Sam Hewitt

Back in the ’60s Tony Dunnell’s pride and joy was a BSA Shooting Star but unfortunately he crashed it. The front end was pretty well wrecked but Tony acquired a complete front end from a Gold Star plus other Goldie goodies. These were duly transferred to the Shooting Star by Tony himself – nothing unusual…

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Here are three photos which might be of interest to Old Bike Mart readers – the first two of which are my father in 1921 with his Rudge Multi, and a photo of it on its own. My father worked at the National Physical Laboratory in the meteorology department and, because of that, he was…

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I am asking the knowledgeable readers of OBM if anybody has any info on a motorcycle shop in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire owned by Chic Parr? My Google searches have resulted in zero! As a youth in the mid-Sixties I am as guilty as the rest for the demise of the British bike industry as choosing…

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It’s not exactly my first bike, nor my last, but one of my early mounts – a 1951 Royal Oilfield 350 Bullet before and after a big “coming off”. I received £100 and the scrap from the other party’s insurance, that was more than 12 weeks’ wages for me, a 19 year old, in 1959.…

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I like the ‘My first bike’ articles, it is very interesting to read about readers’ bikes and how they ran them on a shoestring. Here is a photo of my New Imperial Model 30 which is a 1933 250cc, I paid £2 10 shillings when I bought it, or should I say Mother probably paid…

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Like many of my generation in the early days after the war I, Colyn (yes, that is the Cornish spelling) grew up with various motorcycles – an ex-War Department 125cc James and the D1 BSA Bantam in particular. Although my father was a farmer he was also a keen motorcyclist with various old motorcycles lying…

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BKX 197 came to my family in 1959, when my grandmother paid £10 for it so that my brother could come home on weekend passes from RAF Yatesbury in Wiltshire to Littlehampton, Sussex. On fine summer nights he would sleep rough at Stonehenge, when access was free and unhindered. There was never any intention to…

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