For those who like old Motorcycles.

[rockershovel]

A propos “retro bikes”, I tried the Triumph Street Twin when it first appeared, and liked it very much. If the local dealer had been able to supply one in any reasonable period of time, I’d have bought one. 

 

Three years on and I did, in fact buy a 2013 Bonneville T100. TBH, I’d say the Street is actually closer in overall size and feel, to a Meriden Triumph. I tried the current Street and that’s nice, too. 

[MrWolf]

I was thinking more of the hideous Bonneville America cruiser from about ten years ago. A friend had one in for insurance repair not long ago. Could we get mudguards for the thing? Easier for a prewar model. 

So much plastic, so much cheesiness, so gutless. I was glad that the Bettmann brothers weren't alive to see it. 

 

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by MrWolf
Stupid autocorrect

[2mmMark]

Been out wasting petrol this sunny and crisp afternoon.  I wonder if anyone recognises the location?

Clue - the 350 Bullet definitely isn't the building's one time owner's nickname.

[MrWolf]

That looks like the old station at Slough (I think!) Now offices.

We're a bit restricted on where we can go at present, being on the border of counties with different regulations. 

I rather like the modern Enfield's, a good old thumper that isn't trying to be anything else. I hear good reports about the new interceptor too. 

I have never had much to do with Enfields, until the J2 came along I had a Turbo Twin I rescued from the scrap man and sold on to a Villiers nut and helped a friend restore his 250 Continental. Found an old shilling bodged into one of the top hat bushes in the gearbox to take up the slack!

Edited November 22, 2020 by MrWolf

[Kickstart]

Engine slightly more together. Need some new cylinder nuts (M7, so not a particularly common size). Bought some but when they arrived they were serated flanged nuts.

 

All the best

 

Katy

[MrWolf]

Interesting, that's some inlet port! 

What are the nylon gears for?

[New Haven Neil]

I see that MZ 250 up thread actually has a Honda K series twin leading drum brake!  A common modification, understood by anyone that has ridden a pre-disc MZ250.  They're OK bikes, really, but that brake....eeuuw.

 

I'm building up (as in I can't be bothered but need to) to rebuild the engine of this, '76 XL250K3, with a K4 (non-UK model) tank/colour scheme.  it really does need a freshen up as its performance, which was never great, is tailing off, I suspect it has rather poorly exhaust valves (4 valve head).  The reason I can't put it off any longer is Torrey Canyon effects of oil from the clutch pushrod oil seal, which you have to split the crankcases for.  Bah.  It is held in place by a sort of flange on the bottom case, presumably to stop from being blown out. #sigh#

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by New Haven Neil

[2mmMark]

3 hours ago, MrWolf said:

That looks like the old station at Slough (I think!) Now offices.

 Close!  Staines West.  A greasy, wet & rusty penetration into LSWR territory.

[Kickstart]

57 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

Interesting, that's some inlet port! 

What are the nylon gears for?

That is the balance shaft drive. The gears are service items. Although they are shared with the Rotax Max FR125 kart engine, and the later fr125 engine has switched to steel gears. I am toying with using steel gears in future (I have 4 bikes with this engine, plus a spare engine, plus 2 of the later Rotax 122 engines which also have these gears).

 

it is a Reed valve 2 stroke 125 and uses a 34mm carb.

 

There is another nylon gear to drive the water pump and the oil pump. But they seem tough.

 

All the best

 

Katt

[MrWolf]

Very nice XL250 Another rarity in any sort of condition. Those that didn't simply get stolen were ridden into the ground. I had a DT175MX many years ago and a mate had the NVT 175 with the same engine and square tube frame (I welded that more than once) Another friend had a spectacular off with the DT, bending the forks right back and smashing the engine to bits. Being 16 year olds, we heaved the remains over the edge of the quarry and went home.

Oil leaks are important, they let you know that there's still oil in the tank. They are not, as the pub know-all will tell you, the result of poor design and manufacture. They are simply a sign of how many mentally deficient baboons armed only with a hammer and a screwdriver that your bike has survived over the preceding decades.

Edited November 22, 2020 by MrWolf

[MrWolf]

4 minutes ago, 2mmMark said:

 Close!  Staines West.  A greasy, wet & rusty penetration into LSWR territory.

 

Sorry, I always mix the two up. I blame that bloody Ali G!

 

Surely the Staines branch was another case of the GWR feeling unjustifiably magnanimous towards yet another lame duck independent railway? 

[New Haven Neil]

The XL was 'restored' the first time by one of those baboons, with much gasket goo etc, thankfully I didn't pay much for it at the time but that was, errrr, 25 years ago.   I've built the whole thing again in the interim, and worn it out again!

 

Got two of these too, blue one from new (1982 model) and the white one since 86.  The blue one is untouched, the white one got stripped to fit a kick starter as the electric start mechanisms on these are fragile to say the least!

 

[MrWolf]

I suspect that when Mainline model trains went to the wall, the Japanese motorcycle industry snapped up all those nasty spur gears from tender drives at the dispersal sale and used them for starters or timing chain tensioners. My friend has just repaired a Honda adventure style bike that had stripped both it's gearbox sprocket splines and those of the gearbox output shaft. Apparently it's quite common. Something to do with using processed cheese instead of steel apparently.

I've always liked Honda's small bikes, had a few CG125s, a much maligned CB100N that didn't demolish it's rubbish cat food tin timing chain tensioner, in fact it seemed unburstable and an MTX80 that went back and forth between a friend and I for years. It must have been a good bike, it got stolen twice! The second time I got it back it was basically a frame wheels and engine. So we back dated it with whatever we had in the days before it was fashionable. D3 Bantam tank, alloy guards, early featherbed Dominator number plate and lamp and a headlamp that started life as a spotlamp on an RAF fire engine. Happy days with simple bikes, now of course, they're classics and those parts that got chucked away seem to be commanding wild prices.

Edited November 22, 2020 by MrWolf

[Kickstart]

17 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

My friend has just repaired a Honda adventure style bike that had stripped both it's gearbox sprocket splines and those of the gearbox output shaft. Apparently it's quite common. Something to do with using processed cheese instead of steel apparently.

More worrying is when you buy a bike and find it has suffered this problem. Fixed by someone welding the sprocket on!

 

All the best

 

Katy

[MrWolf]

55 minutes ago, Kickstart said:

More worrying is when you buy a bike and find it has suffered this problem. Fixed by someone welding the sprocket on!

 

All the best

 

Katy

 

Oddly enough, someone who we keep at an arm's length (Kawa VN, customised in the back yard with a £20 arc welder and an aquarium skull atop the front brake reservoir, clean leather waistcoat, meatloaf or other approved T shirt ) DID actually suggest welding the sprocket on and selling the bike to some unsuspecting new owner... 

[MrWolf]

Some 100% old school Triumphs.

 

 

 

Edited November 23, 2020 by MrWolf

[rockershovel]

I didn’t really appreciate them at the time, being concerned with other things and having no use for “dirt bikes” which weren’t motocrossers, but I’ve come to appreciate the Japanese single-cylinder machines of the 70s and 80s. The Honda XL series are Honda doing what they do well (I particularly like the XL350), the CB250RS is a little gem of a bike, the XT and TT Yamahas are like BSAs without the oil leaks and big end weaknesses and the later four-valve Yamaha and Honda singles in the 550-650cc range are pretty good, too. 

 

Re oil leaks on Japanese bikes, I’ve recently rebuilt the clutch on my XT500 and it was a simple matter of removing the cover by loosening the screws, tapping it all round lightly with a hide mallet, cleaning the joint surfaces with a plastic scraper, and replacing it fitting the correct gasket and doing up the screws in sequence. It was that simple, and it doesn’t leak now it’s done. I’ve never managed that on any British bike. Yamaha also manage to effectively seal vertical crankcase joints, which no British manufacturer ever achieved with any degree of consistency. 

 

Regarding BSA singles, as a comparison this is a Yamaha crankcase. Bear in mind, this is a machine designed in the early 1970s... look at the bearings, and the internal supports. The external oil seal relies entirely on the quality of the joint face casting and machining, and it works. 

 

 

 

[MrWolf]

It isn't at all surprising when you look at the postwar world. It's not that Britain was incapable of making such things. The innovation of the 1930s that is still being reinvented proves that.

The problem is that just like our railways, the motorcycle industry had run itself into the ground during the war and received none of the promised rewards as the government changed and ploughed everything into the welfare state. Machinery and production methods were hopelessly outdated and the only way for British companies to survive was to turn out existing models to earn foreign currency during the export or die period. 

The situation never improved. For instance when AMC bought out Norton and moved all of their machinery down to London, they found that they couldn't make crankcase halves within tolerance and scrapped a lot before seeking out the retired machine operator from Bracebridge Street. He told AMC: "You forgot the bit of wood" The machine had been bought secondhand by Pa Norton back in 1911 and it was so worn that workers had thrashed a picture of wood between the back of the cutting head and the factory wall to take up the slack in the slideways.

 

Japan on the other hand had no such problems. The victorious allies, rather than leaving them to contemplate their arrogance at poking the bear and leave them in the stone age, decided to help rebuild their industries to modern US mass production standards and show them how to make it work. A delegation from the Nuffield Organisation, later BMC, showed Nissan how to make their new A series engine (prewar they produced the Austin 7 under licence) That was developed with government money and powered the Datsun Cherrys that outshone and undercut British Leyland in the 70s. 

Freed of the necessity to rebuild its industry, the Japanese government could pour money into the development and marketing departments of industry. Honda's development shop received around £35000 a month in subsidies in the early 60s

Add to this the blinkered arrogance of those who had the final say over anyone in this country who had a radical idea and it's not surprising that we fell behind. I'm thinking here for instance Norton's Joe Craig who was still following the single cylinder route for his racing machinery and wouldn't consider the idea of developing a DOHC inline four for the Manx frame. Or Edward Turner telling the British industry that the Japanese machines were inferior lightweights and we had nothing to fear. That finished our lightweight manufacturers and if you learn on a little Honda, why wouldn't you buy a big one once you had your license? 

As proof perhaps that development and investment was the way forward, that casing is die cast rather than sand cast. A process that creates a thinner, lighter component that is more accurate, more complex and far easier to machine quickly and accurately and although the tooling is far more costly, lower grades of alloys can be used in lesser quantity. It's just an all round winner.

 

The only way that should leak is due to metal decomposition or baboon attack.

 

[spikey]

2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 ... a simple matter of removing the cover by loosening the screws, tapping it all round lightly with a hide ..., cleaning the joint surfaces with a plastic scraper, and replacing it fitting the correct gasket and doing up the screws in sequence. It was that simple, and it doesn’t leak now it’s done. I’ve never managed that on any British bike.

 

Neither had I until I rebuilt my one-previous-owner 1955 Vincent Black Shadow, and I don't recall anything else qualifying after that.   Having said that though, the only Jap bike I ever owned was a Honda CB400N bought new for not much money when the trade seemed to be offloading them by the boatload.  Say what you like about the Wet Dream, but it was everything Britbikes like the Triumph Tiger 90 and 100 should have evolved into but didn't.  It also took the Lady Wife and me plus camping gear on 3800 miles round Bavaria, needing only one top-up of oil en route and the back chain re-tensioning when we got back.

 

Anyhow, what I really intended to post was a question.  Sometime mid-1960s, a pal of mine bought a Honda.  It was the first Jap bike any of the gang down the caff had seen and we were all much impressed by it.  IIRC it looked a bit trials/scrambler, and it was a 305cc one up, one down twin.  Am I imagining that?  And if not, what could it have been?

[MrWolf]

I had a similar experience with a series C Vincent Rapide when replacing the timing gear outrigger plate. I suspect that Vincents being a machine built to aircraft standards, always being the revered and expensive choice of people who were into engineering, they never had any of the abuse that marques of lesser pedigree endured at the hands of learners, bodgers and tightwads. In fact, the amount of neglect and abuse I have seen on British bikes has to be seen to be believed. Yet they still ran, which says something for the robustness and quality of engineering at least.

The thing that winds me up about modern bikes (yes they do everything better, but a lot less people want a photo of it) is that if I want to change a spark plug on a lot of them, it's a drag.

Remove seat, sidepanels, petrol tank, hoses, wiring, more hoses, air box... Then realise that you need a special slim wall socket to remove the plugs from down a mineshaft. ("Naked" GSXR 1400 ) All misplaced patriotism aside, I will stick with old style bikes.

 

 

Edited November 23, 2020 by MrWolf
Stupid autocorrect

[MrWolf]

A very not British NSU. Nice to ride and nice to work on. Well made and we'll finished. Plus you won't find another ten in the car park.

 

 

 

 

[MrWolf]

Road going 250 Bultaco. I can honestly say it's the only one that I have ever seen. At a distance I assumed it was a typical Italian 175.

 

 

[MrWolf]

Alcyon obscurity.

 

 

[MrWolf]

One of my all time favourites that I shouldn't have let myself get talked into selling. The Excelsior F6S Consort Deluxe.

 

 

[New Haven Neil]

1 hour ago, spikey said:

 

Neither had I until I rebuilt my one-previous-owner 1955 Vincent Black Shadow, and I don't recall anything else qualifying after that.   Having said that though, the only Jap bike I ever owned was a Honda CB400N bought new for not much money when the trade seemed to be offloading them by the boatload.  Say what you like about the Wet Dream, but it was everything Britbikes like the Triumph Tiger 90 and 100 should have evolved into but didn't.  It also took the Lady Wife and me plus camping gear on 3800 miles round Bavaria, needing only one top-up of oil en route and the back chain re-tensioning when we got back.

 

Anyhow, what I really intended to post was a question.  Sometime mid-1960s, a pal of mine bought a Honda.  It was the first Jap bike any of the gang down the caff had seen and we were all much impressed by it.  IIRC it looked a bit trials/scrambler, and it was a 305cc one up, one down twin.  Am I imagining that?  And if not, what could it have been?

 

That would have been a CL77, or a CB77 with high bars and pipes.  I'm not sure many CL77's were imported, if any, a touch before my time and interest in Hondas TBH.