Features

Was Suzuki’s big TM the final frontier? Steve Cooper goes where no man has gone before to reveal the truth. In late 1969 or early 1970 someone at Suzuki’s Hamamatsu HQ came up with the bright idea of creating a big-bore scrambler that could beat the likes of Yamaha and Kawasaki on the dirt. Moto-X…

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The sidecar has become more of a leisure item in recent years although, as Mick Payne knows, there are still plenty of enthusiasts using them on a daily basis. In the past, sidecar outfits were often considered a workhorse with the bike, frequently a side-valve single, hitched to a family-sized saloon or a utility box.…

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Words: John Nutting Photography: Gary D Chapman, John Nutting Every month our sister title Classic Motorcycle Mechanics features brilliant bikes like this one – Yamaha’s 500cc V4 two-stroke. You want more loveliness like this piece of 1984 utter joy? Then check out the box on the opposite page. It’ll be the best treat you give…

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If there’s one thing that classic motorcycling canteach us, it’s that the passage of time does not always equate with developments and improvements, as Chris Coote tells us. I own a 60-year-old Venom, which I built up from a number of large lumps and is known as my ‘Christmas Velo’ because it was completed and…

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Any of us who have been around motorcycles for any period of time will have some tales to tell of our fellow riders, and Ralph Ridley is certainly no exception… One of the benefits of owning a motorcycle is the way it can open a door to friendships and social activity. An interest in an…

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Pete Kelly raids the Mortons’ Archive once again to discover how the weekly motorcycling press reacted to a brace of 250cc Japanese twins in the early 1960s – Honda’s overhead-camshaft C72 Dream in 1961 and Suzuki’s 246cc T10 two-stroke in 1963. Sixty years ago, the attitude towards Japanese motorcycles – indeed anything Japanese – among…

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Keen to discover whether the heart of England’s motorcycle industry still has plenty to offer, Dave Manning heads to the West Midlands, and finds lots of true British industry. While there are those who bemoan the current apparent lack of British industry, who blame schools for selling off wood and metal-working facilities, who point fingers…

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Over the last few months, Steve Cooper has stomped through Yamaha’s earlier back catalogue of machinery, showing the steep learning curve that the factory covered in those years… Even if the factory had adopted the more logical format of horizontally split crankcases for the seminal 350cc YR1 in 1967 it had persisted with the more…

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Pete Kelly buries himself in the Mortons Motorcycle Archive to learn how the road testers of old viewed the lusty performances of the 998cc Vincent Black Shadow and 692cc Royal Enfield Constellation. This month we’ve taken two British roadburners with completely different specifications and characters as the subject of our Mortons Motorcycle Archive feature –…

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