27 years after becoming a cager (stupidest thing I ever did) I saw a bike at a mate's that reminded me of an old Jawa. It was a 12 year old CZ 250 single port stroker. The Jawa was a twin port. He'd bought it cheap to hack about on, and then bought a Honda 360 twin, so I gave him a 125 notes for it, including crash helmet, new tyre, brake shoes, clutch and
MOT.
MOT.
First thing I did was strip it right down and do a quick restoration, which was an easy job as it was in pretty good nick. The bore and piston had no wear with 8000 miles on the clock. Visual inspection of the rest confirmed new clutch and drive chain, no apparent problems either side of the crankcase. The chassis was sprayed bright yellow in the hope that it'd help the cagers see me.
I dumped the Austin in a scrapyard for £35 (they paid me...), which taxed the bike. Sale of the car battery and reclaimed tax insured it. Yippee! I was back on two wheels and all the old fun, thrills (and spills) came back.
The only problem was that despite being a puny 250cc single pot it kicked back like a demented rhinoceros. Moving the timing back from TDC (where it was) to the correct position had little effect. Eventually, it caught me off guard, gave me such a vicious kick that I had a serious hamstring injury.
After I was well enough to hobble about I got used to starting it on the left side with my right foot whilst holding the clutch in because it also had a habit of jumping out of neutral and taking off on its own!
I mastered its anti-social habits, started to enjoy myself. I dared revisit old haunts in South London, like the Ace Cafe and Tolworth bypass. Great memories until there was an incredible rattle and crunch. The bike came to a sudden stop and threw me over the top. Right in the middle of the Tower Bridge rush hour. The bloody clutch had come right off the shaft and jammed in the drive sprocket.
I had to leave the bike around the back of Whitechapel nick whilst my mate brought me back on his Honda after we arranged transport to get it home. An easy fix, because it was just some silly bugger forgetting to put the special locking washer on the plate housing. Serve me right, I should've stripped the engine as well.
I was soon back on the road, looking for bits to tart it up. I found some good alloy rims but couldn't find any CZ decals; thought it'd be a laugh to make a Skoda motorcycle. I went to the local importers, Motokov, to buy a couple of plastic car badges that'd fit nicely in the blank hollow on each side of the tank. I didn't buy the badges but met a bloke with lots of common interests who's since become one of my best mates and had something to sell that made my mouth water...An old Jawa 350.
Once again I parted with a hundred notes for a bike, but this time it was a rusting box of bits that was 27 years old and had been stored for the last ten years because he never got around to restoring it himself. But there was a crate full of brand new spares he'd accumulated because he worked at Motokov, who also import Jawa motorcycles.
It was a Type 360, same as the one I'd owned way back. I found some odd things about it, though. Seems to have come from Turkey before going on the road in the UK, and the rider must've been a midget, for the footrests had been adapted to rise them up four inches.
This time I went to town with the restoration, and it was bloody hard work. The rust had really eaten into the mudguards and panels, but I kept at it and eventually had it all shining in my favourite shade of yellow. Back in one lump, it looked really good, bringing back many memories as I worked on it and haunted local scrappies for bits and bobs.
What surprised me (should it have done?) was the acres of knackered and crashed nearly new Jap machines; a fair amount of CZ's and MZ's but no sign of any Jawa's.
The worst job was the speedo in the headlamp, a weirdly shaped dial that's irreplaceable and reads backwards to normal. It didn't have the valanced front mudguard that I remembered - I'm still looking for one. The wheels were another serious problem. The originals were sixteen inchers but I had to fit a set of eighteen inchers, which meant hacking off the bottom of the rear mudguard, fixing it on the swinging arm instead of through it. There was barely enough clearance between the frame and wheel when it was fitted. I wasn't bothered about gearing because I'm still the same eight stone weakling I've always been, and the Jawa's, anyway, better at torque than revs.
The electrics I still have to sort out. Maybe convert to 12V if I find out how, because though I've replaced the main bulb with 38 watts instead of the 26 originally fitted, and upped all the others, I'm now trying to extract 60 watts out of a 45 watt dynamo. In the old days, when everyone had six volts, we all got along nicely. Now the puny systems of yesteryear have to cope with double-spotted pairs of 12V super-psyched up quartz halogen lights; cagers with itchy fingers on the firing button.
I started the bike up for the first time in over ten years, fired up with the first gentle prod of my damaged leg. But hell's bells - I didn't remember all that blooming clattering. It was all coming from the top end, sounded like an old A10 with the tappets about to drop off. Several blokes who'd had 'em said it was normal, even new ones did it, but I only remembered that mine ran as quietly and smoothly as a Singer sewing machine. I had fitted oversized rings, so took the barrels off again to check I hadn't busted any. They were okay, so I rode it around for a while and let it settle down before checking it out again. It got worse!
Before I could investigate properly I had to do a charity run with the local gang of BMF riders. We met up at a Little Chef and garage on the A17/47 roundabout between West Lynn and King's Lynn. Everyone arrived with pockets and panniers stuffed with goodies for the Lord Mayor's Xmas appeal. The first comment I got was when a burly great rocker called out to his mates. ''Cor, look at this. Oh, ain't it nice, it's just a puppet!'' This was followed by two of the Traffic Bill who commented, ''That yellow peril we keep seeing in town has turned up!''
I stripped the engine down as soon as that event was out of the way - remembering the odd barrels and pistons I'd noticed as I assembled the motor, and by this time the bike was sounding more like a steam-roller that'd been assembled finger tight rather than with spanners.
I was sure that I'd kept the same set of piston and barrels together, but on assembly found that an ''X'' piston with a ''Y'' barrel, and vice-versa. Must be me, I thought, and put them the right way around. Wrong! When I stripped right down again I found serious piston slap and well worn oval little ends. I figured they'd been done X to Y in the first place and nothing left for it but rebore and new pistons. A pal had a pair of sixty thou third bore pistons and rings but they were from the later model with a roller bearing little end, so the gudgeon pins were 1mm too big.
No problem. Plenty of meat on the phosphor bronze bushes, so reamed 'em out to suit. I've got bulging arms after that little session. The bloke who looks after King's Lynn speedway bikes bored the barrels for me and did a spanking job - the pistons slid down the bores very silkily. Reassembly was a piece of clockwork cake, and she started first time - merely by pressing the kickstart down by hand!
The difference was amazing, the smooth even burble I remembered from my misspent past. There was still a slight tinkle from both heads, though, and noting hard rubber strips inserted between the fins on the CZ, I experimentally cupped the cylinder head in my hands. The tinkling disappeared entirely, it was merely noise transmission. She was so quiet now I could hear the pistons slurping up and down like a pair of miniature Panther 600's. Packing hard rubber washers between the fins removed the tinkling.
Now, going by the book, it's 4000 miles of careful running in, as quiet and smooth as I remember back in the sixties. I intend to go to the Jawa factory in the Czech republic to scrounge as many spares as I can on my way to Romania to look up old pals. After reading about the possible demise of all four strokes by the turn of the century, I hope to be able to persuade one of the longest established stroker manufacturers left to get stuck in before Honda and Ford scoop the market.
Joseph Hemmings