READER’S SPECIAL WITH BRIDGESTONE!
CMM reader Malcolm Shaw is a self-taught spanner-man with a penchant for making specials…
Welcome back to our 2020 search for the best special/resto with Bridgestone tyres!
“Let me see. I have a GT750, a Z650, I’ve got an air-cooled RD350 along with a RD350 special being built with a Nico Bakker TZ frame. The engine needs a complete rebuild in that one. That bike has an Aprilia RS rear end and RS250 Aprilia forks – Aprilia wheels, too. The VFR tank on that looks like it was meant for it. I guess I’ve got around 17 bikes, nearly all twostrokes.”
Welcome to the world of Malc Shaw. A former nurse, now a self-taught specials builder and lover of classic bikes (ok, nearly all two-strokes, but the Fazer 1000 is four-stroke and modern. “It gets me to Spain and France in comfort,” says Malc.)
While Malc carries on talking I realise this isn’t the bike I wanted to come see. But it would be rude of me to interrupt when he’s in full flow!
He’s pointing at the RD350 with the Nico frame again. “I’m making the mountings for the Jim Lomas exhausts. I’ve built lots of stuff myself for it, you know, rear-sets and the like. I want to be able to ride them (I’ve got a shot right knee) so I look at the bike, look at seat heights, look at foot-peg position with blocks of wood – it’s more than an educated guess.”
Our Malc is even making moulds for the seat. “Yes, I chopped up an old Two-four seat as I had a scabby one and altered it, then glassed it up to make a seat unit. It’s a crude way of doing it, but it works.”
His mind is off again when he points to another bike. “That’s a GT500 which is a runner – well, a running engine. It is a special café racer: that’s what I like. When I retired I wanted to restore bikes and I found a tolerably ok GT500 that ran, but when I looked at resto costs, chroming and the like, it was
daft. Some of these go for £7000 apparently but I’ve yet to see people buy them for that price. Instead, building a special helps you develop different skills. This one has Bandit forks, but I will go back to GT forks. I’ve got three of these. I have a KH400 with 98 per cent of the parts ready to build, and a couple of GT380S. I used to love my 380. I’ve got a 550 with a frame and log-book and that’s going to be sort of a drag bike with inverted forks… Yes, the list of projects on the go at the moment is ‘far too many’.”
It’s not all specials as we spy a trio under wraps: an old Trumpet, a Kwak triple stroker and an RGV250, but you can see where his heart is. In his two workshops we see lots of equipment essential to fabricating your own parts. “I’ve got a proper setting-out/marking-out table and I’m teaching myself to TIG weld: it’s hard, but I’m enjoying it,” says Malc.
So, where does this love for bikes come from then? Malc explains: “I guess it’s all from the summer of 1976. I remember laying out in the garden revising for my O-levels. Back then I had a Yamaha SS50 – the original FS1-E – not the Honda! I wish I had kept that now as they are rare-as and hold good money. After that I was mainly into Suzukis, GT250S; I tuned them myself (I didn’t know what I was doing, but they could beat RDS on the road) then I had the GT380S. Like most of us it then went to relationships and houses.
“Then, when I was about 40, I really wanted a Ducati 916, but a cousin’s mate had a Suzuki GSX-R750 SRAD so I bought that. I did my advanced riding course (I’d recommend it) and that was that. I was back into bikes.”
As we move into the second workshop, Malc says where his skills originated from. “My dad would never sign any HP agreements, so I always had to scrabble around and re-build stuff myself! Later on I raced cars and we built our own semi-space frames so I have always been fairly handy. When I retired I had some disposable so used the pension pay-out to get the mill and things, but all of it’s a culmination of 40 years really…”
Finally, I get to see what I’m here for. It’s unfinished, but stunning: a Cmr-framed ‘TR’ 750. Wow. “We were going to build an ally frame for this, me and someone else, but that didn’t happen. So I got in contact with Denis Curtis of CMR Racing in Canada and went with what we see here. Denis sends over the frame and much as you want but I had the frame and the tank along with bearings, swingarm, etc. I wanted to put inverted forks in, but Denis says you can’t, but as you can see this has GSX-R1000 K5/6 forks and wavy brake discs. This radiator is much narrower than the standard GT750 rad as it’s been much modified, but I need to sort some brackets out for better clearance.
“The engine I had sitting around for a few years. I was looking at buying an H1 from a bloke in
Brighton and I mentioned looking for a GT750 motor and he had one complete, so I bought it there and then. The barrels are ported by BDK Race Engineering: this engine is mocked up with just the barrels on and the carbs from Allens Performance. The bottom-end is all assembled on the bench. I’ve the ignition system to order, the motor has a centre-plug head on it, so BDK reckon it will produce a lot of power. They also reckon the jets in the carbs that Allens sent up are close and the exhausts are done to suit, too. They are made by Performance Fabrications. They mainly make stuff for RG500S, but I took the bike up with dummy engine and left it with Mark Dent for three months, and they are a work of art.”
While this bike may well end up pretty racey sounding, looking and ‘going’, Malc is adamant that it’s a road bike. He says: “I don’t do track days! And with my shot knee it needs to be comfortable. It will be a sanitised race bike!”
It’s clear that this machine is some way off being finished, so will it hit deadline for the Bridgestone/ CMM competition? “Every time you put a bit on this bike, you have to think of the other 10 things around it,” he admits. “The fairing and headlight were a week’s work alone! I’m doing stuff myself as I enjoy it. I have a budget for what parts I can’t make and I get from Robinsons Foundry – Michelle Robinson there is a mine of information on parts! That said,
I’m aiming to get it done by the Classic TT in August/september. Denis from CMR is over (hopefully) so I’m pushing on with it right now. I also have to think of the overall finish. At the 2016 Classic TT I chatted to Steve Wheatman of Team Classic Suzuki (he’s a lovely bloke) and my fave bike to have would be a replica of Michael Dunlop’s XR69. So, with that in mind I was thinking of Team Classic Suzuki’s colours, but either way it’s a Suzuki so it’s got to be blue and white, yes?”
Oh yes. We can’t wait Malc. In fact, maybe we will follow this build month-by-month?