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I’m a great fan of Old Bike Mart, and particularly enjoy the ‘mystery bike’ items. Here is a shot of my parents looking very fashionable one day around 1935 on their mystery motorcycle. They lived in Caithness, which tallies with the registration, but what is the make and model of the very smart machine? Hugh…

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Friends are wonderful – including those you might not actually have met. Readers may recall that I bought a pair of 1957 Moto Guzzi Lodolas for restoration which were featured in ‘Unearthed’ in an autumn issue of OBM. One of those bikes is now a healthy runner thanks to a friend I had not met,…

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In reply to Mr Fred Dawes’ letter about the overhead-camshaft Royal Enfield in OBM (July), the answer lies here. In those far-off days I always looked for Cyril May’s magazines because they had such good photos. I’ve been a reader of OBM from the year dot, so keep it up – it’s brilliant in its…

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Having trouble starting your Goldie or Thruxton? Is that Super Rocket getting a little hard to push around? What we need is something that has an authentic classic look to it and which is fairly light, with electric starting and good lights, proper oil filtration and good brakes, and with lots of aluminium and chrome…

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A few issues ago you asked for images of couples who were still together on bikes after many years, and these photos of my long-suffering wife Jackie and me were taken in 1966 at Little Dial Farm near Wymondham in Norfolk, where my best mate lived. The bike was a 1954 Triumph Thunderbird with coil…

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After reading about the auction of the Heartbeat police Francis-Barnett in the last issue, please find attached pictures of a real Francis-Barnett patrol motorcycle. It’s a 1964 Cruiser 89 250cc twin that was first registered as a black and white Police Twin at Northallerton, North Yorkshire, on April 8, 1964, but it’s been around the…

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In the June OBM ‘Pete’s Prattle’ discussed an important matter – the decline of riding numbers. It’s a subject that is on everyone’s lips at present, and clubs, organisers, riders and the press all mention the ever-mounting problem. If we have too few riders, there can be no events, and that means the eventual atrophy…

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Reading about how the Francis-Barnett pre-dated all trail bikes (OBM April) took me back to 1953, when the specification for the 197cc Falcon trials bike listed a ‘four-inch’ rear tyre and a four-speed gearbox. Before this, the general view was that two-stroke bikes of 122 and 197cc would have only the capability to pull a…

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