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The story of a forlorn Matchless G80

One morning ‘Plonk’ became an orphan. Tears of oil seeped out from ‘Plonk’ as he felt surplus to requirements and forgotten.‘Plonk’ was sat up on a bike lift and surveyed with the view that, with some corrective surgery, as well as a regime of therapeutic drugs. ‘Plonk’ started to feel as if there was a place in the world for it to live and be loved once more and willingly submitted to a full body examination. The prognosis was promising.After the couple of rallies, attended this...

Adventures on a 1928 Scott Flying Squirrel

When booking accommodation for the (cancelled) 2022 rally at Clarks Beach the owner Robyn Pearce, mentioned that “As a young woman I travelled many miles pillion on a 1928 Scott Flying Squirrel…”. When cancelling the accommodation I took a punt to ask if she would like to write an article about her adventures. The result was:...

I’m not one to tell tales, but...

Jampot Pre-Rally Tour, Feb 20 Riding our fine Matchless’ or AJSs (with a few moderns and a car or two) we did around 2,000 miles (3,200 kms sounds even better). Down the West Coast, we were rained on (as was Gore which had a Civil Defence Emergency), roads were closed, people became wet, slips were common, bikes threw wobblies, there were tantrums... But we did arrive at Invercargill in time for the Burt Munro week of speed....

Restoration and Coincidence

This is a story whose theme could well be described as a series of coincidences around a motorcycle. In 1982, we moved to Picton and as usual made new friends. We discovered that one of our new friends, Norm Gourdie, was a second cousin of Claire, my wife, whose maiden name was Gourdie. Norm had two old motorcycles partially disassembled and one of them was a 1954 Matchless G3LS. It had been off the road because of a problem with oil supply which caused repeated failure of the big end. My 1952 T...