Table of contents for RCBE #30 WINTER 2018 in Retrobike

“ONCE THE AUSSIES GOT THE JUMP IT WAS VERY HARD TO CLAW THEM BACK” THE Island Classic, held each Australia Day long weekend on Phillip Island, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2018 in fine style. With more than 300 racers entered on over 500 bikes, it is one of the most popular race meetings in Australia of any sort and one of the biggest classic bike race meetings in the world. The event kicked off in 1994 with avid support from then Australian Motorcycle News editor, the late Ken Wootton. AMCN remains the naming rights sponsor to this day and Ken is remembered through the Ken Wootton Perpetual Trophy for the rider who scored the most points in the four-race International Challenge, which has been the main feature event of…

“MELBOURNE TURNED ON A PERFECT DAY WITH SUNNY SKIES, RESULTING IN A MASSIVE TURNOUT OF BIKES” THE Festival of Italian Motorcycles (FoIM) can trace its origins back to the Pyramid Hill Rallies in the early 1980s hosted by the Ducati Owners Club of Victoria. The first formal festival was held in 2003 in the forecourt of the Melbourne Museum as part of an Italian Masters art exhibition the museum was hosting. Many, however, would say that it should have been the bikes that were the Italian Masters; after all, doesn’t MV Agusta describe its bikes as "motorcycle art"? The museum was an ideal location. It was close to the city with more than enough parking for the bikes to be displayed and easily viewed, with the added bonus of being…

THE Province of Parma in the north of Italy is best known for its delicious food, most famously prosciutto ham and Parmesan cheese, but if a bunch of young custom bike fiends have their way, it might also soon be known as the home of a unique motorcycle event. Held at the Riccardo Paletti racetrack and surrounding countryside some 30km south of the city of Parma, Wildays is loosely modelled on Glemseck in Germany ("Straight Line Fever", Retrobike #29) but with a healthy dose of Dirt Quake fun ("Dusty Demons", Retrobike #25). Live music is also a big part of the mix, as is, of course, fine booze and tasty tucker. Wildays is the brainchild of Alexander ‘Phonz' Fontanesi and San Marco Filios, proprietors of local custom bike shop Anvil…

PLAN B Motorcycles is a small ‘neo-cafe’ custom workshop in northern Italy, owned and operated by the talented Christian Moretti. The workshop’s name comes from Christian’s preference for starting with what he calls “old bikes only good for trash” and giving them a second life as a custom. No two are alike. “Every project is a new trip,” he says, “and every bike is made by exploring shapes and materials, mixing technology with tradition. We build handcrafted motorcycles with a racer soul, like it was, like it should be, created around the rider like a tailor-made suit.” The donor bike on this occasion was an unloved Benelli 354 (350cc, four cylinders) of indeterminate vintage, even if most of it would be consigned to the cutting-room floor. Its small dimensions and…

“I WAS FASCINATED BY THE BUELL’S EXAGGERATED PROPORTIONS AND ITS STRONG PERSONALITY” PAOLO ‘Tex’ Tesio has a day job as an automotive and industrial designer in an engineering firm contracted to a major Italian auto manufacturer. By night he dreams up custom motorcycles on his computer in three dimensions and then uses his own 3D printer to manufacture many of the parts. Best known to date for his work with Ducatis, Paolo switched his attention to a 1200cc Buell Firebolt two years ago and this incredible creation is the result. “For a long time I’ve been trying to get on the American twin-cylinder Buell,” Paolo says. “I’m fascinated by its exaggerated proportions and its strong personality. It’s full of more-or-less logical and functional innovations which make it unique.” First job…

LONDON’S Ace Cafe is the spiritual birthplace of the cafe racer. To celebrate its 80th birthday this year, owners Mark Wilsmore and George Tsuchnikas collaborated with local lad Nick Gale of Nick Gale Custom Cycles on a commemorative bike to be known as the Ace Cafe Racer. This is the result. Gale has serious form as one of Europe’s leading bike builders, albeit best known for his Harley big-twin customs. He wanted to provide a British take on the current generation of specials created by the likes of Roland Sands in the US; dynamically functional, full of glitz but still way cool. Replete with upside-down forks, massive brakes and serious attitude, the new Californian customs were as ready to wheel-stand and carve corners as function as works of art. “I…

THIS year’s Isle of Man TT will mark 40 years since Mike Hailwood’s legendary comeback victory in the 1978 TT, following an 11-year break from racing there while he pursued a car racing career in Formula 1. And to mark the milestone, Vee Two Australia is producing 12 exact replicas of Mike the Bike’s victorious Ducati 900 TT F1 race bike, the production-run quantity commemorating Hailwood’s victorious #12 TT racing number. Vee Two Australia has secured the original technical drawings for the Ducati’s 883cc 90-degree V-twin bevel-drive desmo engine, as well as the relevant casting moulds, chassis drawings and technical details — all of which will ensure the bike is an exact replica of the one that powered Hailwood to his historic win. “The engine used in Mike’s race-winning bike…

A RIDE down to Taralga and back? That’s definitely one of the better long weekend rides if you’re based in Sydney. Less often than I’d like to, but every now and then I ride down to visit an old mate who lives on a couple of acres near this pleasant small country town about 220km south of Sydney. Like a lot of country boys, my mate’s shed is filled with tools, long-term projects and lots of memories, including a few old bikes that will one day roar in anger again. It’s a great place to get lost in time and conversation, washed down by a few cleansing ales. The district’s lamb and bacon are bloody good, too. Riding down to his place on my Guzzi is always something I look…

“PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES IS WHAT GIVES CUSTOM ITS MEANING” ONE of the things we like best about the modern custom scene is that many builders — amateurs and pros alike — aren’t too fussy about what they start with, so long as it’s cheap. Old unloved dungers destined for the scrapheap get a new life as cool streeters, each one an expression of the owner’s personality, creativity and skills. Daniel Thomas is the 20-something proprietor of Lions Den Motorcycles just outside of London in the UK. A few years ago, he acquired an untidy 1988 Yamaha XT600 dirt bike as a commuter hack, but closer inspection showed it was in worse shape than it appeared. “To be honest, it was downright bloody dangerous,” he says. So instead it was hoisted…

“THE ENGINE IS A REPLICA OF THE MANX NORTON ON WHICH GEOFF DUKE WON THE 1952 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP” CALLING a bike a bobber nowadays has become as ubiquitous a term as cafe racer or street tracker. But Fred Walmsley is old enough to remember bobbers the first time around, after they were invented in the USA post-WWII. He’s toyed with the idea of building one for 50 years, and he’s finally gone and done so in the well-equipped workshop on his farm in Lancashire, England. Except, it’s not a bobber, he says. It’s The Fredder. As in, built by Fred, not Bob. This Anglo-American concoction sits well with Walmsley’s 1952 Chevy pick-up and 1931 Model A Ford parked nearby. But the 71-year-old hotrodder is better known for the succession of…

“YOU SEE A LOT OF CAFE RACERS ON THE INTERNET AND I DIDN’T WANT IT LOOKING THE SAME” TONY Da Silva has been into motorcycles for most of his adult life, firstly in South Africa and more recently in Western Australia. For a while there, his focus shifted to fettling the motocross bikes his children raced while he established a successful machine shop in Perth. But when the planets realigned post-kids, as they eventually do, it was time to restock the herd. His early impulse was to revisit the bikes from his past, starting with the tiny Suzuki GT185 that got him going in 1982. But it was when chasing down his second-ever bike, a Honda CB900F Bol d’Or, that the seeds of customising were sown. Finding one too far…

TRIUMPH’S Bonneville has been a favourite with custom bike builders since its release as a pre-unit OHV 650 twin in 1959. The second-generation air-cooled 790/865cc OHC models from 2001 proved just as popular and now it’s the water-cooled 1200s that are making all the fuss. Alec Sharp and Rafe Pugh from Old Empire Motorcycles in Norfolk set the bar high for the new models with their Steve McQueen tribute build a year ago (Lightning McQueen, Retrobike #27). It was a purely off-road build but boasted a long list of innovative modifications to give it both the appearance and riding feel of McQueen’s legendary 1963 Bonneville desert sled, also covered back in Retrobike #25. “After being inundated with enquiries following the release of our T120 collab build with Triumph last year,”…

IT’S almost a cliche to say a test bike attracted a lot of attention, but nothing truer could be said about the Kawasaki Z900RS. Although it shares not a single part with (and is substantially larger than) the original Z1, it’s immediately obvious what you’re looking at, in exactly the same way that a new liquid-cooled T120 Triumph could not be mistaken for anything other than a Bonneville. The Z900RS is Kawasaki’s second crack at a modern retro version of its most iconic model. The 550cc, 750cc and 1100cc Zephyrs of the early 1990s also featured tear-drop tanks, swoopy side covers and seat ducktails — as well as proper air-cooled eight-valve engines — but they squibbed it when it came to the detail and never quite got there. Not so…