A great opportunity to buy a 600cc 'Sports' engine..and what have they done to the back of that frame?.. ..read it and weep... ebay 390720040570 ....Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

An engine from the last in a long line of sporting cultivators...I'm glad that he used a green frame so as not to disguise its horticultural origins !

I have a side-valve cultivator that I can barely run along behind, they're that fast ! (and if I engage reverse too quickly, it can come backwards faster than I can !)

this is what happens when yoof who think anything "old skool" and "retro" and who have no concept of history get hold of half decent old bikes.

Have you seen the Raliegh Safty 7 abortion on ebay?

Really good arguments for tighter control of registration.

No MOT

abuse of 25yr exemption

registration transfers

It'll backfire on us mark my words.

I'm with you absolutely on that Ken. These are valuable concessions and a substantial number of people are taking the proverbial.

The Norton OC now (belatedly) asks for photos of engine and frame numbers before providing DVLA recommendations but even so there is a substantial pool of vehicles that have a current Reg.doc. and basically anything pre-1960 can now be modded to extinction, in the knowledge that there are hardly any coppers with any C&U knowledge anymore.

I'm all in favour of the preservation of period modifications (except Tritons 'cause I bloody hate them !) but now that the rules are so tight on modifying modern stuff, the back-yard bodgers are going to increasingly aim at bikes of 'our' era.

I can live with Titons as they are of my era, but the custard/blobber/crapper/ flat tracker poseur mob are what get my goat.

Do it all to a new bike if you must but leave my toys alone especially the "hard tail" "monoshock" ones

I'd rather not see good bikes buggered up on the altar of 'bobber heaven'..

However, I suspect many of these projects started out as just low budget miscellaneous parts that have been put together to make a bike (sort of) and in that case no complete machines have been hacked up...

Some of the 'bad ass bar hoppers' etc. of late have been 'created' by NOT restoring a bike and then just altering it...There's a fair argument there that the bikes in question would have been better if properly restored..

Taking a historical perspective I personally 'sacrificed' a number of A10s and other machines to make Café Racers back in the day...and worse, perhaps, I 'sacrificed' a few more in the name of the early 70s chopper craze..There were also the 'unfinished projects' that I generated as part of this process.

It was the old story...in the early days my aspirations weren't matched by my skills, my resources or my determination (or lack of it)...

Back then though, I thought I was doing the best (and coolest) thing and I didn't want a standard bike anyway...They were for old men...

I have now become one of those 'old men' to a degree and can see the virtue in a well restored standard bike, though having built a number, I now actually prefer to build 'specials'..

The guys building the bobbers etc. are just the latest generation who think they are creating something..not destroying something...maybe they are...

I'd rather people did actually exercise their imaginations and get involved in working on bikes rather than just buying the 'Universal Japanese Motorcycle'...The blokes who are bodging them up today are learning the skills that may make them the competent bike builders of tomorrow...

Unfortunately...just as back in my youth...that means some metal is going to have to be sacrificed for no apparent immediate gain.......Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

I quiet like this one. He has used a bit of improvisation and ingenuity to to make a working bike out of a load of unwanted and unused bits, in the way it used to be done.
The POC have no problem with it and its passed an MOT, so as long it is roadworthy I hope somebody has some fun on it which is what it is all about.
Its the sort of bike that turns up at a rally and keeps lots of people amused trying to whats on it and how its been done. Always having a crowd around it.

My only comment on the bike itself is that its frame appears to be unlike what it purports to be..a 1939 250 Panther.

The back end looks more like a swinging arm frame that has been altered to a rigid specification...

If that is the case it may just be a convenient logbook that is being used to give the bike an (incorrect) identity...

A rather less extreme version of the Reliant engined BSA that was offered on e bay not that long ago...I couldn't actually identify any BSA parts on that bike...

We all know about Rocket Gold Star replicas, fake Goldies and Triumph Trophies etc. etc. etc. but it seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong when a bike also bears virtually no resemblance to what it is claimed to be..or at least what it is supposed to be based on in this case...

That connection may not extend beyond the front half of the frame..or maybe no further than the frame number itself..Can that be right, or desirable ....Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

and the question on the insurance application well be.............has this motorcycle been modified?

You and me have seen plenty of cheque book / visa card resturations and trailered queens, and they are only a bit more interesting than a universal Japanese motorcycle.
But if if I saw this bike in France, Belgium or Holland with a tent and sleeping tied to the back of it Id be intetested in it. There has been bikes Iv seen that are absolute tatty dogs or just plain mundane, but with really interesting history of construction or use.
If he owns the bits, its up to him what he does with them amd comstructing a bike seems preferable to selling them in tiny pieces for maximum profit on ebay
Justy my tuppence worth though- each to his own

I bet that horn in the tool box would rattle your filling

email (option): roger.beck@node6.com

I see nothing wrong in cobbling up a bike from odds and ends, probably almost all of us have done that sometime.

what I object to is firstly the POC approving this, [for a fee no doubt] as a pre-war Panther and secondly passing it off as something its not in order to take advantage of govt concessions.

At very least it should be on a Q plate.

In a few years time some poor mug will buy this as a 'proper' vintage machine and get really pissed off.

It will end up doing us all harm. It'll only need some newspaper scare story when one of these badly built and ill concieved concoctions kills multiple people for some twerp in authority to call for massive restrictions on old vehicles. Nearly all EU countries have far less freedom in regard to older vehicles than we do.

I agree Ken...Nothing wrong in principle with building bikes from bits... and this one has had an MOT (though only because a V5C was needed).

Personally, I'd like to see the return of compulsory MOT tests. Also a greater effort on the part of clubs etc. to correctly classify and describe vehicles...

As you say, currently our laws are fairly forgiving when it comes to building specials but they won't remain like that after a few unfortunate incidents.

The basic error the law makers have committed ref. the deletion of compulsory MOT's is to draw the erroneous conclusion that 1)only old vehicle enthusiasts are involved with old vehicles and 2)that all those supposed 'enthusiasts' have a good knowledge of what they are dealing with....WRONG.. ....Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

you have only to read the description of some bike parts on ebay to estimate the staggering ignorance out there from even well intentioned sellers.

I lost count of the number of lawn mower/rotvator/industrial engines offered usually with a keyword spam including the words Brough and Superior and rare.

Anything with a winged M emblem is always "rare" Matchless even if its actually Mobylette........

always vintage if its from before the seller was born..... about 1970 usually.

new years resolution to be more tolerant gone down the pan already

You need one of these Ken...'The Bike That Won The War'...A Harley Davidson WLA 'Liberator'....Hang on though.... .... 301056797887 .....Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

There are some very disturbed people out there................

The Panther looks an OK build to me ( I don't know enough about Panthers to know what's-what). The SV500 is what it is and doesn't pretend to be a Harley or whatever. Custom bikes and Bitzas have existed since the early days of motorcycling, just look at some of the old Motor-Cycle/Motor Cycling magazines with wartime specials and moto-guzzi engined Nortons etc.

If the Panther had been poorly engineered I would agree with the comments, but it looks (from the photos) to be OK and it does have Panther decals!

Its not the build or its quality, its the mis-use of the registration and age to mis-use concessions thats the trouble, for every well built one there 20 botch jobs.

Plus by no stretch of the imagination is it a pre-war Panther.To label it as one is fraud.

At least when we built up bikes like this in the past it was proudly proclaimed to be a 'special' or carried the builders name.