Table of contents for Issue 42 in Retrobike

SOME bikes hit you straight between the eyes. One glance is all it takes. It’s been a while since a Honda CX500 took our breath away, Queenslander Garth Allison’s bright yellow 1980 model that graced the cover of Retrobike #33. Well, here’s another, built on the other side of the world by Asen Zahariev and his team at Bulgarian custom workshop Tossa R. “THE CX500 SURE WAS A QUIRKY BUGGER, BOTH IN STYLE AND ENGINEERING” Asen describes the donor bike as a 1986 model, and that’s what the rego papers say as that was the year it was first registered, although CX500 production had finished some years earlier. More importantly, it is a second generation ‘Euro’-styled model, introduced from 1982, fitted with twin front discs, upgraded air-assisted anti-dive forks and…

THE intro to this feature is taken directly from The Mint, a book written by Thomas Edward Lawrence in 1928 but not published until 1955, about his life as an aircraftsman in the RAF after WW1. He had been a distinguished army intelligence officer during the war, notably in the Middle East, which formed the basis of his first book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom published in 1926, and earned him the famous sobriquet, Lawrence of Arabia. “THE LAWRENCE IS NAMED AFTER THE MARQUE’S MOST FAMOUS ENDORSEE” In 1922, Lawrence re-enlisted, only this time as a grunt in the air-force under an assumed name to mask his former rank of colonel. This formed the basis of his second book, The Mint, which includes a fantastic chapter on taking his ‘skittish motorbike’,…

MARK Attebery’s other ride is this cool 2009 883 Sportster, like the Halcyon pretty much stock mechanically but radically refinished in a distinctive, original way. True to style, the front mudguard and drive belt guards were removed — what is it about New Yorkers? — and the rear mudguard lowered and bobbed. The tank was raised by three inches, a popular mod for Sportster fans seeking more fuel range, and the stock solo seat replaced with a custom sprung leather saddle from Rich Phillips Bikersaddles in Missouri. Up front, Flanders F4 flat bars on Biltwell risers offer an aggressive stance. Suspension, wheels and brakes are mostly standard, with rear shocks upgraded to multi-adjustable 440-series units from Progressive Suspension. Applying patina to bare metal surfaces is another of Mark Attebery’s extensive…

SELLICKS Beach is an ideal scenario for beach racing with the underlying pebbles providing a solid base for the sand, which firms up and smooths out after each high tide. With this in mind, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the beach has been used for bike and car racing since the earliest days of motoring, with offi cial motorcycle races commencing in the mid-1920s. These were speed trials organised by the Levis Social Club — not for denim-clad hipsters looking for love, but for enthusiast owners of British-built two-stroke Levis motorcycles — on the Australia Day weekend each January. With a break for WWII, the club continued the races until 1957, by which time bike competition was conducted on various circuits around the country with a few more…

CYRIL Pullin was already famous as a motorcycle engineer and racer when he teamed up with the Ascot Motor and Manufacturing Co in Letchworth, north of London, to unveil what he termed ‘The New Wonder Motor Cycle’ at the 1928 London Olympia Show. Futuristic almost beyond comprehension, the Ascot-Pullin Sports Utility was like nothing before it, or for many years after for that matter. Pullin first rose to prominence by winning the 1914 IoM TT on his modified Rudge Multi. After working during the Great War as a marine technician, he then developed with Stanley Groom a 216cc two-stroke single-cylinder engine housed in a cheap-to-build pressed-steel chassis, predating similar builds like the Ariel Leader and (four-stroke) Honda Super Cub by nearly four decades. Despite showing much promise, it and a…

4-STROKE SEMI-SYNTHETIC MOTOR OIL M4 is a 20W50 mineral motor oil for 4-stroke motorcycles. Recommended for older motorcycles, it limits oil consumption and provides optimum engine protection even during prolonged periods of immobilisation of the motorcycle. • Engine protection • Mineral • Optimal lubrication • Specific use • 4-Stroke Semi-Synthetic Motor Oil FOR VINTAGE MOTORCYCLES M4 is suitable for motorcycles with or without integrated gearboxes, with a wet or dry clutch, for air-cooled, single-cylinder or twin-cylinder engines. Recommended for high-mileage motorcycles, M4 guarantees excellent lubrication and protection of the engine and transmission at all temperatures. Its high viscosity improves engine cooling in hot environments (>30°C). INCREASES THE LIFESPAN OF HIGH-MILEAGE MOTORCYCLES Compliant with the JASO MA2 API SJ standards, it offers maximum friction between the clutch discs and ensures perfect…

“THAT’S WHAT I MEAN BY ‘EFFORTLESS’. WE LET THE BIKE DESIGN ITSELF” ROYAL Enfield scored a winner with its new Brit-style 650 vertical twins, the Interceptor and Continental GT. The keenly-priced pair are attracting fans all around the world, including in Vietnam, home to Daryl Villanueva’s Bandit9 custom workshop in Ho Chi Minh City and his sublime take on a 650 GT which he has dubbed the Jaeger. Bandit9 is best known for its EVE series of Honda Cub-powered pocket rockets, two of which we featured last year (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Design, Retrobike #38). An earlier version also starred in the recent exhibition at Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art (page 88, this issue), on loan from the Haas Moto Museum in the US. But Daryl also has…

“I'VE BEEN TRYING TO BUILD SOMETHING LIKE THIS FOR THE LAST 40 YEARS” RIGHTO, hands up who remembers BMW's last foray into the world of cruisers? Thank heavens, I've read so much guff on the new R18 that’d have you believe BM is finally going where no BM has gone before. And that’s not true, they just got it right this time. Or maybe more right. Back in 1997, BMW released the R1200C, possibly the weirdest looking motorcycle since the 1918 Neracar. Like the Neracar, it started with a strange front end — the Telelever — and that was before the styling team laced their lager with magic mushrooms to come up with the oddball Transformer of the cruiser world. Yet the R1200C handled, steered and stopped way better than…

“I’VE NEVER HAD A BREAKDOWN ON THIS BIKE, NOT EVEN A PUNCTURE” THERE is something about the style of Vincent engines that makes them look so good and work so well in other frames that the hybrids become entities in themselves. The most popular is the elegant Norvin, the archetypal café racer based on the Norton Featherbed. Yet equally stylish and improbably functional was the Vindian, a Rapide engine in an Indian Chief chassis that Phil Irving put together in 1949. It worked too. And then there’s the Vincati, a peculiarly Australian invention that took advantage of a time when Ducati V-twins were unreliable and ex-speedway Vincent engines affordable. On paper, the Vincati made as much sense as the Vindian, but once again that magnificent motor looks like it was…

DO you ever dream about motorbikes? Hope you do. The trouble is that there’s a big difference between fantasies and dreams, and in dreams you usually don’t get to choose what you’re riding. In fantasies, you’re in charge. So a while back I wasn’t in charge, it was night-time and I was dreaming. There I was trail riding in the bush on a little Postie bike, a Honda 90, and the bush track had lots of little ravines to cross, and each ravine had a plank of wood across it. And as I rode across each plank the ravines got deeper and wider, but just like a good mailman should, the Postie bike delivered me to the other side each time. It was a shame to eventually wake up! Then…

WE FEATURED Christian Jentz’s 1984 R 100 RS bobber on the cover of Retrobike #39. Built by custom workshop Black Cycles in Coopers Plains, Queensland, to a shared vision and painted by Christian, it is to our eyes one of the best-looking, locally-built bobbers to ever grace our pages. Style for miles and then some. But that was then. “After my bobber R 100 build, I really wanted a second bike with a bigger fuel range, pillion capability, great brakes and so on,” Christian says. “Just a more useable bike for longer rides, but which still looked fantastic.” Christian likes his BMWs, having also previously built an R 80 café racer. But he also likes his cars and there lay the serendipitous path to the bike you see today. “I…

ALL forms of motorsport take commitment, and land speed racing is no different. In Australia, there is only one meeting per year and it happens on a vast dry salt lake deep in the outback, thousands of kilometres from where most of us live. There is no prizemoney, no rain dates, and it rains more often than you’d think. There aren’t any pandemic dates either. “THERE’S NO PRIZEMONEY, NO RAIN DATES, AND IT RAINS MORE OFTEN THAN YOU’D THINK” But it is a lot of fun and the track is something else, as is the backdrop. For motorcyclists at least, it doesn’t take much to modify an existing street or track bike to have a crack as a rookie. Be warned however, that you might like it and find yourself…

LIFELONG motorcycle tragic Barry Nolan from the Gold Coast has broader tastes than most, starting with a CT110 postie decades ago. “I haven’t owned a car in 25 years,” he says. His scrapbook of memories includes everything from a BMW K100 RT tourer to a self-built Honda CJ250T café racer and a race-spec BMW S1000RR. This is his first Suzuki. “I was asked if I would remove a bike from a friend of a friend’s driveway just around the corner from mine, about three years ago,” he says. “I had seen it there for years and thought it was a ZZR250. I was told they wanted it gone and that it was a 750. I had to take a closer look and was pleasantly surprised, as I had just sold…

REGULAR readers may recall the pair of Sterling Autocycles owned by brothers Mick and Stu Garfarth that we featured in Retrobike #38. Powered by modest 125cc and 250cc Chinese four-stroke singles housed in simple girder-forked rigid frames, the UK-designed, Italian-built flat-tank retro rockers were beautifully finished and looked like they were styled in 1920, not 2013. Sadly, the manufacturer, The Black Douglas Motorcycle Company, ceased production in 2017 after building just 65 examples. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet in Goshen, Indiana, Richard Worsham and Devin Biek of Janus Motorcycles had something similar in mind, albeit initially based around 50cc moped engines. Happily, they’re still at it. “Devin and I got into motorcycles through mopeds: Puchs, Motobecanes, Kreidlers, Garellis, etc,” Richard Worsham told website 50built.com. “I worked at…

ON October 24th, 1992, the first-ever Ducati Monster was launched to the public at the IFMA Show in Germany —the first of 350,000 such bikes built so far, in all their different capacities and configurations. Argentinian designer Miguel Angel Galluzzi’s then-innovative concept of stripping a Superbike of its bodywork to create a user-friendly yet invigorating minimalist streetbike, which combined sporting appeal and everyday practicality, was an instant hit, with thousands of customers eager to subscribe to his belief that “all you need in a motorcycle is a saddle, fuel tank, engine, two wheels and a handlebar. Everything else is superfluous.” That’s a philosophy which, as expressed in the Monster, invented a major new segment of the motorcycle market that keeps on expanding year on year, as other manufacturers have continued…

I FEEL somehow, I don't know, vindicated. Fact is the Rooth Brothers beat BMW to the parade this time around. Hilda's a 1960 R60 BMW. She came into the family back in 1974 when a 14-year-old BMW was the most reliable transport an 18-year-old Rooth could find in Armidale, NSW. That's 'find' with the obligatory dollar sign. $800, which works out about $23 a year to date. She hasn't stopped work since then. My brother Nicko's taken her a few times, usually as collateral for a loan, and it was he who did the first rebuild in 1983, replacing the flogged-out 600cc motor with another one that didn't smoke as much. He painted her cack yellow and we made some exhausts from an old Holden tailpipe. In 1989, I painted…

LOOSE BRUCE 'DESIGN, ART, DESIRE' WE featured ‘The Motorcycle: Design, Art, Desire’ exhibition at Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art last issue, but hardly touched the surface. So here are some more examples from the world’s best ever retro bike show, photographed by Loose Bruce.…