some 2 stroke history ...

thought it was about time i started writing on here agian ... here goes ..


These days if someone asked you if youd like to own a bike that used fuel like a V8,needed basic maintenance every few weeks ,had a front brake that didn’t like rain and generally scared the crap out of you every time you even imagined leaning into a corner you probably say F@#k off.
Or of course youd be buying a Harley he he only kiddin , I am, of course ,referring to Suzuki’s legendary range of 2 stroke triples . I had one of these, a 1974 GT550 to be exact ,I bought the bike in 95 in a moment of rose tinted nostalgia .Also the lack of funds and the fact that it was cheap added to the attraction.
Ok so to the facts ..i got the beast home and started to survey the pile of parts that had come with the bike 3 brand new cylinders in boxes ,several sets of points [that’s contact breakers to those of you born after 1975],and a heap of other engine parts .Now im fairly good with 2 strokes and as such it didn’t present any problems being generally a simple engine . But ,theres always a ‘but’ isn’t there ?,it wasn’t running and I set about breathing some life into it.
These bikes are a 3 cylinder piston port 2 stroke with a starter motor slung under the crankcase pretty unusual in those days as the thing was so easy to start with the kick starter .And the starter motor usually gave up the ghost about 6 months after arriving in England due to being covered in gunge from salt on our roads in the winter . Other idiosyncracys the bike had were the centre cylinder had a propencity to seizing and or holing its piston..this was because of inadequate cooling and the fact that the contact breakers had a habit of slipping ,also due to the design of Suzukis “ram air cooling system “ the centre pot would get doused in water from the front wheel and short the plug cap out resulting in 33% of your power going on holiday ! until the water evaporated and number 2 pot started firing again normally halfway around a long bend ..say hi to a hedge !!
Onto the chassis…the bike was designed with a leaning to sports touring rather strange due to its fuel consumption etc …so the wheelbase was a tad long ..it was lumbered with a weird three into four exhaust system that weighed too much and robbed the engine of usuable power so that got junked in favour of three nice and loud expansion chambers …more tuning necessary unless you wanted another holed piston ..up the jets and experiment till you got the fueling right .
The front disc brake by todays standards would be pathetic {Suzuki even put a sticker on the fork leg informing you that the brake was a bit useless in the wet ….] and the rear drum was either on or off so you had a choice either lock the back up or pray the front cleared the water on it before you hit the thing your braking to avoid…
I hear you asking why then ride the thing ???? well it accelerated like a fighter plane on afterburners ..it could easily hit 120mph in 1974 that would’ve been incredible for a 550cc bike ..and it sounded amazing on three expansion pipes
And it was a bit saner than Kawasaki’s suicidal 500triple..not much mind you …these bikes demanded respect and relied on a lot of rider input to get the best out of them . Of course the 80’s saw a lot of improvements in 2 stroke technology and saw 250s with the same power output as this behemoth but these triples were smooth and on a good day when she was behaving herself a pure delight to ride …get on one and live a little just remember to dial your mind back a few decades youll live longer that way …have fun stay upright

Nice work Jim! Surely worthy of an image to accompany the story:

Attachment 6460

thanks mate theres more ...............im thinking of making them all into a coffee table book later wheni get the cash to publish it

2 strokes, not so much a throttle as a switch. That was an excellent read and brought back a few scary (hilarious) moments. If you're after cash donations for the book, I'm in.

thanks mr ed lol ill post up the next instalment soon .... from pianos to projectiles .....
Yamaha

then maybe well "let the good times roll " lol
..

Yamaha, pianos were not the only things they could tune
.During the 1970’s governments across the globe discovered, shock horror! That motorcycles were dangerous. And that if their offspring were going to be exposed to such instruments of death they should be limited in some way.
This sparked competition between manufacturers to produce learner legal machines .In those early days the limit seemed to be set at 250cc because after all nothing with that small an engine could ever go fast enough to be harmful .These guys obviously had never ridden a 2 stroke twin!

The main contenders for the learner legal market in 1976 were Yamahas RD250 & Suzuki’s GT 250 there were lots of others but they were either vastly expensive exotica [ i.e. Bennelli’s 4 cylinder 4stroke 250] or just too underpowered to be interesting to a 17yrold. Mum would say how safe is it and if she was buying it for you you’d get Hondas CB250 Johnny would say how fast does it go ?and trade it in for a RD!



This brings me neatly to Yamaha’s offerings, now nearly all Japanese bikes had one common fault. Whilst having excellent motors and blistering performance they were still in the dark ages when it came to handling, all that is, except Yamaha.
Enter the dragon in the shape of the RD 250/350 drawing on their success with TR and later TZ road racers this little gem of a bike was a true giant killer.
It could toast bikes twice its size in the real world of road riding, forget the power figures, and forget the pub bravado of armchair pilots. This was the real mc coy!

I ve owned no less than 8 70’s RD s of various sizes but my ‘74 350B was one of my favourite’s .In the right hands it could reel in most if not all of the big fours’ middle weight 4 strokes of the day, hold its own in the presence of it’s euro peers and make a few of the 750s look silly ….its handling was that good.

The RD range comprised of just 4 models 125,200,250 & 350, replaced in1976 with a 400.
All parallel twins they changed very little during the 70’s a 7 port 180degree engine with reed valve induction, and a chassis derived from the race track .
RD really did mean Race Developed, the range went through a few styling changes going from a classic looking motorcycle early on to the final angular shapes and speed block graphics emulating the factory race colour schemes designed to make the bike look fast when it was standing still.
The real improvements were small but significant i.e. 6 speed gear box on the DX models, rear disc brake and cast alloy wheels in 77 along with the 350 growing to 400cc by stroking the engine ,then finally dumping the contact breakers in favour of electronic ignition on the E and F models

Of all the nations manufacturing bikes at the time Japan seemed to have the pulse of the buying public and they were making headway in racing arena too. The diminutive TZ Yams were making headlines
Nothing illustrates the point better then the winning result in the 1979 Suzuka 8 hour race when 2 Japanese piloted TZ350s achieved 8^th and 9^{th place} racing against Z1000s CB900s and GS1000s all ridden by legends of their time Wes Cooley, Ron Haslam, our own Tony Hatton and fellow antipodean Graeme Crosby.
Kenny Roberts won the 73.74 and 76 250cc world championships aboard a TZ followed by Randy Mamola in 78
From 1963 when it won its first 250 crown to 2005 the TR/TZ has won the title no less than 34 times!

Based on the TZ race bikes the now legendary RZ LC range [in Europe they retained the RD moniker] arrived in 1980 and the bar was raised.
The “Elsie” as it was commonly known, was first shown at the Tokyo motorcycle show in 1979 and was an instant hit.
With monoshock rear suspension and 35hp on tap the liquid cooled 250 was a road burner. So much so that the British government reduced their learner limit to 125cc / 12hp within a year of its launch.
However the 350 model was, to youngsters all over the world, the bike to have ,47hp from a 350cc road bike was unheard of at the time.
Within a year it was the UKs biggest selling middleweight, officially unavailable in the USA due to emissions’ and a storming hit here in Australia.
During the 80’s it gained Yamahas power valve system upping the ante to 63hp But by this time the competition had caught up and the fight was on once again between the Japs. Suzuki’s RG s, Kawasaki’s KRs and even Honda had a bite of the cherry with their NSR.
It was all over for the LC350 by 1992, though the TZR and TDR 250 held on for a few years till 95, the end of the road for performance 2 strokes was in the post…. Or was it?
Next time we ll take a look at Suzuki’s twin cylinder strokers from the T20 super six of the 60’s to the blisteringly fast and agile RG250 of the 80’s

Thanks for posting these, great reading over a coffee at work.

Jim in his element. Cheers mate.

Good read Jimmy. Reminds me of bending reed blocks and modifying exhaust gas flow as a 12 YO kid.

yer welcome here comes anuvver un

Let the good time s roll...


Shozo Kawasaki founded his company in 1896 but it wasn’t till Kawasaki's Aircraft Company began the development of a motorcycle engine in 1949 that bikes would start to become part of their empire. The development was completed in 1952 and mass production started in 1953. The engine was an air-cooled, 148cc, OHV, 4-stroke single. Then in 1960 a contract to take over the Meguro Motorcycle firm, which incidentally was one of the only Japanese companies making a 500cc bike at the time, was signed in that year .
The first complete bike to come out of that factory was the tiny B8 125cc 2 stroke. Humble beginning s but only a few years later would see a range of strokers from 50cc to 250cc released...and one of them was a disc valve twin called Samurai!

Built until 1971 the A1 Samurai and its bigger brother A7 Avenger showed that the Japanese could build performance road bikes. These 2 little gems were powerful for the day 31 and 45hp respectively .It took Yamaha till 1983 to get that sort of power out of their 350 twin
While the the rest of the world ,barring a few notable exceptions, carried on concentrating on bigger machines. These and bikes like them were paving the way for an assault on the market that would turn the motorcycle world upside down.
During the late 60’s Kawasaki had already stunned the yanks and Euros with their fire breathing 500 and 750 triples .

Picture this ….. Its So-Cal ,1969 your out riding your tuned Harley and alongside you at the lights rolls up a smelly purple ring-a-ding 500 .The Harley rider smirks and revs his big lazy 1200cc V twin and starts to ready himself for the ensuing drag race.
The lights change …the Harley takes off only to be choked in a cloud of 2 stroke and as the smoke clears he sees that H1 pawing the air in third gear disappearing into the distance like the starship Enterprise!
The same scenario was happening in Europe at least the Europeans could rely on their bikes better handling to reel , the crazy Jap machines in on the twisties. Kawasaki concentrated on outright power to achieve their market status. They just needed to get them to go round corners ..without scaring the hell out of you .
By 1972 the world was in an oil crisis that hit the whole automotive industry hard, big thirsty cars were no longer desired and seemed somehow an affront.
The same thing hit the bike market but in a different way. The world was changing and emissions was starting to be a word everyone knew .This would eventually strangle performance 2 strokes. The Japanese factories had to make their 2 stroke screamers more planet friendly to sell in the lucrative U.S. market.

This helped to kill off the air cooled triples that had made the big K famous.
And so through the 70’s the triple range got heavier and slower until it disappeared altogether First to go was the 750 H2 discontinued in 1975,the 500 H1 had been tamed and renamed the KH500and lasted a year or so more ,by 1980 the only triple in Kawasaki’s range was the KH250. The KZ four strokes, it seems, had taken over, fine motorcycles indeed [well most of them anyway] but not the same to us oil burning fans.

Kawasaki had abandoned the 2 cycle engine as far as performance roadsters were concerned …or so it seemed.
Then came the 80’s, here Yamaha and Suzuki were slugging it out with increasingly clever designs and layouts for their pintsized twins and singles. Honda were producing 4 strokes in all sorts of shapes and sizes [some better than others] and by the end of the decade they would have made diminutive 4stroke 4 cylinder bikes that defy belief!
Kawasaki itself had started to produce small multicylinder 4 strokes that were very good and by 1982 the now famous GPZ range hit the streets …..But if you were to look through the ’82 catalogue you’d have seen 2 little strokers that were hellraisers in their own right
Enter the AR125 and the KR 1-250 [mimicking the KR250 GP bike which was designed by Nagato Sato ] and later the KR 1 S, both were available with full fairings and performance to match. But while the AR125 was a souped up road bike [22hp/107kg], the KR250 was an entirely different beast.
Leaning heavily on their GP success in1981 Kawasaki produced this tandem water cooled twin [one cylinder behind the other] although the race bike and the road bike shared very few parts, if any. This didn’t stop the discerning biker form thrashing the living daylights out of them and making many bigger bikes look fairly ordinary.

So their you have it Kawasaki’s own multi cylinder 4stroke 250 the ZXR replaced these little ring-a-ding roadsters and although just as powerful and perhaps even faster were much better received by the general public...your mum was happy …almost,

Keep these coming they are great reading. For those of us silly enough to want to ride at 16 in the UK there was also the AR50 and AR80..... Quality

If you knew Suzy…


Ever ridden a turbo four stroke motorcycle? If so then you ll know what im on about when i say that sports two strokes give you a veritable kick up the arse ,if not you don’t know hat you’ve been missing mate. And don’t be fooled by small cc numbers either a well set up 350 twin could haul in its contemporary 4 stroke cousin of twice its size

Suzuki were responsible for a lot of the industry”s manic 2 strokes, in fact they exclusively made 2 strokes for the first 15years, the GS range of in line 4 stroke twins and fours ended the stroker s domination of their model range in 1976

The company entered the motorcycle scene in the early fifties having previously made weaving looms of such high quality and durability that they ran out of customers !
Their bikes originally sold under the brand name Colleda meaning ‘this is it’ They were solidly built small to medium cc machines that saved the company from financial ruin..
However the name Suzuki wasn’t attributed to their bikes until the mid sixties when they burst onto the international market with a bang.
The T20 super six 250 was released in 1965 to the world market and continued until 1968 being replaced by the T250 untill 1973
Crackers like Suzuki’s fine 125,200,250,350and 500 ‘s initially labelled with impressive titles like Stinger, Invader , Hustler ,Rebel and Titan [Cobra in the U.S.] respectively.
During the 70’s they were rebadged as GT’s the 200 being strangely replaced by a 185cc machine which was bored out in the late 70’s to 200 cc again and marketed as GT200X5 [alongside a ‘budget’ version with a single carby called the SB200].
the 350 being dropped altogether.

These were sold alongside three 2stroke triple s that were silky smooth the GT380,550 and of course the water cooled 750.
These 3cylinder bikes were less highly tuned than there Kawasaki rivals and as such lent themselves more to touring than scratching .
Trust me I know, I owned both a 380 and a 550. Try hurrying them up and see what happens! You’ll need clean underwear! Not least due to the “interesting “ braking ability. When the twin leading shoe drum on the front was replaced with a single hydraulic disc Suzuki deemed it necessary to put a sticker on the fork leg informing you that you ‘may experience some lag during use in wet weather’ from experience I can tell you that is an understatement of monumental proportions
The model range lasted from1971 until the 380 ceased production in 1979 Suzuki themselves hammering in a big nail in their coffin by developing the GS 4 stroke fours

Carrying on the development of their air cooled range right through the 70”s the last of these was the fast and light GT250X7 ,20kg lighter than the previous models , was hailed as the first true 100mph[160kph] 250.
Although the very same company claimed this figure for their T20 in the 60’s .
So maybe a pinch of the proverbial sodium chloride should be taken with that claim !
In any case the X7 stayed in production till the early 80’s when the first of the liquid cooled RD’s arrived and nicked the top slot …,But they’d be back !

And back they came in the mid 80’s with the introduction of a new bunch of water cooled rockets.
The RG model series 50,125 250 ,400 [for the Japanese market only] and the 500 was Suzuki’s answer to Yamaha’s market leading RD’s and boy did they steal their thunder! These light powerful sports bikes set the bar higher and the race was on Every youngsters dream was to howl off down the road in the wake of a cloud of 2 stroke smoke with expansion chambers ringing in thier ears just like their GP racing heroes .And these bikes did just that, every spotty youth lined up at the traffic lights and was magically transported to the starting grid of their favourite track .

Having gained success in the F750 championship series during the early 70’s with the TR750 [XR11] ridden by the likes of Barry Sheene and Gary Nixon Suzuki were riding high when Sheene won the inaugeral ‘73 championship, but the Xr11s engine was way beyond the chassis and tyre development of the time and was prone to everything from seizures to exploding tyres , this was the bike that Sheene was testing when it crashed at 170mph at Daytona in 1975.
Suzuki dropped out of the F750 series in the mid 70’s due partly to Yamahas continuing domination of the series with their TZ750 and to concentrate on the world GP championship, the father of modern Moto GP
The new RG 500 they raced gave birth to possibly one of the most desired road bike’s of the 80’s .A 500cc square four water cooled sports bike that emulated the GP racer in looks at least if not in pace . I ll be looking at this bike in detail along with its Yamaha rival the RZ500 later on


Meanwhile the RG250 began its assault on the market in 1985 as a water cooled parallel twin with the obligatory square bore and stroke of 54mm x 54mm.
It was christened the Gamma weighing in at just 130kg [286lbs] and with a claimed 45hp [a whopping 346.5hp per tonne] was hot on the heels of Yamahas LC’s.

The smaller 125 had identical bore and stroke and an equal rival in the Yamaha 125LC …..the fight was on again !
The following year saw special edtion versions across the range in Walter Wolf livery.
By 1987 the RG250 had become a V twin ,an engine so successful that Aprillia manufactured it under licence and fittied it to their raucous RS250 .

Both the 250 and 125continued improving up until 1997 becoming more and more refined. But the writing was on the wall for Suzuki as it was for other companies having gone from being ridiculed in the early 60’s as “hairdryers” by short sighted British and American manufacturers to dominating the motorcycle markets in almost every country in the world .These fast light bikes laid the foundations for the future of motorcycle development .

So nearly forty years of developing performance 2 stroke road bikes came to an end effectively in the late 90’s for Suzuki .

Geat stuff Jim. Thanks mate.

no worries its a pleasure

Back to the beginning........



Whilst we ve mainly concentrated on oriental offerings I think its only fair we take a look at the rest of the worlds notable strokers .
Way back before the Brits had that little disagreement with the Germans, Sunbeam bicycles began producing a simple 2stroke engine in their factory in Villiers st subsequently named Villiers engineering and by 1948 had sold 750000 of the things.
This little engine was to find itself in all sorts of applications but the one we re interested in was as a motorcycle engine not particularly advanced but very reliable and used in a huge amount of small capacity british bikes most famously BSAs Bantam.

But the real innovative designs were to come from Bradford 's Scott motorcycles, as early as 1908 this company was producing a 450cc vertical twin seen then as an expensive motorised horse for edwardian gentlemen By the 1920s the Squirrel arrived and Scotts sporting designs were developed during the following decade by the 50s it was all but over .Though an air cooled 350 broke the record for the Barton hill climb attianing a speed of 115 mph.
Fast forward to the 70s and we see a Scott inspired water cooled 700cc twin bearing the name Silk although this is deemed not to be a true Scott bike it does owe its development to the Bradord based company .
Right ...onto Ze Germans ..MZ was renowned for its competition strokers and the engine design ,in particular ,the scavenging port system was actually patented by Scott in 1939..MZ started to produce bikes in the 20,s ..known as DKWs[Das Kleine Wunde ] the little wonder and a wonder they were for by 1957 they had secured their first GP
1971 saw them win the Ulster GP in Ireland
Ernst Degner, surprisingly, defected from East Germany while leading the 1961 125cc World Road Racing Championship with only one race to go. Degner (with his wife and children) escaped from East Germany in the trunk of a car.
He immediately signed a contract with Suzuki. According to sources, he arrived at the Suzuki factory in Hamamatsu, Japan, under the pseudonym of "Eugene Muller" taking with him some MZ parts (cylinder, piston, crankshaft and rotary-valve) plus some blueprints. reportedly sharing most of Walter Kaaden’s[the father of the expansion chamber ] ideas with Suzuki. This paved the way for the Japanese domination of small displacement motorcycle racing in the following decades. The most notable Kaaden-clone was the 1963 Suzuki RT63 road racer.
Walter Kaaden is also credited with the initial development of reverse cylinder technology
Who knows what wouldve occured had this not have happened ! We might all be raving about an 80s hot 250 of East German origin!

So this brings me to Latin manufacturers ..who? I hear you say
Well we have Bultaco,s Metralla 250 tuned by none other than [Barrys father] Frank Sheene during the 60,s in fact Barry had his first track ride on a Bultaco. The company won a host of Gps on this and other bikes in their stable against MV s and Ducatis
Enter Derbi winning multiple world titles in 50cc and 125cc classes ,take a look at some of their amazing little road bikes and youll see why . Along with many others such as Aprillia with their all conquering RS 250..Europe has had a lot to offer our humble 2 cycle engine form its birth right upto today.
I wish I had more space to go into the many makes and models but id be here forever and my Ed says I talk too much as it is..
Next time ill be starting a with some new subject matter ..Lemons ..dont worry im not about to take up gardening im of course referring to those bikes that for one reason or another are less then inspiring........ I predict a lot of emails … see ya next time

[QUOTE=Jockney Rebel;417946]If you knew Suzy…


Carrying on the development of their air cooled range right through the 70”s the last of these was the fast and light GT250X7 ,20kg lighter than the previous models , was hailed as the first true 100mph[160kph] 250.
Although the very same company claimed this figure for their T20 in the 60’s .
So maybe a pinch of the proverbial sodium chloride should be taken with that claim !
In any case the X7 stayed in production till the early 80’s when the first of the liquid cooled RD’s arrived and nicked the top slot …,But they’d be back !

My very first road bike as a yoof back in the far North of Scotland. It ended up with a Terry Beckett stage 2 tune and expansion chambers. Shit did that thing accelerate. After one too many seizures I bought my first and only brand new bikes, the legendary RD 350LC, one of the very last of the pre Powervalve Elsies.Ah, happy memories. Happily I managed to find my self anothe X7 in a box of bits recently and will hopefully be restoring this back to standard, or maybe not :) Love these write ups Jim as it brings back many memories of my 2 smoke yoof.


http://i808.photobucket.com/albums/z...psadkwuji7.jpg

your e more than welcome i have a few stories myself growing up in sarf est lonon in the late 70s ..ill have to write them down ..i reckon i may see about publishing this lot as a book with pictures lol

Hi Fans my demise has been greatly exaggerated just been busy and stuff , anyway heres a few words to try and revive this thread
Funky mopeds and frantic Fantics

During my formative years, way back in the 70s, before the interwar, mobile phones and speed cameras. A law existed, in the UK, restricting spotty 16 yr olds to ride 50cc motorcycles as long as they were equipped with bicycle pedals that actually worked.

The various manufacturers of these motorcycling minnows came up with ingenious methods of making this happen whilst still appealing to the emerging motorcyclist in us acne prone teenagers.
I personally went for Yamahas excellent version of their little FS-1 [FS-1E for the UK market] a 49cc with a blistering 4hp and top speed of anywhere between 45 and 70mph depending on who you talked to and which plane it had been dropped out of.

However this article is not about the Japanese offerings which were altogether very successful but their Italian counterpart’s one of which was probably the worst design idea ever to come out of any factory of any kind.

I am of course referring to Fantics 50 cc Chopper for those of you not familiar with this lawnmower powered easy rider replica believe me your all the better for the lack of experience .

A mate of mine back home who, for reasons better known to him self, bought one of these machines brand new.
He arrived at our local haunt [the servo up the road] and was greeted with a range of reactions going from disbelief to uneducated respect.
A quick look round the bike revealed that it indeed had pedals which, unless you were a double jointed gorilla, were totally useless.

I managed to get a ride on this beast it was a full 14 feet long chop in the classic 70s California style, 6 foot sissy bar and 12 inch over front tele forks plus a weird hippy paint job over the measly 6 litre fuel tank .

So trying to get this thing going with only 4 hp at your disposal was a feat in itself, plus the added embarrassment factor of a bike looking like this and sounding like a demented bumble bee was a bit too much for me so I gave it back .
Later on I had the misfortune of working on the very same bike and a longer period of possession revealed that this bike had no redeeming features. Its painfully slow, it has all the handling characteristics of a shopping trolley with a buggered wheel. And it cost as much if not more than the competition.
Don’t get me wrong Fantic produced some good small bikes The Caballero to name one but they got this one monumentally wrong.

I mean to say you didn’t even have enough poke to escape the crowds of people taking the piss …the last straw for me was getting rounded up by a double decker bus ……Few bought them and regretted it soon after .

In conclusion then is it a viable concept for a resto? Well yes and no, Ive seen one fetch 5k on e-bay but I wouldn’t advise riding the damn thing.
There are a lot of after market parts available for this and its bigger brother the 125 [yep they made a bigger one too] and a few people showing interest in them mainly because of rose tinted specs...
My opinion is “should’ve gone to spec savers “.

So my faithful until next time when ill be roasting another Italian but in an American uniform...

and heres a pic of the offending item Attachment 8411

Size does matter ……


Or does it? When I was a wee boy I used think that having a big bike was the only way to have fun ..the bigger the better.
So I aspired to more numbers on my side cover till eventually I hit the magic 1000cc around the mid 80s. I found that indeed the big air cooled four was a monster and took manly muscles to control but I had had just as much fun on most of my smaller bikes included the tiddlers .
After reading last issues boomtown rats piece it got me thinking about those mad Kiwis and the hilarious bikes they ride .
We used to have a loosely organised event called Moped Mayhem the rules were it cant be bigger than a 50 and it has to be a road bike not a dirt bike. Much the same as these dudes in the south island. We attracted some loons and some interesting team names ..Piston Broke a pretty obvious one, the Green Welly race team cos they wore ..green wellys, the Inflatable Condom Flying Allstars and the like .A figure of eight track was marked out in the dirt and all hell let loose . It was like a 2 wheeled demolition derby. Great fun and the rules soon went out the window as 50s grew to 70 and 80cc in fact the more ingenious the scam the more we liked it .

I had to delve deep into my memory but I remember years ago me and a mate deciding to do the 300 odd miles to the Birmingham bike show on a little Yamaha 50 and a Suzuki Ap50 , believe me 40mph for 8 hours on a little bike ,that almost everything could overtake, was a mission . Before we left it was all “yeah we’ll do it in 5 hours no sweat my Yam does 60miles a hour “ did it f**k! maybe thrown out of a plane at 20000ft ..but not under its own power and especially carrying my lanky frame around and all our gear .

So off we trotted the little 4hp 2 stroke motor immediately screaming its disdain at marathon task we were asking of it. Looking like 2 explorers off to discover the origin of the M6…we left our south east London council estate. Our mums fearing the worst our dads just glad to get rid of us for the weekend.
Because we had L plates we weren’t allowed on the motorway so it was the trunk route for us, battling with trucks and coaches. Getting the middle digit and moonies from kids on the back seat of the buses and blown into the ditches by semis was the sum total of most of the trip. The many, many stops for fuel ,the inevitable ciggys and varying quality of beverages to be had on this now largely abandoned road gave us an insight to the heady days of the 60s [a mere decade past] and how it mustve been for the rockers and mods back then . Every exit to a town had either a disused filling station or a run down café that once was the highlight of the last generations bikers ..It was kinda sad but to a couple of sixteen year olds on their first trip away on bikes it didn’t matter much and was dispelled as quickly a it had come to mind.

This was our time, our road now , ….on our diminutive steeds we were the kings now, we were the dogs bollocks. Yup I know ….the arrogance of youth, but still it makes me think of past and present generations ....
What are we called now ? Gen X was mine ..then Gen Y now its Millennial’s [who thinks up this stuff anyway ?] ..Im just an old biker that’s managed to survive this long by pure determination and luck ..
You guys have the road now ,make your mark ,F**k whats supposed to be the norm or acceptable ..do whatever comes to mind, pay homage to those that came before if you feel the need but most of all ..have fun …you’re here for a good time not a long time ..stay sunny side up ‘till next time ..
Jim The Grin

Jim that's hands down the best thing I have read in a long time, you are one of the few people I have ever seen able to
articulate the best of this life style, thank you

Bloody good read as always Jimmy

Nice one Jim. Glad to have these back.
I luckily, completely missed that Fantic Chopper as all the boys had Fizzys. It does look like some kind of paper weight.

I remember my first ever ride after getting my licence (I started late at 21) was taking my 6ft tall, 12 stone mate to London on the back of my ZZR 600. Each and every right turn from a standstill looked like the "Hokey Cokey" - "You put your right leg out, you put your right leg in, in, out, in, out, shake it all about" - We eventually got there without dropping it though.

lol yeah i get that totally ..i was like a weeble wheni first started riding lol

ta mate

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ozzy1100

Jim that's hands down the best thing I have read in a long time, you are one of the few people I have ever seen able to
articulate the best of this life style, thank you

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thanks mister