Features

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…

Continue reading »

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…

Continue reading »

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…

Continue reading »

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…

Continue reading »

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…

Continue reading »

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…

Continue reading »

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’…

Continue reading »

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…

Continue reading »

The words ‘Popular’ and ‘Universal’ were once commonly used to describe a car, motorcycle or bicycle manufacturer’s cheap and cheerful bottom-of-the-range models. In 1962 Excelsior went a step further by offering its three-speed 150cc Universal in a box so that the customer could assemble it himself and thus avoid the payment of purchase tax, writes…

Continue reading »

With the days of bottomless sources of cheap Japanese parts for classic machines now well and truly over, Steve Cooper brings this thought-provoking article. When the classic Japanese scene really took off in the late 1980s, restorers didn’t know just how lucky they were. Pretty much anything they needed for their mouldering project was on…

Continue reading »