Motorcycle General Discussion

[JimmieSParticipant @jimmies]

Hopper

Approach the task from the opposite angle – make your m/guards and find a bike to fit them!

Oops, too many Christmas crackers jokes.

[Nick_GParticipant @nick_g]

.

Went to my mates yesterday and he is not far from firing up the turbo conversion to his 6 cylinder K1300. Couple of connections to the plenum chamber and oil feed and return from the turbo.

While I was there I noticed at the other end of the motorbike scale this little rascal that somebody had given him. It actually ran and very sweetly first kick with some fresh petrol in it.

It's not really his kind of 'thing' but he saved it from being sent to the scrap. Would be a nice restoration for somebody inclined to do so. Turns out they are worth a few quid to collectors.

But who can name what it is.???

[Dave plus / minus 40 thouParticipant @daveplusminus40thou]

Impressed with the turbo conversion! – the little bike looks like an early CG 125?

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Or a CB125 perhaps?

Edited By Muzzer on 03/01/2017 15:52:29

[Nick_GParticipant @nick_g]

Posted by Muzzer on 03/01/2017 15:50:46:

Or a CB125 perhaps?

Edited By Muzzer on 03/01/2017 15:52:29

.

Yup, it is.

A CB 125 S to be exact. No idea what the S version entailed. Reg is 1972

Nick

[Dave plus / minus 40 thouParticipant @daveplusminus40thou]

well done Muzzer!

[David Standing 1Participant @davidstanding1]

I wonder which nail in the British motorcycle coffin that was! .

[steveteeParticipant @stevetee]

And how much were they in 1972?……………………….. £199

fancying myself as Sammy Miller or one of the Lambkin brothers I wanted an SL 125 off road version £249

My Dad wanted me to have the CB125S , cheaper and more practical.

The SL125 went up anything I would dare point it at!

Would love the CB125 though now.

By 1972 there weren't any British 250's  I'm pretty sure except perhaps some exotic  Moto-X  like an AJS stormer perhaps. The coffin was pretty well dead and buried.

Edited By stevetee on 03/01/2017 17:20:50

Edited By stevetee on 03/01/2017 17:21:41

[Nick_GParticipant @nick_g]

Posted by stevetee on 03/01/2017 17:17:54:

Would love the CB125 though now.

.

Well I know he ain't keeping it. I will PM you his number if you want.

Nick

[Ian AbbottParticipant @ianabbott31222]

They won't let me ride now, 'cos when I stop I fall over, but I keep thinking that it would be fun to pick up an old bike and, after renovation, keep it as a Garage Queen, to polish and start up on Sunday mornings. My worry is that it doesn't stop there…..

Ian

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

My brother had a CM125 than a CM250. But then he also had an MZ…

Neil

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

I was convinced that my life wouldn't be complete without one of these. However, instead I sold 3 lawnmowers and bought a dead Honda N600 (car) when I was 17. Although I tried to kill myself in it unsuccessfully over the next couple of years, it was probably still safer to go with cars than bikes. However, that didn't stop me riding a PC50, XL125 and DT125 over the next few years. After the latter was knicked along with a GSX250, I only rode pillion. That is possibly why I am still here.

The last bike I worked on was a GPZ1100A1 (valve guide and piston ring broken) – the last of the air cooled GPZs, first with unilink rear suspension and one of the first with fuel injection, IIRC. That went like sh*t off a shovel from what I recall.

Friend of mine used to collect Black Bomber CB450Ts. That had a fairly unusual engine, with torsion bar valve springs. Apart from the valve springs which didn't catch on, this engine is said to be the basis for the above N600 engine. With 45 BHP and only 500kg before I modified it, I could play with Minis (38 BHP, 650kg) in my N600. Usually when I stopped for a chat afterwards, they would claim theirs was only firing on 3 cylinders of course.

I have a 1967 Honda S800 coupe in my other (ie mum's) garage. That's bloody good fun to drive – change gear at 10500 rpm. Sounds like a scalded cat. Yes, I have had a few Hondas over the years….

Murray

[Martin CargillParticipant @martincargill50290]

Muzzer.

I had a 1982 GPZ 1100 B2 (the one with the bikini fairing) They were out before the unitrack GPZs (it had twin shox) but it did have fuel injection.

[Barnaby WildeParticipant @barnabywilde70941]

A bunch of us had a reunion over Xmas, all roughly the same age & all raised on the same apprenticeship of Fizzy's/A
P 50's to RD250 aircooled to 350 Elsie's then onto the middleweights (HA HA !) until finally . . . if you'd survived so far . . . the litre plus muscle bikes.

What one grey haired old mate said made a lot of sense & I'd never really thought of it along these lines, but apparently when we were young lads you either rode a screaming 2st banshee of a bike or drove a customised Transit van with heart shaped windows & purple crushed velvet buttoned upholstery

I remember that while we were blessed with plenty of healthy young girls hanging on for dear life on what we called 'ladies night', the Transit lads all seemed to be parked up in the pub & playing the pool & darts together !

My mate reckons it's 'cos Julie, Tanya & Debbie's dads were happy for them to be on the back of one of Terry Beckett or Stan Stephens finest but there's NO WAY ON THIS FRIGGIN EARTH is she ever stepping out with a lad who owns what is, for all intents & purposes, a mobile knocking shop

[HacksawParticipant @hacksaw]

Our village copper had a CD200 ,late 70's I suppose , in metallic pea green , and the radio in those days would , loudly go…beep ,beep, beep, "bravo ,charlie alpha delta foxtrot". …and if you was up to mischief you heard it miles off ,and scarpered quick!.

And one day …..I had a crash with him and knocked him off it ! Ripped the knees out of his trousers ,and elbows… scratched up his motorbike , jeez , he went bloody mental at me ! I was on a 100cc kart doing about 60 round a blind bend a bit sideways , and he was coming the other way…

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Bought a CB125S brand new in ? Reg no was TNU 1M and it cost £249 but that might have had a bit knocked off as I worked for the dealer part time.

Nice bike, very reliable. I fitted a two tooth smaller rear sprocket to get it to not rev as much as I only commuted on it and never carried a passenger.

Achilles heel of these bikes was the kick start gear, the box was originally designed for the CB100 which I don't think ? was released in the UK ? and when they went to 125 and a bit higher compression it used to wipe a couple of teeth off if you didn't get it full into mesh before putting weight behind the kick start.

Honda's at this time were using sintered powder technology for the gears hence the wiping off of the teeth.

I did three gears in whilst I owned it over about 7 or 8 years and the problem was every time you went to Palins in Derby, the main Honda agent around here they had redesigned it and they had to order the correct one. Eventually they couldn't get hold of the one to fit mine so I machined a blank up and had it gear cut in Nottingham as I wasn't equipped at the time to cut gears. Once made out of EN36 and professionally hardened this gear never failed again.

It used to hold exactly a pint of oil, not much really and every Saturday morning I used to ride to work, about 8 miles, pull the sump bung and leave it draining all morning, then fill it up at dinnertime. We had a 900 gallon oil tank at work [ our trucks took from 5 gallons to 9 gallons on an oil change ] so oil wasn't a problem but every time the engine was pulled for a gearbox repair it was spotless inside..

[mgnbukParticipant @mgnbuk]

But then he also had an MZ…

Obviously a man of taste !

But only one ? (I have 6 at the moment !).

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Nigel B on 03/01/2017 21:22:18:

But then he also had an MZ…

Obviously a man of taste !

But only one ? (I have 6 at the moment !).

He sold it because he got fed up of everyone who saw it saying 'it does the job'. His disparaging advert won him a TP T-Shirt*.

Neil

*How come I don't get a Typing Person to do MEW classifieds?

[John OlsenParticipant @johnolsen79199]

I bought a Honda CB100 here in NZ back in 1971 brand new, for $540. Interesting thing was that the 100 was just as fast as the 125. The valves on the 125 were the same size despite the bigger bore, and I think they had a milder cam. They didn't rev as high anyway…the 100 was redlined at 11,000. There was also a 90cc version of the same bike, although we never saw any in this country. They claimed a maximum speed of 72 mph, which actually seemed pretty right…they would go faster with a downgrade or a tailwind, but struggled a bit in the opposite of course. you had to lie down on the tank to get that sort of speed. It actually gave better performance than most two strokes of similar size, the smallest thing that would beat it was the Yamaha 125. Suzuki had a thing called a Wolf 125 at the time, a horizontal two stroke twin very like the old Rumi concept. I spent a most enjoyable long ride once proving to a guy that not only could my little Honda out accelerate his Suzuki, it could go faster and went around corners better. We actually found that I could go as fast sitting up as he could lying down on the tank, and when I lay down too the Honda just walked away from him. All that and I got better fuel economy too.

I eventually hotted mine up, with a 125 barrel and piston, a 24 mm carb, and a hot cam. Also the front end out of a Suzuki 185, so I had an 8 inch twin leading shoe brake instead of the little five inch one. I couldn't get the gearing high enough, but it could do a good 80 mph no trouble, and with the gearing a little lower than ideal it accelerated really well. Since it looked stock it gave a lot of surprises to people.

The CG series (110 and 125) that came out later was a great leap backwards…push rod motor with only four gears, where the earlier bikes had the overhead cam and a five speed box.

John

[Michael HornerParticipant @michaelhorner54327]

Posted by John Olsen on 03/01/2017 22:06:04:

I bought a Honda CB100 here in NZ back in 1971 brand new, for $540. Interesting thing was that the 100 was just as fast as the 125. The valves on the 125 were the same size despite the bigger bore, and I think they had a milder cam. They didn't rev as high anyway…the 100 was redlined at 11,000. There was also a 90cc version of the same bike, although we never saw any in this country. They claimed a maximum speed of 72 mph, which actually seemed pretty right…they would go faster with a downgrade or a tailwind, but struggled a bit in the opposite of course. you had to lie down on the tank to get that sort of speed. It actually gave better performance than most two strokes of similar size, the smallest thing that would beat it was the Yamaha 125. Suzuki had a thing called a Wolf 125 at the time, a horizontal two stroke twin very like the old Rumi concept. I spent a most enjoyable long ride once proving to a guy that not only could my little Honda out accelerate his Suzuki, it could go faster and went around corners better. We actually found that I could go as fast sitting up as he could lying down on the tank, and when I lay down too the Honda just walked away from him. All that and I got better fuel economy too.

I eventually hotted mine up, with a 125 barrel and piston, a 24 mm carb, and a hot cam. Also the front end out of a Suzuki 185, so I had an 8 inch twin leading shoe brake instead of the little five inch one. I couldn't get the gearing high enough, but it could do a good 80 mph no trouble, and with the gearing a little lower than ideal it accelerated really well. Since it looked stock it gave a lot of surprises to people.

The CG series (110 and 125) that came out later was "a great leap backwards"…push rod motor with only four gears, where the earlier bikes had the overhead cam and a five speed box.

John

Hi John

My mate would disagree with you. He has a CG 125, think it has a 5 speed gearbox. He is a member of the VMCC and takes it on their runs and has lots of fun overtaking a lot of the bigger engine bikes. The camshaft only has a single lobe for inlet and exhaust valves. I believe Honda did this to make it more reliable with poor maintenance.

Cheers Michael.

[John OlsenParticipant @johnolsen79199]

Well, checking on line it seems that some had four speed, some had five speed.

The overhead cam bikes did need a bit of care. The cam ran direct in the one piece head, and the bearing on one end was cut away to allow the cam to be loaded from that end. That made for a tricky repair if you managed to seize the cam in the head, which could happen if you got the chain tension wrong or neglected the oil changes. The chain could also give trouble if not tensioned correctly, but I was lucky enough to be shown the technique quite early by a Honda mechanic. Most of the SOHC bikes from that era need similar care with the cam chain. They are very reliable if you keep it right, but can be troublesome if it is too tight or too loose. A friend managed to break one on a CB350 twin once, so I had the fun of helping rebuild it. (It is much more fun when it is not your bike and someone else is paying for all the parts!) On the other hand, one of those bikes did 84,000 miles commuting from Masterton to Wellington over the Rimutuka ranges and never even had the head off in the whole time.

The 450 (Black Bomber) was a great bike, I seem to recall that the design was supposedly based on their very successful Formula 2 race car engine.

John

[Ian AbbottParticipant @ianabbott31222]

One of the reasons that British bikes lost out to the under 250cc Japanese models.

In 1963, I sold an old Vespa and bought a 197cc James for £8 to take my test on and use for work. It could manage 60mph with a good tail wind, but vibrated one's feet off the footrests and after a mile the piston would seize. After a leisurely smoke, the engine would have cooled enough to start again and we were good for another mile. The engine vibration eventually destroyed the wiring in the mag, so one day after it failed yet again, I parked it in a shop doorway for the owner there to look after. When I came back with a friend and a tow rope, it had gone. We searched for a while and found nothing, so we went home. A little later the police called to say that a red bike had been found down on the railway embankment about fifty yards from the shop, could I look to see if it was mine? I hopped on the Velo and went to look. I could identify it only by the mangled number plate, 'cos the rest of it was in tiny pieces. Nothing resembling an engine existed and a mangled pile of tubes would have been the frame. The police theorized that whoever nicked it had become so frustrated trying to make it go, that they'd used a railway sleeper to pound it into tiny pieces. The story has a happy ending though, the insurance paid me ten quid, because it "was uneconomical to repair."

I resisted the impulse to buy a Japanese bike until here in Canada in 1998, when I bought a 1978 3cyl. Yamaha XS750 Special. Wheeeeee….. 9,000 in every gear, 0-60 in something stupid. Never did find out how fast it would go. 560 lbs, shaft drive and absolutely no ability to go around corners. On the straight roads here though, it was a perfect cruising bike. The wife loved sitting on the back and watching the world flash by. Soooo comfortable. Sold it when we went traveling and ended up with the Indian Royal Enfield in England, which was perfect for the winding country roads. The RE was one of the first after they acquired the "Royal" bit but before they began importing to the UK. Someone bought it in India and took it home. It was fun to ride the big single again, but the bike was rubbish, Indian crap castings, peeling chrome and flaking paint. I sold it to a guy who restored bikes when we left to come home. He was going to strip to down and start from scratch.

In terms of the design, the RE was essentially a 1955 British bike. Slow, unreliable, maintenance heavy, just what the Japanese imports wanted. Of course, nowadays, it's all nostalgia.

As for getting a garage queen, I'll probably look in vain for a cheap Brough or Vincent to do up, which will solve the problem…….

Ian

[Cornish JackParticipant @cornishjack]

No doubt 'old hat' for many of you, but what prompts people to do this? …

https://youtu.be/RngZWIe5a-M

rgds

Bill

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

I can think of a few reasons:

1. they don't know there's perfectly good trails or better yet roads just outside

2. bad parenting

3. more stable than a pogo stick

4. growing up at Stonehenge

Just kidding – I have no idea. Lots of skill and balance needed though. Couldna done that with my 1972 Hpnda CB350 or my 1983 Yam 750 Maxim – I miss those bikes. Cheers JD

[richardandtracyParticipant @richardandtracy]

I had a little 15 bhp Suzi GP125 which spat the big end bearing out through the exhaust 3 days before my test. Getting a replacement bike for my test was fun… A week later bought a Suzi GSX550ESD, which I got in 1984. It currently has a spindle tree growing up through it in the garden. Can't quite bear to get rid of it or admit I've grown up.

Went on a 2 month voyage across Canada and Alaska on a Honda Silver Wing in the summer of '87. Started in Vancouver, bought & wrote off a Yamaha in 24 hours (Canadians drive on the wrong side of the road, so I didn't see the car I drove in front of), bought the Silver Wing and took it up to Fairbanks. Visited Dawson City in the Yukon, got snowed on on 31 August in Whitehorse then trundled north of the Great Lakes to Niagara and Toronto where I sold the bike and flew back. 62 days, 8000 miles, a new campsite every night. Amazing trip.

Currently make do with my wife's Piaggio NRG 50cc moped for my two wheel fix. Not half as much fun as a real bike, but with a nice hill to help I've got it up to 55mph.

Regards,

Richard.

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