Classic Bike Guide - Real rides, real riders

Clarky's Corner - January 2010

During the ‘closed season’ I’ve attended a few auctions and with bank interest
rates on the floor and confidence in the city at an all time low, people seem to be keeping their faith in classic motorcycles as a better bet investment-wise and market prices are holding up well. The increasing values of the Black Shadows and Silver Hawks, over the years, has naturally been fuelled by demand and as such has pulled up lesser machines pro rata. Gone are the days when an everyday B40 BSA would be cheap; grey porridge - and I mean no disrespect to B40s here - now commands a four figure sum.

You will read elsewhere in this issue, where Zim’, our American correspondent, comments on a native website on which Thundersprint guru Frank Melling has written rather scathingly on the subject of the B40 as a poor design, BSA as a company and a young feature writer who had ridden a B40 and liked it. I took time to read said piece and felt that Frank had missed the point a bit.

The 60s were a different time and our captains of industry still lived in a
post-war bubble of complacency - after all, we’d never had it so good, had we? As long as sales held up and shareholders received their divi’ then all was well with the world. Times were indeed a changing and between them and a militant workforce, we threw it all away once under pressure from the Japanese; we know that now.

However, someone who takes it upon themselves to restore a B40 (or any other motorcycle come to that) now, will do so because they want to, will be aware of and satisfied with its limitations. What’s more, many components now exist to make any weakness in an old design barely a weakness at all - flywheels, con-rods, cams, pistons, valves, electronics, LEDs, you name it, they’re all available. As such if a restored classic or vintage machine is assessed for what it is, rather than for what it isn’t, then it can be conveyed in a feature as a good machine - to me that is not being deceitful or untruthful.

So to rip into the writer because he reckons the B40 is a good bike, is unfair. A restored B40 is not the same as that which was purchased ex-factory from a dealer in 1964, indeed it’s a whole lot better - and we should be letting these youngsters enjoy them. By all means tell them where the original design went wrong, but also tell them how it can be put right and how by doing that, it makes for a good, reliable bike. Anything else is shooting ourselves in the foot. - Nigel C