Classic Bike Guide

GREETINGS ALL. HOPE YOUR TEA CUP IS brimming, you’re staying warm and, most importantly, despite all around trying to ruin everything it seems, you’re still smiling. I won’t pretend, most of the last month was too cold, too wet or too filthy on the r

IT IS A FAIRLY SAFE BET THAT WHEN YOU OPENED these pages and first set eyes on this svelte yet muscular racing machine, your immediate thought was: “Wow, I’d love a blast on that!” No ordinary motorcycle, this 1937 Sunbeam Model 9A 599cc racer was ma

If you are a regular at the famous Ace Cafe, just off London’s North Circular, it’ll be best to use your classic motorcycle from August. At present, the Ace Café building is not within the Ultra Low Emission Zone – but if you travel to or from the ca

FIRST OF ALL, MY MOST SIGNIFICANT INCIDENT AT the Newark show was the appearance of reader Pip Fisher-Holmes, whose contact details I lost in the madness of last October’s Stafford show, where he offered me a piece of unobtanium – a new old stock dis

 £29.95  www.defendersecurityproducts.co.uk You are only lax about security until you’ve been burgled. The Defender Max II Solar Security Light may not stop unwanteds, but will help. It’s an outdoor solar-powered flood light. It has a motion sensor

IF YOU WERE THINKING OF BUYING A NEW motorcycle in the early 1930s, then it was a good chance that a Rudge would have been at the top of your wishlist. These were race-bred machines. In July 1929, Ernie Nott won Brooklands’ greatest race, the 200-mil

Email || editor@classicbikeguide.com Write to || Classic Bike Guide, PO Box 99, Horncastle, Lincolnshire, LN9 6LZ The writer of this month’s Star Letter wins a pair of Weise Montana 150 gloves, worth £119.99. These waterproof gloves provide maximum w

Yohoho and a twistgrip of fun… THE BRIGHT SILVER BIKE YOU’RE CURRENTLY looking at is almost certainly the second-best Bonneville I’ve ridden in a very long riding life, much of it spent riding Triumph Bonnevilles. The very best? I’ll get to that in a

It’s a chilly day at Midlife Classics bike shop, near Droitwich, and I am most intrigued by the Benelli. It comes from that period when the Italians were creating a lot of genuinely unusual motorcycles, none more than the Pesaro company. Often consid

A QUARTER OF ALL THE NEW MOTORCYCLES SOLD IN THE UK today are off-roaders of some kind. Once a niche product, dual-purpose machines that are usable off-road and at the same time ideal for long-distance touring are flying off showroom floors. Everythi

AT THE START OF THE 1990S, DESPITE ITS heritage and Italian passion for the product, Ducati was in dire straits. No, not the band. Being a relatively low-volume manufacturer and the majority of its production being race-focused, niche machinery, ther

Look at what you’re getting – is it complete? If it’s a runner, then get a ride if you can (make sure you have insurance, and most sellers will insist on cash in their hand first). Hopefully, it’s cold first (had they had it running before you came –

TO GENERATE A SPARK, YOU NEED A high voltage. And to achieve that you’ll need some form of current generator – a dynamo or alternator. If your bike has a remote dynamo or alternator driven by a belt, chain or gears, then please feel free to turn the

CHRISTMAS WAS A LOVELY TIME, hope it was for you too. But it did delay work on the bikes, especially the BMW, so it was full speed once the wrapping paper had gone and leftovers finished. I’d got an idea about the rack that would mean butchering the

THERE’S NOTHING NEW UNDER THIS OLD sun. Except… Except when a new fact emerges. A fact that’s new to the person finding it, even if it was common knowledge to everyone else. It’s just happened to me, so engage patience and read on – especially if you

WHEN REBUILDING ENGINES, most people put up with the hard work for the image of an as-new unit... all those nooks, crannies and fins looking as they would have originally. And the best way to get that is by media blasting – shooting glass bead, sand