Went through the Kawasaki triples thing in the 70s and they were great at the time, but not a patch on this beauty …
Mr Tibbs
Mr Tibbs
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Wow! Gorgeous! I remember when those RS250’s hit the market here. In those days you could get your learners on anything up to 250cc. Many of them went straight out and bought an RS250…not sure how many survived but things have changed now. I think its based on horsepower these days.
Aprila from that era made gorgeous bikes. Beautiful but in a beastly way. They also made World Superbikes extremely interesting with the three way battles between Honda ,Ducati and Aprila V twins.
I knew a dude that raced them in classic racing. He was convinced you could mitigate most of the issues and then just hang on and have faith in knowing the bike. Yes , Ive also heard them described as having Rubber frames.
Yep, I had a near fatal in 07. Hit some clay mid corner doing 57kph. A month later I got home and seven months after that I was back at work for 2 hours a day.
99% now. This is one reason why I’ve gone down the classic 250 route. Still need my wits about me though.
I had an R80 ST. Airhead. Fantastic bike with the Koni rear shock. Kick myself for selling it. I love pushrod air-cooled engines in motorcycles. I did have a GSX1200Y that was superb but in the end I went back to pushrods with a 03 Sportster 1200S. It went like stink once I “tuned it up a bit” Went up one profile on the rear tyre and fitted some better mufflers and it went round corners with the best of them.
Not on Two Wheels but a classic two stroke non the less…
Runs best at 10 to 1 on 30 weight oil. EP 90 in the gearbox is a total loss system in a way as the prop shaft isn’t totally water tight. Fantastic wee outboard that brought us home last summer after the Mercury decided to not start for our return journey. It was my grandfathers. Hone marks still on the bore.
No mention yet of a BSA Bantam. Found a book in the library as a teenager about tuning, a mate that had one in his garage and a GPO contact for lots of others. We spent many lunch times in the school metalwork shop, grinding, filling, polishing. For some reason the one task that sticks in my mind was reshaping the con rod from I to a flattened oval profile. I managed to get it to a mirror finish.
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I never had the bantams but started with a Suzuki Hustler. Went on with various Yamaha and Kawasaki two strokes, graduated to the Kawasaki four strokes (GPz600, ZXR750, ZX9r) went to the full bore ‘litre’ bikes (GSXR1000).
Have commuted on various bikes over the last 25 years or so but ended up with BMWs; K100s, 75s, K1100s and now R1100RT.
For the last 15 years or so I’ve been all over Europe and beyond (Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Russia etc.) during summer trips. I’ve used various bikes for this but settled, for a while, on the Yamaha XT660. However… having changed, again, to the BMW R1100GS I can confidently say I’ve no intention of going back to long-haul travel on single cylinder bikes again…
However I do run a Honda 250 bike for ‘non-sealed highway’ (‘green lane’) use.
Bikes have been a bit of a lasting interest from my teens to now (mid 50s). Can’t see myself stopping anytime soon. But, sadly, I also don’t see myself running a two stroke again.
Absolutely. Much BS about diesel. The new Audi S4 is a tdi.
Agree with you on that. I have a multistrada and nice and sit up and beg comfy, but has electronic dampers and ECU settings so you can potter along for miles and miles without getting sore or you can turn the dampers and ECU up to 11 and have a good old crack around the lanes. For me it is the best of both worlds. Round lanes I can keep up with 600 sports bikes but the 1,000’s get away from me. I am getting too old for a 1,000 sports bike though so happy to let them go and have their fun …
Back in 1974 a German friend of mine, living in Paris, came to visit me in Sheffield. At the time he was riding a very nice 650 Bonneville, and I had just finished rebuilding a Rocket 3. To this day neither of us knows why, but Andreas bought a Tiger Cub from my neighbour for £25! An even greater mystery is why I agreed to ride it to Paris 3 weeks later, in exchange for petrol money, a return rail ticket and a weeks holiday in Paris.
To describe the journey as the ride from hell would be a total understatement. I was 6’2" and weighed 14st. The max speed I coaxed out of that machine was 55mph when going downhill with a following wind. At times, going up some of the M.2 inclines in Kent, I was down to 25mph! The journey ended up taking me over 2 days in pretty dire weather conditions. Suffice to say it tested our friendship to the limit! Why anyone would ever want to own a Bantam, Tiger Cub or similar is completely beyond me.
45 years on, I remember the pain as if it were yesterday!
Well, given my summer holidays have a notional destination (e.g. ‘Volgograd’) and then I plan a journey to it, the journey is the important bit.
But… I’ve been all over Europe and at the moment I’m more interested/challenged by places further afield so there is a distance I have to travel first that means a larger bike’s better.
However, for the meandering around at home I’m tending to use the Honda CRF in preference to either of the larger BMWs.
I’d quite like to own a Tiger Cub now. Albeit only for limited distance journeys.
Then again… I didn’t manage to hang onto my ‘speed twin’ for that long since it really wasn’t speedy, whatever the name said.
Not if they’re as clean as mine which also does 65 mpg
Route the exhaust inside the car for about 10 miles and then let me know how clean it is. Trust me they all stink and put out black smoke/soot.
I’m sure believing that comforts you. It doesn’t make it true.
Absolutely. 
Some of you seem intent on finding ways to bring things down with either politics or climate change issues or just plain arrogance. Get over yourselves and butt out if you’ve nothing positive to contribute.
That’s not a very positive or encouraging comment.
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