Letters

So Arthur Pentney (OBM Letters July) likes his Norton sidevalve solos but not his BSA M20 which was “somewhat heavy and ponderous and lacking cornering ability” – could this be because he was talking of a rigid model with girder forks? Not so the postwar 600cc M21! My plunger one with teles and the wonderful…

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When Colin’s nephew gave me this batch when we worked for a Lincoln company in the 1980s, he had a huge pile of the card-backed prints. I just wonder what happened to them all if they are gems like these! Maybe they will surface sometime. In Part 7 we have a rigid framed Norton Inter,…

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What a great cover photo on your July 2019 issue: London’s Metropolitan police officers on the Noddy Course. When the Met put hundreds of officers on two wheels in the late 1950s, many of them had no motorcycling experience. The two-week Noddy Course at the police’s Hendon Driving School taught them the tips of motorcycling…

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This picture (left) could have been taken in 1948 but was actually taken last month. It shows my 1951 BSA C11 next to Tornado, which was the first steam locomotive built in Britain for 50 years in 2008. Both machines have a connection with Darlington. Tornado, a Peppercorn class loco, was built by enthusiasts in…

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What a great paper OBM is. I look forward to its arrival on my doormat each month. It offers some wonderful insights into what we fringe motorcyclists love doing best: riding, tinkering and occasionally restoring: which brings me neatly on to that subject… I’ve been restoring a wonderful Velocette MAC for a few months now.…

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Regarding the front page photograph of Jim Sandford’s tyre repair in the 1971 ISDT on the Isle of Man. First the people from left to right, on bike number 999, is Ken Heanes, my friend Peter Thomas, then me (Keith Gush), the next is unknown, the next an East German observer, on his knees is…

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I was very interested to read in the May issue of OBM,, Steve Cooper’s article on the remarkable emergency development of the Kawasaki H1 500cc triple. Readers may be interested to recall that at the 1969 TT, an H1 was entered by Read Bros. in the Production Race, ridden by Tony Dunnell, one of the…

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I was reading the letters in the latest OBM and something stirred when I read the letter titled ‘Nothing’s new’. Rummaging through my old motorcycle mags I came across the attached article. By modern standards it doesn’t look very impressive, but… Was this the first commercially produced electric bike?  Keep up the good work. Bill…

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Following the Gold Star vs Thruxton article (June 2019 edition), and my brother (Chris Briston) visiting us last week from the USA, and the June ‘Where are they now?’ letter, I was prompted to write this email. In the early 1960s my brother owned a 350cc Gold Star whose previous owners had been, in sequence,…

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I’ve read in OBM, and other mags, plaintive messages from older riders who are selling bikes because of difficulty with machine weight, especially when lifting on to centre stands. One method suggested by Tony Groves is to build a short ramp from 2” timber planking. Cut a low angle plus scallop at one end to…

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