Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2025 i The Classic MotorCycle

This picture was published, in the May 24, 1928, issue of The Motor Cycle, under the headline ‘TT among tea terraces.’ It explained: “The Liverpool Motor Club organised another miniature TT meeting over the sporting course in the Delph Tea Gardens at Parbold on Saturday. The track, which is just under a mile in length, includes all kinds of twist and turns, and a bath in a lake if a rider fails to take a corner under an arbour of trees, while parts are so narrow that there is hardly any room for solo riders to overtake. The meeting was open to 16 clubs. “In heat four of the unlimited cc class, L Myerscough (499cc Rudge-Whitworth) had nearly completed his final lap when he failed to take a wide hairpin…

There could be a good case argued that the Triumph Thruxton Bonneville was one of the most stylish in the Bonnie range of original Meriden Triumphs, while it definitely remains one of the most desirable and sought after, with prices staying high despite the current softening prices of other classics. If you don’t believe me, Bonhams’ auction sold one of the original batch of Thruxtons at their early Stafford auction in 2024 for a sum well in excess of £15,000, which is not too far below the early-£20k they were selling for a couple of years ago, and still far above what a ‘standard’ matching numbers Bonneville would fetch these days. I have used the term ‘original,’ because when you start looking at the model’s history, things start to get…

It’s easy to overlook a Bantam, particularly when one is parked in a line-up of larger, more glamorous machines at a show; or like this one, sharing page space with the immaculately restored and the rare. Though many will have moved up the capacity ladder as soon as experience and wallet allowed, most motorcyclists of a certain vintage will have started their two-wheeled career on a Bantam. The rest will have ridden to work on one, or if they didn’t a member of their family did. How do we know this? Well, park any model in any UK town and it’s only a matter of minutes before someone will come over and spark up a conversation about it: ‘Ah, BSA Bantam. I used to have one of them’ is how…

Automatic inlet valve Rival makers soon followed the form of the first small capacity, high speed De Dion Bouton engine, with its automatic inlet valve located over the mechanically-operated side exhaust valve. This design had the added advantage of incoming fuel vapour offering a cooling effect to the exhaust valve. Automatic inlet valves have no mechanical operation; rather, the engine’s downward charging stroke within the cylinder creates a vacuum, which sucks the inlet valve open against its valve spring pressure, permitting and drawing in the charge. The concept has two problems. Firstly, inlet valve operation couldn’t keep up at higher engine revs, thus limiting the rev range, and, secondly, some claimed/observed the design allowed an overcharge of fuel vapour, causing sparking plugs to wet up. To minimise this, makers often…

The headline for this piece is taken from that which was used when Ken Rivers described his Australian adventure, which, actually, at the time of publication (it was in the April 14, 1955, edition of The Motor Cycle) had taken place three years before, as Rivers had set out in May 1952. That it hadn’t just happened isn’t made clear in the British press published article, albeit it probably didn’t really make any difference, as the motorcycle he’d done it on, a swinging arm 500cc ohv single-cylinder AJS 18S, was still a current model, and, well, who was going to argue? But it is also interesting the fact isn’t recorded, one supposes to add immediacy, though what’s not open to discussion or speculation was that he became the first person…

Ever since engines were first fitted to bicycle frames over 130 years ago, front end formats have been the single most contested aspect of motorcycle chassis design. The girder fork was for long the default option globally, before the telescopic fork invented by Britain’s Alfred Scott in 1908 received hydraulic damping from BMW, whose 1935 R12 and R17 models were the first production motorcycles fitted with such a feature. In the subsequent 90 years, the ‘tele’ fork in all its various iterations, and with ever more sophisticated damping control, has become the go-to solution for front suspension on powered two-wheelers the world over, despite numerous attempts to find something better. From small volume exotica like the Bimota Tesi or Aston Martin AMB 001, to the much greater numbers represented by…

The Victorian seaside resort of Silloth boasts picture-postcard views across to Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland. But turning inland, it becomes clear that there is more to this small, handsome Cumbrian port town than meets the eye, and its part-cobbled streets, laid out in a grid plan with some charming Regency-style buildings, soon lead the observant visitor to a satisfying chain of historical clues. Silloth Green, for example, which directly overlooks the Solway Firth, sports a seemingly incongruous scale model of a Lockheed Hudson light bomber. RAF Coastal Command flew these aircraft in training operations during the Second World War from Silloth Airfield, located on the north-eastern edge of the town. The airfield hosted civil aviation following the military’s departure at the end of 1960, then from July 1964 onwards…

THE SPECIALIST With more than 35 years of experience, Motorworks has a comprehensive knowledge of BMW motorcycles. It also has an enormous range of parts, both new and second-hand, especially for post-Second World War models. There are updated components and even aftermarket parts that have been commissioned where new items have become obsolete. Grateful thanks to Motorworks for providing specialist knowledge for the R80 G/S. ■ Motorworks: 01484 353600; www.motorworks.co.uk MODEL HISTORY It was a surprise when BMW announced it was to build an off-road bike. A surprise that was doubled when the creation finally arrived. An off-roader like no other. The styling ticked all the expected boxes, such as wire-spoke wheels, off-road tyres, high level exhaust and mudguards, but did this really need an 800cc engine to propel it?…

Are you sitting down? Nothing fragile nearby? I’m about to tell you a startling revelation… Here it comes… Using an old motorcycle will wear it out! There! Not much of a revelation I agree, but one which has a point to this particular workshop tale. As mentioned in the last issue, my 650cc Triumph was pressed into service pretty damn quickly when the Pre-65 Scottish Trial lost the use of their traditional car parking area in Kinlochleven. This required finding somewhere else to stay for a couple of nights, which turned out to be the Red Squirrel Wild Campsite near Glen Coe village. It’s a few miles from there to Kinlochleven and using a motorcycle solved any potential parking problems at the small town where the trial is based. Getting…

This lovely picture, printed in The Motor Cycle for October 5, 1939, as ‘lead’ for that week’s ‘Current Chat’ pages, carried the caption: “Yorkshire’s broad acres. A fine panorama showing Howgill Fells from near Sedburgh.” And that’s it – there’s no mention of who it is or what motorcycle he’s on (it’s Rudge), while the rest of pages carry news snippet stories – several of which, naturally enough, deal with the overriding issue of the day, which was that the Second World War was under way; Nazi Germany had invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and, two days later, the UK (and France) declared war on Germany. So, on October 5, the UK was just over a month into a global conflict, which had another nearly six painful years to…

The Banbury Run is an institution, an event which remains the world’s biggest gathering of pre-1931 motorcycles, and it’s not just a gathering, as it’s a road run too. The first event – ‘The Birmingham-Banbury Reliability Run’ – took place on June 26, 1949, and it’s taken place every year since, apart from in 2020 and 2021 owing to the Covid crisis. It was Vintage Motor Cycle Club (VMCC) member and well known Royal Enfield enthusiast Ivor Mutton who proposed the original idea; so it was fitting that Ivor daughter’s was at the run this year. One of Mutton’s old Royal Enfield machines, the immaculate 1925 Junior TT machine, normally on display in the National Motorcycle Museum, was also there, taking part in the run, ridden by David Cooke. In…

During the early part of the year, I was much involved in the organisation of the SS100 Brough Superior display which we pulled together for the Stafford show in April 2025, and which many of you will have read about and several of you, hopefully, managed to see. During that process, I had plenty to do with the Brough Superior Club and it was during that time the subject of the club’s ‘Far East Rally’ came up; basically, Howard Wilcox, mainstay of the club and super-enthusiast of the marque, said something along the lines of: “You live in the east, you should come to our rally, I’ll lend you a bike.” For despite its glamorous-sounding name and the fact that these Brough Superior folk enjoy long rides, their Far East…

A host of commitments has meant I’ve had to snatch the odd spare hour here and there rather than enjoying a proper chunk of workshop time with the MZ this month. Still, progress is progress, even if it comes in frustratingly small increments. Priority number one was investigating that weeping fork leg. Regular readers might remember the reassembly method involves holding the support tube in place with a screwdriver slotted into the threaded end, then nipping it up with a 10mm ring spanner. Problem is, I don’t have one of those, and a normal spanner won’t reach into the recess at the bottom of the fork leg. Being the resourceful sort (read: impatient), I improvised with a set of mole grips on a deep socket, threading the screwdriver through the…