Features

Heart-warming tale as a chicken house-transporting BAT is lovingly restored to its former glory. Also unusual is how the owner finally got his hands on the machine. Roy Poynting explains…

A heavy clutch and signs of slipping? Pete Monks goes deep into his RD400 to restore a smooth and positive transmission

Yamaha’s original RD350LC was furious if not as fast as we’d expected. But the two-stroke twin had huge potential which has been explored with a huge range of modifications. John Nutting tested it at MIRA in the early 1980s…

There’s a mountain of difference between pioneering a cine camera and manufacturing the world’s most powerful engines, but that’s just what John Prestwich did and successfully too…

In the early Seventies the world of twins was simple; Ducati produced V-twins, BMWs were horizontally opposed and the British persevered with pushrod parallels… then Yamaha mixed it all up, with the OHC XS1…

By the time the continental circus reached Spa Francorchamps, high in the Ardenne, in July 1956, the season was in full swing and the championships taking shape…

If you cut your teeth on The Motor Cycle or its sister magazines The Autocar or Flight International, you will recognise Lawrence Watts’ signature immediately as the name on those marvellous cutaway drawings which showed ‘the inside story’

Starter motors on Japanese motorcycles can have a pretty hard life, and we do take them for granted. Rod Gibson brings one up to scratch…

Rod Gibson dons his workshop overalls and reveals the engine assembly procedure for Yamaha’s big single cylinder trailie, the XT500, then turns his attention to restoring the frame and running gear…

‘Thor’ is an appropriate name for this thundering V-twin. This historic JAP-powered V-twin sprinter was rescued before it was dismantled for its engine. James Robinson takes up the story…