Table of contents for Issue 331 in Motorcycle Trader

“Mate, don’t cry poor when there’s a grand’s worth of ink on your arm” The proliferation of the internet might have pushed some of the ‘Trader’ name of this mag out into the digital sphere, but there’s still plenty of wheeling and dealing that goes on around here. In addition to Guido succumbing to my alluring finds – twice – there’s also the matter of my mate’s very pretty Honda GB500. It was supposed to be here at HQ briefly (between house moves and due to a temporary lack of shed space with Pat’s other bikes), but it’s been more than 12 months and counting. Pat finally pulled his finger out and advertised it, which means potential buyers have to come here to kick its tyres. That also means I…

RACE ONE: 1 JEREMY MCWILLIAMS, UK, 2 DAVID JOHNSON, AUS, 3 GLEN RICHARDS, UK, 4 JASON PRIDMORE, USA, 5 PAUL BYRNE, AUS, 6 TROY CORSER, AUS, 7 DANIEL LINFOOT, UK, 8 JAKE ZEMKE, USA, 9 PETER HICKMAN, UK, 10 STEVE MARTIN, AUS RACE TWO: 1 JOHNSON, 2 RICHARDS, 3 MCWILLIAMS, 4 PRIDMORE, 5 COLIN EDWARDS, USA, 6 CORSER, 7 BEAU BEATON, AUS, 8 ZEMKE, 9 MARTIN, 10 LINFOOT RACE THREE: 1 JOHNSON, 2 MCWILLIAMS, 3 BYRNE, 4 RICHARDS, 5 LINFOOT, 6 BEATON, 7 HICKMAN, 8 CORSER, 9 MICHAEL RUTTER, UK, 10 EDWARDS RACE FOUR: 1 MCWILLIAMS, 2 JOHNSON, 3 HICKMAN, 4 LINFOOT, 5 CORSER, 6 BYRNE, 7 SHAWN GILES, AUS, 8 RUTTER, 9 MARTIN, 10 CRAIG DITCHBURN, UK KEN WOOTTON TROPHY 1. JOHNSON 158 2. MCWILLIAMS 157 3. CORSER 139…

BRING BACK THE NOD Can anyone tell me why some motorcyclists don’t nod back? I’ve been riding for 20 years and lately I’ve noticed a significant drop in the number of nodders. Nodding is a show of solidarity and if someone goes out of their way to say you’re all right, you shouldn’t be a nob – you should nod back. It seems Harley riders are the worst offenders. Most don’t nod to anyone, even each other. But there is also a strange phenomenon whereby riders of a certain class of bikes don’t nod to riders of another class. For example, a sportsbike rider often won’t nod to an adventure bike rider. Weird. Anyway, I’m going to keep nodding to everyone, even scooter riders, not because I need acceptance from…

“You can’t keep coming home at 3am singing sea shanties at the top of your voices. It’s either him or me” “You said he was going to die.” My wife is clearly upset. “He’s been living in our garage for 10 weeks now. Exactly when is he going to die?” I had met him for the first time at the Star Hotel, Macksville, 12 weeks earlier. A few of us were on a ride and we’d checked in for the night. He was also staying there, a solitary, stoic figure at the end of the verandah, drinking by himself and staring at his immaculate, 1969 Triumph Bonneville parked in the street. We became mates immediately and once I heard he was in a relationship with Jimmy Dancer, he didn’t put…

NEW SOUTH WALES CC Bikeworks, Long Jetty Repair centre and tyres Ph (02) 43 339 884 Ballina Motorcycles, Ballina Yamaha, BMW, general service/repairs www.BallinaMotorcycles.com.au Mick Cole Motorcycles, Bega North Honda, Yamaha www.MickColeMotorcycles.com.au Taree Motorcycles, Taree. Honda/agricultural www.TareeMotorcycles.com.au Sydney Motorcycle Wreckers and Workshop, Hornsby Servicing and repairs (older models included) www.SydneyMotorcycleWreckers.com.au Vince Strang Motorcycles, Inverell Suzuki (DR & DR-Z specialist), Honda, Can-Am www.VinceStrangMotorcycles.com.au Cash and Co, St Marys Repair centre and wrecking Ph (02) 9623 3699 WESTERN AUSTRALIA Thunderbike Motorcycles, Bassendean Moto Guzzi sales and service www.ThunderBikes.com.au Munich Motorcycles, Myaree BMW parts www.MunichMotorcycles.com.au BM Bikes, Myaree BMW service and repair www.BMBikes.com.au Planet Honda, Melville www.PlanetHonda.com.au QUEENSLAND The BM Shop, Stafford, Brisbane. BMW parts, accessories, repair, used bikes www.BMShop.com.au RJ’s BMW Motorcycle Service, Cunungra BMW service, repairs, accessories Ph (07) 5543 5962…

Sod editor Harris. In the past six months, he’s somehow managed to empty my wallet faster than anyone other than Bill Gates could refill it. First there was the ZX-10 he put me on to, and very nice it was too. Then this. Another reader email turns up, which he flick-passes and slithers into my phone. It’s a bloke selling a Kawasaki GPz900R A1 and it looks very original and very bloody tidy. Dammit. It’s $8500 and I honestly have no idea what a good one is worth, simply because they don’t appear on the market in any quantity, least of all with the original exhaust system in place. So I consult the brains trust, which includes Spannerman et al and is like asking Dracula if fangs are a good…

“Blessed are they who believe without seeing” For those of you who’ve been in touch asking about buying a bike in England via eBay, I counsel caution. Yes, I know it’s the first time you’ve ever seen the word ‘caution’ in this column but we’re talking about substantial sums of money here and a completely new way of getting rid of it. Riders over the age of 50 reading this find the whole concept of online bike-buying a thing of shocking wonder. If they wanted to buy a bike when they were 18, they bought the Saturday edition of the local paper and went to the ‘Motorcycles’ section of the classifieds. If it was a paper, like the Sydney Morning Herald, there might have been a couple of pages of…

1. In the last issue, Spanner and Strooth used two pages to talk about something other than motorcycling (and somehow made it entertaining). They discussed a). The rising prominence of straight males in ballet. b). Three quick and easy meals you can make with creamed corn; c). Lawnmowers. 2. In Stewart Howard’s ‘Your Story’, what unexpectedly happened during a desert ride? a). Campers told him to piss off; b). He was drugged and possibly molested; c). A girl named Freedom gave him a topless massage; d). All of the above. 3. Where did Groff test-ride RE’s Himalayan? a). Tibet; b). India; c). Bethanga? 4. In Guy Allen’s ‘Untouchables’ feature, which bike could he not helping thinking that, if it were human, “it would be sitting on the verandah of a…

A 67-year-old bike that smashed Australia’s speed record in 1953 has destroyed another record: it’s now the most expensive ever sold at auction. The 1951 Vincent Black Lightning was bought by an Australian businessman for $US929,000 (about $A1,180,000) in Los Vegas recently, beating the previous record of $US775,000 paid for a 1915 Cyclone once owned by Steve McQueen. To put that into perspective, you could buy about 41 brand-new Ducati V4 Panigales (see page 14) for the price of the Vincent, which is roughly the same age as Spannerman. Built by special order and imported into Australia by Tony McAlpine, the Vincent – number 7305 – is one of just 30 Black Lightnings from the Stevenage, England factory, which built them from 1948 to 1952. Back then, it was the…

WHAT A COX-UP! When Carl Cox Motorsport rider Michael Neeves suffered an engine failure, the superstar DJ himself bought a Trevor Birrellengined Katana he saw for sale in the pits and gave it to Neeves to race. But not before Brian Browne of TT Motorcycles (left) and the crew worked their magic on it. MICHAEL RUTTER Team UK’s Michael Rutter had a shocker of a Phillip Island debut. In race one a coil was shorting out on the frame, sending megavolts through his arms and legs. GIACOMO AGOSTINI Giacomo Agostini brought four famous MV Agustas out from Italy. The 75-year-old legend paraded his favourite MV, the original four-cylinder 350cc machine of his 1972 and ’73 titles. “I like people to hear the music of the engine,” he said.…

As I wade into this shark-infested pool, I think about all the times I’ve been stranded on bikes. All categories have culprits from commuters to superbikes. There was the time the Honda 500 Turbo blew up on the Nullarbor Plain; the holed pistons in a variety of two-strokes; the building evacuation when my Suzuki GS1000G emptied the fuel tank via the carburettors onto the floor of the underground car park; the exploding third gear on the Honda 50; the destroyed clutch on the Honda VF750F during performance testing at a remote airstrip – I’ve been alive a long time and it’s a very long list. It’s a fair question to ask if it was all the bike’s fault and what role rider abuse played in the breakdowns. An even better…

The news was not encouraging. “It’s not good, Smith. Your feet will never reach the ground on that thing.” BSA Damien had been studiously observing my so far abortive attempts to mount the Rent-A-Deathmobile GS750. “Give me a chance, old sport!” I was desperate to succeed in the then-current endeavour in order that we could Wallop The Thoroughfare in the direction of the wonderfully debauched and debauching Star Hotel at picturesque Macksville-Upon-Nambucca. I continued to attempt to throw myself onto the then-new Wonder Machine Of The Seventies whilst also making a valiant (neither the Prince nor the Chrysler product) effort to avoid throwing either said machine or my brekky onto the deck. The major problem was a physical deficiency of mine, which acted as an actual, physical restraint on my…

Stan Mucha’s 1926 Indian Altoona replica featured in MT #316. Ross and Mucha (right) have been regular rivals. “Stan’s a good bloke, I like him, even though he rides the enemy,” Ross says. “He’s a funny prick. On his first race, he got past me, but he was stuck in second so I past him. In the pits he came in and said, ‘You only just got me!’ I thought, ‘Jeez, he’s pretty competitive.’ I’m not really like that. “I helped him fix his gear lever and he just stared at me and said, ‘I might beat you now.’ ‘Yeah, Stan, that’s correct.’ And he did, and I’m okay with that. “At a Broadford race meet, my bike was going a bit better in second gear than Stan’s Indian 741,…

How ironic that ‘The Unreliables’ story on page 38 of this issue should have an introduction that addresses a lack of pre-production testing of modern bikes. To quote, “…many new bikes are underdone when released and problems emerge on the road rather than on the development bench like they used to.” It’s the way of capitalism that competitive pressure to get new models onto the showroom floor now gets in the way of engineering integrity. The outsourcing of bike components doesn’t help, either. A ‘finished’ bike in 2018 may have components from 50 different manufacturers and the integrity and fit of the products can’t adequately be tested until the bike is complete. Sometimes these components fit well but end up fighting with each other when the bike actually rolls down…

“The Honda made nice four-strokey noises but went like a wet fart” Have you lived so long you can’t remember the name of the bike in your photo? I’ve got a feeling the bike pictured is a Suzuki Hustler, but I can’t bloody remember. Might have to ring Groff... It would have been maybe 1971 or ’72. I’m guessing that because I might not remember much but I do remember the name of the girl in the photo. I’m not telling you, not that it’d matter – she’d be a granny by now. Hopefully none of her grandkids look like me. Damn she was cute. Where were we? I have mentioned the ’70s and a lack of memory rather than a decayed mental state, haven’t I? Okay, so sometime in…

Harley-Davidson’s electric cruiser is charged to hit Australian showrooms by mid-next year despite a risky outlook for local demand. The announcement comes amid a motorcycle demand slump in the US and Australia, and despite California firm Zero Motorcycle’s exit from the Asia-Pacific market last year, citing an inability “to build an economically viable business model”. The LiveWire concept, H-D’s first electric bike, was unveiled four years ago, with a three-phase AC electric induction motor producing 55kW (74hp) at 8000rpm and a peak torque of about 70Nm. This gave the bike a range of about 80km and a claimed 0-100km/h time of almost four seconds. For your reference, Zero’s SR (no longer available in Australia) claims the same speed in just over three seconds and has a range of more than…

Ducati has announced the prices of its new V4 Panigale range and the entry-level one is just $1000 dearer that the outgoing twin, at $28,990 (plus on-road costs). The new three-tier price list also includes the Panigale V4 S at $37,490 and the range-topping Panigale V4 Special, which sets the bar for mass-produced Ducatis at a new high, at $59,990. What do you get for your coin? The base model features Ducati’s latest electronics, a five-inch TFT dash, Brembo brakes and fully adjustable Sachs and Showa suspension. The V4 S gets the same but with semi-active Ohlins suspension, an Ohlins steering damper, forged aluminium wheels, cast-magnesium alloy subframe and a lighter lithium-ion battery. The range-topping V4 Special, meanwhile, gets the Ohlins suspension but also Ducati’s data analyser with GPS, a…

COLIN EDWARDS “Now I’m retired I’ve got more jobs than I know what to do with,” said Colin Edwards, explaining how the timing of the Phillip Island event worked out for him. As well as running his Texas Tornado Boot Camp near Houston, US, Edwards has race commentating duties and is also a Yamaha MotoGP test rider. BEAU BEATON After a huge weekend of historic competition, Beau Beaton collected the Phil Irving Memorial Trophy for the most points accumulated by a competitor outside International Challenge races. He won both the Unlimited Post Classic class and Forgotten Era Sidecars (with Noel Beare) on Irving-Vincents. DAVE JOHNSON Dave Johnson first rode the Tom Dermody Motorsport XR69 Suzuki at the Island Classic in 2011. “It’s a different bike now,” he said, pointing out…

Established in 1911, Benelli is considered a brand of national heritage according to Italian law, which essentially means it must remain in Italy. Its company headquarters are still located in Pesaro on the Adriatic coast, 160km south east of Bologna. Benelli’s high-performance sports and naked bikes of yore (such as the Tornado and TnT899 and 1130 models) were discontinued long ago while it turned its attention to small-capacity models for emerging and mature markets. Its current model line-up includes the BN 302 naked bike ($5690) and the recently launched TnT125 mini bike ($3250). Benelli was purchased by Chinese automotive giant Qiang Jiang (QJ) in 2005, 30 per cent of which was bought in 2016 by another Chinese giant –Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. Geely owns Volvo Cars, the London EV Company,…

Handshifting is a slow process compared with footshifting the Brit bikes, which have four speeds to click through. Some handshift riders gear their three-speeders down to make no changes, particularly for the undulating corners of Broadford where every gear change costs a second. So if you can cut out three of those... “I use the gear changes as an advantage. Our races are with other classes, such as the 125s, and they can get in the way through corners. One of my strategies is to deliberately change down through a corner, which wobbles the bike off line a bit, and they get scared shitless. By making yourself a bit bigger on the track they stay out of the way. “Missing a gear is probably one of the biggest threats when…

BMW C-SERIES: C650 SPORT/C650GT. F-SERIES: F 700 GS; F 800 GS; ADVENTURE; R NINE T SCRAMBLER PROBLEM: The indicator light that warns of an engine malfunction is not being activated when a fault occurs. It means you could continue riding when a problem has occurred with the potential of engine damage and/or crashing. ACTION: Contact your local BMW dealer or call the BMW Group Customer Interaction Centre on 1800 813 299 to arrange an inspection and repair. SPANNER SAYS: I know BMW owners who tape over parts of the instrument panel so they’re not distracted by all the warning lights flashing and the bike continues to function, but this is certainly worth having checked if you own an affected bike. APRILIA RSV4 1000 AND TUONO 1100 (2015-17) PROBLEM: The front…

Pietro Laverda founded the company in 1873 in the northern Italian town of Breganze to manufacture agricultural machinery, including wine and olive presses. By the 1970s Laverda was Italy’s leading manufacturer of agricultural machinery, specialising in combine harvesters and employing 1500 workers. It was one of Pietro’s grandsons, Francesco, who decided to experiment with motorcycles. In 1948 he built a 74cc four-stroke engine and assembled a complete motorcycle at home in his spare time. During the early 1950s, the 75 and 100cc Laverda singles dominated their classes in the Milano-Taranto and Moto Giro road races. Although Aprilia bought Laverda, intending to re-launch the company in 2003, as Aprilia was later sold to Piaggio this hasn’t eventuated.…

“They reckon you can get 230hp” What’s that proverb about idle hands doing the devil’s work? I think that’s where we’re heading. There we were minding our own business when I spotted a Honda CB350F (that’s the four-cylinder version from circa-1974) for sale. It was a nice-looking example and the price of around $7500 seemed okay. So I popped it up on my Facebook feed (@MotorcycleInvestor). Normally I’d be tempted, but I saw a clean 1981 Kawasaki GPz1100 for about the same money, which for me had a bit more appeal. It was all academic, really, as there’s no money in the slush fund. Then auld mate Alec Simpson popped up on Faceplant, mentioning that he did a story ages ago on a supercharged CB350F. Now that would have been…

“I went on to win four races from four starts” It’s been three long years since Team Australia tasted victory at the AMCN International Island Classic, but this year the drought was broken. Since its inception in 2004, the Classic has become a major event on the racing calendar for fans of modern and classic racing. The highlight of the weekend for me was the International challenge. This began as a classic Australia versus UK grudge match but NZ and the US have since joined. In 2015, the UK team managed to take the trophy from Australia, and they’ve done a brilliant job of holding onto it. This year’s UK team was again led by Jeremy McWilliams. The ex-MotoGP racer may be 53, but he’s still as hungry as ever…