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.

EDITOR’S LETTER

Old Bike Australasia

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The mysterious case of the vanishing Green Frame

OUT IN THE SHED

BUZZ BOX OLD BIKE NEWS

Under the Chequered Flag

BARRY HODGKINSON and a wayward Manx Norton • How a 500 Manx Norton came back from the dead and home to Australia, thanks to a devoted family.

Finding my dad’s TT Manx Norton

ONE FOR DAD • Back in issue 25, in compiling his account of American Frank Wheeler’s incredible 21-day journey around Australia in 1972 riding what could be considered a most unsuitable machine – a 125cc Hodaka Wombat, Peter Whitaker opened his story with some typically pithy prose.

HEADS, YOU WIN Bash hats, bone domes and skid lids – a brief history. • These days, head protection is a complex science. The helmets that protect the multi-million dollar noggins in Formula One are worth a small fortune. The strides that have been made in MotoGP helmets would have prevented literally hundreds of racing fatalities over the years. But the acceptance of this most vital component has not always been so universal.

SUBSCRIBE to for your chance to WIN!

FROM INDIA VIA SWITZERLAND • All good things must come to an end, and after inventing the V-twin cafe racer more than sixty years ago, Swiss performance guru Fritz Egli, now 87, ran the gamut of two-wheeled excess, with a series of bikes he and his team constructed to the highest engineering standards in the converted hilltop lumber store south of Zurich which comprised the Egli factory, powered by a variety of engines ranging in complexity from one to six cylinders.

ARIEL HS • Most of the Ariels used in scrambles in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s were individually converted, stripped road models – the engine responsive to tuning and the chassis acceptable. Then came the VHC – the Competition Red Hunter, but in 1954 Ariel decided to capitalise on a growing market by introducing the HS series – still based on the road-going Red Hunter, but with greater attention to purpose, and with an eye to the strengthening US sporting side.

Harold Lines: Ariel’s ace scrambler • Immediate post-war UK scrambles were the domain of the BSA Gold Star, Matchless/AJS, and occasionally Norton in the hands of Les Archer, but Ariel more than held its own, thanks to tough and talented riders like Eric Cheney, and especially Harold Lines.

A BEAUTY FROM BOLOGNA • While photographing bikes for magazines, you come across various collections. Some contain just a few bikes whilst others are well in excess of a hundred. For some it is a random collection of bikes the owner likes but for others, it is a particular marque, model or era and could be either production bikes, race bikes or a combination of both.

WONDER WOMAN • Beatrice ‘Tilly’ Shilling was born in 1909 in Hampshire. She was a pioneering motorcycle racer, pioneering female engineer and played significant roles in wartime and post-war aeronautical and aerospace engineering. She also played a key role in solving a major operational problem with the Rolls Royce Merlin engine.

2025 Yamaha MT-07 Much more than a facelift • A decade has passed since the launch of Yamaha’s highly-successful MT-07 parallel twin, and for that period it has been one of the best-selling bikes in Australasia. So it’s fitting that the new-for 2025 MT-07 has a bold new look, but there’s...