Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) The glory days of british motorbikes...

Bikes in the dinning room Arwyn, fine dining indeed...(-: I would really like to be able to lift my eyes occasionally while sitting in my armchair typing or watching TV, and see view my Morgan...

As a yoof staying one floor up in my parents tenement flat I had one bike in bits residing under my bed, and the other in build in the room, fortunately mum was very forgiving and not too upset with the occasional spot of oil or acid burn on my bedroom carpet... I bought her a new fitted carpet for the lounge to make up for the mess I made..

I remembered a local guy who was into choppers and built a ridiculous thing in his bedroom in his parents house... he invited us up to see it, he even fired the thing up and pulled in the clutch, put it into gear, revved it up and wrote the wardroom off as it jumped forward then fortunately stalled... The screw-on nipple at the clutch lever end of the cable had not been fully tightened, allowing the cable to slip out of the nipple.... Duh..!

I admire anyone who has a British bike taking pride of place in the house. The downside with British bikes even into the last days of production, was the ubiquitous oil leaks.

I remember well in the early 70's, the biggest local motorcycle dealer split the showroom in two, British bikes your BSA, Truimph, Norton on one side and mainly European Scooters Lambretta, Vespa and Japanese bikes Honda , Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki on the other side of the showroom. Without exception there were oil trays under all the new British bikes and the European/Japanese side of the showroom was completely oil tray free.

One of the best bit of free advertising for continental brands visually hit you when you looked down as your walked into the showroom, oil tray or no oil tray..

Funny thing perception .... my take on the oil leak thing was always 'so what???' .... even on older bikes it was never enough to be other than just a cosmetic thing ... you weren't topping up every 5 miles or falling off because the rear tyre was soaked ... just a consequence of a vertically split crankcase vs a horizontal one ... never was a deal-breaker for me.

Part of the legend of Brit oil leaks was down to the fact they were simple enough to be owner maintained... and many owners were mechanical barbarians with zero cash ... the Japanese bikes needed special tools and techniques and were largely dealer maintained .... once they fell down the food chain into the hands of poor blokes with hammers they leaked and ended up stopped at the side of the road along with their British cousins .... and 50 years later guess which bikes are still leaking all over our country roads on a sunny Sunday rather than being a memory in the back of the scrapman's head 🙂

Have had a Harley in the kitchen, a Triumph in the hallway and built a BSA chop in my bedroom (including several coats of metal-flake celly ... my sense of smell never fully recovered!!🙂)

K

Only an MG Le Mans MkIII and a 6v Indian Enfield Bullet made it to my kitchen.
The MG was in storage whilst we were in Kenya & I bought the Enfield in Nairobi. The Enfield came back to Den Haag.

When the MG came out of storage it was winter & -25c. My blood was real thin from the height of Nairobi & 15c was like -5 so it went through the hall to the kitchen to get it road ready. Refitting the fairing mirros made it to wide to get back out though. Doh!!!

The Enfield had a tappet issue so came in later in the year to the kitchen for a head strip. Both times the Boss was away.

Took me a second to twig MG was Moto-Guzzi ... I thought you'd managed to get an entire classic Le Mans car into your kitchen!! ... that would be an acheivement!! 🙂

K

Having an understanding mum was a very important part of my mechanical education, allowing me to use her oven to heat the cyl head of my Dommie in order to knock out the old valve guides and replace them with phosphor bronze ones. Similarly heating Ducati crank cases to replace crankshaft bearings... At least I cleaned the oil off the units first, well as best I could, still made the oven a bit smokey though...Mum`s can be a bit special.

Would not dare to suggest anything similar to my good lady today...

I'm not much of a fan of classic Japanese bikes and I've never owned one, but there are plenty of older ones still around being used regularly. Kick starting a large capacity British bike is becoming challenging for those enthusiasts of a certain age, hence the ever-increasing popularity for early Japanese stuff with their electric starts and better reliability.

MPH ... certainly there is a cult following for those early Japanese bikes (amongst a slightly younger crowd who cut their teeth on them, or wished they did) .... but it's their rarity that drives a lot of that .... I guess there's ten old Bonnevilles still raking about for every Honda 750/4 or Suzuki 250 .... and the prognosis isn't good either .... Brits are almost infinitely rebuildable but with cams running direct in castings and short run electronics the days are numbered for many Japanese 'classics' .... long runs of virtually identical Triumphs and Beezers make it worthwhile doing batches of consumable parts .... low interchangability of parts and constant model changes will increasingly make the old Japanese bikes that did survive problematic to run as the decades pass.

K

First thing I´ve heard about Britsh bike when I started my bike career was "All over swimming in oil"....

After a Vespa I bought a small Honda CB250N. 2 Years later I wanted a bike with Kardan.

So in a showroom I tried to pull the clutch from a famous german Bike (BMW) first

Next step was to pull the clutch from a HONDA - compared to the BMW, I had the feeling that no clutch cable was installed...

As a result, I did not buy a German high tech bike!

Good old days....

During my first degree, I had a classmate who rented a tiny house. I was always fascinated when I saw him turn into the street on two wheels... on a motorbike with a sidecar.

When I visited him at home, there was a motorbike engine on the table and motorbike parts everywhere.

He told me that he slept (with his girlfriend) in a tent in the garden because it was summer.