I was dispatching at the time, and fed up of secondhand bikes letting me down. The MZ cost £900 brand new, and I dispatched, scratched and toured on the thing. It became more than a bike, it was my friend, my pet labrador. At 6 months and one week - one week past the warranty period - the gearbox fell to bits at 44,000 miles. I rang Jack Nice (the importers) and they couldn't have been nicer. He asked me if I could manage to get the engine out (a piece of cake), then had a brand new engine couriered to me, and a set of panniers by way of an apology! Try getting that kind of service out of your local Ducati dealer... Far and away the most fun bike I have ever owned.
I keep thinking about getting a smaller bike again, but somehow I convince myself that it won't be enough, even though I know that's not true. Humans: fickle
I have to say that, while I generaly really enjoy riding my SS and can make it harrass most modern bikes most of the time (best five minutes of last year were the last few miles into Newtown having caught up with a Pantygirdle at the top of the hill), for sheer "feeling at home on the thing" I'd take one of my Deauvilles any day. The very ordinaryness of them means that you don't get sucked into uncomfortable situations and also that when you want/need to get a bit leery nobody seems to notice/mind. Plus, of course, when you comprehensively out-corner a supposedly better bike in a lurid shower of sparks it really makes you smile. But as an ex-courier you already know all of this, don't you? :tongue:
Had a lovely phone call from Mick Hemmings this evening. He was really chuffed with the photo so I'm glad I sent it to him and I've got an invitation to pop in for a culpa anytime.
Me too. My ETZ250 was £699 brand new, minus some discount and the P/X on a 160 Monza Junior. The materials used by MZ were always good (steel, alloy, rubber parts) and lasted; engines unburstable; original tyres and plugs rubbish; dealers superb service and cheap, e.g. Burwins of Essex Road. Kept it for 16 years, sold for £250. Never liked the sound of the exhaust though.
Or the look! Like an oily drainpipe... Just think where MZ would be now if Ernst Degner hadn't defected and took Kaaden's designs with him.
Brilliant! More pictures please, I did '89, '91, 93', and '95. It'd be a small world if any of us are in each others photos!
We knew the triangle as 'Blackpool' No idea where it came from or who I first heard it from? As you past the toilet block at the top of the hill on the right, you had to go right at the top of the triangle, we always used to camp about 50 metres from there, just on the little left hand bend. People I remenber were the guy with the 888, who I think was RAF? A Falklands vet with a missing leg, and a guy from Norfolk with an FZ600. He rode back with us one year and his missis went pillion on my Gpz1100B2 as she was in tears sitting on the postage stamp of a pillion seat on that! My rides were '89, Yelllow Gpz1100B2, '91 black Gpz1100B2, '93 black 500 Pantah, and '95 Ducati F1.
For many years there was a guarded Ducati bit of the campsite which I went to every year, inside the circuit not too far from the paddock. You had to show the reg document to get the bike out (to prevent theft). I remember the year I was trying unsuccessfully to get to sleep in the small hours in my tent, with the bikes tearing past only a few yards away. Suddenly it all went silent and I got a few hours shut-eye. Woke up to silence and looked out to see thick fog which had curtailed racing for a few hours. There was real excitement in those days. You'd ride down from Switzerland over the Col de la Croix Haute between Grenoble and Sisteron, the route taken by all the bikes from North Eastern France and Europe. Bikes everywhere. Then you'd get to the péage at the Aix-en-Provence junction. The péage was free for bikes that weekend, and they were all over the place. Everyone stopped for a fag or to wait until their mates caught up, then wheeling away or accelerating madly for the hell of it. The motorway has four or five lanes in the miles that follow, sweeping around wide bends. It was like a racetrack - you were caught up in the euphoria of the whole thing. And as you waited in the queue to get in, there was the obligatory rev-limiter madness. At my early Bols, this would sometimes end in tears for the owner and the delight of many, as the engine went bang, but by later Bols, Japanese engines were far too reliable and rev-limiter madness went on all night. A mate of mine once decked a perpetrator, having warned him to shut up at about 3am when he was testing his engine's reliability about 3 feet from his tent. When the guy carried on, he just got out of his tent, floored the bloke and went back to sleep. I may try and dig out some of my old photos and scan them in. I loved the Bol. You never really knew what was going on, but it was unnecessary as Honda always won (Alex Viera). Who remembers putting their leathers back on at the end, in the scorching heat, with your hair like the Sahara (thank you Mistral) and sunburn and a coating of grit all over you? Oh the joy.
I think the fog was '91?? You were close but more like the opposite side to you, halfway along that top track, so more to the right; -) I'll have to get into the attic later to find some more pictures!
I've done the Magny Cours 'bol' it's shite! Use a host site like photobucket for pictures then you can keep posting ;-)
