estimate into six…

Murray Raynes did well at school except in academics, he joined a water polo club and became a great boozer, trained as an electrician and never wired a house, a fighter pilot and never fired a shot in anger, flew big jets commercially and has a host of stories relating to very questionable, and sometimes outrageous, practices and behaviour from that industry. He has snorkelled, skied, ridden horses in most parts of the planet and has also completed a solo circumnavigation of the globe in a yacht (Raynes: A Fighter Pilot with Attitude, 2005). As a child of the 1970s, I was a little detached from the Vietnam War. Some of our locals were known to be fighting over there. Friends’ brothers had been conscripted, or enlisted, and news of…

PBradshaw’s oil-boilers oking fun, many nickname Bradshaw’s oil-cooled engines ‘oil boilers’ and a few use the term in derision. The former is fun, albeit a joke done to death, but one wonders if the latter souls are equally derisory about the Suzuki ‘oil-cooled’ models, including the successful Bandit range. While your scribe has no experience of Bradshaw oil-cooled engines, friends (including our editor James) have, and they all report the 349cc Bradshaw oil-cooled engine performs well and its oil doesn’t boil! It is worth considering oil involved with motorcycle recirculating systems aids engine cooling, albeit heat dissipation isn’t its primary role. An awareness of the assistance oil offers an engine was known to motorcycle race factories before the First World War. For example, early IoM TT riders would manually pump…

There comes a time in any build project when there is no point trying to pretend that if you had ‘this bit of kit’ or the latest gizmo you could hurry things along. It’s the point when specialist attention really is needed. Had I filled my workshop with fancy kit there is a good chance it would have gathered dust, as I’d still have to carry stuff to more competent machinists. However, there are a few bits of machinery I’ve collected over the years which I’ve used on my own motorcycles. A drill press was the first acquisition, and given the nature of my family and the area I’m from, this drill press wasn’t new but was quite a robust and probably a professional or college thing. Unfortunately, I have…

Three years before the start of the Second World War, Mr T Hart, of Edale, Queen’s Road, Hazelgrove, Stockport, demonstrates his electrically powered motorcycle, with The Motor Cycle of April 30, 1936, explaining: “Mr Hart is an electrical engineer with a belief in the future of electrical propulsion, and he sees possibilities in the electric motor cycle for the type of person who objects to the normal machine for a variety of reasons.” The report continues: “The machine has been built up from an old ABC spring-frame motorcycle, from which all mechanical parts were removed. A platform has been placed on the lower tubes of the wide duplex frame and on this stand eight lead-acid cells in moulded containers; the cells are arranged in T formation, leaving space on each…

There’s an opportunity to join hundreds of traders showcasing their wares at one of the UK’s biggest bike autojumbles on Friday and Saturday, September 3/4, 2021. Thousands of visitors from across the country will descend on the Netley Marsh treasure trove to find that elusive part, piece or tool for their next project. Why not try taking a stand? As a bonus, on Friday evening, traders are invited to unwind in the marquee with a beer and a hog roast while listening to the fantastic band, Monkey See Monkey Do. The foot-stomping, high-energy folk band will be playing two sets during the evening with catering vans selling refreshments until 10pm and the bar staying open until 10.30pm. Event manager Nick Mowbray says: “After a tumultuous year, we can’t wait to…

For the past 67 years Ducati’s USP (unique selling proposition) has been the closeness of its customer products to the bikes its factory riders successfully race with at the highest level. Even if today it bravely seeks to compete with three of the four Japanese manufacturers in MotoGP racing, like the fourth, Kawasaki, Ducati’s natural sporting home is Superbike racing, with its riders aboard evolved versions of bikes its customers can buy in their friendly local Ducati dealer. It’s been that way ever since May 1954, when progettista Fabio Taglioni began work at the state-owned Ducati factory in Bologna, then considered to be at the lower end of the plethora of Italian manufacturers competing to meet the need for personal transportation in postwar Italy, with Ducati’s prosaic range comprising the…

John Renwick started racing a solo Black Shadow in the 1960s, before adding a third wheel to the Vincent and teaming up with his brother. After many successes, various pressures caused him to retire from racing in 1971, but some years later, when classic racing offered further opportunity, he built another outfit, ‘Prometheus’, and raced again. After trying straight-line sport with his racing outfit, in the 1990s he built ‘Epimetheus’, a 1665cc V-twin that was more home-built than Stevenage-sourced. The engine produced around 180bhp and with assistant and initial passenger Eddie Wallbank they notched up a number of wins and at least one sprint championship. Probably, John Renwick’s greatest claim to fame was his sensational ‘wedge’ road race outfit. He had been preparing Vincent engines for brothers Nick and Gerry…

Now, this is the space where we’ve been talking about the lockdown project for the last year or so, but this month, well, we’ve been able to go out, and project progress has been slow – although Founders’ Day did link in with the project, which we’ll talk about later. But to do Founders’ Day first. The traditional VMCC event, held at the fabulous Stanford Hall venue, is perhaps the last of (or one of the few remaining) old fashioned autojumbles, insomuch as there’s plenty of stallholders there who are simply clearing out their own sheds, rather than specialised traders. There are those too, of course, but there are also those who don’t really do other jumbles – a case in point being, for example, our old friend Derek Fox…

No one really knew what to expect as we all headed to Stafford, with a slight hint of trepidation because, well, we’ve all been away for so long and there were myriad rules and regulations to conform to. Briefly, the showground was limited to 5000 visitors per day, while only 1000 were allowed inside the main halls at any one time. This created an interesting dilemma, in that it meant all the side doors had to be kept shut and fire-locked, thus meaning that it wasn’t possible for fresh air to circulate as it would with all the doors open. But it was a logistical impossibility to do such, meaning that all traffic in and out of the hall had to come through one door, where security guards with clickers…

In 1977, I started a new job at a factory. In the same factory and on the same day, starting a new job too, was a man called Jeff Tanner. Jeff and I got round to chatting and I learned he had always been interested in classic bikes and cars, and he used to tell us he once had an Ariel Square Four, but we never saw any photographs, never mind the bike. After I left the factory, I was employed in a garage as an MoT tester for both motorcycles and cars. Jeff by now had a nice couple of classic cars and our paths crossed again, as I used to MoT his fleet and do bits of work on them, but Jeff never mentioned having any motorcycles. Not…

Our story starts in Penarth, in the vale of Glamorgan, Wales, in the hot summer of 1968. At the popular bikers’ cafe on the Newport Road, local teenager Andy Rowett has just pulled up on his 350cc Triumph Tiger 90, and, turning off his engine, he is made very much aware of the unusual sounding bike that has just pulled up behind him. For Andy – who is now well recognised by regular readers of the magazine, allowing us to sample various machines from his eclectic collection – it was a memorable day, as the machine which, in his words, ‘made a weird noise and smoked a lot’ would ignite an interest in the marque which has so far lasted for over five decades. The result is this month’s test…

The intention this month was to have at least had a go at starting the lockdown Velo, but, well, time being what it is – meaning increasingly fast moving – we’ve just not quite got there. In fact, we’ve really not got anywhere with the project, though two Johns have stepped in and offered help. First of all, I was contacted by John Shaw, longstanding Velo enthusiast, who offered me his old Monza fuel cap, as mine has gone missing somewhere, so when I was at Founders’ Day I tracked him down and he gifted me the cap. He apologised that it wasn’t ‘immaculate’ but, well, nor is much of the rest of the bike, so it’ll fit in fine. It came attached to the filler neck and it was…

01 Engine Vertically-split, aluminium crankcases with a plain timing-side and roller drive-side main bearings supported a one-piece steel crankshaft with a bolted-on cast iron flywheel. The crank throws had an 80mm stroke for the aluminium conrods with shell-type split big-ends. The timing case contained a duplex chain drive to the camshafts, with the inlet driving the gear-type oil pump and the magneto via a further gear. The exhaust camshaft also had a gear drive, for the front-mounted dynamo. The one-piece cast-iron barrel had 63mm bores (for 499cc) with air flow between them for cooling. Depending on model and intended market, pistons gave either 6.8:1 or 7.5:1 compression. The integral push-rod tunnels (one at each ‘corner’) extended through the cast-iron cylinder head. For 1953 all models got aluminium cylinder heads. The…

EDITOR James Robinson Tel 01507 529405 Fax 01507 371066 email jrobinson@mortons.co.uk REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS Tim Britton, Alan Cathcart, Jonathan Hill, Roy Poynting, Richard Rosenthal, Martin Squires, Jerry Thurston, Alan Turner, Andy Westlake. CONTRIBUTORS IN THIS ISSUE Tony Smith, Dan Talbot. PRODUCTION EDITOR Sarah Wilkinson ART EDITOR Kelvin Clements DESIGNER Charlotte Fairman, Tracey Markham PUBLISHER Tim Hartley GROUP ADVERTISING MANAGER Sue Keily DIVISIONAL ADVERTISING MANAGER Tom Lee ADVERTISING Sarah Mitchell-Savage Tel 01507 529418, email smitchell-savage@mortons.co.uk SALES AND DISTRIBUTION MANAGER Carl Smith MARKETING MANAGER Charlotte Park COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR Nigel Hole PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Dan Savage EDITORIAL ADDRESS PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincolnshire LN9 6LZ VISIT OUR WEBSITE www.classicmotorcycle.co.uk GENERAL ENQUIRIES & BACK ISSUES Tel 01507 529529, 24-hour answerphone email help@classicmagazines.co.uk www.classicmagazines.co.uk ARCHIVE ENQUIRIES Jane Skayman jskayman@mortons.co.uk Tel 01507 529423 SUBSCRIPTION Full subscription rates (but…