Features

­British motorcycle racing success on track and road in the Dutch East Indies – a country now known as Indonesia – was reported in The Motor Cycle on Thursday, December 20, 1923. There was no substance to the text – just a selection of images with short captions. Pic 2 (shown below left) was taken…

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Early Yamaha XS1 The Japanese take on big parallel twins was something of a mixed bag. Despite the successes with two-strokes and air-cooled fours, the lure of the big twin proved too much. Two of the major players developed new versions of the same theme, one carried on with an existing design while the fourth…

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Cable operated rear brake on BSA Road Rocket The more you ride older machines, the more you start to value a good rear brake. It seems to play a disproportionate role, not least in providing a decent hold on steep hills where some twin-leading shoe front brakes are of little use. Despite the weight transfer…

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The team which put the Triumph 6/1 through its paces at Brooklands included (left to right); Len Crisp, S Slader (passenger), Tim Robbins, Harry Perrey and RR Holliday (passenger) Tucked away in the bottom corner of an end-of-1933 season Brooklands race report in The Motor Cycle was a much smaller story with the headline: ‘New…

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Harley-Davidson has just announced plans to water-cool an area around the exhaust valves in the cylinder heads of its all-new 2014-model Ultra Limited. It’s a ‘ground-breaking’ move for a company that’s built its entire heritage on the air-cooled 45° V-twin (and, before you say it, yes, the V-Rod was water-cooled, but then many Harley aficionados…

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Riders heading out on the road during the ACU Miniatures test The September 20, 1923 issue of The Motor Cycle carried a report of the Miniatures Test, carried out by the Auto Cycle Union. The ‘test’ attracted an entry of seven machines not exceeding 125cc and 18 machines under 175cc – all 25 of them…

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Triumph Metisse Most classic enthusiasts will be aware that Triumph created the Trophy range from the three machines that the experimental department had converted for the 1948 ISDT by adding a few lightweight parts to the Speed Twin roadsters. The bikes were good enough to earn the British team gold medals but not as good…

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Norton military prototype motorcycle Simple fact of life: motorcycle makers need to move bikes through production, out of the despatch department and on to customers who will pay for them. If they offer a wide range of bikes in various colours, the process becomes more complicated and the possible pitfalls are greater, so a production…

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This photo is from the Mortons Archive Eight different capacity engines were on offer: 247cc (67mm bore x 70mm stroke), 349cc (67 x 99), 494cc (80 x 99), single cylinders and 494cc (67 x 70), 698cc (67 x 99), 998cc (80 x 99) V-twin air-cooled engines. Plus the water-cooled 550cc single and 1100cc V-twin (both…

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A 1931 596cc overhead valve twin formed the basis for this well-engineered sidecar outfit Mills wrote: “In the motor cycle movement this is a sprinkling of enthusaists who derive almost as much pleasure from building machines as they do from riding them… and they are not happy unless able to ride something that is distinctly,…

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