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 15 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 £3.02 for single edition or £12.20 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, wherever they are from, and are also happy to help to publicise any events for cyclemotors, autocycles and mopeds.

When’s it published?

We try to publish four times a year at the beginning of January, April, July, and October—and things nearlyalways work out that way.  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 May 2026 edition is available now on our Downloads Page.

Main feature: The Giant

The tandem on the EACC stand
at the 2013 Copdock Show

The Paul Maye–SER tandem had been lurking around in the Suffolk Section background for several years, and appeared on a number of occasions in section note dispatches on local club runs and at shows.  Such a characterful machine was obviously a likely candidate for one of our articles someday—and that day is finally here!

Team Tandem in action at Kneels Wheels in 2023

It’s a machine of great character and often attracts a fair amount of interest when it turns up at events, as you really don’t see many motorised tandems. Tucked away beneath the rear bottom bracket, the SER Itom-licensed engine is barely noticeable and practically disappears against the sheer physical size of the tandem frame.

Team Tandem are Suffolk-based Martin Kendall and Nick Parker, who completed reconstruction of the bike and its registration for use in local run events—because realistically, this isn’t the sort of thing you’re going to be using for conveniently popping to your local supermarket…

As regards producing the article, neither the Paul Maye cycle frame or the SER engine are things you’ll even find in mainstream motor cycle reference material, so all the research is a deep dive into obscure French references, requiring translation in every case.  Any information that can be found is generally only partial passages, and it requires several such scraps collated from different sources to start building up the stories, then eventually a picture begins to form.

The tandem article was planned before our previous edition, but the photo-shoot was delayed until 18 March due to the extended wet weather.  That shouldn’t have been much of a problem since the article could be worked on in the meantime, except when two consecutive major computer breakdowns prevented access to the text file for six weeks.

We did get there in the end, but a month late getting to press.

Sponsored by David Osborn, Cambridgeshire EACC.

First Support feature: Getting the Bug

Our Tanaka engine came in its original box, new and never used—for around 43 years, and long enough that the ink on the box labels had faded into obscurity!  We’d had the boxed engine in our possession for probably some 15–20 years, and long enough even to forget where it actually came from.  The most likely options came down to either having bought it in among some job-lot of parts, or Paul having picked it up at a car boot sale—we’ll never really know.

The TAS Spitz box just got put into a plastic storage bin, stashed away on a shelf in one of the stores, and pretty much forgotten about.  As the stores were reorganised following our site move, the engine resurfaced and, as a number of other bikes were restored and cleared over the last few years, a plan to build the Tanaka on to the Raleigh R20 Solitaire was hatched as an over winter project and put into action over Christmas 2025.  It was confidently planned in as a feature for our second edition of 2026 before main issues with the drive roller and engine were discovered, though quickly resolved, and assembly completed for first photo-shoot with pictures for registration by the third week of January.

The bugs were debugged and road tests completed the following week and notes largely written up over the following week, before the first major computer breakdown prevented further access to the text files, until the technical issues finally got sorted out six weeks later…

Our Tanaka QBM-23N had a ride to the Jawa road tests & photo-shoots in Northampton on 24 February to appear in some comparison pictures together with Stuart Austin’s earlier QBM-23 BikeBug on a Hercules bicycle.

The registration came through; the bike was advertised, sold and gone, even before the article reached publication, making workshop way for other projects.

Sponsored by Paul Clipstone, Ipswich, as thanks for original registration recovery.

Second Support feature: Pointless

We didn’t have anything planned for the third article at the time our last magazine came out, so that just got notified as ‘something will turn up’, subsequent to which Tony Austin came to the rescue with an offer of both the type-28 and type-207 Jawa mopeds for our ‘instant, just add boiling water’ Pointless feature.

Both these are now both old and rarely seen early Babettas: the M-28 being 53 years old, and the M-207 being 49, so both now classified as historic vehicles.

The quality of these earlier Jawa models built at Považské Strojárne was pretty good, but Babetta moped assembly was transferred to the plant at Kolárovo in the south of Slovakia from 1976, then later to its new auxiliary plant in Čalovo, close to the Hungarian border. The build quality suffered, and suffered again with each of these moves, with the subsequent 210 models developing a poor reputation.

With larger 12mm carbs and higher 9:1 compression ratio giving 30mph+ performance, the 210 models certainly perform a little better than the 40km/h, sub-25mph earlier types, which generally prove quite slow and disappointing to ride and struggle to keep up with the usual pace at club events today.

The trip to Northampton on 24 February to road test and photo-shoot Tony’s Jawas further worked out for the Tanaka article, since brother Stuart also had an early TAS to give us comparative pictures for the BikeBug feature.

Sponsored by ‘Big’ John Berry, Ipswich, in appreciation for dating cert for registration.

What’s Next?

The next magazine is scheduled for publication at the beginning of April 2026.

Next Main Feature: ‘Well gentlemen, the company has called this meeting because of the autocycle sales we’re increasingly losing to trendy Italian scooters, and the business needs to react.  Our best designers are already hard at work on new designs which will very shortly be going into production, and will have the likes of Lambretta and Vespa quaking in their boots!  We can show these Latino chappies that British industry knows all about styling too.’

What were they thinking?

Next First Support: SR2E?  Isn’t that some old jet aircraft?  No, that was the TSR-2.  So what’s this?

Well, it seems that it’s a late 1950s’ East German moped that was never sold in the UK, even though the ‘E’ tells us it was an export model.  This must have been one that escaped over the wall…

Next Second Support: Again we have nothing lined up yet for the third slot in our next edition, but hopefully again, something will turn up…

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:

Ambassador Moped,

Dunkley Whippet & Popular,

Elswick Hopper Lynx,

Leopard Bobby,

Mercury Mercette & Hermes,

Ostler Mini-Auto,

Raleigh Ireland Super,

Stella Minibike,

…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);

Dunkley S65 & Whippet Super Sports;

Elswick–Hopper VAP MIRA test prototype;

Gilera RS50;

Hercules Her-cu-motor;

Honda Gyro Canopy, Model A, CD50, & SS50;

James Comet 1F;

MV Agusta Liberty;

Norman Nippy Mark 3;

Powell Joybike;

Rabeneick Binetta;

Simson SR2E;

Solifer Speed;

Sun Autocycle & Motorette;

Vincent Firefly;

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 …