Other than "investment", Is there a future for classic car/bike?

Possibly price has a lot to do with it? Are expectations just too high? Also, a buyer needs somewhere to keep it. While not a rich man's hobby, the sort of vehicle you mention isn't for someone who doesn't at least have access to a lock-up.

Maybe someone will stumble upon something rare and take a shine to it; fair enough. But should every obscure Viliers-powered utility bike be preserved as a matter of principle, for example?

Same again

Partly, I think that owner involvement in vehicles has dropped; people do care about a brand and image but they expect to buy something that just works, then throw it at a dealer to service. Rather like a washing machine. How many Hotpoint owner clubs are there?

Can't really comment on this.

Hmm, quite possibly.

Never heard of the insurance cost thing. Can't see why that should be, tbh. Aftyer all, in my experience, most accidents are caused by people not looking where they're going or making errors of judgement, unless there's a specific cause of incidents that are transmission-specific.

I prefer stick shift but my car is automatic: specifically, a slushbox automatic. Why? because I like diesels and these generally come with DMFs these days. In fact, so do some petrol cars now. At the sort of age and mileage that I buy a car, DMF failure is an increased possibility and it's the sort of fault that can (apparently, I have no personal experience) just occur without much warning and leave you stranded. And it's not something that you can preemptively replace easily. Or cheaply.

Classic tends to refer to something a bit more modern than cars with an advance retard lever?

Generally post WW2.

This is posted to a motorcycle group as well and motorcycles were available with advance retard levers later. Fifty years ago I had a 1958 AJS 600 twin with one. It meant that once going you could toddle around in top, 4th, all the time. Of course it also showed british bike manufacturers didn't invest in modern manufacture.

Trying to think of a coach built motorbike. Must be one somewhere. ;-)

But yes - no wonder the UK bike industry failed if they hadn't discovered auto advance by then.

There will have been British bike engines with centrifugal advance by then but I cannot name any, my 1962 enfield 250 definitely did but many bikes were basically running engines that had been produced before the war with just a few tweaks. It wasn't as if the designers didn't know better, Turner the chap that designed the pushrod triumph twin engines used right up to the 70s had designed a double overhead camshaft engine but it was never put into production because the investment wasn't available.

Conversely, one change that many owners of 1950s British bikes was to change the manual advance/retard lever to an automatic timing advance.

Turner's design for a DOHC 350 (the Triumph Bandit/BSA Fury) was fatally flawed because he stuck with his 1930s design with a vertically split crankcase with a crank supported only at the ends, while Japanese manufacturers were coming up with horizontally split crankcases with mains at the centre as well as each end. Turner's design resulted in many broken crankshafts, which is why it never went into production.

Triumph asked for £3M from Thatcher's government to modernise and improve the factory. Turned down. Renault, 50% owned by the French state, asked for £182M and it was given to them. Now, come up with some more shit about Leftist dogma. Fucking Tory cretin.

No point in arguing with our patriotic Tory ex-pat. He just knows he is right.

Perhaps he'd like to say why Germany still has a very successful car industry despite trade unions and the higher pay they've achieved for the workforce there. But I'll not hold my breath.

Total absence of wildcat strikes perhaps ?, plus the Germans well-known pathological inability to do a bad job, unlike people in the UK.

Thanks for that; I was aware he designed it between the wars before he went to Triumph but not that the same design was regurgitated for an unsuccessful try in the 70s.

There were a number of engines from the period, presumably inspired by aero engines like the merlin, the norton 500 springs to mind, yet they didn't make it through to cooking bikes.

Nowadays even Ford transit diesels have DOHC yet I always thought the main benefit came from being able to sustain higher RPM.

Also whilst the Norton was a successful design it wasn't carried through to the twins and BSA's club racer retained pushrods in the goldstar, which incidentally was the bike I aspired to own below the Venom, both obsolescent designs even in the mid 60s.

As to investment in modernising; the 60s were a period of great optimism and growth but we hadn't recovered from war or war debt, simultaneously the cheap imports from empire had gone, this coupled with the the structure of the companies and share holding meant the ethos of long term investment was lost amid the "take the money and run" philosophy, as pointed out by another poster.

I've no room to collect veteran or classic bikes but I would like one to potter around with, I would not exchange my modern watercooled, electric start, ABS disk braked Japanese bike for one as a sole ride though.

PS OP why post to URCM when we still have URCC?

Wasn't just Triumph motorcycles that broke cranks. My dad had a Triumph

It wasn't "regurgitated", sadly it was an advanced top end nailed to the same old bottom end, cos "that's how we make em". His earliest 350 OHC engine was gear train (like Honda VFR) and 2nd was shaft driven (like Manx Norton). The 600cc Square Four was chain driven SOHC. The chain ran in the space at the middle of the 4 cylinders from a half time shaft - this made the top end sprocket the same size as the bottom one so was quite compact but added cost of 1/2 time gear. Many DOHC car engines from the 50's and 60's used a 1/2 time intermediate cam drive. Jaguar and Alfa Romero being 2 that come to mind. The 350cc Bandit/fury was DOHC. Like the Square Four it had a compact chain drive as it used a gear driven 1/2 time shaft to drive the lower sprocket. The rear cam was driven off the front by a short chain, yet more expense with 2 extra sprockets. Something Porsche were to do in the late 80's on 4 valve heads used on 944/968 and 928 with the added innovation of a moveable guide/tensioner that changed the inlet cam timing.

Manx Norton's shaft driven DOHC was horrendously expensive due to the 2 pairs of bevel gears and a gear train. It was also very expensive to set up with vernier gear and shimming of the bevel gears. Postwar AJS 7R / Matchless G50 SOHC had a much cheaper chain drive.

Accuracy of valve timing and removing need for service adjustment. Bucket and shim tappets have check intervals around 60K miles. Hydraulic don't need adjustment. Once you have a screw and locknut, adjustment becomes a regular service event. Fleet buyers are very willing to pay more up front to reduce lifetime costs and unlike individuals have some ability to fully cost this for higher mileage vehicles 3 years 60K miles.

BSA made the DOHC MC1 in 1954. Aborted before racing.

There was a story that BSA did some research on introducing an OHC motor for sale to the public. They found that owners "liked" to do a de-coke on Saturday before a Sunday blast to the coast. It was deemed that OHC would make the task of a decoke too difficult for the owner and they wouldn't buy.

Can't recall anyone ever telling me they were going to do a decoke on a Jap OHC bike. But they were all alloy head and barrel, many of the British bikes were cast iron.

There was another story that Norton went to great expense to forge twin cylinder cranks in one piece. They were fully machined and then parted to split the left and right hand parts so they could be bolted to the central flywheel. The left hand crank half was put a box with all the other left hand cranks, the right in a box with all the right hand cranks, never the twain to meet again. Which is why they couldn't align the cranks and needed "Superblend" bearings on the Commando.

URCC is as good as dead. One thread with 3 posts this year,

OHC reduces wear on the camshaft - not as much mass to move as pushrods and rockers. Giving a longer life of the valve timing still being within spec. And engine with a worn cam may well still run, but emissions etc no longer in spec.

Usenet is as good as dead but we still read and post, one more thread may have livened it up for a while.

Thanks for the input about the only bit I knew was that the G50 and 7R had chain drive

Easy peasy. The German trades unions were never infested with Trotskyite, revolutionary filth hell-bent on destroying the country like Britain's were back then, that's why.

My uncles 1956 Mk 1 diesel landrover broke its crank too. Quite common I believe.