Classic Bike Guide - Real rides, real riders

No need to worry

If something breaks on their motorcycles, they simply take it apart and repair it and if need be, make various parts in the process – and it’s this latter part that always impresses me. To these people though, it’s just how it is, they feel there’s nothing remarkable about what they do and that anyone could do it, but they’re wrong, not everyone can do it at all.

What set me thinking about this was when someone asked where such skills would be found when the present generation of highly respected old hands leaves for that great workshop in the sky. It’s always the same, a lifetime of experience disappears leaving a partial vacuum – but it is only partial because others take their places and they mix those first principle, traditional methods with their own skills honed in a manner, which was the way of their era. I guess it could be called evolution.

I have a pal who not only builds his own bikes bespoke but he makes his own frames too, invariably oil bearing and the skilled bit is that he makes it look so simple and easy. What’s more they work jolly well. A few years ago, another engineering buddy wasn’t overly impressed with Devimead’s ideas on A65 crank conversions, so he drilled the crank, bunged up a load of oilways in his engine and formed some new ones to re-route the lubricant. Then there’s another pal who left school unable to read or write, yet made himself a fortune in robotics and has recently manufactured Vincent four valve heads from Irving’s original drawings – coming soon in CBG – and so it goes on.

Some people are naturally skilled in certain areas, be it artwork, metal work, instrumentation, electrics, whatever, and they eventually come to the surface. Furthermore, classic motorcyclists seem to have an uncanny knack of finding these people who do a darned good job, invariably at reasonable cost. Even with a lack of education and the general onset of computerised systems, which increasingly remove the need for human skills, there are and, I have no doubt will always be, those who can, want to and profit from. If the demand is there, and presently our motorcycling movement shows no sign of foundering, then eventually someone will satisfy it.

Long may it remain so.

Nigel Clark
Editor