Welcome to the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club

Welcome to the VJMC, the UK’s premier club for Japanese bikes fifteen years old and over. The club was founded in 1982 by a small group of like minded enthusiasts..

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According to the old saying…" some things in life are worth waiting for"… and December’s front cover rather neatly underlines it. Keith Price offered Tansha his Honda CB750F restoration back in March of this year but then the world got turned upside down for six months before returning to a heavily revised normal - which was nothing like the old one! Then work got in the way for Keith but, bless him, he penned the article only to find he’d stored the memory card of pictures in such a safe place he couldn’t find it! Fortunately, his good lady remembered that the images had been backed up to a Google drive and thus saved the day. Where would a lot of us be without our significant others? So some nine months after the initial conversation Keith’s CB750F appears in all its glory and also blags the front page. Hopefully for anyone spannering a DOHC Honda the story and our ongoing restoration ‘From the Archive’ series will add some inspiration?

By the looks of it Karen Bristow has caught the two stroke bug well and proper. A relative new comer to motorcycling and even fresher to the perverse world of stinkwheels Karen’s been well and truly bitten. What was supposed to be just a taster convinced her she needed an RD200 in her life and she’s set to with elbow grease, spanners, spray cans and the like. It’s amazing what a decent freshen up can do for an old classic and Karen’s words prove just how rewarding smaller stroker can be. By the large grin on her face there’s a fair chance the Yamaha twin is going to be a keeper.

Keeping with the Yamaha two stroke twin theme this issue we also have a pair of slightly more potent offerings. David Langfield’s YR5 appeared briefly in Opinions in the last issue and this time he gives us the detail behind his lockdown project including a tip about not walking into garages with just socks on your feet. Jumping forward a couple of decades Peter Wright takes the bull by the horns with a rather tasty R1-Z. Despite the fact that the bike was more than happy hibernating in a garden it was eventually brought back to life after a number setbacks and issues.

Steve Slater provides us with an in depth review of bringing his Honda CD175 Sloper back to life and seems to make it all look disarmingly straight forward. Anyone who knows these delightful and charismatic, early, Honda twins will know these were generally hard worked and often abused pack commuter mules. With a pressed steel frame many rotted away and those that weren’t were often ridden into the ground. Another Honda twin has broken cover post lockdown in the guise of Andy Crabb’s beautifully understated CB450K5. Pretty as a picture it owes its rear suspension to Barry Sheene riding both an RG500 Suzuki and a Yamaha TZ500 – no, you really couldn’t make it up!

A huge thank you to everyone that answered the call for more Tansha copy. Frankly, it’s amazing how many members contacted me and supplied material. We’re future proofed for a while now but if you have a project, job, task or technique photographed please fire it all over. Just as pertinent are your riding experiences so yes please once again. The more variety we have the better the magazine.

As the magazine goes together late November and early December the world is still a very strange place but we carry on etc. Here’s wishing you and yours the best Christmas possible under strained circumstances, a better New Year and, hopefully an infinitely improved, restored and recovered 2021! 　

Tansha is due out between the 8th and the 10th of the month and that members need to allow for regional delays within Royal Mail due to COVID 19 working restrictions.

Many thanks,

Steve Cooper

VJMC Editor