About Us

The Girder Club is a place for people who love proper old motorcycles.

Our focus is on motorcycles from the early days of motoring, particularly the machines built before 1950. From pioneering single-cylinder bikes and unusual engineering to the people who ride, restore and preserve them today, we want to bring it all together in one friendly place.

We share stories, photographs, history, events and the occasional bit of oily-fingered nonsense, with the aim of keeping these remarkable old motorcycles in the spotlight and connecting the people who enjoy them.

The Girder Club is built around the community. The website and our public social media channels are free for everyone to enjoy, but if you would like to help us keep producing the content and growing the club, you can become a member through our private Facebook Members Area. Membership gives you access to our members-only community, while your subscription directly helps support The Girder Club and the work that goes into keeping it going.

What We Do

The Girder Club is about old motorcycles, the people who ride them and the stories behind them.

We research and compile articles for the website, covering everything from individual motorcycles and manufacturers to engineering, personalities, events and the history surrounding these remarkable machines. The aim is to make the information interesting and accessible, whether you’re a lifelong enthusiast or someone who has only just discovered the world of vintage motorcycles.

Alongside the website, we share stories, photographs and information across our social media channels, helping to bring these old machines to a much wider audience and connect enthusiasts from all over the world.

Our aim is to keep as much of The Girder Club as possible free for everyone. The website and public social media content are currently there for anyone to enjoy, without a paywall getting in the way. The support we receive through the Facebook Members subscription helps us continue researching and producing the content, maintain the website and grow the club. It also gives members a private space to meet like-minded enthusiasts and support what we’re trying to build.

The Girder Club is also built on practical knowledge and experience. We have a grounded, specialist understanding of early and vintage motorcycles. That knowledge also means we can help identify and source vintage motorcycles around the world, connecting the right people with the right machines and helping to navigate what can sometimes be a complicated market. If you are after a particular machine, please get in touch and we will see where we can help.

Ultimately, we’re trying to do something fairly simple: keep old motorcycles interesting, keep their stories alive, and make the world of vintage bikes a little more approachable for everyone.

The Girder Fork Era

Before telescopic forks became the norm, there was the girder fork.

For much of the early motorcycle era, girder forks were the standard way of controlling the front wheel. The configurations varied considerably between manufacturers, but the basic principle remained the same – a pair of fork blades, linked to the front wheel through a sprung arrangement that provided a degree of suspension.

To modern eyes they can look complicated, even slightly agricultural. But at the time they were a clever and effective solution to one of motorcycling’s biggest problems: how to make a lightweight motorcycle cope with increasingly poor roads while keeping the front wheel under control.

Girder forks evolved rapidly during the early decades of the 20th century. Different manufacturers experimented with spring positions, linkages and fork designs, and some became every bit as distinctive as the engines they carried.

By the 1920s, the girder fork had become one of the defining features of the classic motorcycle. It would remain commonplace for years before telescopic forks gradually took over.

And that’s where The Girder Club gets its name.

We’re interested in the motorcycles, engineering and stories from this fascinating period — the machines that came before the modern motorcycle and the people who still keep them running today.