Ok so this is the first of at least six episodes from the annual Telford Classic Dirt Bike Show that was held at The Telford International Centre on the 10th and 11th of February 2024. And in this first Episode we take a look at some superb and rare classics.
Well hello again welcome back to classic dirt bike TV thanks for joining me uh once again now we’ just recently returned from the 2-day tford classic dirt bike show and I’d just like to say a quick hello to everybody I met at the show over the course of the two days
Nice to meet some of the old uh YouTube subscribers and thanks again for your appreciation of my video channel now we did come across a quite a few machines over the course of the two days so there’s quite a lot of uh footage and bikes to sort through but we’ll get to
It as soon as we can and uh I hope you enjoy all of the episodes from this year’s classic dirt bike show so we’re going to dive straight in here now with episode one of possibly six or maybe even seven episodes from the show so let’s dive straight into our first batch
Of bikes and uh let’s take a look right so uh first up we have a rather tasty looking B tacle travels bike here and this machine here is a 1975 Sammy Miller High boy 325 and these first selection of baks are just some of the lucky ones that I managed to capture
On the Friday afternoon and that was of course prior to the opening of The Show for real on the Saturday and actually this is the perfect time to film these bikes because there’s usually plenty room to work around them because the exhibitors are usually in the process of
Just setting them up because uh once they’re all in position and then fenced off then you have absolutely no chance of getting a good shot but again that was uh one of the things that I did notice at tailford this year that seem to be quite an abundance of Trials bikes
At this time around and although I’m not really a trials man myself there were still some superb looking trials bikes on display so we’re going to feature quite a few of them as we wind our way through the various episodes of this year’s show although I must say that this
Little b Taco High boy uh here is certainly a little belter in the credit to the owner who’s obviously spent quite a lot of time and money getting this bike into what can only be described as better than brand new condition now don’t quote me here because as I said
Trials bikes aren’t really my speciality but I’m pretty sure it was the great Sammy Miller who designed these high boy frames uh which of course were really designed to give the writer extra GR clearance here under the motor but these bll tackle two-stroke Motors were as you know excellent uh
Power plants for the day and they were not only used for these uh trials bikes but also put to good use on their perang motocrossers as well but you can see that this is frame number 501 or SM 501 for Samy Miller and I expect that these
Front forks as as well will be those Spanish betor units which are more or less the same Forks that were fitted into the W Taco motocrossers of their day but the general finish on this bike is absolutely fantastic and I don’t even remember these bikes looking this good back in
1975 but I do remember that the tank and the combined side panels on these TRS bikes were all originally formed in fiberglass in that year and naturally it was a much Slimmer fuel tank on these TRS bikes than the porang uh motocrossers of this off their day
Because this after all is a trials bike where everything has to be slim neat and tidy when you’re standing up on the pegs but for being one of the very first bikes I came across on the Friday after afternoon I was certainly well impressed with this machine and uh if this was a
Kind of quality of the bikes that we’re going to see at this year show then I just couldn’t wait to see what was next on the list and in fact as it happened the very next bike that I spied was this old school vintage BSA gold star Scrambler a
Proper man’s race bike from the early 1960s and the British built Goldies of course were the staple diet for many of the UK’s best Riders away back in the day and these vintage gold stars and many other British Classics like the the Greaves and A’s and many others were
Pounding the UK’s racetracks in the 1950s and 60s when at scrambling as it was known then it was broadcast live by the BBC on their grandstand TV show on Saturday afternoon and again as you know these big Goldie fourstroke Motors were big powerful beasties for their time and
Between that tubular steel chashi and this quite heavy single cylinder uh Power Plant you certainly needed to have the build of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the determination of the Great Big Bob Wright to muscle one of these Goldies around the racetrack now I did notice that this particular motor here had quite an
Unusual carburetor fitted to the engine and it wasn’t one that I was quite familiar with up until a more knowledgeable BSA passer by pointed out that this little square receptacle was actually at the float chamber for for the carburetor which I think was called a matchbox uh float chamber for obvious
Uh reasons and uh this carb here was some kind of upmarket works item but as I said not a carburetor that I’ve seen before but uh that’s a great thing about the classic dirt bike TV channel even I can learn little bits of knowledge as we continue to look deeper into these old
School classics although when you take a look at these big uh heavy bsse engines you have to admire uh those guys who rode these bikes on Scrambled stacks back in the 1950s and 60s because uh not only uh were these quite heavy machines the suspension systems that they fitted to
These bikes were still more or less unmodified road bike suspensions and their travel was kind of limited to maybe just a few inches but that was what they had to work with back then and you can’t have anything but respect for what these guys had to go through riding these awesome big fourstroke
Classics but certainly a beautiful old classic from the 1950s and 60s and just one of many Classics that were at this year’s 2024 show but this was another very nice B tackle that I managed to grab just before it was locked into the lineup and this was Andy priests 1974 Mark
8360 perang another absolutely Immaculate machine as you can see and I must say these B tackle guys certainly know how to look after a bike because this one here once again is in almost shroom fresh condition now with regards that rear stand on the bike there’s no
Way that that stand is going to give way under the bike’s weight because it’s made of solid rebar which as you know is more commonly used for reinforcing uh concrete but in this case here it’s being made to support another kind of classic foundation so moving on again to the
Baco engine which is just a conventional piston Port two stroke with that big Amal carburetor there to feed it with its fuel but these 74 360s were just an absolute Peach of an engine and uh the engine’s casings triple clamps and of course the HBS on the wheels all came direct from the
Factory in this very highly polished uh kind of state now the Sparks for these Mark 8 360s were all supplied by a fza ignition system and they say that these uh 74 porang were almost identical to the bike that the great Jim pomoy at road to Victory when he won the Spanish
At 250 Grand Prix back in 1973 and again you can see and as in our previous Baco trials B you can see that the bike’s fuel tank and side panels and even the mud guards were all made of fiberglass for this bike back in 1974 which of course was prior to
Plastic taking over the Motocross world but Andy’s bike here appears to still have all of the Spanish goodies that were bolted onto it at Baco HQ in that year because it was these beater Forks on the front and beater rear shocks that the factory used on these Mark 8s and some
Of the other models uh from the 197s and as you can expect these bors were about as basic as you can get but unfortunately this was the suspension technology of its day because there wasn’t really much of an alternative in that year although nevertheless once you got
These little B tacos all set up nicely with regards ignition suspension and carb settings and uh you put the right rider in the saddle than these European made motorcycles could certainly and give a good account of themselves on the racetrack even when they were racing alongside the might of the big four
Japanese manufacturers but without question this is a superb example of one of these mar8 360s from 1974 and a credit to its owner Andy priest who put it together now next up it’s another Italian Stallion and this time here it’s a quite rare 1976 Moto gory GS injo 250 powered by a
Sax 7-speed two-stroke engine now uh motor gory were another one of the smaller Italian motorcycle manufacturers that I think they began in the late 1960s up until I think it was around 1983 and they initially began by building small 50cc off-road bikes to eventually going on to build bigger Motocross and injob
Bikes such as our machine here with the german-made Sach motor but uh motoori also uh used power plants from rotx Minelli hyro and Moto Marini in their earlier years but these 2 50 motoori and Juro bikes had this kind of yellow theme while their other Motocross models that
Used the more popular rotax two-stroke engine were colored in green Livery but as I remember it was the other Italian bike builder swm who eventually bought into motoori which then led to them changing their name to simply uh gory but there’s no mistaking that these little sax 250 engines were quite
Powerful for their day and as I said they had this seven speed gearbox which certainly kept your feet busy uh dancing up and down on that gear shifter and because this was a seven speeder occasionally it could be a bit troublesome in the gearbox Department from time to
Time due to its two transmission shafts and a pair of complicated idler gears that made up at the seven speeds but in terms of the motor’s power and its quickness uh this sax engine was still a ballistic missile and so here at the back end of our gory more Italian based Parts with
These quite radical looking Cy Cal piggyback shocks which uh although they look Hightech and ahead of their time for the mid 1970s these were still very basic dampers for their day that had very little in the way of adjustment or tuning but uh they certainly had that Italian styling that’s for
Sure and uh when we take a look here at the front end of our Enduro 250 I’m pretty sure that it would have been more italian-based parts and uh these Forks on this bike could maybe even be a set of Maris or something uh similar but uh these Forks
Here are not a make or model that I instantly recognize with these kind of squared off Machining on the fort legs but here at the rear we have a substantial tail pipe or silencer just to enable the bike to comply with all of the relevant road traffic laws just in
Case the bike does take to the highway and uh the fuel tank on our gory here is more than likely made of alloy but the green livered Goro motocrossers of their time used plastic fuel cells as I remember so although uh motori did build some quite nice bikes during the short
Production life they were just another small manufacturer who could never h seem to compete with the volume and the variety of bikes that were being imported from Japan in the 1970s and early 80s and it wouldn’t be uh too long before the likes of motoori and some of the other italian-based bike
Builders would then succumb to the might of the Japanese invasion okay so next up it’s another super rare CCM classic and this bike here is Rob P’s 1991 CCM 605 CC double overhead cam rotax racer so my intention is just to do a full length video on the this bike at a
Later date so just for now we’ll have a quick look around the bike and some of its parts now the frame for this machine was actually purchased by Rob Hughes back in 1998 and at that time uh the frame had a stock single cylinder Road tax fourstroke motor uh sitting inside it
But Rob and his bike building pal Alec Middleton then noticed that there were additional engine mounting points on the chassis that weren’t uh being used so they then contacted the late Alan clues for a bit more information whereby Allan then told them that this chassis was actually built to take the Prototype
Twin cam rotx engine and it was originally his son Austin clu’s race bike at that time now as you would expect Rob and Alec then asked Alan clu why this bike still had the old school single cam rotax motor in the chassis and Allen told them
That once they bolted in the new double overhead cam rotx engine it was then tested by the great Perry Lisk who found that the power delivery wasn’t exactly what was expected and the additional weight and the bulkiness at the top end didn’t really outweigh the advantages of
The extra 10 or so horsepower that the engine delivered so they then just took the engine out and swapped it for a tuned up single overhead cam motor which Perry Lisk then raced during 1992 and so as you can see this big Bruiser of an engine is quite a
Formidable lump sitting here inside this custommade CCM at Works chassis and expect it it would have needed quite some effort to throw this big bike around a racetrack but another unusual feature of this uh double overhead cam rotx engine was that it had three spark plugs which
I’m led to believe all fired at exactly at the same time and as far as I know the thinking behind this triple uh spark plug was to make sure that all of the fuel that was pumped into that single cylinder engine was burnt completely ensuring uh a full and complete uh burn
Of the gases and hopefully uh more power uh eventually at the rear wheel and in in fact it’s also said that this double overhead cam motor had a pair of 40 mm at delorto carburetors originally so you can understand why it had to have that triple spark ignition
Just to help burn the Sea of fuel that was pouring into this huge rotax power plant but uh as like many of the other CCMS from the 1990s it was a good quality pair of white power suspensions uh that were used here on the front and
Uh at the rear of this clu classic it was just a single Monoshock white powered unit here at the back and as I remember this did have uh quite a bit of scope for adjustment uh to the rebound uh and uh the damping and it was also a quite strong but well-built
Alloy swing arm on the back of this CCM which had I think it was a gy MAA uh twin pot break here at the back although as I said we’re going to take a look at this very rare bike in much closer detail in the not too
Distant future when we do a full video on the history and the parts that are fitted onto this Clues classic but yet again this is another uh part of the CCM racing history that takes pride of place in the Rob Hughes classic CCM collection oh and uh just before we go
Another little bit of information on how rare and interesting this bike was over the course of the two days of the show because the judges awarded it the best motocross machine and the best bike in the show so again another big well done to Alec Middleton who put the bike
Together and of course to Rob Hughes the owner of the machine right okay just to finish off our episode 1 from the 2024 tford classic dirt bik show this is Ed Willet very nice 1972 TM 400 Suzuki now as I remember I think these used to be called the
Cyclones back in the day and this was said to be Suzuki’s first ever mass-produced Motocross off-roader of that time now these Suzukis did have a a relatively light tubular steel chassi and of course that pretty wild and scary two-stroke 400 engine but although EDS Suzuki here’s maybe not a
Fully 100% original bike from that year this is probably as close as you’re ever going to get to an original version of this 42y old uh race machine so the engine on this bike was a simple uh piston Port two stroker although it never actually ran on premixed fuel because these little
Suzukis had a separate oil tank for the two-stroke oil that was usually hidden behind that right hand side uh panel on the bike and on the transmission side it was a wet oil cooled multi PL clutch that had this kind of front facing lever to operate the clutch and inside the motor
It was a 5-speed gearbox as well now uh fuel was usually fed through a 34 mm carburetor and the engine also had Pei electronic ignition to supply all the Sparks to make the engine go but allegedly uh these old tm400 engines uh kicked out around I think it was the
40 horsepower Mark which wasn’t really that bad for a 400cc uh Power Plant but uh the complete uh Cyclone package of the frame and the engine made it quite a difficult Beast to tame and in fact I’m pretty sure that these bikes were often listed as one of the most dangerous
Motocrossers of its day because of its evil handling and its kind of light switch motor that experts actually put down to the way that the ignition was initially set up at the factory because it was designed uh using full for easy starting and when riding a bike it
Would just simply jump uh from full to full uh advance and then uh take off like the proverbial missile so you can understand why it was that these engines were so unpredictable uh to which of course many riders found out to their cost uh when trying to ride
Them and uh here at the front end of our TM 400 some of the reviews on these uh Forks weren’t really that great either uh in 197 to some people say they were just far too soft and spongy for a bigger uh 400cc bike but uh these old
School uh drum brakes actually worked reasonably well and uh these were certainly capable of slowing the bike down if it wanted to try yet another one of its rocket ship uh takeoffs but but these kind of upswept exhausts were uh certainly a stock fitting on these 72 bikes although
Naturally this one here of EDS isn’t the original pipe but uh a pattern replacement from gemco exhaust systems which is very similar uh to the standard 72 pipe once more the original shocks on the back here have been changed for something a bit more up to date but
Still in keeping with the classic age of the bike and although I’m not entirely sure as to what make and model these shocks are they’ve certainly still got that old school uh classic look to them and the these will probably be a lot better than the 1972
Originals but uh as I said said earlier uh no need uh to put your premix oil and gas into this tank because Suzuki had their own oil and gas in separate tanks and they use a little oil pump that they call their CCI lubrication system whereby oil from
The pump is injected directly into the left hand main bearing and into the intake ports to lubricate the conward bearing piston and uh needle uh bearing and of course the cylinder wall as well and the oil uh from that lubrication it was housed in this little uh plastic
Tank here that was hidden behind the right hand side panel of the bike but I certainly do remember the earlier 1971 tm400 Cyclone Suzukis which also never had a a great reputation for their handling and scary power of that engine because I’m sure that these 72 bikes
Used much the same power plant although the earlier 71 Suzukis uh would have had orange type of fuel tanks and side panels as opposed to the stock standard yellow but don’t get me wrong here I’m not knocking Ed Spike far from it because although the earlier Cyclones
From 71 and maybe even these 72 bikes never actually covered themselves in glory in the early 1970s because uh early attempts were uh really just a bit of a Suzuki test bed where they could learn from these much earlier off-road bikes so that they could then go on to
Compete on the world’s staged against their fiercest Rivals of Honda Kawasaki and Yamaha so there you have it that’s the first batch of machines from the 2024 tford classic dirt bike show and of course there are many more episodes and bikes to follow in future uh videos and
If you’d like to be notified as soon as I upload at one of those videos and it’s just a simple case of subscribing to classic dirt bike TV and that way you won’t miss out on any future videos that I upload from this event but thanks
Again for tuning in to my cdb TV channel hope to see you again very soon so we can talk about more of these old school classics from this year’s 2024 tford classic dark bik Show