The other day, a hefty and quite remarkable book arrived in the mail. It’s called Modern Motorcycle Mechanics, and it’s the seventh edition of a guide that first appeared in 1942. If you own a pre-70s bike, be it an Ariel or a BSA or a Norton, you need this manual on your shelf. It’s the sort of book that would make me feel confident about owning and maintaining a pre-unit Triumph, like this lightly customized machine from New York. The bike was built by Neil Fenton of the brilliantly named White Knights in The House of Color, a collective