THE VALESPEED 28 – A CUSTOM MOTORCYCLE FOR THE AGE OF SOCIAL DISTANCING

Posted on July 31, 2021July 31, 2021 by Steve Carpenter

31 Jul

This is the new Valespeed 28 by Valespeed Motorcycles, it’s a limited run production bike that can be ordered either with or without the accompanying sidecar.

Living as we do in the age of Covid-19 social distancing, the humble motorcycle sidecar potentially offers a great way to move two people around by motorcycle without them having to be pressed together sharing the same seat. Despite the timeliness of a sidecar custom this bike was designed and built before the outbreak, but its timing couldn’t have been better.

The Valespeed 28 is actually the second iteration of the much-loved original design pioneered by a British custom motorcycle builder Ben Hall, the founder of Valespeed Motorcycles. Back in 2016 Ben built a land speed racing motorcycle that raced on the Pendine Sands in South Wales, and since then he’s been hard at work on a new series of customs based on the first iteration called “28 Days Later” from 2018.

Ben was inundated with messages and emails from people after the release of 28 Days Later who wanted to buy the bike, he quickly realised there was a market for the unusual design and began putting the pieces together to do a limited production run of the design.

When he’s not building customs Ben works with Watsonian Sidecars a few times a week putting his fabrication skills to good use. Watsonian has been building world class sidecars since 1912 when company founder T. F. Watson patented a unique design for a folding sidecar that could be wheeled through through the narrow alleys between terraced houses.

The company built countless sidecars for the war effort (both WWI and WWII), today they remain in business building sidecars for an ever increasing number of modern motorcycles, and Watsonian Sidecars have made appearances in Hollywood films including Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Given Ben’s work at Watsonian, it only made sense to develop a sidecar for this build and then to offer the final run of production motorcycles with a sidecar combination as an option.

The method Ben uses to build each bike is best conveyed in his own words, so I’ll turn it over to him now:

“I fabricate the whole machine myself from scratch. I start the frame by machining the headstock, I then mount this along with the axle plates in the jig. Next I roll the rear tubes to the approximate radius on my roller and tack them in place.

Following this I add a fixture to the jig that looks a bit like a metal Christmas tree, this actually represents the engine mounting points, I make the bosses that attach to this and then put the down tubes in and the seat post, finally I make the headstock gussets and various other brackets and tack these in place. Once I am happy that all is present and correct I begin final welding in a very particular order to avoid heat distortion.

Once the frame is complete I fabricate the “blades” for each side of the front fork, I make the axle clamps on my milling machine and turn up the pivot bosses on the lathe and then lay these bits into a jig and join them all together with ¾” tube, I then make the steering stem and yokes and the links that hold it all together.

The sidecar is fabricated (again by me, but this time with my Watsonian hat on) from 1 ½” tube, this is again made by hand, in Britain, without the use of CNC machinery. I make the fuel tank from two halves and then weld them together so that I can vary the capacity depending on what people want.

I try to use local companies and friends to handle any of the bits that I don’t do. I have the powder coating done by Worcester Powder Coating, this one was done in their chrome finish which I rather like. The seats were covered by my friend Sally of Simply Chairs and the sparkly blue paint was applied by my mate Neil at Tazart Design.

The engine used is a Honda-clone Lifan 156FMI unit with a Mikuni round slide carburettor and a one off exhaust system. The price for the completed bike is £5,995 for the solo model and the sidecar combinations starts at £9,995.”

If you’d like to see more customs from Valespeed Motorcycles or register your interest in ordering a Valespeed 28 you can click here to visit the website.

Ben Branch

Ben has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more.

Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

A fun business and something that always grabs the attention of the public.

Via :

Beryl Swain- First Woman to Compete on the infamous Isle Of Man

Posted on July 26, 2021 by Steve Carpenter

26 Jul

Beryl Swain: The First Woman To Compete As A Rider In The Most Dangerous Motorcycle Race In The World.

IN most peoples opinion the most dangerous motorcycle race in the world is without question, the Isle of Man TT.

Its a point to point 38 mile race that is held once a year on the public roads of a small island located in the Irish sea between England and Ireland.

The first race took place back in 1907 making it one of the longest running events as well. Its an all out sprint where riders can reach speeds well over 200mph while traveling just inches away from cobblestone fences and houses littered along the course, or I mean roads.

Since its debut there have been almost 250 reported casualties both from competitor to spectators lines up along the route. You can only imagine loosing control of a bike at even 100mph, its going to slide a long way and hit something hard. For a point of reference, the current record held on a bike is 16 minutes 58 seconds set by Michael Dunlop at this years running of the TT. If you average that out, its over 133 though the entire 38 mile course (well 37.73 mile to be precise)! Now don’t go thinking its virtually a straight line the entire course, there are said to be more than 200 turns, some of which sharp 90 degree turns.

Now that we have an understanding of just how intricate and dangerous this race course is, you can better appreciate Ms. Beryl Swain. She made history by becoming the first woman to compete in the mighty TT in 1962. She wasn’t riding the powerful superbikes, instead she rode a 50cc Itom made by a small Italian manufacturer. Now the bike was highly tuned by Beryl and her husband Eddie Swain who was also an accomplished motorcycle rider.

She had worked in the pits for Eddie at races since they got married in 1959. But on this momentous day, it was him that was prepping the bike for her. It was reported that Beryl was a complete natural from the first moment she threw her leg over a bike, which apparently didn’t happen until after she and Eddie got married. If that’s accurate, that would mean she would’ve had less than three years experience on the bike when she entered the TT.

Now technically Pat Wise was the first woman to be a part of the Isle of Man in 1958 when she rode in the side car for Eric Olive. But Mrs Swain was the first to compete as a rider. Now this was during a time when men hadn’t yet realized that women secretly run the world and are not only as capable of doing almost any thing a man could do, but some things even better. (Insert sexist joke here, for example “what..laundry?) That includes Motorsports, just look at the Force girls dominating the NHRA drag racing championships. I’m getting sidetracked, Mrs Swain did exceptional well for her first time, even finishing the race which is not something that is a given.

At the end of the race a reporter managed to catch up with her where she said ” my hands were frozen round the twist grip, but I was told I managed to get within three seconds of the lap record for the 50cc class”.

She had every intention of returning to the race the following year to increase her expertise and possibly get closer to that lap record. But unfortunately her racing licence was revoked by the International Federation of Motorcycling preventing her from being able to legally compete.

It was reported the reason for the revocation was the death of a female rider would be very bad press for the event and IFM. They went on to say that having a man racer get injured or worse is one thing, but race organizers were not prepared to take the risk of something like that happening to a woman.

Swain campaigned with everyone she could in order to get her license reinstated, even getting the Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man involved.

But even with help from friends high places, as well as many other racers, she was not able to race again. It wasn’t until 1978 that another woman rider would compete on the famous TT.

Also a few years before, the Girls were Just starting to make an impression on the Race circuits. love seeing girls racing its awesome.

Never tire of wrenching on 2 or 4 wheels

Posted on July 7, 2021July 7, 2021 by Steve Carpenter

07 Jul

With all this Crazy Mayhem with the virus and wear a mask etc., its nice for me to be able to just do my own thing out in the sticks and away from the craziness that has really changed the Globe right now, but I came across this photo of me many years ago when I created my own style of CR750 Honda and they were care free days that we still need to have . Below is how Life is today with just some of my very own rides and am blessed to live the lifestyle that I do.

I have a variety of machines to complete and am looking forward to new parts I will be making available to you all to help you with your own creation, half the fun is building and the other half is riding them.

I have built many styles of bikes and always scratching my Nogging to think of what to do next, but when the New Barn is completed, I shall be looking into completing some creations and more Blogs and videos to show you what I get up to out here.

If I can help steer you in the right direction , I surely will, this is like a big family to me and always feels good when a Customer informs me their ride is now on the road for the first time.

Get creative and you may have to strip that bike 3 or 4 times to get where you wanted, this bike above I built 3 times but in the end it came out just as I had envisioned it and was worth the blood sweat and tears.

Paint scheme I did almost 15 years ago

Posted on July 2, 2021July 2, 2021 by Steve Carpenter

02 Jul

Well, it is almost the 4th July, the weekend is almost here, I was looking through my Computer and happened to come across this body work that I did back at home in my garage in the City Of Orange, some 15 years ago. I didnt use it in the end and sold it on Ebay, never did see it again, I did a similar paint scheme to the HTML bike 8 years later but forgot I had even done something similar.

I had an old K4 Gas tank that was pretty beaten up and not wanting it to go to waste, I hammered the sides to give them Knee inserts a certain pop when you look at it, these take a while and I hand hammer them, but the end result is always cool to see. They came out great and then I decided That I would have a play around with some paint, as I received some sample Candy Paint from a friend of mine.

I used a Candy Aztec Gold Base and added the flake with it and sprayed the whole tank and seat I had as a spare, then wet sanded it and masked it ready for the Candy Apple Red candy paint and laid that on super think, wet sanded and then a liter of Clear Coat to make sure it seals the color in good.

This was all experimental and was super glad at the way she turned out and, all in a garage at home, make sure you put a tarp on the floor and water everywhere as Metalflake gets everywhere.

I wanted to share this with you as to be honest, I had totally forgotten about this bodywork and now on reflection, how could I have forgotten about such a great color scheme for a motorcycle?

The Seat base is my own Dunstall assembly that I still sell many of on the website and it held the paint really well with no issues at all and was a breeze to prepare and spray.

I have always loved Metalflake and the likes of Roth, Barris, Watson, Starbird and Von Franco all loved to incorporate on their rides back in the day and when the Sun hits the color it really does Pop!

Wished I kept that now but I am sure we have all done that and I needed the money for electricity bill or something back then so it helped me out of a jam at the time.

Its a nice combination and very MV Augusta of the day, sure hope that you lot like it too?

So, I thought that today would be a good day to show some old photographs of this tank and seat set up for a CB750 Honda and maybe it will inspire you to get out in the shed, garage or Porchway for that matter and have a go on your bodywork?

There are tons of color options that you can use and the end result will always wow you with Candy paint.

I think I have made over 100 pounded gas tanks over the years and never tire of it, albeit its a lot of hard work, but the end result is worth all that sweat.

I test fitted this on the bike I had just started, the Tenacuois Ton Alloy bike, so shows you how long ago that was.

A sharp set of Bodywork thats for certain, and glad that I took a risk on it, and all them years ago too, just makes me smile when I see this photograph.

I am building a few bikes this year and have some different Custom designs that I hope to incorporate into the bodywork, so stay tuned on my website for that.

Thank you for taking your time to read my Blog today, hope it at least made you smile, this is a very cool paint scheme that I am truly proud of putting out there in Cafe Racer Land.

Have a Super 4th of July weekend everybody.

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