Reviews

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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Gerry Atric’s restoration of his 500cc twin continues, and we’ve discovered some other info about these bikes, too… While all the previously described work was going on, I had been regularly visiting autojumbles in an effort to find the missing pieces of the jigsaw, which might one day make up a complete bike (one with…

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It runs! Quick, take it to bits again! With a deadline in sight, Martin Gelder’s 1982 Moto Morini 350 Sport finally receives some much needed attention after sitting in the shed for two years… Progress! Well, progress of a sort, at least. Two years ago, I fried my Morini’s alternator windings by trying to fit…

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Lots of bits have come back, ready for assembly on Phil Speakman’s MZ rebuild. So he ventures into the Devil’s Kitchen and proves that you should never leave a man alone with a tube of strong adhesive… The first parts to return to me were the lovely gloss black powder coated frame components and to…

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Jim Algar’s Dominator Diary start here: the first (and hopefully not the last) of a sporadic, irregular series of reports, updates, musings, questions, tirades, victories and defeats as an American neophyte takes on his first classic British bike… Chapter One Wherein I immerse myself in all things Norton, and my newly-acquired Dominator suddenly reveals feet…

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If at first you don’t succeed (and indeed your Bantam conks out before it even leaves Europe), try, try, try again. And then write a book about the experience… When it comes to adventuring – and I don’t just mean motorcycle adventuring – there is an unspoken compact between the few-who-do, and the many. The…

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