Features

John McCrink tells of the acquisition and rebuilding of his beautiful 1956 500 ZB34 BSA Gold Star scrambler that is now road-legal for green lane riding and events such as the Beamish Trophy Trial. I bought my ‘Goldie’ about three years ago from a fellow club member who’d enjoyed racing with the Scottish Classic Scrambles…

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Richard Thomasson describes the evolution of the Ariel Owners’ Motor Cycle Club, which was formed at London’s Ace Cafe in 1951 and is still going strong. At a time when Ariel was busily producing its distinctive range of four-stroke motorcycles at its long-established home in Selly Oak, Birmingham, the Ariel Owners’ Motor Cycle Club was…

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Mick Payne considers the links between Swallow sidecars and Jaguar cars as Team Katy makes a brief foray into central Wales. Team Katy recently spent a few days riding the sidecar outfit around central Wales, staying at Radnor Revivals which is run by a bike-mad family (see page 16). Tim also has an engineering business…

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Nigel Darken tells the story of the ‘Tour de Lard’ – a madcap idea involving two motorcycle combinations and three very secondhand Reliant three-wheelers that raised no less than £27,000 for charity. Reading an article in a classic bike magazine about the ‘interesting’ aspects of sidecar handling prompts me to tell the tale of the…

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Well-built and innovative, the West Midlands-manufactured DMW motorcycles were among the most sought-after lightweights of their day, as these Mortons Archive photos show. Despite DMW’s relatively brief period in serious motorcycle production, the firm that was founded in Wolverhampton by Leslie Dawson in 1940 was innovative and dabbled in everything from trials, scrambles and road…

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Alan Turner tells of a very special reunion at Stafford when, thanks to Holland’s Ferry Brouwer, Des Heckle was reunited with his record-breaking 250cc Yamaha TD1C sprint bike of 46 years ago. While much was taking place at April’s Carole Nash Classic MotorCycle Show at Stafford, away from the crowds a very low-profile meeting finally…

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Electric starter? What electric starter? Pete Kelly visits Steve McFarlane, of SRM Engineering fame, in Cardiff to fully appreciate the huge amount of skill and dedication that went into his patented design for an electric starter for swinging-arm A7 and A10 BSA twins. Once Steve McFarlane had set his heart on manufacturing an electric-start mechanism…

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An association with Manchester spanning over 100 years will come to an end this September when Dot Motorcycles Ltd ceases trading from its 1912 premises in Ellesmere Street. We delve into Mortons’ Archive to give some idea of the surprising variety of road and sporting machinery – all quite Devoid of Trouble – that the…

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Piers Kurrein from Harrogate, who had a lovely Norman B2CS trials bike on show at The Girder Fork & Classic Motorcycle Club’s Big Bike Sunday at Skipton on June 26, tells OBM about its history and long restoration. While studying industrial design at Leeds Polytechnic in 1974, I discovered a Norman B2CS trials bike in…

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With quality, performance and excellent design apparent in every detail, the 350cc Morini V-twins bore comparison with any Japanese motorcycle – but when the Italian firm upped the capacity to 500cc, it never quite managed to produce the right machine, writes Steve Cooper. Sometimes you jump on a bike, ride it all day and then…

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