In something of a contradiction to Tony Garnham-Parkes’ company name, as of early April, this was the latest bike to roll out of the Sheffield workshop of Complete Cafe Racer! Words & pics: Dave Manning Clearly, it’s not a caffeine-fuelled road racer that owes its styling and heritage to the
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One of the things about biking, custom biking, that fascinates me is the way the scene has so many separate facets, separate sub-divisions, the more you look into it. Words and pics: Nik You have folk who are into bike trikes, folk who are into car trikes, folk who are
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A bit from here, and a bit from there – it’s probably the most clichéd way to build a bike but, like all good clichés, it has a solid basis in truth and honesty. Words: Dave Manning Pics: Garry Stuart And, to be totally frank, it’s perhaps the only way
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When most of us hear the word ‘chopper’ we think of a motorcycle with long forks, don’t we? If we go back all the way to when the word was first used, though, it didn’t mean that at all – it meant a bike that’d been cut down and modified
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NOBODY seems to quite know when the alloy of copper and zinc that’s more commonly known as brass became the ‘must-have’ material for custom bikes, but it’s a recent trend that, although very much a modern thing, can be traced back, pretty much, to the dawn of motorcycling. Words &
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I’ve been riding and building bikes as a hobby for 42 years. I had a pretty common list of bikes to begin with: FS1E, RD250, Z650, CBX1000, have done loads of track days, and previous builds’ve been featured in Superbike, Streetfighters and AWoL magazines, all based on the Honda CBX1000
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I first clapped eyes on The Vampire, as Nik christened this bike in 1989 when he wrote it up back then – it was featured in issue 166, and was on the cover of the 1990 Yearbook too, but it didn’t look quite like it did then (or does now).
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So that’s it – all the rounds of the BSH Custom Champs for 2019 are done! And here are the winners! You can see more pictures of all these bikes in the October issue of Back Street Heroes, which is winging its way to subscribers now and will be on
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We’ve had a lot of fairly exotic and obscure brands in Back Street Heroes over the years, mostly British or American it has to be said, but I think this is the first time we’ve had a French Motobecane. Words: Nik Pics: Simon Everett Motobecane are most famous for the
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The following tale is a little convoluted, a little bit of a translation from a guy who doesn’t have English as a first language, so please excuse me if things go a little awry here and there, okay? Words: Nik Pics: Robert ‘Drake’ Kaczmarek Robert ‘Drake’ Kaczmarek was in the
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