Reviews

An ongoing tale, which as yet has no end in sight, about a girl. And a motorbike. And a misfire! Rowena Hoseason loves her Hurricane but doesn’t get to ride it much… Once upon a time, my dream came true. I have odd dreams, and this one involved a bright orange motorcycle. Said tangerine dream…

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This Laverda triple, says Dave Minton, was a memorial to an heroic age, when mighty power made uncompromising demands and the consequences were thunderous. Boom! In the early 1960s Fritz Egli campaigned the European Hill Climb Championship on a Vincent Black Shadow tuned to full race Lightning trim. Dissatisfied with its roadholding up the excruciating…

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A quarter of a century ago, Gerry Atric started a restoration project on a 500cc Royal Enfield twin. And was ably assisted by… a muppet… So I’d acquired a vehicle suitable for restoration (or a pile of scrap, according to your viewpoint), and the next step was to examine each item and plan the renovation.…

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It’s been a while, but Martin Gelder cracks open the toolbox for part seven of his Moto Morini Saga. Time for a burn-up… The last episode finished with me setting out to change the cam belt and stripping the threads out of the centre of the flywheel in the process. Various trips to all the…

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Phil Speakman has stripped down his MZ, ready to start restoring it to glory — which involves lots of decisions. To shot blast, sand blast or vapour blast? What sort of finish to opt for? And does copper really have the devil in it…? Once the strip down of my 1972 MZ ES250/2 Trophy was…

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We can’t all be expert spannermen. Howard H reminds us what it’s like to be fixing up a classic bike with little mechanical skill (and even less time)… Have you ever had one of those days in the shed where everything you do goes just right? No, me neither, though I suspect Humbernut might be…

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After a series of high powered modern bikes, Noggy 88 is inspired to return to the Brit Iron of his youth. This in turn provokes another purchase – he explains all, in this tale of two twins… Some of you may remember a time some four or five decades ago, others may not, so for…

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Yamaha’s 750-4 from the early Eighties was never top of the best-seller list, but then Jim Peace has never been one to run with the herd. He reckons you could go a lot further and do a lot worse… I have to confess that I’d never heard of a Yamaha XJ750 Seca, until the day…

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You probably have an all-time favourite classic bike. Sunbeam Peter (the name is a bit of a giveaway about the model of motorcycle!) explains how his dream bike became a real bike… ‘Kevin’s found you a Sunbeam,’ the good lady said as she waggled the telephone handset at me, ‘but do you really need another…

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It’s not really a Bonneville, but Neil Owen’s individually-tailored twin-carb 650 twin might, just might, be better than a Bonneville… ‘I have to make two admissions’ says Neil. ‘The first is that this bike isn’t really a 1959 pre-unit Bonneville, although it is a pre-unit Triumph with a re-tuned 1959 engine. The second is that…

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