Classic Bike Guide July 2016 preview

HONDA NS400R

ONE RADICAL TRIPLE

MATCHLESS G3 LAST OF A LONG LINE

LIFE AT 120°

BSA SPITFIRE CAREFULLY CUSTOMISED

ER

UNMISTAKABLE AIRHEAD

TRIUMPH SPEED TWIN SPLENDIDLY PREWAR

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WHERE NEXT FOR NORTON? || CAFÉ RACING TRIDENT || HERCULES W2000 ||

CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE || CONTENTS

076

006

NEWS

010

SOUTHERN CLASSIC SHOW

Some clothing, quite a lot in fact, a smart battery charger and more

The Kempton Park racecourse was

042 050

packed with people (and bikes, too)

016 018

NORTON CEO SPEAKS As does its design chief. Stuart Garner and Simon Skinner bare all

LETTERS We ran out of room again! So there’s a just a single page of letters. Write more…

SUBSCRIBE! Save money, get the magazine early.

Thrills undiluted. Excitement unlimited

A very different kind of event, lots to look at, less to buy. Great

038

058 066 084

bikes and people, again. Tobacco

BSA SPITFIRE

Beefy café racer loses weight shock

World By Storm Shock. Or not

MATCHLESS G3 Gentle thumper bows out gracefully

restoring and then riding

LAVERDA JOTA Which is the best, and why?

TRIUMPH SPEED TWIN Almost the very first of a very long line indeed

HONDA NS400R Two strokes, three cylinders, single purpose

BRITISH CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE With a truly remarkable selection sold for

TRIUMPH 900 TRIDENT

Revolutionary Engine Takes

It is a pleasurable experience,

of the prices real bikes were

Another award winning Brit twin

HERCULES W2000

PAUL MILES

a Japanese classic

076

BIKE SHED

Dock, no less, uber-smart

026 030 034

056

052

PAUL D’ORLÉANS

054

MARK WILLIAMS

Why factories won’t build your dream bike

Is Made In Britain anything more than a distant and irrelevant memory?

098 110

BMW AIRHEAD TWINS A lengthy guide to the Teutonic twins

READER ADS Send us your bargains. We need many more bargains.

We do, we really do…

130

FRANK WESTWORTH Doesn’t everyone lie in for-sale ads?

CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE || JULY 2016 3

RIDINGLIFE || KEMPTON PARK

Southern Classic Motorcycle Show WORDS & PHOTOS BY IEISH GAMAH

THE ANNUAL KEMPTON PARK show and bike jumble attracted its fair share of interesting machinery. From the unique to the ubiquitous, the pristine to the patinated, there was something to delight, intrigue and inform anyone who had even a passing interest in two-wheeled transport. Many marques were represented in the private entry exhibits and on the various club stands, and the models shown ranged from totally standard to totally modified. Alongside the motorcycle jumble and indoor halls, the Southern Classic Show spills into a main hall for this event. A wide range of clubs, businesses and builders were represented, along with some truly eye-opening private entries.

From simple trestles to an elaborately constructed period shopfront, where some delightful fore and aft Douglas motorcycles were showcased, this

10 JULY 2016 || CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE

EVENT SHOW REPORT THE NEXT Kempton Park autojumble is on Saturday, July 23. See kemptonparkautojumble. co.uk

show enabled you to get a snapshot of motorcycling history in just a few steps. The worldwide lexicon of motorcycling marques was well represented, from the newly relaunched Brough Superior brand, to machines harking back to the early years of manufacturing.

The day was bright, and the rain held off until show machines were fired up to leave (of course), meaning that those attending could wander to their heart’s delight without fear of being stabbed in the eye by a rogue umbrella. Walking up to the Show Hall, after lingering by the machines for sale by their owners, meant passing an interesting selection of caged cafÊ racers, as well as the stand belonging to the excellent London Motorcycle Museum, plus a brace of motorcycle themed business stalls. Overall it was an interesting show, with a lot to see.

RIDINGLIFE || HERCUL S

000

Vive la revolution Up and down or round and round?

WORDS BY FRANK MELLING PHOTOS BY CAROL MELLING Above: The first production rotary motorcycle wasn’t intended to be a super-sportster.

90mph was entirely respectable for an air-cooled, 300cc, 32bhp commuter in 1974 1: None of the W2000’s ancillaries were much cop. The tacho could read 4000rpm with the engine switched off, and it was perfectly possible to knock the engine kill switch when reaching for the indicator…

2: Rotary motors are famous for running hot, as the exhaust headers demonstrate 3: The initial Hercules/ DKW engines used two-stroke oil mixed with the petrol, while later versions swapped to direct oil injection

THE HERCULES W2000 was the first ever production rotary engined motorcycle. It was also the first in a line of not undistinguished rotary engined motorcycling failures.

The clever engineers who design them know that the rotary engine is conceptually superior to dirty two-stroke engines and scarcely less inefficient four-strokes. Through the eyes of a purist engineer, a conventional four-stroke is a truly horrible thing. The problems begin with the piston coming to a complete stop at the top of every stroke. Then it starts again and travels all the way to the bottom of the cylinder and stops once more. Stopping and starting is grossly inefficient and wastes a huge amount of energy.

The power the four-stroke engine produces is linear, and the energy from the piston travelling up and down has to be wastefully converted into rotary action in order to drive a wheel. The four-stroke engine is full of expensive, fragile parts which offend

34 JULY 2016 || CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE

the engineer’s sensitive eye. It’s packed with valves, pistons, cams, springs and myriad other expensive items all of which waste power and cost a lot of money to make. Two-strokes are fractionally better in that they have fewer moving parts, but their fuel consumption to power ratio is poor because of their inherent inability to burn all the hydrocarbons they have available for combustion. So, in theory, what the world needs is a rotary engine in which all the power is converted into rotary action. In a rotary motor there is just two moving parts and the motor is both light and small. Theoretically, it is also cheap to manufacture. What more could one want?

The problems start because the Wankel rotary engine is a patented design. It was first conceived by the German engineer Felix Wankel in the early 1950s when he worked for NSU, and was developed by another NSU engineer, Hanns Dieter Paschke.

NSU enforced expensive licensing demands on

RIDINGLIFE || STUART GARNER INTERVIEW

Norton CEO discusses the future Steady, But Sure

WORDS BY ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS BY KYOICHI NAKAMURA

NORTON MOTORCYCLES OWNER Stuart Garner, 47, is the man who bet big time on being able to revive Britain’s most sporting motorcycle brand as a series production entity – and he now looks set for the bet to pay off. Since he acquired the rights to the historic British marque eight years ago, obtaining with them the prototype Commando 961 streetbike, which previous owner Ollie Curme had commissioned from the USA’s No.1 twin-cylinder Norton guru, Oregon-based Kenny Dreer, Garner has invested long hours in putting the born-again Norton Motorcycles firm back on the map, with getting on for 2000 motorcycles so far built and delivered to customers around the world.

Doing this has entailed shifting from a compact 8000ft² factory housing a

42 JULY 2016 || CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE

dozen employees into a six-times larger modern annexe to a 226-year-old stately home nestling in the middle of a 26-acre estate in the heart of England, with a major international airport and Grand Prix race track right next door, and a workforce now numbering 75. It’s also involved returning to the Isle of Man four years running to race in the Senior TT, with a fifth visit this year with new rider David Johnson.

Norton’s new 45,000ft² factory was formerly Britain’s second largest airline, BMI/British Midland International, which was headquartered at the palatial Donington Hall estate until it was acquired by British Airways in October 2012. Garner purchased Donington Hall from BA in March 2014, and moved Norton in there later that summer.

He’s now in the process of converting the mansion built in 1790 into a 14room boutique hotel and 200-person banqueting facility. He has also just purchased the neighbouring Priest House Hotel, a luxury 42-bedroom riverside property built around an 11th-century Norman mill tower – thus adding a useful revenue stream to help capitalise his flourishing motorcycle business nextdoor. In this he’s also been aided by a £4-million grant from the UK Government after a visit to Norton by Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.

The reborn Norton Motorcycles company has finally shifted into top gear, and talking to Stuart in his Donington Hall office he explained how and why this has come about.

||

OPINION ||

John Player Norton, various Dunstalls, etc), and made a distinctly American version. The styling prototype or concept bike, and wondered why on was a work of genius, with a unique long tank earth it was never produced, it never hurts to ask paired with an XR750 flat-track seat, a halfthe factory. fairing, and trippy siamesed exhaust pipes, done I’ve had the good fortune to speak with a up in all-black everything. few chief designers on just this question, and It remains among the most menacing the answer is basically the same in every case machines ever built, a bruiser of a sports bike, – it won’t sell. People go gaga over outrageous and sexy as all get-out. It was also, unfortunately, machines, but usually opening their wallets an ordinary H-D XLCH Sportster beneath that proves far more difficult than opening their exceptional bodywork, which made it a sheep mouths. Magazine inboxes have historically been in wolf’s clothing. AMF didn’t have the budget stuffed with cries from riders hoping for this or to perfect the machine by installing, say, a that concept bike to be built in series, but just racing XR motor in that amazing package. It like it ever was, it’s up to riders to build their own was introduced in 1977, and before H-D pulled dream machines, which they’ve done for ages – the plug one year later, it had sold only 3000 it’s called the Custom scene.

Why factories won’t build units – an utter failure in their eyes. Still, this In 2013 I co-curated an exhibit of café racers your dream bike production figure bettered its rivals; H-D sold during Bike Week at Sturgis called Ton Up! which 50% more XLCRs than Ducati’s 900SS those became my ‘Café Racers’ book. I’d never wanted two years, which was their best seller, and saved to attend Sturgis, so I was pleasantly surprised at the level of interest in our the company after the disaster of the ugly 860GT. exhibit by the public, and the numbers of motorcycle industry brass who At the Ton Up! show, we also had a custom machine designed/built showed up too. One of the bikes displayed was the serial number 0001 1977

by Willie G’s successor, Ray Drea, called the ‘XRCR’. Parsing the factory Harley-Davidson XLCR, loaned by Willie G Davidson, who had designed the acronyms, this was the machine H-D should have build in 1977 – a café machine in response to the worldwide trend for factory café racers. racer based on the all-alloy racing XR750 motor. Drea updated his bike with Willie G is a real rider, and he was young, energetic, and hip in the midcarbon fibre wheels and bodywork, upside-down forks and triple Brembo 70s, while H-D at the time was none of those things; the management (AMF) brakes, which only increased the cool factor. I’ve never owned a Harley, didn’t ride, and were a bunch of old suits. He’d recently begun his tenure as but I immediately offered to buy the XRCR, only to find I’d been pipped by head of design for the Motor Co, and already had great success translating Willie G! one Custom trend into a big selling, industry-changing design; the Street With its modern chassis, and that terrific motor, I asked Drea why H-D Glide, whose raked-out front end successfully sold the chopper look – couldn’t build such a machine today? His answer was sobering – there translated as ‘street cruiser’ to the frightened – to a generation who’d just wouldn’t be enough demand to amortise the extensive R&D required, and seen Easy Rider. It’s still one of Harley’s best selling models, and spawned the factory hadn’t built XR motors or spares in several years (even though a host of imitators from Japan and beyond. they’re still extensively raced on US flat tracks). Even with a contemporary Thus Willie G was in H-D’s good graces, the wunderkind who turned their Evolution motor, he didn’t think the design would sell enough to reach fortunes around, so it wasn’t a stretch to approve his next big idea; a Harleyfactory goals. About 120,000 ‘small’ Harleys were sold in 2015, so the Davidson café racer based on the XL Sportster. At the time, the XL in all 1800 XLCRs sold in 1977 would be considered a complete disaster today. its variations sold about 27,000 units/year, and the XLCH model was the H-D is nothing if not conservative, so they’ve learned their lesson I suppose, fastest machine in the H-D line-up. Willie G took copious notes from the and are now twice shy. It’s the bike I’d buy, but I’m obviously the wrong British and Italian factory café racers in production (Ducati’s 750SS, the demographic.

IF YOU’VE EVER drooled over a factory

PAUL D’ORLÉANS

Once burned, twice shy

‘About 120,000 ‘small’ Harleys were sold in 2015, so the 1800 XLCRs sold in 1977 would be considered a complete disaster today…’

WHO IS PAUL D’ORLÉANS?

Paul d’Orleans is a writer, artist, sartorialist and photographer. He’s best known as The Vintagent for his long-running blog and judges concours such as the Quail and Villa d’Este, consults for Bonhams auctions, shoots digital and tintype photographs, and is curating an exhibit on café racers at the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum.

52 JULY 2016 || CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE

LAVERDA JOTA

Smooth, sophisticated, almost civilised. But have the later Jotas lost their je ne sais quoi?

C

onventional wisdom says that this is the one to have. The Jota 120.

Manufactured for just two years from 1982. The Jota they should’ve built in the first place, six years earlier. ‘The Jota has been transformed from what many saw as a basically brutal, macho bag of old nails into a smooth, civilised, usable yet still very evocative means of rapid conveyance.’ This was how Which Bike? greeted the launch of the 120, like it was sliced bread and the second coming combined. To this day, many insist that the Jota 120 and its later stablemates are the ultimate Laverda triples. But why?

The original, 180-degree, 90 horsepower 981cc Jota was without a doubt a beast. Not a bit of a beast: it was an entire animal. Slater Brothers, the UK Laverda agent at the time, breathed fire into the belly of the brute when they created the 3C(E).

This used the fork yokes from the 750 SFC twin, high-comp pistons, high lift camshafts and a freeflowing, bespoke exhaust system, all to exceptional effect. After seeing it in action on the track, Slaters convinced Massimo Laverda to put the Jota into production, initially just for the UK.

they needed a lightweight 4-stroke motorcycle to rival Triumph’s Cub

BIGGER VERSION OF the Model 14, built with better forks taken from the early 1950s heavyweight but with a slightly feeble brake from the 2-stroke range. They provide a better ride than the early 250s, although by 1962 there was nothing between them apart from better torque. The 350s didn’t last long as they competed with AMC’s own heavyweight 350 singles, without being better, just slightly lighter.

Surprisingly quick and pleasant to ride.

Prices:

low £1500 || high £2750

Model 16 (Matchless G3)

348cc (69 x 93mm until 1963, then 72 x 85.5mm) ohv single || 400lb || 80mpg || 75mph || 1945-66

EN

AMC UNDERSTOOD THAT

Model 8 (Matchless G5)

348cc (72 x 82.5mm) ohv single || 350lb || 70mpg || 80mph || 1960-62

SE

248cc (70 x 65mm) ohv single || 340lb || 75mph || 1958-66

low £1500 || high £2500

AS

Model 14 (Matchless G2)

Prices

LD

B

y 1950, Associated MotorCycles Limited in South London were building bikes under both AJS and Matchless badges, and at one time boasted the largest factory in the world dedicated to motorcycles production. They later acquired the Norton marque, at first keeping production in Birmingham but eventually moving Norton in with AJS and Matchless. AMC also built James and FrancisBarnett motorcycles (also in the Midlands and not at Plumstead). So the varied range of models offered under the AMC banner stretched from 98cc 2-strokes all the way through to stonking 750cc 4-stroke superbikes.

The company was also successful in two-wheeled sports, and apart from the dedicated and highly specialised road-racers they also built a lot of competitionbiased roadsters. The whole lot collapsed in 1966, and was reborn as Norton-Villiers, concentrating on the Norton Commando series and a range of 2-stroke AJS off-roaders.

Model designations are shown for AJS, with Matchless equivalents shown in brackets, as the two marques increasingly differed only in finish and trim styles.

The bikes are very solid, wellengineered and rewarding to ride. Spares are plentiful, and they boast an excellent and very active Owners’ Club.

and BSA’s C-range. Intelligently, they used a bicycle based on their James 2-strokes and designed their own new 4-stroke engine to fit. That engine appeared to be of ‘unit’ construction (where engine and gearbox are built into shared castings), but the gearbox was separate and cylindrical, attached to the crankcases by a pair of steel straps. The 250s and the similar 350s were not a commercial success and are not widely sought-after today. However, they are fun to ride (CSR 250s in particular) and offer a low-cost intro to classic motorcycling with plentiful spares and simple construction for straightforward spannering. The best are the AMCforked versions and the late CSRs. As with most AMC models, the 250 was available in standard, ‘S’ (chrome mudguards), CS (off-road styling), and CSR (café-racer) versions.

SO

AJS & MATCHLESS

TRIUMPH HARRIS BONNEVILLE T14OE 750, 1986. Less than 8000 original miles, unrestored. Stunning condition. New tyres and battery, Norton peashooter silencers (sounds amazing). SOLD FOR £5100

SOUNDLY ENGINEERED AND

THE 500 VERSION of the

finished trad Brit single. AMC singles are immensely strong, engineered to cover countless miles with little maintenance and no complaint.

They started as rigid machines very close to the wartime Matchless WD G3L, then switched to swinging arm suspension. The late 50s models with alternator lighting and half-decent brakes matched to fine handling are the most common, although the rigid-framed models have a considerable minimalist cachet. Also unusual although not particularly popular are the 1964on versions, with their (relatively) short-stroke engine, Norton forks and wheels. Rigids fetch the highest prices, but spares for the later ones are easier. Very easy bike to live with; very few faults.

very trad AMC single really is a bigger version of the 350, with a bit more of everything. Excellent riders’ machines; classic in every way. They share almost all the components apart from the piston, flywheels, barrel and head with the smaller engine, which gives them a tendency to knock out some pattern big ends very quickly. However, this is not the problem it was, as the quality of AMC spares continues to improve. This is a pleasant touring motorcycle, with good handling and comfort allied to a relaxed 60mph cruising speed. It’s easy to convert a 350 single to a 500 as the strokes are the same, but to run smoothly they need the 500’s flywheels too…

Prices:

low £2000 || high £2750 (CS comp models a lot more)

Model 18 (Matchless G80)

498cc (82.5 x 93mm until 1963, then 86 x 85.5mm) ohv single || 400lb || 55mpg || 80mph || 1945-66

Prices:

low £2400 || high £4000 (CS comp models a lot more)

Model 20 (Matchless G9)

498cc (66 x 72.8mm) ohv twin || 410lb || 60mpg || 90mph || 1948-61 AMC’S TWIN TOOK a different path to the already established designs from BSA, Triumph, etc.

CLASSIC BIKE GUIDE || JULY 2016 85

TRADINGPOST || MODEL HISTORY

BMW TWINS Much ado about airheads… WORDS BY NOLAN WOODBURY PHOTOS BY NOLAN WOODBURY