Replacements

Replacements

LEANINGS

Peter Egan

WHEN I FIRST CAME TO WORK AT Cycle World in 1980. the Managing Editor was a guy named Steve Kimball. I quickly discovered that Steve and I had a common personalitv quirk. Actually. Kimball had a lot of quirks. but our space here is limited and I won't catalog them. In any case, the one we shared was a weakness for old motorcycles.

We were constantly busing wornout. orphaned or neglected old bikes, dragging them home and rebuilding them. Sometimes the old crocks were keepers, and sometimes thes weren't. But one thing we both discovered with our various restorations was that it's very hard to make an old machine as good or better than a new one. Korks recently rebuilt would leak again altera few weeks of use; freshly resurfaced camshafts would lose surface hardness and add cast-iron glitter to the next oil change, and so on.

Kimball and I gradually became philosophical in the face of these setbacks and developed a catchphrase to sum up the underlying reality of vintage vehicle ownership: Old) STULL ISOLD STUFF

Steve would come into my office and grumble that the electrics on his ancient Guzzi were sizzling again, and I would smile and say. “Steve, old stuff is ».del stuff." The next week.

I would complain to Steve that the brand-new evlinder-head gasket on my Davtona 500 was oozing oil all over the cooling fins, and Steve would merels shrug and say. “Old stuff is old stuff."

The obvious question, of course, is why were sve buying old stuff in the first place?

A sense of history. 1 suppose, is part of it: wanting to sample what's uonc before and to see where we've been. Aesthetics probably made up the other part. There are a lot of uood-lookinu. beautiful old machines out there. As in music, the top 10 hits from ans decade tend to be more memorable than the top 10 hits for this month. The other part, of course, svas that there were a lot of motorcycles that came under the heading. “They don't make 'em like this any more."

That's alsvavs been the main incentive. for me. to bus older motorcycles. I bought my '67 Triumph not because 1 lose endless restoration projects, but because no one made a new motorcycle w ith the clean looks and lightweight feel of the late-Sixties Triumphs. I bought a 1984 BMW RI00RS last year because 1 didn't care for the redesigned seat and sidecovers on the new ones. And so on. Sometimes you have to go back in time—retro-shop, so to speak— to get what you want.

It has recently dawned on me, however, that for the first time in many years, the motorcycle industry has come up with some very good, modern replacements, both aesthetically and functionally, for the old stuff in my garage.

Take Ducati. for instance. I love my old bevel-drive 900SS and had all but given up hope that C'agiva/Ducati would produce another bike w ith the same combination of torque, sound, stability and precision of operation, while setting new standards of handling. Then came the new 900SS.

I have no plans to sell my old Duck, but if I had $8000 in the bank and had to choose between buying a new 900SS or looking for an old one. I’d buy the new one. It may not have quite the pure, simple lines of the old bike, but it's better in every other way. And the new one is more fun to ride. It goes faster and handles better.

The Norton Commando and the Triumph TR6-C? Okay, you can't really replace old British bikes. Nothing translates directly into them. Their anachronistic engineering combined w ith pre-war (the question is. which war?) standards of plating and finish yield an eccentric combination that will probably never be duplicated.

But. If I had to buy a new bike—or bikes—to replace the Olde English iron, a couple of possibilities might present themselves. First, there's the (hold on to your pillion) Evolution Sportster. I've been riding a loaner 883 for a year, and even I. Belstaffsuited Egan, have to admit it’s as much fun on a back-country road as the TR6-C'. Not quite as light, but it's narrow, steers well and has much better brakes.

Can a Sportster replace an old Commando? Not without speed mods. Nortons were genuinely fast in their time and are still pretty quick. Also, the Norton's Isolastic engine mounts make it much smoother on the highway—even if-the engine is a paint-shaker at stoplights. And then there are aesthetics again: only old Velocettes and Vincents have more mechanical gleam than a Norton.

No. if I had to replace the Commando with something modern, it would probably be Honda's GB500 Single, if I couíd still find one before they're all gone. With a little motor help from White Bros., the GB could be just as quick and fast as a Norton, while also being lighter, better handling and harder stopping. To be honest, the GB is more fun to ride on a winding road, if pure riding, rather than historical ambiance, is what you're in it for.

And then there's BMW's new standard R100. Simple, clean, black and beautiful, a throwback to the classic form, but with almost another decade of technical refinement. With an RS fairing, it could easily replace my old Beemer. And there also are some nice new Guzzis for Kimball . . ..

The list goes' on. Traditional themes, made better with new technology.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not planning to clean out the garage just yet. But it's reassuring to know that when Old Stuff gets really old, or if a tornado carries your garage off to Kansas, the industry has you covered. The hits just keep on coming. No decade has ever had a hammerlock on good times. f<3