Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Sept 2016 preview

RO-SPECTIVE! ETRO

Moto Guzzi M Modern V7 and the original

MARVELLOUS The David Silver Honda Collection

• • • • •

YAMAHA Ridden, rated and remembered!

Workshop skills:

Wiring connections

Knowledge:

Perfect timing

September 2016 Issue 347

CLASSIFIEDS BUYING YOUR NEXT CLASSIC: ALTERNATIVES TO AIR-COOLED HONDA FOURS ❙ Q&A TIPS FOR, AND FROM YOU!

64

❙ WORKSHOP NEWS

66

❙ Q&A

68

❙ WIRING WOES

72

❙ TIMING

74

❙ PROJECT BROOKLANDS

78

❙ YAMAHA RD350B

80

❙ HELI-COILING

Contents

New metal tools and reviews.

Mark Haycock with more tips.

Ralph Ferrand gets connected.

Mark Haycock on the nuances of this necessity.

Stan Stephens’ latest project.

Wiring on Scoop’s scoot!

Stan Stephens sorts out an RG500 with issues.

84

❙ DUCATI 996

88

❙ BIKE BENCH SET-UP

Jim Lindsay joins CMM with his big Bologna twin.

Scoop on the best invention for the ageing restorer.

92

❙ HONDA CB125T

98

❙ TRIUMPH T595

Ralph Ferrand finishes the twin.

Niall Mackenzie and his accidental project bike.

110 ❙ DUCATI 750GT

Scoop on how to buy one.

114 ❙ YAMAHA FZ600 RACER

‘Spike’ Edwards finishes Nancy.

126 ❙ NOT ONLY…

06 08

ARCHIVE

12

NEWS

18

CALENDAR

Bimota’s Tesi 1D racer.

1986 YAMAHA FJ1100 Mossy mounts his Marmite bike: the big Yam FJ.

The best from Bonhams, the CMM Stafford Show & more!

Do you remember what’s on in September?

36

SUBSCRIBE!

38

1974 DUCATI 750GT

46 52

Dear all: we need you to subscribe!

Steve Cooper falls in love with a beauty from Bologna.

YAMAHA FJ1100

Chris Moss on the history of the FJ and more besides.

MOTO GUZZI V7 II

John Nutting rides a modern retro and recalls the original.

20 22

FEEDBACK

SHOW US YOURS

60

26

MAGIC MUSEUM

62

32

ENDURANCE LEGENDS

130 NEXT MONTH

You have your say.

Now with added nostalgia!

Check out ‘The Way We Were!’

CMM gets an invite to The David Silver Honda Collection.

Your first call on 2017’s event of the year!

RETRO REBOOT

Kawasaki’s GPz1100 for the modern world.

SAVE! SAVE! SAVE!

Yes! If you want to save on your subscription come here!

Yamaha’s Fizzy, On Any Sunday, Metisse and more!

…but also. Scott Redmond on alternatives for old Honda fours.

www.classicmechanics.com / 5

& events

Suzuki set for Stafford!

If you love Suzukis and are heading for the CMM Stafford Show this October, boy are you in for a treat.

Over the weekend of October 15-16, the 23rd Carole Nash Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show will take place, with its normal smorgasbord of motorcycling brilliance, but this year there’s more than an added dash of splendid Suzukis on show.

This year will see a dedicated Suzuki area, which will contain all the best-known owners’ clubs and groups, including the Suzuki Owners’ Club, The Kettle Club, Air-Cooled Suzuki, Team Classic Suzuki and the GT/X7 Owners’ Club. Robinsons Foundry will also be selling parts and clothing in the Suzuki area, while Crooks Suzuki and Redcar Motorcycles will be on hand to help any show-goers with any Suzuki-based classic queries.

Best of all – in celebration of Barry Sheene’s two 500cc World Championships – his title-winning bikes from those years have been shipped over from the family home in Australia, paid for by Suzuki.

Tim Davies, of Suzuki GB, explains: “We couldn’t miss the opportunity to share these rare Suzuki championship-winning bikes with the CMM Stafford Show crowd. We will also be displaying

Sheene’s Suzukis in sunnier climes!

the GSX-R750F and TL1000S road-bikes that we refurbished and Team Classic Suzuki will also be showing a number of other classic race bikes, such as the XR69 ridden at the Classic TT by Michael Dunlop, an RG500 Mk10 and a pair of RGV500s, one ridden

by Kevin Schwantz in Pepsi colours and the other a Movistar machine campaigned by Kenny Roberts Junior.”

The biggest news for the best event in the classic calendar is that the stars of ‘On Any Sunday’

the legendary Seventies film will be in attendance: Dave Aldana, Don Emde, Mert Lawwill and Gene Romero will be jetting in from the USA, so let’s hope Stafford in October is warm for them. We will be re-telling the story of this classic bike flick in CMM’s pages next month as part of our Stafford Show preview.

■ For more info check out page 100 of this issue and to book tickets head to www.classicbikeshows.com

Classic edge to British GP Classic bikes and classic racers will again feature heavily in this year’s British MotoGP event.

Double world champ and

Croz says: “I’m going to be reunited with my XR35 for the first time since the 1981 event when I crashed at Stowe Corner.

■

12 / classic motorcycle mechanics

SUPER-COOL HRC ARAI LAUNCHED

As if Arai’s RX-7V wasn’t exclusive enough, if you’re a Honda fan, perhaps owning something in HRC’s race colours, then this very special replica lid is for you.

HRC or ‘Honda Racing Corporation’ has developed all the great Honda race machines and Arai has been allowed to do an official HRC replica RX-7V lid.

As you can imagine this is a very limited-edition helmet, designed by legend Aldo Drudi with the HRC logo and Honda wing prominent on the helmet. It will be available from September in sizes XS-XL and will be priced at £649.99.

can joy in our pages, so you ride re with fellow readers. nd r y .co.uk or mail to bsimmonds@mortons es s yo g. Let us know ss at the front of the ma ea ot e and after e done it and send befor u’v yo d an ’ve rtie. can. Do get in touch. Be ots i

We’ve teamed up with The Hobby Company www.hobbyco.net which distributes Tamiya plastic motorcycle kits in the UK to give our favourite restoration one of its amazing motorcycles in miniature. So, send in your pictures of your bikes and you could win the chance to indulge in a miniature motorcycle restoration of your own. Remember to send your name and address on each submission so we know where to post the kit.

Paul O’Neill’s 1979 Honda CB250N Superdream my recently restored 1979 Superdream. It was a ired example purchased on eBay two-and-a-half ars ago. It stretched to well over my timing plan, as it s interrupted by a carb overhaul on my 1978 100 Z, which graced your pages many years ago. had a silver Superdream as my first bike in 1979 but came to grief less than a year later when I hit a f diesel in the rain, destroying the bike beyond It asn’t been a particularly cheap job bringing it standard. It’s been a total strip-down and coa i of everything black, made of metal, lots

of aluminium and chrome polishing an engine tear-down, all the rubber bits were perished so were replaced.

The CDI unit, coil pack, alternator, plugs and leads finally made her start on the button and a very good silver paint job has finished her off nicely.

There were thousands of these around back in the day but you rarely see a nice one these days.

Lots of people approach me saying how good it is to see one of these once-popular bikes back on the road. I took these photographs on the w stle-Gates ead Quayside, making this e it well among the ones in the idge, Millennium Bridge, the .

KIT WINNER

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CLASSIC EVENT

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WORDS: JOHN NUTTING PICS: GARY ‘D’ CHAPMAN

mechanics

The Shed...

New tools shown, old tools rated, kit ridden in to destruction. Yup, you’re in The Shed.

Portable bike jacks!

It’s hard to get it up off the ground when you’re out and about.

I’m talking about your rear wheel, but Tirox has just the job.

With your bike on the sidestand the SnapJack Portable Motorcycle Jack is locked into place and lifts the rear end off the ground when placed under the swingarm. A front brake locking strap prevents your bike from rolling forward. The jack itself has ulti le adjustment heights and will just ra he rear-end enough so the wheel will spin freely for lubing, cleaning and adjusting the drive chain.

The high-strength low-alloy steel jacks are available in red or lue, and come with two protective floor pads and a carry case for portability. Full instructions are included and they are available now at Wemoto for £47.35.

■ Go to: www.wemoto.com

Retro bracketry Moto46 has released some new bits and pieces aimed at 1980s race-replica machines.

They say that thanks to ever-increasing interest in bikes from the Eighties, Nineties and early 2000s (as well as classic racing) they have expanded their Race Fairing Bracket range to include the Yamaha FZ750 and Yamaha FZR750R OW-01. They also say more fairing brackets are planned for bikes of this era, like the first GSX-R750F slabside model.

Parts are made from lightweight aluminium and cost £89.99

■ For more go to: www.moto46.co.uk or bell: 01673 885088

64 / classic motorcycle mechanics

Shim-shimmeny!

Laser Tools have just added a number of valve shim tools to its growing range of motorcycle maintenance tools. These tools are indispensable when carrying out adjustment or overhaul of engine valves with solid shim-type adjustment. The Tappet Shim Pliers (part number 6489) are used to grip the shim to allow easy removal by gripping the edge of the shim (priced at £28.80).

The Yamaha Valve Shim Tool (part number 6516) compresses the valve shim bucket to allow the removal of the shim. It fits XJ 550, 650, 750, and XS 750, 850, and 1100 models and is equivalent to the OEM tool YM-01245. It is priced at £8.33.

The Kawasaki Valve Shim Tool (part number 6517) can be used on a range of Kawasaki models: KZ 750 to 1300 four and six-cylinder twin cam engines from 1976-2005 and Z1 900, A 900, B 900, KZ900, KZ1000, KZ1100, KZ1300 and ZN 1300. Good value at just £8.66.

Part number 6518 is the Honda Valve Shim Tool, and is equivalent to the OEM tool 07964422000.

The application list for this

little beauty are Honda four-cylinder twin cam models including CBX1000 from 1970 to the late1980s; CB750 (1979-82), CB750SC (1983), CB900C/F (19801982), CB 1000C (1983) CB1100F (1983) and CBX (1979-1982). This is priced at £14.71.

Finally, the Yamaha/Suzuki Valve Shim Tool (part number 6519) is the equivalent to the OEM Yamaha YM-04125 and Suzuki 09916-64510 tools, and fits all Suzuki four-stroke models fitted with top shim-type valve tappets and Yamaha XJ600 Seca II models. Again, good value at £14.09 including VAT!

WORDS AND PHOTOS: MARK HAYCOCK

A question of timing

Mark Haycock with the first part of his series of features on timing.

I

had a question for the Q&A section from a reader recently where the subject was ignition timing, specifically how to check it on a bike with no timing marks, so I thought it might be an idea to look at the whole subject in a bit more depth.

Firstly, a bit of background: we all know that a bike engine works by burning a mixture of petrol and air and if (like me) you have encouraged a feeble bonfire to perform adequately by using petrol, you will appreciate that the burning can be very fast indeed. It did work, by the way, but I didn’t repeat the experiment!

You might think that the petrol/air mixture explodes in the engine cylinder: that is not quite the case. Under some circumstances the mixture can detonate, but this is very harmful to an engine and needs to be prevented. The burning process does normally take a finite time, measured in milliseconds (i.e. a few thousandths of a second). If the spark, and thus the start of combustion, were to

occur at top dead centre (TDC), by the time the pressure had increased significantly, the piston would already be descending and some of the potential power output would have been lost. So the spark is set to be before TDC, so that the maximum pressure reached occurs a few degrees after TDC. One thing that complicates matters is that in contrast to an industrial engine, a vehicle engine’s speed varies and the timing setting needs to accommodate this by increasing the advance at higher revs.

On top of that, the air/fuel ratio varies in operation and it has been found that richer mixtures burn quicker than weak ones, so they need less advance. Apart from those things, throttle position (and thus engine output), atmospheric pressure, temperature and humidity level, fuel composition and God knows what else have their own effects, so it is not a straightforward issue.

In days of yore, ignition timing could be set by a handlebar-mounted lever. It would be normal to retard the timing to prevent

2

The vacuum advance is powered by the silver diaphragm unit.

72 / classic motorcycle mechanics

1

Auto-advance unit: 1970s.

any possibility of the engine ‘kicking back’ i.e. firing too soon and suddenly reversing, violently forcing the kick-start upwards.

The rider would then advance the timing for normal use but could make fine adjustments depending on how steep hills

3

The Eighties saw solid state ignition units: this from a VT500.

WORDS AND PICS: JIM LINDSAY

Project Ducati 996 part 1

Duke of Hurl

A spill has left his 996 rough around the edges: CMM welcomes industry legend Jim Lindsay to its pages.

M

y first encounter with a Ducati twin was 36 years ago. I’d just arrived at Bike Magazine as staff writer and the editor had a bevel drive Hailwood Replica on test – a 900SS in fancy clothing really.

I managed to nab it for the weekend. I rode it from Peterborough to London, picked up my mate Hugh, rode two-up to Leicester to go to a party at the squat we used to live in, took Hugh back to London, had a night out and arrived back in Peterborough in the small hours of Monday morning with a slipping clutch and a worn-out body. It was one of those bikes that you wanted to ride forever.

Finance and the need for reliable transport kept me away from the Italian marque after that. I loved them from afar but I lost interest with the arrival of the belt-drive cam, air-cooled variants. I tried a 750SS but thought it was gutless. Like so many others, the arrival of the 916 in

84 / classic motorcycle mechanics

1994 woke me up. It was the most beautiful-looking motorcycle ever made. I lusted at a distance, watching with envy the arrival of the 996, the 998 and, with horror, at the 999 – actually it was a better motorcycle but ugly.

Like many ageing men, my desire was theoretical. I did not ride one until 2011.

At my disposal for a glorious week to make a magazine story were new and old versions of Fireblades, Kawasaki 600s, GSX-R750s and a pair of Ducatis, a 1098 and a yellow 916. Of all those bikes it was the 916, borrowed from a trusting reader, that I chose to spend the most time with.

Less than a year later, my sober finger clicked a last 10sec bid on eBay and I bought a yellow 1999 996 Biposto for £3500. Ahh bliss. Contrary to my usual practice, I did not even go to look at it beforehand. I figured if it were rubbish, I’d keep the cash in my pocket and say goodbye. As it happened, it was more or

Typical crash damage.

Project Yamaha FZ600 ‘Nancy’ part 6

She’s finished!

There’s just time to put Nancy in a new dress before her first prom date. Spike is suitably nervous…

A

t last Nancy was very near to completion!

The chassis was more or less back together, the motor was in and Nancy was on her wheels. There were a few ‘Spike’ race refinements to implement.

One thing that has annoyed me over many seasons of racing, is when you try and make adjustments to the rear-sets, they all drop apart with spacers, washers etc. rolling everywhere as you unscrew them – my cunning plan is to counter sink the holes in the spacers, feed a small O-ring on the bolt to sit snugly, then the bolt and spacers have a temporary fix that stops them parting company when you take them off. It works a treat.

The gearchange had to be altered from road to race and it wasn’t as easy as it seemed. I had to turn the gear lever around and try to get clearance with the gear rod, so this required a bit more ingenuity and modification to finally get right.

Now that I was happy that I could change gear, it was time to work on making sure the rear brake could operate; at some stage during either the strip-down, 114 / classic motorcycle mechanics

or the plating, the push rod was mislaid.

In fact, I spent several days looking for the bloody thing. What’s bizarre is that it’s quite unique and a sizeable component, so how it could have got lost is still a mystery until this day! So, with necessity being the mother of invention, it was time for a bit more engineering. Taking a length of ally tube, I measured the approximate length and then put a thread in either end; one end I wound a rose joint in and attached to the brake lever and at the other end an appropriately sized bolt to go into the cylinder. Success – a rather groovy looking push rod.

Gareth, from Reactive Suspension, had done a great job on modifying the rear shock as it had slipped in with ease, unlike that monster ugly thing that took hours to hammer out. I just now had to find a location and fixing point to site the remote reservoir. The original unit didn’t have a reservoir so I had to find a suitable location, which was complicated by the fact the flexi pipe to the reservoir was a certain length and, at this point, couldn’t be changed. Luckily enough, after much moving and fiddling about with the battery

Measure twice and erm...

Not only…

…But also

NOT ONLY, BUT ALSO…

It’s not just the expensive core classics that float our boat!

Every month we give you an insight into a few options if you want champagne biking for lemonade money…

WORDS: SCOTT REDMOND AND BERTIE SIMMONDS PHOTOS: MORTONS ARCHIVE

Air-cooled cool

Not only…

If you want that air-cooled Honda but don’t want to pay £50K, what do you have to do? Scott Redmond and Bertie Simmonds have some advice.

I

don’t do football, but I need to use an analogy, so here goes.

I am going to kick off this NOBA with a comparison. The prices of these old motorcycles we fondly remember and yearn for are rising and like it or loathe it, it is a fact. But what fuels the steep prices? Sure there’s supply and demand but that isn’t enough to create leaps in asking prices. Once a model breaks a new ceiling in the marketplace it creates the benchmark and the Honda CB750 is one model that’s got lots of notches on its desktop.

Here comes the analogy: Trevor Francis broke the million quid barrier on the transfer market in 1978. I have zero idea how I even know this, but that’s how bike prices operate.

If a bike gets sold for a big ticket price it pulls up the rest of the market. So, having heard 126 / classic motorcycle mechanics

recently of a 1969 CB750K0 that changed hands for £55,000 in the UK, it has, by default, increased the value of every other K0 left out there.

I have no real personal yearning for the machine many call the first real ‘superbike’, not because I am a pleb and don’t appreciate its place in motorcycling’s hall of fame, it’s because, like Trevor Francis might have been worth a million bucks, I always reckoned Trevor Brooking was better value for money. There’s such an assortment of 750 Hondas to choose from, you might think looking for my Brooking might be difficult, but I can assure you it isn’t. So, sit down with me in the dugout and I’ll explain.

Firstly, let’s look at the evidence... Those early K models are quite similar, pretty much the same meat and potato, just different veg and gravy through the years. The

onda B750 K - /F1-3 Years:

1969-1978

Engine:

736cc SOHC

Changes:

Electric start, sandcast crankcases, disc brake up front: the first real superbike.

1975 K5 had more rounded look, disc rear brake and engine changes. Alongside the K model came the F1-F2/3 of 1975-1978 with Euro-styling.

Price:

£1900-£55,000!