classic japanese motorcycle
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TRX TURNS 30
2025 marks the 30th anniversary of Yamaha’s supersports twin, the TRX850. Jon Lambley helped to organise the bike’s big birthday bash… In late 2024, a few members of the Yamaha TRX Owners Group UK on Facebook, Andy, Paul, Adam and me, decided that we needed to plan an event to celebrate the 30th anniversary in…
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Clubman’s Corner: cover your Kettle!
Members of the Kettle Club – which caters for Suzuki’s iconic 750 two-stroke – now benefit from a bespoke insurance scheme, specifically tailored to meet their needs… Launched in 1971, the water-cooled inline triple established itself as a smooth, comfortable grand tourer, unique in a world dominated by identikit four-cylinder four-stroke sportsbikes. At 550lb, the…
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Yamaha TZR125
Phil O’Hara wanted to make his learner-legal Yamaha stroker go faster. He also wanted to stop it oinking like a pig. The results of his experiments were a revelation… It was 1990 and I’d sold my car and required transport. These days one car generally replaces another, but this was then, not now. To substitute…
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Kawasaki or Commando?
They may both be 750 twins but there aren’t that many other similarities between the Kawasaki Z750 and Norton’s Commando. However, it turns out that many RC readers have experience of both, as Colin Leighfield reveals… It was great to see John Hunter’s letter in RC195 about his Kawasaki Z750B twin. With the short rear…
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Kawasaki W2 650
RealClassic reader Kevin Lemire is a fan of Kawasaki’s 650 twins, built back in the 1970s. He’s so enthusiastic about them that he owns half a dozen different types of W2… Kawasaki had every right to expect success in 1966 when they took the plunge with Japan’s first large capacity twin, the 624cc W1. After…
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Honda CB400F
Honda 400/4s are popular, relatively plentiful and commonly spotted at classic bike shows. So it might’ve been easy to overlook this one – but Marion Thirsk went back to double-check and discovered that its subtly different to the standard 400/4 you might find on British roads… Closer inspection reveals subtle differences to the normal UK…
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Honda Black Bomber
In 1968 Soichiro Honda rode his firm’s 10 millionth motorcycle off the production line. That bike was the ground-breaking CB450 Black Bomber – notable not least for its use of novel valvegear with torsion-bars ‘springs’ in its top end. It wasn’t long before racers transformed the CB streetbike into a world class competitor, and the…
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See Sheene’s machines at Stafford
The Carole Nash Classic Mechanics Show is so mightily immense that you could easily spend all day at the showground and still not see everything. So here’s our handy-dandy guide of what to see at Stafford this October… The Suzuki Village is a special feature, displaying a stack of rare racing machines of the marque.…
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Honda CL350
Here’s another contender for our ‘compact classic’ competition. Honda’s street scrambler from the late 1960s comes with 100mph potential, electric starting and a not too scary purchase price. Richard Jones examines its credentials… So here’s the problem. You like the look of those trail / adventure bikes that seem to be ridden by everyone yet…
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Suzuki GT750
Now that it’s an acknowledged cult classic, this iconic 1970s water-cooled 750 triple doesn’t come cheap. But if you spend one single quid to enter the VMCC’s raffle, there’s a chance you could win this very bike. So what’s it like to ride? Remember the ‘Universal Japanese Motorcycle’, that faintly derogatory term from the 1970s…
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