Visiting the Classic Dirt bike show & meeting Frank Melling 4K

This time we check out the Classic Dirt bike show held at the international centre, Telford in England. Wecheck out some stunning bikes ans meet some great people

Well just for a change today there we are in the car yeah unfortunately but on the bright side we are going to look at some bikes because it’s the classic off-road show at Telford so we’re going to go down and check that out let’s see how we Go the classic dirt B show is held in tord interruptor at the International Center every February and for many people marks the start of the show going season not surprising the show includes Motocross trials and Speedway machines from all different areas from pretty much all over the globe as well as Great

Britain of course but it’s not just about looking at bikes there’s an auto jumble and some very handy stores on the inside too Ling thanks to the association with Sammy Miller the aial has always made a popular heavyweight tri’s choice and there were plenty on show today

But as we know bikes like the aerial and the nfield bullet both represented the past of heavyweight trials machines and the future would very much Li and lightweight machines like this BSA bantom and of course the dot a firm famous for its Pro SN trials with their excellent bil as powered

Machines the do was a company with lots of strings in the B as well as road bikes and trials they made this excellent demon 1960s motocross bike scrambles to me and you on the subject of motorcross or scrambling the mid-60s would see a pleer of companies building their own chassis

Into which they install big British Twins or thumping singles of course perhaps the most famous of these is the Rickman brothers who build their own chassis during the 1960s which they dubbed the mati or Mongrel and indeed the machines are still being produced today under the matis name and at the sh

There were some very nice examples fitted with match’s big fper but also some later machines fitted with a bull Taco two-stroke there’s no doubt that mati chassi is best known of its association with Triumph’s big twins another famous chassis builder of the 60s was of course Eric Cheney and as it

Turned out this very fine example belonged to Frank melan Frank was a successful Motocross or scramble Rider of the 1960s as well as competing in Enduro and other events before becoming a successful motorcycle journalist and event organizer and while we’re there he kindly agreed to have a few words with

De so can you tell us about the Cheney yeah this is the Cheney I’ve had virtually all my life it’s a Works frame and it’s factory BSA engine my very very good pal Fred Barlo now sadly passed on he bought me a full Factory engine and it’s a quick quick

Thing it’s the bike that I fell in love with with my wife I took her to a first ever motorcycle meeting with this bike and I won the five from class she took the trophy home cuddling it when we got home I proposed to her so I owe a lot to this

Fight later on I won the Vintage grass trk Championship on it all stories are in my latest book scrambling for successful beginners so a lovely example of how bikes bring people together by Frank melon and it’s true in our story too although in our case it was only Honda

CX now not surprisingly Greaves were very well represented at the show it’s always been a popular machine and despite what some people may tell you it’s also a bloody good machine too there are those ignorant of the off-road Community or ignorant of the British bike Community who seem to think very

Lowly of these machines and I think it’s larger because of their quirky looks but these are very capable and very successful machines one of their best known off-road machines is the hawston a popular Motocross machine of the 1960s of course there was also this lovely example of a latest machine with

Conventional Forks visited with an engine of gev’s own manufacturer the products of Clues competition motorcycles or CCM were very much in evidence the raing machines are best known for their use of the BSA b50 motor which of course they evolved greatly over the years for later moving

To Austrian rotax power as well as other engines too the cotton Owners Club bought a number of very nice machines including this fabulous motocrosser as well as a sizable number of Trials machines If like me you spent a lot of your time in the 70s watching programs such as Kickstart and Junior Kickstart you’ll be very familiar with some of these machines including the fantic and AA manufacturers two makes that will be very familiar to trials fans of the 1970s

Given the success of B tacos in the 60s and 70s it wasn’t a great surprise to see a number of their machines on show while Baca would have success in such veryy Pursuits as Grand Prix road racing they’re best known for their trials bikes and indeed the majority of

Machines on show were trials models although we did manage to find this Pang motocrosser and of course you can’t talk about 60s Motocross without mentioning CZ those great pioneers of two-stroke success because all to often people talk about their dowy 1970s commuter bikes people often forget about their great

Contribution to the field of motorcross being the first to win a 500cc Motocross world championship event of a motorcycle powered by a two-stroke engine English poet Lord Bon was once described as mad bad and dangerous to know I’m not sure who wrote or said this but I’m pretty sure that had he been

Around in the 1970s most people would have assumed he was writing about Moo T and the last part of the 60s villes of course stopped Supply to outside manufacturers which left specialist builders in a bit of a bind when it came to Motocross and trials events and while many would switch to using PUK or Pooch engines and others would use Baco some

Made use of Japanese engines for this first time which of course Segways nicely into the Japanese motoross and TR trial’s bikes here we see a very nice Classic Honda CR250 known to Americans of course is the Elenor but if the Honda isn’t playing scary enough then Suzuki may just fit

The bill for you their early machines are evil handling and have an engine that massively outperforms what fima who there is so exciting then now there were a lot of Yar off-roaders on show but I thought we’d end on one of their more fearsome the YZ

490 we finished the show with a stroll around the auto jumble with this sped this lovely CAD motocrosser although were a number of other machines there for sale and power units too so on reflection while this isn’t the biggest show in the UK it’s too specialized to

Be that after all it is one of the better ones there’s some great machines on show but perhaps even more importantly you meet some great folk whatever bikes or collections of bikes would would you like to see us cover in a future video HS you’ve got a

Bite we can use for test ride either way get in touch below hope you enjoyed that video if you did don’t forget to like And subscribe and of course thank you very much for watching