Features

When you buy a spare engine for a classic bike, you’re never sure about its internal condition – but when Mark Hiscox of Cambridge pulled from his garage shelf a 1954 Ariel Huntmaster engine that he’d bought last year, he found a rolled-up piece of paper telling exactly what work had been done to it…

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Once upon a time, breakdown help was more of a club affair than merely an insurance scheme with multiple marketing spin-offs run by giant companies. Photos from the Mortons Archive tell the story of the good old days, when the sidecar-mounted patrolmen of the RAC and AA were seen as the knights of the road.…

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Graham Overd tells of a lifetime of motorcycling memories, from keeping a stock of box sidecars for sixteeners taking the bigger bike, three-wheel ‘L’ plate option to building off-road specials and proudly riding a succession of Triumphs on the road. In February, Old Bike Mart ran a story about a reader who bought his first…

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Ingenious, versatile and affordable, Motolug collapsible motorcycle trailers are designed and manufactured at the Cotswold Business Village at Moreton in Marsh, Gloucestershire. Founded in 2007, the business offers a unique range of UK and internationally patented EC Whole Vehicle Type-Approved trailers whose key design criteria have resulted in products that can be easily and quickly…

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Mick Payne concludes his series about getting into sidecar riding by looking at a bargain second-hand outfit with great possibilities. The word serendipity, first coined by Horace Walpole in 1754, is said to be one of the most difficult words in English to put a meaning to, but it sums up the subject of this…

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Steve Cooper explains why there’s never been a better time to buy a middleweight Japanese classic. As he stepped off his Panigale, the guy in the Ducati-logoed leathers said: “That’s a nice wee bike.” He was acknowledging a Yamaha XSR700, a modern retro based around a high-tech twin with all the current electronic gizmos and…

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Pete Kelly looks back to the motorcycle styling practices that led to the ‘bathtub’ era of the late 1950s and early 60s. Putting on my steam railway hat for a brief moment, in Victorian times many express passenger locomotives would have the top portions of their driving wheels hidden behind intricate splashers; safety valves would…

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Mick Payne looks at the pros and cons of ‘chairing up’ a motorcycle you already own rather than buying a whole new outfit in one go. The theme of last month’s column was how to buy a ready-made motorcycle and sidecar – but this isn’t at all the most popular option. “We assemble a lot…

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Chris Dickinson recalls a hectic scramble to get his Suzuki GT185 back on to the road after a little-end bearing disintegrated as he rode home for the weekend from a summer job at RAF Marham. Although he was just 17, dogged determination ensured that he was back at work on the Monday morning. Pete Stevens’…

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Danish Old Bike Mart reader Knud Rasmussen, otherwise known as ‘Velo Knud’, tells of his passion for Velocette motorcycles which began with the sight and sound of a postman’s 1946 MAC. It was our country postman who first aroused my interest in Velocette motorcycles when I was 12 years old in 1950. He came to…

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