Classic Bike Guide

Greetings! May your jacket vents be open and your mouth closed as you ride through that cloud of bugs in the shade. Despite bikes sometimes not wanting to play, we’ve all been out as much as possible, enjoying this wonderful weather; we hope you have

Back in the 1970s, a legendary twin-engined Norton drag racer emerged from a Workshop in Kenosha Wisconsin and blew away the Harley-Davidson mounted opposition. Provocatively named The Hogslayer, the bike won four world championships with the late TC

The Adventure Bike Rider Festival, spawned from the magazine of the same name, is now the biggest motorcycle festival in the UK. It also claims to be the largest adventure motorcycle festival in the world, ‘Glastonbury with motorcycles and posh toile

With huge thanks to Philip and Irene Fields for letting us photograph their Bonneville The word ‘iconic’ is bandied about with such abandon these days that one expects to pop into Screwfix and discover it has a deal on an ‘iconic’ outside tap. This m

EVER SINCE THE CLASSIC BIKE WAS INVENTED IN THE LATE 1970s, the changing fortunes of many machines down the subsequent years have been wondrous to behold. Should you boast an enquiring mind and a lot of free time, try trawling through back issues of

As the dust settles on another Isle of Man TT, we are reminded of one race forever etched in TT folk law – Mike Hailwood’s Isle of Man return in 1978. Having spent 11 years away from the Island and motorcycle racing, except for the odd race down unde

AROUND THE NATION THERE ARE STILL SHEDS and barns holding motorcycling gold. There’s a barn near me with a low-mileage T150 Trident and a spotless Daytona rubbing handlebars with a real Indian Enfield (an official rebadged 1950s Meteor complete with

Lying on my back in the middle of the road, a light drizzle settling on my visor, I knew instinctively that the bike was a write-off. I’d watched the old boy potter along the pavement and get into his car. But then, instead of driving forward, he rev

“IT’S SOUNDING NICE AND FRUITY THIS MORNING,” said Garry, Sean’s T140-owning neighbour, as I pulled up on my Bonneville. Garry has been bugging me for ages to get a set of Norton Peashooter silencers for my Bonneville, which has the original cigar pi

WITH NORTON’S FUTURE NOW IN THE hands of Indian manufacturer TVS, the historic British marque seems set for a new, much more financially secure lease of life, with a range of at least three all-new model platforms set to be launched at the Birmingham

To convert my old race bike back to an original road bike, I had found parts I’d stashed away more than a decade ago, yet somehow many small parts had gone missing. I also needed a front subframe. It holds the headlight, the fairing and the dashboard

The original working title for this piece of dog-eared prose was ‘On Unintended Consequences’ but as you can see, I decided against it. Because there is always a point, a purpose, to everything we do to our bikes, is there not? Don’t answer that. One

My unfortunate tumble on the entrance to Montrose did both myself and my Triumph T140 some damage. Nothing major, but mostly irritating. The damage was done to the left-hand side of the bike, taking out an indicator, the headlamp and the left-hand he

“Throughout the 1960s, the majority of TR6 Street Scramblers were made exclusively for the American market,” said Triumph TR6 enthusiast Allan Seggie when I photographed his TR6C Special for the December 2020 issue of CBG. “The yanks loved them, and