Letters

Reading Pete Kelly’s ‘Skimming Flatties’ feature, and his comments on Geoff Duke’s BMW’s small megaphone sound took me back to 1963/4. At that time I worked as a mechanic at Henleys, Star Inn in Oldham, at the main junction as you came off the Pennines in the centre of Oldham (there was no M62 then).…

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I have been an OBM subscriber for many years, but was taken aback to read ‘Jack Plowright Motorcycles’ in large print on your letters page in the June edition. I was born and grew up in Trowbridge and bought my first two bikes from Plowrights in Mill Street, so I was very interested to read…

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Jack was a gentleman, very ‘old school’. The motorcycle shop was the bigger of two in Trowbridge though I have no photographs of it. The lads used to go in there. I remember one ordering a Velocette Thruxton but it never materialised so he bought a 650SS instead which served him well. I used to…

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Being unable to get out on my Velo recently, l was looking at some of the old negatives l have of the Sixties motor bike races. With the Classic TT/Manx Grand Prix now being announced as cancelled, l thought the this photo of Barregarrow might be of interest. It was taken during an early 1960s…

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Whilst reading your article ‘Images from the past’ in this month’s OBM, I was pleasantly surprised to see my dad’s old Velocette featured in one of the photos. I can hopefully shine some light on the bike and rider No. 71. First of all, the bike is a 1935 Velocette 500cc MSS, originally purchased by…

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I thought your readers may be interested to see these pictures, taken 50 years ago, in August 1970. I graduated from teenage bicycle-rebuilding to the joys of motorcycle ownership when, at the age of 15, I bought a wreck of a Francis-Barnett Kestrel for £5 from a mate. My parents weren’t happy about this but…

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Hunting through my study in the search for an item I never found, I came across this photograph (right). In the 1980s I was a founder member of the motorcycle section of Bedfordshire Police Sports & Social Club and ran this until my retirement in 2004. We undertook many activities, too numerous to list herein, (though…

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In reply to Jamie Allium’s letter in OBM May 2020 regarding Chic Parr. In my late teens and back in the late ’60s, I bought a battered old Velocette MAC GPP 201, which had had numerous owners around the town. I got it cheap from one of my mates, after he had crashed it with…

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Further to the letter from Tony Colman about his Kawasaki Z200 in issue 420. His letter was a reminder of my own experience. I have, over the years, had an eclectic mix of bikes, starting off on a D7 Bantam and have had a good mix of British, Japanese, Indian, German and Italian machines. I…

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This may be a useful company to mention, who I dealt with a week ago. Finding a disappointing leak on my Honda VT 500 petrol tank (June issue) which could be soldered, I searched the web and found CPC (at the website www.cpc.co.uk) in Preston, while looking for a large 200 watt soldering iron. To…

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