I’m sure that most of us have owned a few bikes over our motorcycling career, but as I suppose should be expected, I’ve owned more than a few. To be perfectly honest I really don’t know how many personal bikes I’ve owned, I gave up counting at the age of 21 when my old friend Lozzo and I sat down one night and tried to make a list, when we had exceeded 150 or so and couldn’t name any more, but both of us were still convinced we had missed more than one or two! Well, even then to be fair I had worked in the trade for several years, which gave me access to any part exchange the boss didn’t want in the shop to sell, at trade price! This coupled with the recent change in learner laws, from 250cc to 125cc, meant the market place was literally flooded with 250’s that no one wanted. So at one time I ended up with not one but two council garages, packed with bikes (26 was the most I had at one time) and not one had cost me more than about £100. Indeed several bargains come to mind, like a very nice RD250E with 2500 miles on it for £30 and a three year old Honda XL250S for £150!
This had it’s consequences too, one day I got a call at work from my poor long suffering mum, she had been visited by the police, as one of my kindly neighbors had walked past one of my garages a day or two earlier while I was working in it, and assumed that because it was absolutely stuffed with bikes and parts that they must be stolen. As mum hadn’t got a key to the garage she called to ask me to come home and show the officer what I had. So, after explaining this to a none to pleased boss, I went home to a waiting policeman. Fortunately, I was fairly organised and was able to grab a folder of registration docs before he escorted me down to the first of my garages. Upon opening the door, he just stuttered out an expletive, turned to me and said “I think your in a lot of trouble laddo!”, so I just grinned and handed him the folder of docs smiled and said “I really don’t think so”. Anyway after he had spent about an hour digging through the pile of frames wheels and bikes, going back and forward through the folder and checking on his radio, he just turned to me and said “is there any point in me looking at your second garage?”, ” nope” came my answer, but I wouldn’t mind an apology for being dragged out of work in the middle of the day for no reason. A muttered sorry came and he scuttled off in his little car, tail well between his legs.
Safe to say in the years that have followed I’ve significantly added to the unknown total and I would guess that I’ve actually personally owned well in excess of 300 motorcycles. But, even this number pales into insignificance compared to the number of bikes I’ve actually ridden. A few years ago, in a pub, passing the time with a stranger who had noticed my bike related clothing and struck up a conversation with me started telling me about his biking experiences, anyway as the evening progressed, the conversation turned to how many bikes each of us had ridden, and I seriously think he wanted me to be impressed when he said he had ridden over two hundred. After a brief bit of mental arithmetic, I suggested that my total would be safely in excess of 6 or 7 thousand, even when I pointed out to him that I had over 30 years of working in the trade and that it was not uncommon for me to ride 3-5 bikes a day and sometimes more than that, he was still very skeptical. So safe to say that a bike has to be something special for it to stick in my memory.
Some of the bikes I’ve owned and ridden have left a real mark on me, quite literally, burns cuts and scars are all part of the biking experience and I suggest that if you’ve so far come away unscathed, you haven’t really been trying. But, the physical pain and suffering aside some bikes stick firmly in the memory, like my first real big bike a Terry Becket tuned ex-proddy race Yamaha RD400E complete with red Marzocchi Strada shocks, cut down seat, flat bars, reversed gear change and most importantly for the pose, Dunlop KR124 racing tyres. I bought it from my good friend John Impey and for it’s day. my god it was fast, easily keeping up with Z1000’s and the like. It handled well too, but, some early squirrely experienced with those KR124’s proved to me that although I thought I was riding like Kenny Roberts, the reality was I couldn’t get the tyres hot enough to work on the road!! So I fitted some new TT100’s which improved it loads. However, Richard Woodworth, the mechanic at the Kawasaki dealers I worked at then, suggested “it was like giving a child of five a box of dynamite and some matches to play with” and suggested running a book as to if I would make 21…. A sentiment that was proved all to close to reality, as I chucked the bike at the scenery, doing just over 100mph a few weeks later!! After bouncing through the biggest nettle bed ever, with my leather jacket pushed up under my arms, I ended up face down in six inches of water at the bottom of a seven foot deep drainage ditch. As my helmet was filling with water, and at that time I didn’t know how deep the water actually was, I quickly clambered out to find my mates about a hundred yards away looking for me where I had gone though the nettles.
Another bike that sticks in my mind is my old 1978 Yamaha RS100, not the most memorable bike, just a 98cc commuter much like todays YBR125, but mine was special! I bought it when I was seventeen and most of my mates had 250’s, the biggest bike you could ride as a learner back then, but as I was more or less unemployed / unemployable it was the best I could afford. In standard trim it was ok-ish and with the wind behind it would just about top 60 mph, not enough to keep up with my mates on runs, so something had to be done. Firstly, a Micron expansion chamber was bolted on, which made is very slightly quicker, but more importantly made it sound much faster. The development continued with a bigger carb, from an RS125, a DT175 reed block with Boyesen twin stage reeds, skimmed cylinder head, and my first few attempts at porting. These modifications certainly made it much faster, I could now leave my mates XS250 for dead, and I once even managed to haul in and overtake a Suzuki GT185 on the flat, but made the engine a peaky monster, that had all of it’s power tucked away right at the top of the rev range and would foul a plug or two every day. It also exposed the awful set of ratios in the gear box 1st 2nd and 3rd were fine but there was a chasm between 3rd and 4th so you had to rev the thing till it was ready to explode before notching up into 4th where it instantly fell out of the powerband, then you had to wait until it gradually got up enough revs to get back into the power, what a learning curve! This problem was eventually overcome with a pair of 3rd gears from a Yamaha DT100 that closed the gap between ratios somewhat. Anyway, just as I had got the bike sorted, it was clocked at 93 mph (downhill) by a mate on a 500, it was written off in quite a spectacular fashion, I stopped for a red traffic light but my mate, Joe on his XS250, decided he was going for it and hit me from behind, catapulting me out into the path of the traffic starting to move from the other lights. This ripped the pipe of and bent one of the rear shocks, but I must have a charmed life because I escaped with nothing more than a bruise on the back of my leg and a few scuffs!
That ended that but that little bike and the desire to keep up with my mates on much faster bikes taught me so much about motorcycle tuning and the rules of cause and effect, and certainly helped make me the mechanic I am today.