From The Archive

Mick Payne brings some sound advice about keeping your bike in one piece as he revisits stainless steel nut and bolt manufacturer D Middleton & Son. Until I retired, I worked as an engineering designer, apprenticed at bearing manufacturer SKF and finally working on the propulsion systems of satellites. The common denominator of much of…

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Les Orme tells how, many years after the event, he managed to return the favour to a Norton Navigator that had rescued him from a breakdown crisis in France. My motorcycling days started in 1959, at the age of 15, when friends Keith Pitcher, Pete Evans and I bought an old non-running rigid rear-end BSA…

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Ted Bemand concludes the report on his National Autocycle and Cyclemotor Club branch’s foray into Northern Ireland. Patrick McAlister became a wheelchair user following an accident in his teens, but that didn’t stop him enjoying life to the full. Sadly, at 44 he traded in his wheels for wings, and now (hopefully) flies with the…

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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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Almost 500 riders took part in the Vintage Motor Cycle Club’s 68th Banbury Run, open only to VMCC members on pre-1931 machines, on Sunday, June 19 – down a little on the 600 or so during the halcyon days of a few years ago, but still living up to the event’s tag of ‘the largest…

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Mick Payne looks back at the long history of the Watsonian Squire Palma range of sidecars, which were innovative at the time of their introduction and remain available to this day. I mentioned last time that our editor, Pete, had offered his BMW R100RT and Watsonian Palma to Kate and I on long-term test. The…

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The uncanny flexibility of the Ariel Square Fours, from the 497cc and 597cc ‘cammies’ to the final pushrod-operated 997cc Mk. 2, always amazed those fortunate enough to road test these four-pot classics, as these excerpts from our archive bound volumes show. All images: Mortons Archive www.mortonsarchive.com Last month, starting with the first published road test…

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Steve Cooper strays from the Japanese path once more as he examines the reasons why Ducati’s controversial ultra-short-stroke parallel twins were never going to succeed amid motorcyclists’ ever-changing expectations of the 1970s. Think of Ducati and you’ll be conjuring up images of rorty V-twins and lusty singles. Both will bellow in their own inimitable way,…

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Old Bike Mart meets Ian Savage, manager of the VOC Spares Company Limited in Kettering, to learn how the imaginative joint venture sources and markets the spare parts, club regalia and even complete second-hand Vincent motorcycles. Although the VOC Spares Co Ltd was set up by the Vincent Owners’ Club in 1975 to ensure a…

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Mick Payne visits a Yorkshire bootmaker with a proud tradition, after the very comfortable and practical boots they made for him 20 years ago were swiped from under his nose. During our recent Team Katy charity trip, after I’d left my boots outside the tent to air a bit, some light-fingered Herbert decided he’d like…

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