Introduction

Iceni CAM Magazine

This is the home of the Iceni CAM Magazine—a free e-magazine about Cyclemotors, Autocycles, Mopeds … and more.  It was launched on 15th April 2007 and the most recent ten issues can be downloaded here.  All the articles from all the previous magazines are on this website.  For non-computerised folks, printed copies are available at £1.50 per edition; we can accommodate mail order too at £2.40 for single edition or £9.60 for a year’s subscription.

So what’s it about?

It’s an e-magazine all about cyclemotors, autocycles and mopeds that carries road test & feature articles, rally reports, free adverts and other assorted information.  Although we are an independent production, we have strong ties to the EACC and also to the New Zealand Cyclaid Register.

We are based in East Anglia, but are by no means limited to that area.  Much that appears in the magazine is of universal appeal.  We welcome contributions, whereever they are from, and are also happy to help to publicise any events for cyclemotors, autocycles and mopeds.

When’s it published?

We publish four times a year at the beginning of January, April, July, and October.  Iceni CAM is purely an enthusiast production, and all produced on a tiny budget.  The free downloadable version will be posted on this website on the same day as the printed version goes on sale.

All the issues of CAM Magazine that we’ve produced have been very well received.  Thank you all for your comments; they are much appreciated.  Several of you have also made donations, which has helped enormously in keeping Iceni CAM going.

What’s in it?

The July 2024 edition is available now on our Downloads Page.

Main feature: The Ghost

Was this the biggest single article we’ve ever produced?  It sure felt like it was!

Like some impossible lost world, it’s quite incredible that a production Raleigh moped could remain completely unknown, unidentified, and undiscovered for nearly sixty years, but that’s exactly what happened, and nobody knew!

Within just days of each other, two contact e-mails from Southern Ireland about two ‘Ghosts’ set the ball rolling at the end of July 2018, but the article couldn’t really begin until we completed a deal to get our third decrepit example shipped back from Ireland in 2021, though the opportunity to begin restoration couldn’t start till October 2023.  Meanwhile we’d been trying to research it, but the trail had long grown cold … just nothing; by the time we’d got to the end of the restoration, we still knew little more about ‘The Ghost’ than what we’d been able to conclude from examination of its parts.

When our previous Batavus lead feature The Flagship went to publication in April 2024, it finished with committed trailer to produce the ‘The Ghost’ for next edition, so now things really had to get serious!

Since the fabric of the article was going to be so obviously dependent on research and conclusions, it was decided to assemble the text in the sequence of discovery as we progressed—you have to try new things sometimes, which explains the somewhat unusual structure.

Analysis of the Raleigh–Motobécane contract and supplements explained how and why the ‘Super’ came about, but didn’t confirm whether it might have been the speculated RM3.

We tracked down the black & white scans and the illustration from another source, as each piece of successful research allowed more conclusions to be formed from it and added to the growing text file.

Running out of time as the editorial deadline approached, there was nothing else left but to visit Nottingham Archives and search through the most likely files.

©2024 Inspire Nottinghamshire Archives
Ref: DDRN6/28/1/4/404

While finding nothing on our Ghost, there were several other ‘unusual’ photographic and negative files that looked ‘particularly interesting.  Four of these were in negative form, so while you could hold them up to the light and appreciate ‘that looks something’, it isn’t until receiving a reprographic scan of the photographic print that you can really start to appreciate what you’ve actually found.

As the article says, the 64-year-old, deteriorating and untitled file negative of the unknown Sturmey–Archer engined MkIII prototype proved to be more than we could have imagined.  Analysing the image we steadily began to appreciate this was the most significant find of all, and the realisation that this was the lost RM3 prototype, as the interview notes with David Denny back in September 2009 came into view.  It’s very sure that this negative had sat in archive files, unprinted, for over 60years; nobody had seen it and no one knew what it was.

We were hunting one ghost, but found another completely different ghost.

The Irish ‘Raleigh Super’ is unquestionably the rarest production Raleigh moped, but it’s not the RM3.

The Sturmey–Archer RM3 ghost wasn’t the only archive ghost we found either, but that’s another story for another day…

Producing the main article also resulted in a number of curious ‘spin-off’ items, regarding contracts, Irish manufacturing plants, early reed-valves, powder clutches, and other snippets.

While working through the Raleigh records it was very noticeable that there were very few archive files referencing the RM1 and RM2 models.  There were no Research and Development records of RM1 and RM2 models, and only minor records on the RM4.  This leads to the conclusion that Raleigh completely ‘cleared the decks’ of all the previous generation of discontinued models to focus on the new Motobécane based models.

First Support feature: Garden Ranger

Our NVT Ranger came from Paul Hunt of SIM-50 fame when we were making the first ‘Speedway In Miniature’ feature published in October 2009.  The Ranger had been lying, dead as a Dodo and abandoned in the back of one of his storerooms for many years, and as we were leaving after returning his Mk1, he offered the dead Ranger, so we put it in the van.

Not only did it look dilapidated, with bent forks and a very ravaged appearance, the kick-start was broken off, the engine was so worn out that it was impossible to feel any compression rotating the mag flywheel, and the main bearings were so slack that the flywheel contacted the stator poles on rotation.  How any motor could even get so completely worn out was incredible (and even worse was still to be discovered inside the motor later)!

It then got stuffed into the darkest corner of our workshop for 15 years, until March 2024 when we thought, ‘Oh, better do that for an article’.

The littlest NVT proved significantly performance restricted by its reduced drive ratio, seeming as if it wasn’t expected to go over 20mph.  It could easily be re-fitted with an Easy Rider 30T rear sprocket, and maybe a 14T front sprocket to gear back up to a similar final drive ratio as the Easy Rider for around 30mph, then a switch back to the 12/14 Dell’orto carburettor to restore the expected torque loss.

Our bent Ranger ‘lightweight’ front forks did seem a bit inadequate, and reports of broken springs were not uncommon.  Since replacement fork springs and bent leg replacements are probably no longer available, it was just easier to fit an old set of heavier duty Easy Rider forks, which look rather more capable, and fitted straight in.

The Ranger is probably now a classic kid’s bike, we wonder if they’re becoming collectible?

Second Support feature: Raleigh on Safari

‘Raleigh Safari’ was only suggested as a possible small fill-in third feature for the July 2024 edition, because the main article was obviously going to be so big.  This last minute addition wasn’t even looked at until the last day of the editorial deadline, then pulling up these 15-year-old notes, we realised that there could be some useful mileage here.

It wasn’t planned, but just happened like this, that David Denny came up in two items in the same edition.  When the Safari fill-in was proffered, we had no idea that the Denny interview notes would be contributing at the last minute to the Ghost feature.

Only a small article, but it contained some interesting insights of RM1 pre-launch.

What’s Next?

The next magazine is scheduled for publication at the beginning of October 2024.

Next Main Feature: for 17 years we’ve been producing IceniCAM, and never managed to get a sniff of one of these sporty Raleigh mopeds for road test and photo-shoot—then, just like buses, two come along at once.

Next First Support: one of the main Italian lightweight manufacturers since 1968, and somehow we’ve never actually managed to fall upon a single one of its many models.  Now we have one, hopefully we can scrape together a story.  It had a simple tubular frame with blade girder forks and was the lowest priced machine on the market, listed at a mere 14 guineas, though it came as standard with no lights.

Next Second Support: The 21st Century returns to cyclemotoring days with ‘Ye Olde Legend of the Worme’.

What else?

Well, there’s this Website … we’ve put a lot of useful information here, and we’re alwas adding to it.  We have a directory of useful people to know.  Information on local events and, after each run, we put photos of the event on this website.  There’s also a market place where you can buy and sell mopeds, autocycles, cyclemotors and other related items

As each edition of the magazine is published, we add to our collection of articles.  From Edition 3 of the magazine, we introduced another evolution.  Previously, features in the articles section had reflected what appeared in the magazine, but you may now discover a bit of extra content has crept into some items as they’ve transferred to the website—you might call it ‘The Directors Cut’.  The problem with printed magazines is editing everything to fit page sizes and space, and there can sometimes be bits you’d like to include, but they have to be left out to fit the available space.  The web articles don’t need to be constrained by the same limitations so, although the text will remain the same, the ‘Directors Cut’ graphic in the header indicates the item carries extra pictures and bits that didn’t make it to the magazine.

We also have an Information Service—if you want to know more about your moped, we can help.

What we do

Iceni CAM Magazine is committed to celebrating all that’s good about the Cyclemotor, Moped and Autocycle scene; researching toward the advancement of the pool of knowledge about cyclemotors, autocycles, old mopeds, and other oddities; and the publication of original material.  We are a declared non-profit making production, though we still need to fund everything somehow to keep the show on the road.

The magazine is free on line, and the nominal price of supplying hard copies to non-computerised folks is pitched only to cover printing and postage.  All advertising is free since we believe that the few people left out there providing parts & service for these obsolete machines do so as a hobby and an interest.  This involves far more effort than reward, and they should be appreciated for the assistance they provide.  Our Information Service is there to help anyone needing manuals to help with restoration of a machine.  We make a small charge for this but, again, we have set our prices so the just cover postage and material costs.  However, we are trying to make this free too!  We are setting up an on-line library where you can download manuals at no charge.

Overheads involve operation of the website, and particularly the generation of features.  Articles like Last Flight of the Eagle can cost as little as £20 to complete, while others have cost up to £150 to generate, eg: Top Cat on the Leopard Bobby.  With these overheads, you may be wondering how we get the money to keep it all going.  So do we!  But, somehow, it works, helped by a number of generous people who have sponsored articles or made donations to keep the show on the road.

How long does it take to research, produce, and get these feature articles to press?  Well, up to two years of preparatory research in some cases, where little is known about the machine or its makers, and where nothing has been published before.  Then, collating all the information and interviews, drafting and re-drafting the text, travel and photoshoots typically account for up to 40 to 50 hours to deliver the package to editing.

There are many examples where these articles have become the definitive reference material for previously unpublished machines like Mercury Mercette & Hermes, Leopard Bobby, Ostler Mini-Auto, Dunkley Whippet & Popular, Stella Minibike, Ambassador Moped, Elswick Hopper Lynx, and many others.

We’re committed to continuing to produce these articles, because we believe it needs to be done, and we’ve got a proven track record for achieving it.  Nobody else has done it in 50 odd years, so if we don’t do it—who will?

To whet your appetite for what’s ahead, here’s an updated list of machines with developing articles for future features: Ariel Pixie, Beretta–Mosquito, Capriolo 75 Turismo Veloce, Cyc-Auto (Wallington Butt), Cyc-Auto (Villiers), Dot ViVi, Dunkley S65, Dunkley Whippet Super Sports, Elswick–Hopper VAP MIRA test prototype, Gilera RS50, Hercules Her-cu-motor, Honda Gyro Canopy, Honda Model A, Honda CD50, Honda SS50, James Comet 1F, MV Agusta Liberty, Norman Nippy Mark 2, Norman Nippy Mark 3, Powell Joybike, Rabeneick Binetta, Raleigh RM12 Super 50 Simson SR2E, Solifer Speed, Sun Autocycle, Sun Motorette, Vincent Firefly, Yamaha FS1-E.

The working list changes all the time as articles are completed and published, and further new machines become added—so as you see, there’s certainly no shortage of material.

Readers have probably noticed a number of the articles collecting sponsorship credits, and we’re very grateful for the donations people have made toward IceniCAM, which certainly assures we’re going forward into another year.  We don’t need a lot of money since IceniCAM is a declared non-profit making organisation, and operates on a shoestring (and we’d like to keep it that way)—run by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts.

It’s easy to sponsor an article by either picking a machine from the forward list, and we’ll attach your credit to it, or simply making a donation.  There is no fixed amount, it’s entirely up to you, and however large or small, we’re grateful for any contribution to keep the show on the road.

If a vehicle you’re interested in seeing an article about isn’t in the list, then let us know and we’ll see about trying to add it in the programme, but we do need access to examples—perhaps you have a machine you’d like to offer for a feature?

See the Contact Page for how to: Sponsor an article–Enter a free advert–Submit an article yourself–Write a letter to us–Propose a machine for feature–Offer your machine for test feature …