Sommaire pour Issue 35 de Retrobike

G'DAY WITH GEOFF SEDDON

Retrobike|Issue 35

G'DAY WITH GEOFF SEDDON

PUTTING the feature together on Bob Prior’s Suzuki GT750 on page 28 brought the memories flooding back. My first road bike was a GT750 that I bought secondhand in 1977. It was nothing like Bob’s in appearance or performance, far from it, but it was the bike that changed my life. A dirt-bike hobby became a road-bike lifestyle that I have lived, eaten and breathed uninterrupted to this day. I didn’t know much about motorbikes when I bought it. I thought the Suzuki was a handsome thing and I liked the idea of it being a two-stroke, as that was what I knew from my dirt-bike days. It had had a hard life, evidenced by missing side-covers and a universal tyre on the back, which was the real reason I…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Retro Specs

ENGINE Air-cooled four-stroke 75-degree V-twin; SOHC, two valves per cylinder; 92 x 69.2mm for 920cc; 8.3:1 comp; 2 x 40mm Hitachi carburettors with K&N filters; electronic ignition; custom exhaust; five-speed gearbox with shaft final drive; 65hp @ 6500rpm (stock) CHASSIS Box-section pressed-steel mainframe with engine suspended beneath; Kawasaki ZX6R/ ZX10R USD forks, 2 x four-spot Tokico calipers and 310mm rotors, 17in cast wheel; triangulated cantilever-style swingarm with Sachs mono-shock, stock Virago drum brake and 16in cast wheel; Metzeler tyres BODYWORK Repositioned fuel tank; custom seat BEST “A good custom must look perfect both up close and from afar” NOT SO GREAT Having to choose between the two…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Retro Specs

ENGINE Air-cooled inline four-cylinder four-stroke; DOHC, four valves per cylinder; welded and balanced crank; race cams; 4 x 38mm Mikuni round-slides; Dyna ignition; lightened clutch to five-speed gearbox; chain final drive CHASSIS Perimeter chassis in tubular steel; Yamaha FJ1100 forks; 17-inch Suzuki wheels and brakes; braced rectangular section alloy swingarm with dual Gazi shocks BODYWORK Stock McIntosh fibreglass tank; modified seat unit and fairing; paint by owner BEST Not your average McIntosh; genuine race performance; remarkably streetable NOT SO GREAT Touring, pillioning, keeping a low profile…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Put The Kettle On

SUZUKI was exclusively two-stroke when it came up with its answer to Honda’s game-changing Honda 750 Four. Its biggest bike was the air-cooled 500cc Titan parallel twin. The quickest route to a 750-class bike was to add a cylinder to the Titan engine to build an inline triple, but Suzuki engineers were concerned about the middle cylinder overheating, given that two-strokes fire twice as often as four-strokes. The GT750J was the first Japanese liquid-cooled production bike and Suzuki’s largest-ever motorcycle when it was released at the end of 1971. Curiously the first model had a four-leading shoe drum front brake, which was ditched for a pair of discs with the follow-up K-model. The L-model followed with redesigned side-covers in 1974 for a more integrated look, and power was bumped up…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Milano Milestones

EDOARDO Bianchi started manufacturing bicycles in Milan in 1885, aged just 20. His first motorised bicycle appeared in 1887, but it wasn’t until 1903 that he built specialised motorcycle frames which contained the engine in the centre of the bike. The factory dabbled with a number of engine capacities and layouts between the two World Wars, including V-twins up to 740cc and both side-valve and OHV singles. Bianchi went racing from the very early days and hit their straps between 1925 and 1930 with the almost unbeatable Freccia Celeste (The Bike That Time Forgot, Retrobike #27). Powered by a bevel-driven DOHC 350cc single, the innovative Freccia Celeste dominated Italian bike racing (including four consecutive Italian GPs) in the hands of car racing legend Tazio Nuvolari. Edoardo Bianchi died in 1946…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Trials By Numbers

TRIALS riding originated in Scotland in the early 20th century. Unlike other forms of motorcycle sport, observed trials (to give the sport its traditional name) is not racing, although it is certainly competitive. Instead, trials (or trial) is a sport of balance, skill and concentration. One at a time, competitors ride over an obstacle course of boulders, streams, hill climbs, logs, drop-offs and nearly anything else the organisers can find, with riders losing points for every instance he or she ‘dabs’ or touches the ground. With low speeds and no other competitors on the track, it is the safest form of motorcycle sport and, according to convening body Trials Australia, the world’s most popular. In Australia about 1000 riders compete regularly; in Europe, the numbers are in the hundreds of…

TRIPLE TREAT

Retrobike|Issue 35

TRIPLE TREAT

1973. England. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Led Zeppelin. Bowie. Queen. Hot pants, bell-bottom jeans and platform shoes. And Robert, the owner and builder of this Triumph Trident T150V, was 13 years old as it rolled off the line in England’s industrial midlands. It remained stock for many years, as customised Tridents were and still are rare. 2018. Western Australia. Four decades later and half a world away, Robert and the Trident have both ended up in Perth, where they got together for the first time. The Trident was purchased as a non-runner, but Robert planned to change both its destiny and its style. For a long time, Rob had a vision of a flat tracker-inspired triple. He made drawings of the lines desired and Tom Sharman of…

LONE WOLF

Retrobike|Issue 35

LONE WOLF

THE prototype V6 Laverda endurance racer made a single brief but memorable appearance just over 40 years ago in the 1978 Bol d’Or 24-hour race. Riders Nico Cereghini and Carlo Perugini retired after eight hours with a broken final drive coupling when lying in 23rd place out of 80 starters, providing a rare glimpse of a near-mythical motorcycle whose fame has far exceeded the sum total of its achievements. Unlike Ducati or Moto Guzzi, Laverda was never a standalone motorcycle manufacturer, with its bike division a spin-off from its core agricultural machinery business (now owned by Fiat). But thanks mainly to the passion of Massimo Laverda, who took over Moto Laverda in 1964 at the age of 25, the family company produced a stream of high-performance models, of which the…

RUNNING OF THE Bull

Retrobike|Issue 35

RUNNING OF THE Bull

NIGEL Irvine has been around motorcycles forever and remembers first hand the dramatic impact Japanese bikes had in the early 1970s. Gone were the old, oil-leaking English machines often bought cheaply secondhand and destined to break down at the most inconvenient times. “I know that I lost a number of girls because of my unreliability,” he says. “Not turning up on time, or turning up covered with grease. Early Spanish and Italian bikes often meant late-night rides home in complete darkness.” Now resident in the NSW central west, Nigel has broad tastes in bikes but admits to a certain affection for two-strokes, including the air-cooled three-cylinder Kawasakis of the 1970s, the 500cc H1 and 750cc H2. (We featured Nigel’s restored 1973 H1 in Retrobike #32.) “The H1 was a delicious…

FRONT WHEEL DIVE

Retrobike|Issue 35

FRONT WHEEL DIVE

BY 1920, the basic format of the motorcycle as we know it today was well established, even if detail design of things like forks and brakes and rear suspension had yet to evolve. And then there was the Megola, with what looked like a mini radial aircraft engine shoved within the spokes of the front wheel. The Megola was the product of a consortium of three German engineers — Meixner, Gockerell (better known as Cockerell) and Landgraf, who each contributed the first two letters of their surnames — to commercialise in 1921 a two-wheeled design produced the year before by Cockerell. This originally featured a three-cylinder engine located in the rear wheel, soon replaced by a five-cylinder one, but by the time production began, Cockerell had hit on the novel…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Rusty’s First Love

I HAVE lost count of the bikes I’ve bought, ridden, raced and sold,” Russell Diffey says. “Well over 50. I love all of them; there’s no such thing as a bad motorcycle, they all have a place. “But my favourite bike is a 1924 Indian Scout. At the age of 10 I started riding my 50cc Honda 10 miles to go look at it and try to buy it off the elderly owner. I pestered him for many years but he eventually ended up in a retirement home and the family sold it. It took me 23 years of searching to find her again. “It is my ‘true love’ motorcycle. I used to sit in the shed with the owner, with him telling me stories of riding the bike in…

TWINS

Retrobike|Issue 35

TWINS

YAMAHA Viragos are almost made for customising, especially the first mono-shock models from the early 1980s. Plentiful and cheap, especially in Europe, they are nicely-proportioned bikes with simple, mostly hidden frames and soulful torquey engines tuned more for grunt than speed. “WHEN I WAS THINKING ABOUT THE PERFECT CAFE RACER, IT WAS ALWAYS A YAMAHA XV920” The only hassle is that it is becoming ever more difficult to come up with a fresh take on modifying them, a bit like CX500 Hondas for much the same reasons. Tom Moose’s solution was to build a pair, more complementary than matching, although they are certainly very similar in construction and finish. Built as cafe racers, Tom also uses the term ‘cafe fighters’, acknowledging the street fighter influence. The white bike he calls…

The Flying KIWI

Retrobike|Issue 35

The Flying KIWI

EVER had that niggling feeling that you wish you hadn’t sold a favoured bike in the past, or at least had a strong yearn to do it all again with something similar? “I owned a McIntosh back in the mid to late 1980s,” Tony Bianco says. “It had been damaged by fire. I rebuilt it and rode it around for a couple of years.” Tony has owned more than 100 bikes over his lifetime, which means most of them got turned over to fund something else, and the McIntosh was no different. “Twenty year later, I wished I had it back, but McIntoshes don’t come up for sale very often.” Auckland-based Ken McIntosh is these days best known for his replica Manx Norton race bikes, but made his name as…

THUNDER GROUND

Retrobike|Issue 35

THUNDER GROUND

BRITAIN’S annual Goodwood Revival, held each September since 1998 over the 3.8km Motor Circuit, first opened by the Duke of Richmond in 1948, is widely considered to be the world’s premier historic race meeting, attracting a sell-out crowd of 150,000 spectators. It complements the annual mid-summer Goodwood Festival of Speed founded in 1993, a ‘motoring garden party’ centred around a high-speed 1.9km hill-climb up the Duke’s driveway, which also attracts a massive international following and crowd. Perhaps as an antidote to these major events, in 2014 the Duke of Richmond resurrected the Goodwood Members’ Meetings, which were club racing days for dedicated enthusiasts rather than the high-profile teams that contested the circuit’s major races. Seventy-one such meetings were staged over the 19 years of the circuit’s original existence up until…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Retro Specs

ENGINE Liquid-cooled inline two-stroke triple with 120-degree crank; replaceable head inserts by Doug Flannery Motor Sport; 70 x 64mm for 738cc, Wossner pistons; 3 x 40mm Lectron carburettors; automatic oil injection; Flannery expansion chambers; Barton Motors straight-cut primary gears to beefed-up Barnett clutch; five-speed GS750 gearbox; chain final drive; 100+rwhp@9000rpm CHASSIS Stock GT750 frame, no mods, grit-blasted and powder-coated; stock forks with spring and damping mods, stock calipers on Bob’s own lightweight rotors, laced 19in alloy rim with Metzeler tyre; GS750 swingarm with twin Ikon shocks, sls drum brake laced to 3 x 18in alloy rim with super-sticky 100/90 Heidenau tyre BODYWORK All original GT750 bodywork apart from repro front guard; paint by Peter Muhm SPECIAL THANKS Browny from Bullet Racing, WA; Kyle and Marcus, Hi Octane Performance Coatings; Marc…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Retro Specs

ENGINE Air-cooled four-stroke single; (external) belt-driven SOHC, four valves per cylinder; 97 x 81mm for 600cc; dry sump; Mikuni flat-slide carburettor; Nippondenso ignition; custom exhaust; five-speed gearbox, chain final drive CHASSIS Custom twin-loop chassis in tubular steel, zinc-coated; conventional forks with twin-leading-shoe front brake; custom swingarm with linkages to front-mounted Buell shock unit BODYWORK Modified Bianche tank, custom seat MORE planbmotorcycles.com BEST Small bike with a massive engine; innovative engineering and style NOT SO GREAT Exhausts may be an acquired taste…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Retro Specs

ENGINE Air-cooled four-stroke single; OHV, one inlet, one exhaust; 84 x 90mm for 499cc; single Amal concentric carburettor; electronic ignition; custom exhaust; wet clutch to five-speed gearbox and chain final drive CHASSIS Tubular-steel single-downtube mainframe with engine stressed; welded on sub-frame; 35mm conventional forks in custom aluminium triple clamps, single 280mm rotor with twin-piston caliper on laced 21in aluminium rim; twin-shock (Hagon) swingarm with drum brakes laced to 18in aluminium rim; Pirelli tyres BODYWORK Tank, mudguards and seat base in aluminium by Baak; brushed finish by Baak, also the leather seat WANT TO BUY ONE? www.baakmotocyclettes.com.en BEST Light weight, cool style, fresh approach NOT SO GREAT Going fast…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Three For The Road

BRITISH 650cc vertical twins still ruled the roads when Triumph first started work on a three-cylinder 750 in 1962. Engineer Burt Hopwood and designer Doug Hele had a prototype up and running by 1965, but critically it would take another four years before it was released. It was the first collaboration between BSA and Triumph since the companies merged in 1951, and the last major model to be developed by the original Triumph company at Meridan. The plan was to release it simultaneously as a Triumph Trident and a BSA Rocket 3, with BSA insisting late in the piece on a completely different chassis (with the engine lent forward from vertical) and styling, which was the principal cause of lengthy production delays. Honda got wind of the new English ‘multi’…

Three For The Road

Retrobike|Issue 35

Retro Specs

ENGINE Liquid-cooled four-stroke 90-degree V6; chain-driven DOHC, four valves per cylinder; 65 x 50mm for 996cc; 10.5:1 comp; wet sump; 6 x 32mm Dell’Orto carbs; Marelli/Dynaplex ignition; multi-plate dry clutch to five-speed gearbox and two-piece shaft final drive; 138.7rwhp @ 10,500rpm CHASSIS Tubular chrome-moly frame with engine fully stressed with tubular chrome-moly sub-frame; 38mm Marzocchi conventional forks with two twin-piston Brembo calipers on 280mm cast-iron rotors; chrome-moly swingarm with twin Marzocchi shocks and single twin-piston/280mm Brembo; 18-inch Campagnolo mags each end DIMENSIONS Wheelbase 1500mm; kerb weight (no fuel) 226kg; top speed 283km/h (Paul Ricard 1978) BEST FOR Riding to church on Sundays NOT SO GREAT Don’t break anything!…

Retrobike|Issue 35

El Seizo

BULTACO was established in 1958 when Francesco ‘Paco’ Bulto resigned as a director of Spanish motorcycle manufacturer Montessa after the latter pulled out of road racing. Francesco formed a new company, Bultaco, a combination of his surname and nickname, and was back on the track within two months of the release of his first road model. That bike was the 175cc Tralla, Spanish for ‘Shrapnel’. “Not too sure why they had this name — some say because they used to blow up,” Nigel says. “El Seizo, as they were cruelly nicknamed by the philistines. By the time I was 17 and saw my first one, they were called Metralla and were 250cc. Up until the Suzuki Hustler turned up, the Metralla was the fastest and best-handling 250 a boy could…

BACK ON
TRACK

Retrobike|Issue 35

BACK ON TRACK

THE Broadford Bike Bonanza was first held 11 years ago over two days at Easter at the Broadford Motorcycle Complex in Victoria. The concept for the event was to get older bikes out of the shed and onto the track, be it dirt or bitumen, with trials, enduro, motocross, speedway and road-racing circuits available. To say it was a success is an understatement, especially the road circuit, which attracts many bikes that are seldom seen. Each year there has been a theme for the event and 2019 celebrated 50 years of the Honda CB750 Four, but there were still many other marques there. The BBB is somewhere between a parade lap and a full-on track day, with the choice largely yours to make. Eligibility for road bikes is pre-1993, with…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Retro Specs

ENGINE Air-cooled four-stroke V-twin; OHV, four per cylinder; 90 x 96mm for 1100cc; 12:1 comp; dry sump, BSA-style oil pump; points/coil ignition; chain primary to Norton clutch and four-speed gearbox; chain final drive CHASSIS Rigid duplex-loop OEC chassis (1924), welded not brazed; Norton girder forks with laced Akront 19in alloy rim, no front brake (in salt trim); laced Akront 18in alloy rim at rear with 7in Enfield drum brake; shaved Avon Roadrider tyres BODYWORK Handmade alloy fuel tank incorporating oil tank front right; handmade seat; paint by Urquhart and owner BEST You live more in five minutes on a bike like this going flat out than some people live in a lifetime WORST Not a thing…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Retro STYLE

LEGEND HELMETS AGV produced the world’s first fibreglass helmet in 1954 and has enjoyed long endorsements with famous racers like Giacomo Agostini, Barry Sheene, Wayne Rainey and Valentino Rossi. The X3000 Legends range includes replicas of Sheene’s and Ago’s race helmets, with Ago’s shown here. Matching MV Agusta optional. $999 www.linkint.com.au THE GRINGO MADE from an injection-moulded plastic outer shell and three-piece expanded polystyrene safety shell with removable comfort liner, the Biltwell Gringo full-face helmet has a cool 1960s motor sport aesthetic but exceeds modern ECE motorcycle standards. Available in seven different colours and in sizes from XS to XXL. $249.95 www.monzaimports.com.au TRACKER JACKETS MERLIN’S Chase men’s leather jacket is made from full-grain 1.2-1.3mm AAA-grade cowhide with removable 100g thermal liner. Removable Level 2 armour in shoulders and elbows, with…

Retro STYLE

Retrobike|Issue 35

HOG SLAYER

YAMAHA’S XV750 Virago was only the second Japanese V-twin ever when it was released in 1981 (the first was the Honda CX500 in 1978) and the first Japanese bike designed from the ground up as a cruiser. Conceived as an affordable lightweight competitor to Harley-Davidson, the XV750 featured shaft drive contained within a then-radical cantilever-style mono-shock swingarm which, at first glance, looked like a rigid. But with just 51hp on tap, it was maybe a little underdone in terms of grunt. The XV1000 (XV920 in the US and some other markets) released alongside it was more conventionally styled as an all-rounder and was chain-driven, although still with the rigid-look mono-shock rear. The low-revving but torquey 75-degree V-twin made 69hp at 6500rpm (65hp for the 920) and some commentators likened it…

HOG SLAYER

Retrobike|Issue 35

Original Isn’t Always Best

THE two big motorcycle events of the early 1980s were the Castrol Six-Hour Race and the Easter meeting at Mount Panorama, the premier race of which was the 81-lap Arai 500. In 1982, the bikes to beat at Bathurst were Rob Phillis, Mick Cole and John Pace on 1100 Suzuki superbikes, and Andrew Johnson and Greg Pretty on Team Honda CB1100RCs. Kiwi Ken McIntosh had built a radical tubular chassis to house a Yoshimura GS1000 superbike engine that Kiwi racer Rodger Freeth had acquired. It contained the engine as a stressed member, with a perimeter-style mainframe going around the outside of the engine to connect the steering head and swingarm pivot, and was measured as three times stiffer than a production chassis. The combination dominated NZ F1 racing, encouraging Freeth…

HOT WATER BOTTLE

Retrobike|Issue 35

HOT WATER BOTTLE

“THERE ARE LOTS OF GUYS ON GSX-R1000S WHO CAN’T RUN 10.6 SECONDS” BOB Prior first drag-raced a Suzuki GT750L ‘water bottle’ at Castlereagh drag strip in western Sydney in 1974, sponsored by his employer, Northcott Motorcycles, in Blacktown, where Bob worked as a mechanic. “I did a 12.7 (seconds) on it,” he says of his best pass. “I then raced it as an altered and ran 10.7 sec at 123mph in 1977.” He drag-raced other bikes (always Suzukis) until the late 1990s, then switched his attention to salt racing on Lake Gairdner, where he set a new DLRA class record on another GT750 of 136mph in 2001, before bumping it up to 149mph in 2002 on the same bike. (Bob is also the current DLRA record holder at 163mph set…

THE FLYING ’57

Retrobike|Issue 35

THE FLYING ’57

PRETTY much every custom bike builder on the planet has a house style, from Japanese master craftsman Kengo Kimura to US metal wizard Max Hazan and German power duo Diamond Atelier. You could look at any of their bikes and know who built it, generally speaking. This is not a criticism, quite the opposite. I can’t get enough of them, evidenced by multiple features from each of these workshops over the past four years and hopefully many more in the future. If Christian Moretti from Plan B Motorcycles in northern Italy has a house style, it is that he doesn’t have a house style, nor does he choose to follow the accepted custom classifications. We’ve also featured a few of Christian’s bikes over the years, all of them totally different.…

LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE

Retrobike|Issue 35

LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE

WHAT started as an underground custom styling trend is now so mainstream that even major motorcycle manufacturers like Triumph, Ducati and BMW are in on the act. 1960s-style scramblers feature in all their new-model line-ups, and it won’t be long before all the others follow suit. What’s cool about that? Not much! Time for something new! Enter Rémi Reguin, proprietor of Baak Motocyclettes in Lyon in eastern France, an experienced and accomplished trials rider as well as a successful custom bike builder. Established in 2012, Baak specialises in turning brand-new Triumph twins, BMW RnineTs, Moto Guzzis and Royal Enfields into bobbers, trackers, scramblers and occasionally cafe racers, and selling them across Europe for big bucks with full manufacturer’s warranty. They also sell kits and individual bolt-on parts all over the…

CUTTING LOOSE

Retrobike|Issue 35

CUTTING LOOSE

RIDING bikes in the 1970s was pretty cool. Catch up with some mates a few days in advance (no mobile phones or internet), organise a meeting place (usually someone’s house) and head off on a ride on your favourite roads. There was less traffi c and the authorities hadn’t become the fun police, at least not to the same extent as today. If you did encounter the boys in blue and weren’t doing anything too outrageous, then you either received a stern warning about safety and being responsible, or a ticket, more often than not with a few km/h knocked off your actual speed. Since then technology — both in terms of safety and performance — has improved to make bikes better and riding safer, but along the way some…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Retro Specs

ENGINE Air-cooled four-stroke inline triple; 120-degree crank; OHV, two per cylinder; 67 x 70mm for 741cc; 9.0:1 comp; 3 x 26mm Amal Premier carburettors; Tri-Spark electronic ignition; dry sump; Viking headers; triple-row primary chain to dry Norman Hyde single-plate clutch; five-speed gearbox; chain final drive; 58hp @ 7250rpm (stock) CHASSIS Twin-loop tubular-steel mainframe with single front downtube; modified sub-frame; telescopic forks, Lockheed racing front brake with under-tank master cylinder; twin-shock swingarm with conical drum brake; alloy rims laced with stainless spokes BODYWORK Chopped fuel tank; fabricated seat unit; hand-applied graphics; Motogadget speedo/ tacho BEST Rare modified Trident, tastefully done NOT SO GREAT Thin on the ground…

LIFE’S A BEACH

Retrobike|Issue 35

LIFE’S A BEACH

AFTER two years of the best blue-sky weather the mid-north coast of NSW can offer, the heavens opened for the third annual Rattletrap festival on the beach at Crowdy Head, north of Taree, in May. Heavy showers lashed the event all morning, then tapered off in the afternoon. All the action is centred either side of low tide, so it was all done and dusted by three in the afternoon, at which time the clouds promptly parted as if on cue and the sun finally came out. Rattletrap is primarily an event for early hot rods and jalopies, the majority powered by side-valve ‘four bangers’ and flathead Ford V8s, but motorcycles have also been part of the mix from the get-go. Organised by Sydney’s Drag-Ens Hot Rod Club, it is…

Retrobike|Issue 35

Retro Specs

ENGINE Air-cooled two-stroke triple with 120-degree crank; piston-controlled intake ports; 60 x 58.8mm for 498cc; auto-lube oil injection; 6.8:1 comp; 3 x 28mm Mikuni carburettors; CDI ignition; All Speed (UK) expansion chambers; five-speed gearbox and chain final drive; 60hp @ 7500rpm (stock) CHASSIS Twin-loop tubular steel mainframe with braced steering head and cut-down seat sub-frame; modified FZ750 forks, single twin-piston front brake; twin-shock alloy swingarm, with Icon spring/ damper units and sls drum; Akront rims, Continental tyres BODYWORK Bultaco TSS replica fibreglass tank, modified to fit; custom oil tank and seat; Acewell speedo/ tacho; fabrication, assembly and paint by Knight’s Garage Australia BEST Quirky original romantic fun idea, finished to a high standard NOT SO GREAT Not sure about the fairing, but handy for Orange winters!…

THE FLYING ANZANI

Retrobike|Issue 35

THE FLYING ANZANI

LINDSAY Urquhart is a legend of Australian motorcycling. A successful local sidecar racer and constructor from the late 1950s, who also enjoyed overseas success, Lindsay is an innovative engineer who, amongst other things, built the world’s first small-wheeled ‘kneeler’ in the 1960s. He was also the first anywhere to build a racing sidecar chassis to house Honda’s CB750 in 1969, with BSA’s Rocket 3 and Kawasaki’s H2 following in quick succession. But this is not a story about sidecars. Lindsay likes his solos too, and the rarer, the better. Inspired by bikes he couldn’t afford or were otherwise unobtainable, Lindsay realised he had the skills to make his own and so he did, starting with a pair of early AJS racers and later a posse of eight-valve Indian Altoonas and…

Retrobike|Issue 35

HERE’S TO COUNTRY PUBS

IF YOU like to get out of town for a night or two and prefer to stay at pubs rather than motels, join the club. I love country pubs, or at least some of them. The friendly ones. I’m not knocking motels — my wife loves them and won’t go near a pub — but when I’m on my own or with mates on our bikes, I prefer pubs. Sure, camping produces some incredible memories (both good and bad, with the weather gods usually deciding which one it’s going to be) and I’ve spent many great nights by a campfire, but this time ’round I’m here to tell you about one country pub welcome that still takes the cake, literally. My mates and I have favourite pubs all around the…

HERE’S TO COUNTRY PUBS