Table of contents for Issue 19 - Winter 2015 in Retrobike

WALKING around the VJMC show’n’shine at the National Museum in Canberra was like walking through the early days of my motorcycling life. Over there, my first proper road bike, an orange Suzuki GT750L just like the one I bought secondhand in 1977 and rode to Queensland. Not far away, a handsome green ’76 Z900 Kawasaki, identical to one I rode in the early 80s. Behind that, a beautiful blue XS650C Yamaha, a million times nicer than the old smoky dunger I commuted on a few years after that. Memories. I was wishing I’d kept them all when a chrome-tanked Hodaka Wombat 125 stopped me in my tracks. It was my very first bike! My parents wouldn’t let me ride it on the road but it got me hooked on a…

THIS YEAR saw the 22nd running of the Phillip Island Classic and the 10th anniversary of the International Challenge, an event which now has teams of 10 from Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and USA competing on 80s-era superbikes upgraded with modern 17in racing tyres. There is no doubt that this is what draws the crowds; stunning bikes ridden by famous riders who have graced the world’s racetracks in all categories of MotoGP, WSB, BSB and Isle of Man. Imagine a Suzuki Katana with more than 170hp at the rear wheel and lap times in the mid 1:30s. That’s the International Challenge. But it’s not the only attraction at the Island Classic. There are many other classes comprising 125cc bikes from the 1960s through to highly modified 1300cc production bikes…

THE Panigale and the 1198 are brilliant pieces of engineering, but nobody ever finished off developing the original two-valve desmo engine,” says Brook Henry of Vee Two. “There was always more to come from the two-valve desmo concept than what the factory achieved before they switched to the desmoquattro in 1987.” Brook would know. Starting in 1983 with a bevel-drive 900SS insurance write-off, he steadily developed Taglioni’s original V-twin to international acclaim. The Vee Two RV-1 with Owen Coles aboard humbled fuel-injected eight-valve racers on three continents, not only in BEARS and ProTwins events in Australasia, but also in Europe and, most memorably, by finishing fourth at Daytona in the 1991 Battle of the Twins race won by Doug Polen on the factory Ducati 888 Superbike. Apart from Polen, only…

IT SEEMS to me we have a situation prevalent today that steers the younger generation towards safety, and nothing wrong with that, I hear you say. Well, in nature, isn’t exposure to risk the very thing that teaches us to avoid it or how to deal with it? So I’m not sure about wrapping our kids in cotton wool to always minimise their exposure to risk, and all the regulation that comes with it. Anytime there is a serious incident on the roads, the first thing to be rolled out is the need for extra legislation, as if there wasn’t already enough. We need laws to protect us from ourselves and here in Australia one of those ways is to have a licence for everything – even coffee making! But…

SOME say you need three spanners to build a Honda and a truckload to fix a Norton – and there is some truth to that – but the basics of setting up a home workshop are much the same. It’s likely you’ll already have simple tools like hammers, hacksaws, drills and pliers, although you might need to add some circlip pliers. Multi-grips and shifting spanners are useful but should be used sparingly. You’ll need a full set of screwdrivers, and not the ones you use as chisels and to stir the paint! Some tools you can buy cheaply but don’t skimp on socket sets and ring/open-end spanners. These you will use all the time, and they need some quality to cope with wear and tear and still retain their precision.…

LIKE many others who share a newfound passion for cafe racers, trackers and scramblers, I arrived late to the whole modified motorbike thing. I didn’t get my rider’s licence until I was 38, but have made up for lost time by owning 15 bikes in the five years since. These three Hondas were built in my garage over 12 months. I have no formal training, so am typical of the new breed of self-taught owner/builder who make up the grass roots of the modern cafe racer movement. The reason I focused on early 80s DOHC Hondas was simple – they are plentiful and cheap, and parts are interchangeable between variants and with later Hondas, which means you can build bikes like these for just a few thousand dollars. For canny…

THE REBORN Indian Chieftain evokes the style and spirit of the revered postwar side-valve Chiefs, which is all well and good if you want to ride from Melbourne to Darwin in comfort and style. But to former US 250 GP champ Roland Sands, the original Indian marque is more fondly remembered for the purpose-built race bikes of an earlier generation, lithe innovative hot rods forever locked in often mortal combat with Harley-Davidson on the timber boardtracks of 1920s America. “The new Indians are well-built bikes and have a lot of soul,” the head of Roland Sands Design in California says. “It would be cool to see people want to customise them. Our inspiration came from a drag bike rendering that Sylvain from Holographic Hammer sent to me. I ended up…

CHRISTIAN Moretti is a talented bike builder based in Laveno-Mombello in the Lombardy region of northern Italy. He is particularly fond of getting hold of what he calls “old bikes only good for trash” and turning them into something better, which is why he calls his business Plan B Motorcycles. “This XV750 is the perfect example,” Christian says. “It was designed to compete with Milwaukee’s twins but despite some interesting technical solutions, it turned out too clean, too quiet, almost tasteless and without the character of the American bikes.” Little was known of the donor bike’s history when a prospective client, who Christian calls Mr F, dropped in with his Yamaha. “Sometimes it’s better not to ask,” he says of the boxes of rusty parts, spray-painted engine pieces, knots of…

HONDA had form when they released the CBX 1000 in 1978. In 1966 and ’67, the factory won consecutive 250 GP championships with Mike Hailwood riding an air-cooled in-line six-cylinder four-stroke. Incredibly, it had DOHC and four-valves per tiny cylinder. Hailwood also won the 1966 350 championship on a four-cylinder Honda, but returned with a 297cc six to retain the 350 crown in 1967. At the top of his game, Soichiro Honda then pulled the pin on GP racing for a decade to concentrate on development of roadbikes, with equally spectacular results. One of the engineers closely involved with the race program was Shoichiro Irimajiri and he was the main guy behind the CBX, whose engine bears a remarkable resemblance to Hailwood’s 250, even if it is four times as…

ARRIVING in Greece, I was painfully aware of not having ridden a motorbike for a couple of weeks. That I met some mates who were about to ride through Europe only enhanced that sense of angst and chagrin. And then my Greek mate Loukas got in touch and said, let’s catch up. Opa! All of a sudden, my world brightened! Loukas is a bikie or, to be more specific, a member of the Athens ‘café racer’ set. We met and Loukas said he had two bikes and we should go for a ride on Saturday. The planets suddenly seemed in alignment. Loukas has a Suzuki Bandit in Dunstall bodywork, rear-sets and clip-ons. For reasons best known to him, he also has a home-built Enfield 500. The chassis of Loukas’ Enfield…

WHILE I’d been toying with buying a Commando for some time, scoring the gig on Retrobike was the catalyst in buying one. An unfinished project was even better; it was cheap and would get me back on the tools. My bike had a rebuilt engine but had otherwise been assembled finger-tight by the previous owner to show all the bits were there, so after getting the motor running sweetly my focus turned to making sure everything was done up tight and adjusted properly. The only money I’ve spent has been on tools, top engine mounts, rubber kit and a new Boyer Bransden ignition box after the original bundied off. It and my new torque wrench were the major outlays. I’ve also been diving into old toolboxes, digging up odd-sized spanners…

LEGENDS JOHN Fretten was my first boss in the motorcycle industry 20 years ago, and his bikes are something else. It is about time somebody persuaded him to show them to a wider audience. And Jack Taylor (and his bully Wal) were customers of mine for many years and it was so good to see him still going strong at almost 90. I think I nearly cried. As for the poster, you could have left the other side blank because that Guzzi is just way too much for that other over-rated Italian marque, even with a girl! Peter Lucas HAPPY THIS magazine keeps on getting better and better. Well done to all involved, keep up the great work. Kevin Kluske NOT HAPPY GOT issue 17 in the post 12/1/15. Cancelled…

ASK ANY punter to list the five most beautiful motorcycles of all time and you’ll likely find at least one bevel-drive Ducati sportsbike. They have the three Ps – performance, proportion and poise – and in their day were the finest examples of minimalist high-performance motorcycling on the planet. They were also the inspiration behind Barry’s Beltvel, a Ducati special that combines a 1976 900SS bevel frame (and period bodywork), a 1996 900SS belt-drive engine with reversed rear cylinder head, and modern running gear. It was 1997 when Barry French decided he wanted a new bike, but Ducati weren’t building any he liked. He toyed with the idea of a 916 but his wife wouldn’t tolerate the pillion seat, and after owning two beautiful Ducatis he couldn’t bring himself to…

THE Museum & Heritage Committee of Motorcycling Australia is not the kind of name you’d normally associate with one of the most fun weekends on the calendar. Now in its seventh year, the Penrite Oils Broadford Bike Bonanza in regional Victoria has established itself as the must-do Easter event for pre-1990 motorcycles, attracting record numbers of entrants from as far afield as Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane. Formed in 2006, the Committee has been active in locating and preserving motorcycles that are important in our heritage, including the 750SS Ducati that Mike Hailwood rode in the 1978 Castrol 6 Hour race and the XS1100 Yamaha that won it. Some bikes are donated but most are purchased, and so the Committee established the Bike Bonanza in 2009 to not only raise funds…

THE hot rodders first travelled to Lake Gairdner, a dry salt lake deep in the South Australian outback, in 1990. Living the Bonneville dream, they established Dry Lakes Racers Australia, an organisation devoted to land speed racing which has conducted annual Speed Weeks on the Lake ever since, weather permitting. Motorcycles started arriving in numbers around 10 years later and then that movie came out. These days motorbikes, increasingly purpose-built, outnumber cars. “PREPARING A SALT RACER HAS ITS CHALLENGES. IT'S NOT LIKE YOU CAN TEST OR PRACTICE ANYWHERE ELSE” Salt racing is an unusual form of motorsport. In Australia, it takes place just once a year at the end of a rough dirt track in the middle of nowhere; just getting there takes real commitment. Apart from a canteen and…

WE’VE been talking a lot about different types of restorations and how to attempt the project and get a result from your hard-earned hours in the shed and at swap meets finding all the parts you need. One day it will be finished. What happens next? The objective of all that work is to end up with a motorcycle that you can ride and enjoy, but also one that is safe and reliable so as to handle any conditions set before it. Now it may be that you make every effort to create a motorcycle – irrespective of age or style or stock components – as rideable and safe as it can be, but the conditions it will operate under warrant special consideration. We aren’t living in the 1920s anymore.…

HAVING first focused on the roadworthiness of his CB750 K7, which we covered last issue, Stuart Garrard has turned his attention to making the old dunger look, stop and handle like a brand new 1978 Honda Four. He’d already invested in a new original four-into-four exhaust which made everything else look old, so time to bring the rest up to scratch. The main job was respraying the tank and side-covers, which Stuart entrusted to Southern Highlands Smash Repairs south of Sydney while he addressed everything else at home. “It had a reasonably good paint job but looked plain,” Stuart says, “so I wanted to add the original tank stripe decals which I sourced in the US. I’m glad I didn’t try to apply the decals myself, it’s not a job…