‘No sat nav; no rider aids; head south…’
600 issues! First one out 1971. Me a 14-year-old I browsed it off the shelf. Iconic cover but I was saving for my Raleigh pedal and pop. Motorcycle memories come flooding back: no sat nav; no mobiles; no rider aids; no plan; no idea; head south; passport; travellers cheques and folding money bulging in your bike jacket. Roll off the ferry, take a deep breath, point and go. There were a succession of big cube bikes: Yamaha FJ1200, Kawasaki ZZ-R1100. My current choice – Honda Blackbird. It still does the deed but it’s different times. Roll on the next issue landing on the doormat.
Dave Clark, email
PS: is the Bike gear ad on page 71 still valid? I’ll take one of each.
» You and me both. Maybe we need to revisit the look for the next range of Bike ‘fashion’, although I can’t guarantee T-shirts will still cost £1.75 if we do... MA
Who’s fuelling who?
Regarding the E5 fuel situation and the increasing use of ethanol (apparently Triumph are looking at engines that run 100%!). I am getting slightly concerned about the current – and indeed long term – availability of E5. This is the fuel that used to be ‘normal’ grade with super available at a higher price. Then we got the E10 and E5 became super – at an elevated price. Big surprise there. And now E5, which is recommended for bikes with carbs, lawn mowers, chain saws etc, is becoming increasingly hard to find, certainly up here in the highlands. The rollout of E10 was not well advertised, and I still meet people who I would have thought would know about the difference but do not. Unfortunately for me I prefer older bikes – I have five that require E5 (including a Ducati with injection) so consequently my longer rides require a similar thought process to an electric car driver – i.e will I be able to get E5 at the next fuel stop? There seems to be no guarantee E5 will still be available in the future. And if so where will this leave people who drive/ride old cars/bikes?
Eric Green, email
Harsh but fair
You recently wrote that the Ducati Scrambler has a ‘harsh rear shock’. Please allow me to give you some more information about this…
Way back a girlfriend bought a new Urban Enduro. Twice in a few months the OEM swingarm licence plate holder broke off and disappeared while riding. Conclusive evidence that a) Belgian roads are crap, b) the holder wasn’t up to it, and c) the rear shock was dangerously bad. Yet, on the internet, I only found one review that mentioned the worrying shock characteristics. Only one. All other reviews just mentioned a ‘slightly harsh’ rear shock. Thank goodness for Bike.
Paul D’hooghe, email
(Almost) A joy
Having chewed the end off my pencil on sight of your March issue cover story – ‘British’ single cylinder motorcycle costing £30k (because it has fantastic welds and is better value than a poncy watch) – I settled down to read the review of the Norton Commando…
Never was a great fan of old British bikes – my first venture into biking was a Honda CB250. That bike took
me all round Europe and never missed a beat.
By chance, a couple of years ago, I was offered a pristine 850 Commando roadster, which I bought without any preconception of what it would be like to own.
What an absolute (almost) joy this thing was: slim and not too heavy; easy handling and I never found myself wishing for more power. The gearbox was smooth, even though it had an upside down change, and the noise from those peashooter exhausts was heaven.
But what made the package so good was what is absent in the new version – the Isolastic rubber engine mounts that took away any high frequency vibes.
The one fly in the ointment? Starting the bugger from cold.
I can honestly say if the ‘old Commando’, with that flaw removed, was made today I would be first in the queue. Granted the new version looks fantastic, but as a road tool it’s too heavy, vibey and expensive.
Jim Roberts, email
600 not out (yet)
Wow! Six hundredth anniversary! That must be about fifty years worth of Bike, and I’ve been buying it since 1977. I must have had a subscription for over 25 years, and I still look forward to reading it every month. I remember the very first edition I read, way back in 1976: Hap Spoons, Edgar Jessop, LJK Setright, the very first Bimota and an article about something called a Vincent. I was totally hooked.
There are many articles from Bike’s past which stick in my memory. Team Carl who robbed banks, Mac Mcdiarmid’s lap of the Baltic on a VFR750, stories of Bol madness (I eventually got to see it in 1998), Roland Brown’s review of the Laverda Montjuic – described as: ‘best ridden when you’ve taken your brain out and put it in a safe place.’ And the mad, disjointed ramblings of Dan Walsh. I’ve had a fair few motorcycle adventures of my own, all inspired by Bike. The aforementioned trip to the Bol, various jaunts around Europe, a foray into the Sahara and three visits to India on Enfield 350s (and I cannot understand why anyone would want one in the UK).
I hope I’ve got a couple more left in me, although I have to admit I don’t ride my bike much nowadays. I promise to remedy that each year, and each year I get to MOT time only to find that I’ve put less than a thousand miles on the clock since the last one. This year will be different. Keep up the good work.
Graeme Burton, email
Thanks Hugo
I really enjoyed Hugo Wilson’s account of a ride to Scotland on a BMW K1600 (Bike, Feb).
On a tour last summer I parked my bike next to a K1600 and was overwhelmed by the size of it. I was curious to see what riding such a massive bike would be like and Hugo’s article answered all my questions. I was particularly impressed that he was honest enough to print that he had dropped the 354kg bike in a car park and broke the end off the clutch lever. I’ve also done this, on a much smaller bike. My youngsters found the end of the lever, filed it smooth and drilled a hole in it. I then put some red string through the hole and wore it as a necklace.
Andrew Coe, email
Ogri MIA
What I don’t understand about your 600th issue is the almost total lack of Ogri. Has he been airbrushed from history? Ogri, Mitzi and the hapless Malcolm (whom I’m sure we all identified with) together with Kickstart were the dog’s. It was so good to read about the ordinary motorcyclist getting one up on car drivers, the old bill, lorry drivers and the world in general. I wonder what Ogri would make of the regular legal articles in Bike magazine. Would his comments be printable?
Yours an unrepentant biker…
Richard Symonds, email