Sommaire pour July - August 2020 de Motorcycle Classics

By the time you receive this issue, it will be mid-June. With any luck, it's warm where you are and your bikes have had all the maintenance they need to be ready for a summer and a fall full of riding. It's tough to know what events will or won't take place this year. Individual states and counties continue to decide what size of groups can gather as we proceed through what has surely been one of the most unpredictable years I've ever seen. But whether there are events to attend or not, if your bike and your gear are ready, it's time to go, somewhere, anywhere. I find even short solo rides can be a great cure for what ails you. I'm lucky to be about 15 minutes away…

1968-1973 Benelli Dynamo The Benelli Dynamo Trail and Compact were manufactured in Pesaro, Italy, imported into the U.S. by Cosmopolitan Motors, and sold initially through J.C. Penney. Both models used a 50cc (59cc from 1970) 2-stroke single-cylinder engine with a 4-speed foot-shift transmission and high-level exhaust. Both models used a spine frame with front telescopic and rear swinging arm suspension. The Trail was fitted with 3.0 x 10-inch wheels, knobby tires, an engine bash plate, and was geared lower with a large rear drive sprocket. The on-road Compact wore 3.5 x 8-inch street tires. Both came fully street-legal with a horn, a speedometer and a lighting kit. Cosmopolitan claimed the Dynamo Trail version could cover all types of terrain with two passengers. A third version for offroad use only was…

Britain’s iconic Métisse motorcycle marque was founded in the 1950s by brothers Derek and Don Rickman, offroad aces who were household names in Britain thanks to BBC-TV showing the Scrambles racing in which they excelled every Saturday afternoon in winter. After achieving dirt bike dominance with their stiff, good-handling frames powered by British twin and single engines, they then did something comparable with road bikes. Rickman went on to briefly become Britain’s largest street bike manufacturer after the demise of Norton the first time around, and before John Bloor resurrected Triumph. The Rickmans’ creations not only represented a key stage in the evolution of the modern offroad bike, they also played a role in helping the Japanese manufacturers discover the black art of frame design for their 4-cylinder street bikes,…

Twenty years of indifference to motorsports ended on July 20, 2008. By accident, I watched the U.S. Grand Prix at Laguna Seca on a projector at the long-gone Lovejoy’s Bar in Austin, Texas. Rossi passed Stoner in the dirt on the last lap, accompanied by drunken Texan whooping and hollering. Lone Star beer fogged my visor on the way home and made me dip knees at every corner. Stupid, I know. Growing up in the cable TV landscape of the 1980s, Laguna Seca was a regular on ESPN. IMSA, CART and even SCCA races played out over yellow scrub and blue sky dropping into grey snaking corkscrew pavement. Laguna etched itself in my brain, along with Watkins Glen, Road America and countless other tracks. From the start It took 60…

Have you ever discovered something that has you asking yourself, “Why hasn’t anyone ever done this before? It seems so obvious, and yet …” (The “and yet” is usually the reason why not, but still.) Well, that was my reaction when I first came across Joel Samick and his Northeast U.S.-based Retro Tours operation (retrotours.com) a couple of years ago — and I’m still asking that very same question after spending two days visiting Joel and his wife Lynn in their spacious home on the Pennsylvania/Delaware border, and riding a selection of their motorcycles. For this lovely house comes complete with a large garage and workshop space to house the 23 twin-cylinder motorcycles, plus two fours, a 1976 Honda Gold Wing and a 1983 Suzuki GS550ES — all except that…

When I first got into motorcycling, a major draw was the solo nature of riding, the opportunity to head out on my own to discover the world around me. I was already in love with riding on two wheels — my first job in junior high school was at a bicycle shop — and the self-powered part of the equation just made the proposition that much sweeter. What I didn’t appreciate when I first got into motorcycling was the incredible community of motorcyclists I’d get introduced to, the folks who make this the coolest corner of the universe, a place filled with talented, interesting people driven by a shared passion for motorcycles. You get to see that passion in action at the hundreds of shows held across the country every…

What: Golden Spike National Historic Park, P.O. Box 897, Brigham City, Utah, 84302. (435) 471-2209. Admission is $20 per automobile and $15 per motorcycle. How to Get There: From Ogden, take I-15N/I-84W to Utah State Route 83 north, and follow the signs. Best Kept Secret: All of Utah (the riding and scenery are exceptional). Avoid: Using your GPS as you approach (the NPS advises following the road signs instead). More Photos and Video: bit.ly/golden-spike More Info: nps.gov/gosp/index.htm…

No one who stopped by the motorcycle auctions in Las Vegas this past January could have failed to notice the large number of minibikes for sale. Most were Hondas, and many of those were from the Northwest 100 Collection based at the LeMay automobile museum in Tacoma, Washington. Of course, homemade minibikes have been around since the first creative gearhead attached a lawnmower motor to a kids’ bike. But it was the special transportation needs of wartime that inspired a production minibike. The Welbike was designed in World War II specifically for battlefield communications and transport. It used a 98cc Villiers 2-stroke engine in a rigid frame with a retractable seat and folding handlebars. With a full gas tank, it was packed into a metal drop canister and parachuted to…

The Antique Motorcycle Club of America has been around for 63 years, making it something of an antique itself. With over 11,000 members in more than 70 chapters across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, it must also be the biggest club of its kind. The Club organizes numerous National Meets and Road Runs each year, but individual chapters also put on regional events — like the Southern California chapter’s annual Winter Road Run. Riding opportunities are a bit thin in early March in much of North America, but not so around the Anza-Borrego Desert in Southern California, where temperatures can climb into the 80s in early Spring. The Desert is close to the Salton Sea, one of the lowest points in the nation at-236 feet — and one of the…

We were like crazed carefree children on Christmas morning, sampling one motorcycle, and then another and another, oblivious to the abuse we inflicted on the bikes during countless hot laps around Laguna Seca Raceway. After all, we were motorcycle journalists, 60 by count, from around the world, dispatched to Monterey, California, to … work. Yeah, that was it, we were working, sampling — no, testing — what certainly was to become a landmark motorcycle for its time. Yeah, that’s the ticket, we were working and testing. The landmark model happened to be Kawasaki’s new Ninja (GPz900R for the international market), accompanied by a cadre of GPz1100 and GPz750 models for us to ride for comparison purposes, sort of a new versus old. Moreover, none of our hosts from Kawasaki Heavy…

Turn 1: Cresting a blind hill, Turn 1 is just a kink. It’s supposed to trick you into braking too early for Turn 2. If possible, channel Freddie Spencer and use your front brake to gently drift through it. Turn 2: It’s a nicely bowled double-apex left-hander. Also, Pit-Out enters on your left, so watch out. Don’t feel bad if you messed up. Wayne Rainey never got this corner right. Mostly because it didn’t exist when he raced here. Turn 3: A slightly off-camber right-hander, it’s not difficult. But on cold tires, folks go off here. Unrelated, you go through a pedestrian bridge with a giant novelty plywood Cooper tire. Add 10 racer points whenever you race under a bridge. Turn 4: This quick right-hander requires no downshifting. So feather-torture…

AC: Joel, why haven’t you expanded your Retro bike lineup into the 1980s? JS:Well, originally the concept was Big Twins from the 1970s, because originally that was the kind of bike that I liked, and had collected. But my target population is aging out, so the guys that really like bikes from the ‘70s, may no longer be mentally willing or physically able to go on a single 300-mile ride on one. Doing two or three 300-mile days in a row on back roads on those bikes, they beat you up a little. So one thing we do to mitigate that issue, is we switch bikes every 75 miles, so nothing gets too intensely painful. AC: But most of your bikes don’t have an electric start, and not everybody is…

Electrical issues Q: I have a 1978 Triumph T140 with stock points ignition that has lost spark. I ran the bike a couple of summers ago with an old, possibly highly sulfated, battery. Since it’s a kickstart bike I didn’t need the battery for starting. Anyway, I started the bike and began a short ride. About 5 miles out, I lost spark and ended up trailering the bike home. I parked the bike, rode others, and haven’t done any troubleshooting since that incident but would like to get the bike going again this spring. I guess my question is can major damage be done, like stator damage, etc., by operating with an old discharged battery? Thank you for any assistance you can provide. Mark/via email A: It’s possible but unlikely…

7/4 Head to the Barber Motorsports Park outside Birmingham, Alabama, for the second edition of the Concours de Competition et D’Elegance. WERA will conduct the event on the track and in the paddock, while the Barber Museum will provide judging for motorcycles entered. If you would like to enter the event watch wera.com or the Concours de Competition Facebook page for the procedure to apply to participate, or contact Brian Slark at bslark@barbermuseum.org 7/10 AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days returns to the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio, July 10-12, 2020. Enjoy the AMA Vintage Road Racing Grand Championships along with motocross, hare scrambles, trials and flat track racing. The event includes America’s largest motorcycle swap meet, the Wall of Death, bike shows, stunt shows, demo rides, seminars and more.…

While prices were all over the place for Honda Z50s at the January 2020 Vegas motorcycle auctions, this 1969 Z50A is a fair representative of the middle of the market. Sold on a bill of sale, this first-year model came from the Bob Weaver collection. While the listing doesn’t say if it’s original or restored, we’d hazard a guess at the bike being a pretty decent restoration. At Mecum, prices ranged from $2,475 for a 1969 Z50 restored and bored out to 88cc, to $6,600 paid for another 1969 Z50, which was all original down to the original tires and some early paperwork. The most expensive 1968-1978 Z50 was the$20,900 price paid for a 1969 Z50 given to actor Mitch Vogel by Steve McQueen, which wears Von Dutch custom paint…

Don Smith’s neighbor in Appleton, Wisconsin, was a bit of a hoarder. While that might put some people off, not Don “He had two large barns,” Don explains, and continues, “he was a racing fan, and something of a hoarder of parts and machines, including pieces of race-crashed Ferraris and all kinds of motorcycles. There was a tremendous amount of interesting stuff in those barns.” And outside, too. A grainy snapshot Don took in the late 1990s shows a weather-worn 1965 Ducati Mach 1 with a Suzuki for company strapped to a motorcycle trailer. Clearly, both were quickly becoming one with the landscape. Weeds and rust were doing their best to reclaim them, but Don wasn’t about to let that happen, especially to the 250cc Ducati. Don had known his…

By 1980 Yamaha Corporation made it clear that its Tuning Fork brand aspired to be the No. 1 motorcycle company in the world. Honda Motor Corp., ichiban since the 1960s, confidently accepted that challenge, and like a pair of heavyweight sumo wrestlers the two corporate giants locked arms, tussling to see who would be the world’s majordomo motorcycle company for the coming decades. As the wrestling match intensified, their respective model lineups bulged with new hardware. The fight was on. Meanwhile, further south along Japan’s craggy eastern seaboard, Kawasaki Heavy Industries’ (KHI) motorcycle division, headquartered in the industrial city of Osaka, silently set about to build what would be a landmark heavyweight sport bike. And like a Ninja creeping silently in the night, Kawasaki’s small squadron of engineers quietly went…

Pre-World War II motorcycles dominate the high-end collectable market, and Brough Superiors sit at the pinnacle. Much of the Brough’s appeal is due to its association with T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, who owned eight examples and was killed on one in 1935. But the Brough Superior also harked back to an era where bikes were built in smaller numbers with an emphasis on quality. And as they are now around 90 years old and extremely rare, the Brough’s status is even higher. George Brough was originally involved in a partnership with his father, William, producing the Brough motorcycle. After World War I, George wanted to build a luxury motorcycle for gentlemen, but William wasn’t so enthusiastic. So in 1919 the 29-year-old George decided to go it alone. George bought…

“The Great North Road wound away like a flat, steel-grey ribbon. Up it, with the sun and the wind behind them, two black specks moved swiftly. To the yokel in charge of the hay-wagon they were only two of “the dratted motorcyclists,” as they barked and zoomed past him in rapid succession. A little farther on, a family man, driving delicately with a two seater side car, grinned as the sharp rattle of the OHV Norton was succeeded by the feline shriek of an angry Scott Flying-Squirrel. He, too, in bachelor days, had taken a side in that perennial feud. He sighed regretfully as he watched the racing machines dwindle away northwards.” Dorothy Sayers, The Fantastic Horror of the Cat in the Bag (1928) The Scott motorcycle, the invention of…

You know how occasionally, someone says something that’s obvious to everyone but yourself? Years ago, a girlfriend commented (most likely while watching her BF grapple with a derelict car repair), “You know, I’ve never seen you happier than when something’s broken.” That offhanded compliment stuck with me for years, but its oddity also gnawed at me. Because, what did she mean exactly — that I’m some moto-bumpkin who doesn’t know that life is better when you buy new things on the E-Z Pay Plan, that always work as advertised? Or was it just an innocent observation, from her disinterested-in-mechanical-stuff standpoint, about her guy’s penchant for mechanical pain? Hopefully it was only the latter, but many times it’s made me wonder — not just about myself, but about other people who…

Utah’s Golden Spike National Historic Park honors completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. It all started in 1832 when Dr. Hartwell Carver (great-grandson of John Carver, who came to America on the Mayflower) proposed the idea to the U.S. Congress. The concept gained momentum with an expanding nation and the California gold rush, and for good reason: Reaching the West required a six-month voyage around South America or an overland journey through hostile territory. Three routes were considered: A northern route (rejected due to terrain and harsh winters), a southern route (rejected due to distance and hostile natives), and the ultimately chosen central route. Council Bluffs, Iowa, became the eastern starting point (well north of Civil War hostilities, it presented a direct path to the Sierra Nevadas). Sacramento, offering river transport…

By 1980 American motocross fans had grown accustomed to predicting who wouldn’t win the United States round of the 500cc motocross Grand Prix World Championship. An American wouldn’t win — it had been that way since the USGP first called Carlsbad Raceway home in the early 1970s, so why should 1980 be any different? After all, and despite European riders detesting Carlsbad’s hard-packed track that twisted and turned itself over the arid hillsides several miles inland of Southern California’s scenic coast, those international racers willingly cashed in on the championship points over their American counterparts. But that changed June 22, 1980, and if you were watching the race on ABC Television’s Wide World of Sports you might have sensed that this year might be different. During ABC’s lead-in to the…