Table of contents for RCBE #32 SPRING 2018 in Retrobike

“The Honda Four ushered in an incredibly diverse and exciting period of motorcycle development” THIS month is the 50th anniversary of the unveiling of the iconic Honda CB750 Four at the Tokyo Motorcycle Show. We think of it these days as just another lovely old vintage bike, but at the time it truly was the bike that changed the world. Honda was then known for its twin-cylinder road bikes, the largest of which was 450cc, but the factory had had plenty of success with across-the-frame four and six-cylinder race bikes in winning six consecutive 350cc World Championships from 1962, along with numerous 250cc and 125cc World Championships. The factory withdrew from GP racing at the end of the 1967 season to concentrate on its road bikes and the CB750 was…

“120 MOTORCYCLES AND 16 OUTFITS ENTERED, COVERING ALL CLASSES FROM VINTAGE TO FORGOTTEN ERA” IN the early days of motorsport, race weekends often catered for both cars and bikes and were referred to as ‘2+4’ meetings. The tradition is alive and well at Historic Winton, which celebrated its 42nd consecutive running in 2018. Bill Sheehan was the instigator of the event after attending an all-historic motorcycle and car meet at the now defunct Amaroo Park in Sydney. Winton Motor Raceway in Victoria was chosen as it was about halfway between Sydney and Adelaide and only a few hours drive from Melbourne. It also boasts reasonable spectator viewing areas all around the circuit and the major regional centre of Benalla is just down the road. He eventually persuaded the Austin 7…

SPEED, style, sport and serious fun. That's Sultans of Sprint: motorcycle madmen from all over the world on insane bikes, trying to outperform each other over 200m, or 1/8th of a mile, while putting on a great show. It’s become so successful that organiser Sèbastien Lorentz’s only concern is that it doesn’t grow over his head. Say to Sèbastien of Lucky Cat Garage in France that he has a stupid idea and he will go for it with even more energy. Like the time he proposed to build a sprint machine based on a BMW boxer. "Can't work,” everyone said, "wrong engine, stupid plan." So Sèb built one anyway, the iconic Sprintbeemer. He raced it for a few years in several classes, eventually motivating other custom builders to join him…

AFTER restoring a trio of show-winning Triumph twins — including a 1968 T120R Bonneville, which scored 99 (out of 100) at an Antique Motorcycle Club of America concours — upstate New Yorker Dave Williams was seeking a new path for his energy, engineering skills and fastidious attention to detail. “I wanted to build something more individual, where I could be more creative, and not rebuild something to be just as it left the factory,” Dave says. “That’s why I built a Triton, there seemed to be a certain freedom about it. It didn’t have to be built a certain way, except for those components that define a Triton, like the Norton frame with clip-on handlebars and the Triumph motor. From that point on, you have the freedom to do whatever…

APART from a few four-stroke tiddlers in its very distant past, and the disastrous rotary-powered RE5 of 1974, Suzuki was two-stroke only until the debut of the GS400 twin and GS750 four in 1976. The GS750 had a DOHC eight-valve engine not a million miles from the Z1 Kawasaki, but it was its superior handling that attracted enthusiasts and prepared the market for the main event at the end of the following year, the revered GS1000. Although outwardly similar, the GS1000 had a completely new engine, which weighed almost 5kg less than the GS750’s and made around 90hp. The chassis was also new, with extensive bracing and gusseting around the steering head and larger diameter tubing for the main frame cradle, as well as bigger and thicker fork tubes and…

ULFERT Janssen has a great eye for what makes a memorable Moto Guzzi custom, and refreshingly broad tastes in donor bikes. He is after all the bloke who turned a lumbering 1400cc Eldorado into a stunning tribute to the factory’s legendary 1955 V8 GP bike (Vanguard, Retrobike #25), so anything’s possible. This here is his take on the cheap and cheerful 850cc V9 Roamer, transforming what for the rest of us is a simple and relaxed cruiser into a pure cafe racer for the 2018 European show and sprint-racing season. As always, Ulfert started with some loose sketches to get the overall proportions right. "First I worked on the stance and changed the frame angle from slanted backwards into forward leaning,” he says. “I cleaned up the architecture and made…

OUTBACK South Australia is home to salt racing and one of the fastest Vincents ever built, Mal Hewett’s 185mph Land Speed Special. Just shy of 300km/h in the new money, it’s a phenomenal speed for any naturally aspirated OHV V-twin, let alone one that’s 70 years old, so it’s no surprise it didn’t happen overnight. Mal got his introduction to Vincents as a young Triumph-riding apprentice through the pages of Classic Bike magazine in the early 1980s. “The more I read, the more I was fascinated with them,” he says. “They had a lot of mystique and I thought they looked fantastic. And they were said to be fast, well, the fastest in their day, and I liked that even more. “THE VINCENT MOTOR IS SUCH A TOUGH LUMP. IT’S…

JEREMY Furness is a longtime classic bike owner and racer who, with his wife, Mary Ann, has published a series of children’s books based on the character of a BSA Bantam named Barry, who works for the post offi ce delivering mail. “I’d always been told to write about something I knew well,” Jeremy says. “I chose the Bantam because it was my first motorcycle. Thirty years ago, most riders I knew claimed the Bantam as their first motorcycle. It was a machine many (older) riders relate to. “I coined the name ‘Barry the Bike’ on day one, but from then on things got a lot harder. No publisher was interested. In fact one American publisher declared that the books would encourage children to ride motorcycles, which would be a…

JAPAN has a very healthy custom motorcycle culture, building world-class show bikes and thousands of cool daily-ridden street bikes. Leading the way is Kengo Kimura, whose Hiroshima workshop, Heiwa Motorcycles, has dominated the show scene in recent years while turning out hundreds of street-legal customs for discerning customers all over the country. We featured Heiwa’s sublime 1966 Triumph TR6 rigid bobber, called ‘Master Peace’, on the cover of Retrobike #27 — heiwa means peace in Japanese — fresh from its win at the Mooneyes Yokohama Custom Show at the end of 2016. It was the first time a bike with a European engine had ever won the prestigious event in its then 24-year history. Amazingly, Kengo and co then won again in 2017 with another, albeit totally different, TR6-based custom,…

OUT of nowhere they burst onto the scene and, like the proverbial classic rock band, each new release went straight to number one. From Munich in Germany, custom bike shop Diamond Atelier has been a dominant custom player in recent years with a string of show-winning bikes, including a pair of R nineT BMWs dubbed 'DA#4' (Play Hard, Retrobike #26) and 'DA#9' (Follow The Leader, Retrobike #28). Now founders Tom Konecny and Pablo Steigleder are going back to where it all began, with new ideas and new possibilities, but all while keeping that same unmistakable DA style. The opening track in their latest production is a killer, asphalt-shredding 2016 Ducati Scrambler custom with just the right sounds. Take a listen to DA#11. As Tom explains, it’s all happening at Diamond…

“I’VE ALWAYS BEEN THE TYPE OF PERSON THAT, IF I’M GOING TO DO SOMETHING, I’M NOT GOING TO HALF-ARSE IT” A CHANCE encounter with the iconic ‘Jerolamo’ cafe racer while on a European holiday in 2014 was enough to convince Geelong’s Jonathan Taylor it was time to make his own. Built by Italian custom shop Mr Martini around a late-model Triumph triple, the stripped-back ‘Jerolamo' boasted the best you could buy in wheels, suspension and brakes to handle as great as it looked. “Seeing that bike showed me that art and utility can mix,” Jonny says. “It was the perfect blend of modern sports bike crossed with old-school cafe racer design. “I’ve always liked the idea of a cafe racer but, coming from a road-racing background, it baffled me why…

“THE BIKE’S HUGE POWER IS TEMPERED A LITTLE BY THE WIND-UP OF THE TORQUE CONVERTOR AND AUTO GEARBOX” MOST motorcycles built around car engines, from the VW-powered Amazonas to the V8 Chevy Boss Hog, are nearly as big as the cars they came from, which kind of defeats the purpose. Not so this astounding Subaru-powered custom from New Zealand’s North Island, with dimensions (apart from width) no bigger than a Harley. Even more amazing, it’s turbocharged and 100 per cent street legal. “It all started off as a bit of a challenge from my mate Harry in Aussie,” builder Marcel van Hooijdonk says. “He’d come across an artist’s impression off a concept Subaru-powered bike and sent it with a comment, ‘Something for you to knock up in the shed, mate.’…

THE Bombinette was built by Sèb for his wife, Laurence, who races it in the Sultans of Sprint. It is not only a serious sprinter, it's also a dazzling custom bike, with a fairing covered with 24-carat gold leaf and a gas tank with eight different types of flakes. The R80 engine was built by German BMW specialist Edelweiss around a rare racing crankshaft and is set up for nitrous oxide. The pistons and cylinder heads are from a GS, with larger valves. “The secret of the engine is the work of Edelweiss,” Sèb says. “They made everything lighter, so you can really rev it up, as high as 10,500rpm. So far, the engine block has survived that. We took it apart this winter and there was hardly any need…

WHEN we tested the then new Triumph Bonneville Bobber last year, we were blown away by its radical appearance and low-slung stance, then amazed how well it performed, especially the grunt from that fantastic engine (Snake Charmer, Retrobike #29). We were not alone, with Triumph reporting the Bobber went on to become the fastest-selling model in the factory’s history. Most manufacturers would have left well enough alone, but not Triumph Motorcycles, which has comprehensively updated the Bobber in both appearance and riding feel for 2018 with the new Bonneville Bobber Black. For a start, it’s a lot more, well, black. Engine cases and covers, formerly polished alloy, are now finished in black, as are the header pipes and mufflers, previously chromed. Ditto levers, pegs, handlebars, headlight rim and pretty much…

HOW’S this for an idea? Build a bike with a power-to-weight ratio greater than any road bike before it, then sell it for less than anything of comparable performance. Yes, I know, who’d ever buy it, but it was 1969. The cops drove Minis and life was much simpler then. The 500cc Kawasaki H1 Mach III was a huge hit from the day it was launched, for all the right reasons. Boasting 60hp at 7500rpm and weighing just 174kg dry, it was a genuine rocket, the fastest accelerating bike of its day. It attracted all the fast guys, many of whom crashed finding its limits or more commonly finding theirs. “There is a lot of mythology about the Kawasaki triples, mostly from those who’ve never owned or ridden one,” says…

IN the build is Sèb's new sprint bike to race alongside the wife’s BMW. The class rules allow more capacity for long-stroke engines to offset their limited ability to rev, in effect making Harleys competitive. “First I wanted to go for a Ducati, but that's too easy,” Sèb says. “In fact, we have too many of those. So I want to try putting in some American shit again. The plan is that the bike will produce 160hp at 160kg. That's not easy because the engine block alone weighs 90kg and it will need to rev. “The question is whether the cases will hold up to the high revs. I have talked to a lot of people about it. Some say it will explode. Others say it must be able to…

“IT WAS JUST A PILE OF PARTS SITTING THERE IN MY WORKSHOP LOOKING AT ME SAYING, ‘BUILD ME!’” JIM Mott of Hand Made Racers professes no particular fondness for Suzukis but maybe it’s time to call him out. This is the fourth in a quick succession of Suzuki specials to exit his Brisbane workshop, with another even more radical build close to completion as we go to press and who knows what after that? He got the ball rolling with a finely detailed tribute to the Texaco Heron Suzuki XR69 F1 racers of the 1980s, which we featured early last year (Road Racer, Retrobike #27). It was based around a 1200 Bandit engine shoehorned into an early GSX-R750 chassis. He then followed with a pair of GS1000 street bikes, one…

Send Us Your Pics! Share your memories and lifestyle with millions of Retrobike readers by sending photos to retro@universalmagazines.com.au…

HAVE you ever had a friend who’s a bit hard to impress? While everyone else is going “Wow!”, your mate is shrugging his or her shoulders and going “Meh”. I was one of those hard-to-impress people when I was road-testing bikes. In fact, at times, I could be like a spoilt rich kid; you know, someone who gets a new bike to play with every fortnight. This had its downsides, because sometimes the excitement of getting a new bike became not a lot more special than getting another hamburger. Nice, delicious, but it’s just another burger, after all. Okay, I exaggerate, just a bit. It was always cool to pick up a new test bike, but it was nothing remotely like buying a new bike. A bike that you have…