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The bikes which were once viewed as king of the heap can all too often be disappointingly tame when revisited. But, says Frank Westworth, BSA’s 1960s flying machine still turns the heads and does the business… It was, without a doubt, a friend’s BSA Spitfire which made the running in the grammar school grand prix.…

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Working hard on his project Beesa, Phillip Rashleigh makes a wiring harness from scratch and discovers an excellent engineering firm who can fabricate the right kind of brackets… Where to start with the wiring? The Haynes book of lies had a picture showing the BSA diagram and this was confirmed to be correct by a…

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Fiery Fred bought a modern classic – a brand new Chang Jiang 750 built into a 1950’s frame. And behold! On its maiden journey it behaved almost exactly as a 50 year old bike would… After reading the article on this site some time back, concerning the eccentricities of the Chang Jiang 750 sidevalve, I…

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Wherein Jim Algar discover the pitfalls of working on a classic bike that has spent almost 50 years in the hands of… other people… I stood in my garage looking at the bike…well, not so much a bike as a collection of parts and bits on the white plastic shelving at the back of the…

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Jim Algar was galloping on with his restoration on a Norton twin. And then he discovered that his cylinder head has… shrunk! What next? Time, I think, to add the crowning glory to the now installed engine; the cylinder head. Ah, the infamous Norton cylinder head. Gather round, children, and I’ll tell you a story…a…

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Emm collects her new classic bike. Emm loves her new classic bike. The new classic bike wasn’t yet available for comment… Visitors to this site will know that I have eagerly awaited the opportunity to collect a new motorbike recently and, with thanks to those of you that have whet my appetite over the last…

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Buying a ratty classic bike unseen is always risky but – hey – nothing ventured… Russ Gannicott starts a new project and asks; ‘Can you tell what it is yet?’ Of all my eBay purchases this could have been the one where I came unstuck big-time. Scanning through the ‘newly listed‘ section of ‘other motorcycles’…

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In 1954, an adventurer set off on an overland ride from Britain to Australia, aboard a Norton Dominator. These are his diaries, which we asked Dave Blendell to read… The Hard Way Round is more of a thick pamphlet than a book, taking 44 pages of A4 to tell the tale. There is also a…

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This book aims to give advice to cure leaks, reduce vibes and boost performance. So who better to review it than a professional motorcycle engineer? ‘Improving Classic Motorcycle Engines’ is the third in a series of books by Graham Blighe, and it follows the same format as ‘Improving Classic Motorcycles’ and ‘Magnetic Speedometer Repair.’ It’s…

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Dave Minton has been riding Laverda triples for over 30 years. Meet his favourite and be surprised: it’s no Jota (but it does make all the right sounds)… At between 2500 and 4000 revs in the higher gears, 180-degree Breganze triples make wonderful noises — a sort of basso profundo gargle, not unlike a narrow…

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