Yvonne and I got married in 1968 and are still happily married now with two married offspring Christopher and Michele. By around 1978 I had a successful office furniture supply business and had just sold the old 350cc racer and bought a road going Rocket Gold Star. One day I heard about a new racing club being started called the Classic Racing Motorcycle Club and one of the founding members a certain Mr Alan Cathcart happened at that time to live in Ealing so I called to see him one day whilst in that neck of the woods.  Well by the time I left I had become the first official membership secretary for the club due mainly to the persuasive powers of Stella his wife who had been overwhelmed by the interest in the new club. The CRMC went from strength to strength and with the help of my Mum (sadly no longer with us) we were proud to see the membership grow to 1900 members worldwide. After four years Mum and I decided to call it a day but during that time I had already started being asked to find and supply classic bikes mainly racers and Gold Stars so that’s how the business began a hobby gone mad.

The business developed into restoring classic machine not just Gold Stars but Matchless G50 and G45 AJS 7R Tritons and Manx’s plus all kinds of road machines and an ever increasing worldwide spares supply side catering mainly for the Gold Stars and Rocket Gold Stars. Although not a trained motor engineer I pride myself that I can put a good Gold Star together and judging by the articles etc that started appearing in the press other people seemed to agree. After some years I have been joined by Dave Harris who is a trained aircraft engineer and his expertise means that we now can do most engineering work in house and he can check the quality of parts bought in. When I first started restoring and rebuilding the Goldstars it became apparent that much of what was being sold as spares was not of the best quality shall I say. Don’t get me wrong its easy to knock others who had continued supplying British bike spares in some very lean years but for whatever reasons standards had slipped shall we say.

Now because as far as I know I am the only supplier of Gold Star parts who is also continuously  rebuilding Gold Stars using and fitting the parts we sell, the faults soon became apparent. Naturally we spoke with the suppliers, some rectified things others didn’t so where possible and necessary we started to have our own parts made  to original specs and together with experience gathered over the years have reached a much better standard of available spares than ever before, not all perfect, but a hell of a lot better. In addition where a part leaves a little to be desired I will always say to the customer at present as far as I know that’s the best there is on the market but if you see better please let me know and I will try to stock it. By the nature of the beast it will never be 100% right but we keep on trying.

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