Old Bike Australasia

Old Bike magazine is a must for those who ride as well as the dedicated enthusiast and rebuilder, covering everything from Vintage to early 1980s bikes - marvel at the restoration of machines that could still sit proudly on the showroom floor. Each issue brings you the latest news and results from recent events, race reports and Rally Roundup, along with new and old bike news and reviews, readers letters, Club Directory, What’s On and much, much more.

Old Bike Australasia

Once were mongrels

BLOW YOUR OWN

RARITEE Best Letter

Harold hits his hundred • It’s a miracle that Harold Tapscott reached his 30th birthday after crashing at Ballart in 1950 and spending three months paralysed from the chest down, yet on Sunday July 18th 2021 he celebrated his 100th birthday.

CLASSIC COB • OUT IN THE SHED

Buzz Box • OLD BIKE NEWS

Under the Chequered Flag

METEORIC RISE, HARD FALL • Being the son of a famous father can be anything but a bed of roses. In the case of Ray Quincey, son of Victoria’s most successful resident rider in the early to mid-fifties Maurice (Maurie), there was no free lunch. When he decided he wanted to follow in the fatherly footsteps on the race track, he had to figure it out for himself.

AN ARIEL ADVENTURE

A Ground-breaker Yamaha TD1B: The three versions 1964-1966 • The Yamaha TD1B had a profound effect on the face of road racing worldwide. Picking the differences in the model’s evolution is not easy.

Starting with a bang • The name Zündapp comes from an abbreviation of Zünder Apparatenbau, meaning Detonator Apparatus, and the company that adopted this name in Nuremburg in 1917 was indeed a manufacturer of detonators for explosives, of which there were quite a few in use at the time.

A CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK • The original Bimota DB2 is a fairly rare machine with just over 400 constructed in the early ‘nineties, but the DB2 Junior is even rarer. It is believed that just 105 were built in an attempt to capture some of the market that had been the domain of the mid-sized Japanese sport bikes. Whether the Rimini-based company achieved their aim is questionable, but it was a typically neat job nonetheless.

Waiheke Island NEW ZEALAND • The concept was modelled on the Isle of Man, but the roads that made up the New Zealand TT course were little more than bush tracks. It took a special breed of rider just to make it to the finish.

Luxury ✓ Czech • Ask almost anyone what comes to mind when Jawa is mentioned and the answer is invariably ‘two-stroke’, and perhaps, ‘solid and reliable’. But just when everyone least expected it, Jawa produced a classic four-stroke design.

Lattoniere extraordinaire • I recently discovered an internet photo of an MV Agusta tank and book. Paul Galles posted the photo proposing the author, Primo Felotti, was the designer/fabricator of the now famous tank design.

CONVENIENT TRANSPORT • Kununurra, WA-based Phil Mumenthaler has a passion for early transport – he built a replica 1885 Einspur and has early Tohatsus in his collection, which also extends to early Hondas…

Lucky learners • There’s a lot of competition in the middleweight segment of Australian LAMS market. Think Yamaha MT-07, Honda CB650R and Kawasaki Z650. And while Triumph’s entry is aimed at the ever-expanding Learner category, this bike and any one of its competitors make damn fine road machines for riders of all ages and experience.

A totally new Tracer • Since its original inception in 2015, Yamaha’s Tracer triple has been refined by degrees from a tricked up MT-09 to a gradually more serious sports tourer. The more recent GT version addressed perhaps the model’s greatest shortcoming, namely the suspension, in such a way that it transformed the ride experience, but deep down it was still the same...