And when you add the two stroke oil the dispenser was adjustable for different ratios, ie 33/1 or 25/1 ets.
The old roasting tin placed under the bike when parked up at home to catch the oil drips. Some bikes needed two!! My first electric start bike! I declared I would still kick start it, lasted oooh, maybe a day! Meeting Barry Sheene at Mallory Park and getting his autograph. Being able to put a bike on the centre stand with ease...my inability to do it now is possibly age related but bikes are significantly heavier as well.
Bell Star 2 helmet from MCA Leicester DMs Jeans and leather jacket mail-order from the back of Sounds Racing the bus to/from school on my AP50 Flat on the tank with feet on the pillion footpegs Pulling the clutch cable with my hand to change gear when it broke at the lever Picking gravel out of my knees Drop handlebars 'Bikini' fairing Micron expansion chamber De-coking said expansion chamber with caustic soda and a potato to bung-up the end Santa-pod - run-what-you-brung on my AP50 to howls of laughter and applause from the spectators and seeing a jet car blow-up killing the driver Riding up and down the sea-front at Croma in nothing but swimming trunks and helmet Ah ... seems like yesterday
Dave, you're not from my part of the world are you? Just you mentioned Croma and by that do you mean Cromer?
I lived near Leicester in my late teens and Cromer was a regular summer getaway for my moped mates and I - that and Skeggy!
Ah yes, Cromer was and to a certain extent still is a getaway for folk from Leicester. Seem to remember there was always a fortnight when the town was full of folk from there.
Yep - Leicester 'holiday fortnight' - first two weeks of July when most of the shoe factories closed down for hols. Coincided nicely with my birthday :smile:
Ahh, after I'd left the town when I got married for the first time, although my folks still lived there ( father died about 4 years ago ) still go to see my mum every couple of weeks or so, in fact was there on Saturday. Town doesn't change too much, loads of old folk and a bloody nightmare in the summer!
Ace bars Dunstall 4-into-1s Maserati airhorns fixed to my carrier Seaboot socks (always thought that was a sartorial faux-pas so never had any) My Coburn & Hughes one piece leathers (with a few padded bits) Lewis Leathers bike jackets Castrol R Fade Very Quickly dampers Camchain tensioners that didn't Centurion helmets Pirelli Phantoms (so much cooler and more expensive than TT100s) Actually understanding about how most of my bike worked (through having taken it to bits, Haynes in hand) Fantasising about Ducati 900SS and Laverda Jota ownership. Two Laverda Jota anecdotes: Some bloke a friend knew was selling his and a chap came round for a test ride. Half an hour later he reappeared: "Took it up to 120 on the bypass and it just ran out of steam!" he complained, bitterly. A different friend of friend owned one. He reportedly dropped some acid and inspected his Jota. He knew it was his, but didn't know what it was for.
Fizzies were faster Mine had a Mel Lemoto tank/seat unit and ace bars and an Allspeed pipe. Did 185mph. In third.
hmmm let me see staying up til midnight for my first legal ride on the rip snorting suzuki GT after a year killing various moped cept the fantic of all things that was bulletproof?? LCs allspeeds several still in mothers garage when she moved house---all lefthanded ones seems back in the day l could only fall off on the right -------now can crash either side of a motorcycle with no bother! progress eh? no waterproofs two pairs of jeans was the ticket ace bars with standard foot pegs cool or what the utter dismay at the age of 18 discovering the CB900 l had just bought was infact 901 cc and was in the next insurance bracket Honda cam chains the thing mentioned above has two of them eek it has just occurred to me how good biking gear is today even the cheapo stuff from lidl/aldi etc regards Steve B
Just seen your edit Dave, if it was 30 years ago, I was still living in Cromer then, used to frequent the Wellington and Kings Head pubs, mainly because they were only about 2 minutes walk apart, was riding a CX500 at the time, good weather back then too!
May, 1972, a leetle pink pooper me takes a seat on my Dad's Crooks Suzuki Super Six T20... From there it was all downhill, lol! The infamous RD490DX - got tired of my ex-proddie RD250 eating pistons so, at age 19, tore that out and fitted a YZ490 Motocross engine. A four-speed gearbox with NO powervalves or other nonsense, it spent most of its time wheelieing largely uncontrollably from corner to corner, the HUGE carb & single cable meant that sometimes in the damp climes it would stick WIDE open. Progress was el rapido. :biggrin: Did 12 miles to the gallon, routes were planned between filling stations? Its thirst an logistical inconvenience rather than a financial one, petrol was sold by the gallon and cost by todays standards fk all? Kept a bottle of Silkolene full semi under the seat, fillups were a mystical Witchcraft affair, adding a dash of oil at 20:1, then petrol, then oil, then petrol, finishing with a bike-jibbling sloshing of said tank contents before leaving the forecourt in a fog of two-stroke fumes... Had to be ridden hard, or the plug would foul? It shook like a shitting dog, most cars bemused by a front-wheel passing them with all the crackle & drama of a largely unsilenced Open-Class MX bike? Good times. Rescued a CD175 - a workmate had an unused CB200 gathering dust in his shed so we robbed the engine out of that and transferred it... now 80+mph was possible, an excellent Winter bike, barely up to my knees? BRRRRRRRRRRMMMM!! Fred - from Superbike magazine:
castrol tt 2 stroke ,transatlantic races ,cleaning the top of my pistons with wooden peg. Rd250 allspeeds screaming !! crashing lots and Barry Sheene legend ! had his poster next to Kate Bush in a leotard !!
