Someone had a low mileage Yamaha RS100 pining away in the back of their garage for 200 notes. I bought it - blue and shiny whilst I waited for my licence to arrive from the DVLC. Burbling about the yard I locked up the back wheel on some mud and dumped the bike on its side.
Fortunately, the indicators had ultra trick bendy rubber stalks which saved them from breaking off but the clutch lever snapped off - £7 from my local Yamaha dealer, I'd expected no more than £2 and found my wallet emptied.
Licence arrived, I soon found that the bike had to be wound on in the lower gears to make it shift. It took off at 35mph in third, I had discovered the powerband. From then on I thrashed it everywhere. Once, after too many pints, I missed my turning at a poorly lit junction, ending up in a ditch.
Luckily, there was no water in the ditch and I managed to haul the bike out despite six pints of the Devil's Buttermilk sloshing about inside my body and brain. I even made it home cross country through the woods at night so as to avoid the forces of law and order and other pissed idiots. The RS is no motocrosser; nothing broke or fell off, apart from myself. I had to fit a new chain and sprockets when the teeth started pinging off the rear cog, and a new set of points ten minutes before my first training session.
The course was a good laugh, an opportunity to meet fledgling bikers and ride around in a straggly line with silly orange bibs on. Our instructors were two bearded John Bulls, as fat and jolly sounding as the BMWs they rode, and a tall Mad Max outlaw type with a massive matt black Katana. I passed Part One with no trouble but Part Two wasn't so easy.
After the second time, when I failed because the examiner couldn't see the RS's pathetic 6V indicators, I rented a Honda CB125T and spent a day going around the test circuit getting every corner and junction exactly right. I passed and burned off home to burn the hated L plates.
The RS took me for a summer ride to the capital, revving hard to keep up with my mate's tuned Suzuiki GP125 and arriving in Covent Garden with a red hot motor. The rush hour was unbelievable to us provincial rodents, though the little strokers would slice through the smallest of gaps. At one point, I burnt off a Laverda Mirage rider, who was so outraged that he stalled his bike at the traffic lights. I was ahead for 200 yards before he caught me.
Another memorable trip was to a weekend party a 100 miles away in Leicester. It was February, so I taped a bit of old sheepskin to the seat and set off, thinking of using B roads as much as possible to avoid the traffic. Four hours later, having had to stop to check the map every 6 miles or so, I was still a thrid of the distance from my destination and my right foot was a frozen lump. I found a pub with delicious hot chicken and chips, had a whisky and massaged the blood back into my iced up extremities. So, refreshed I pressed on and arrived just as the fun started.
On the way back, with hangover but happy, I took the A road, an unpleasant hack on the poor old bike with knackered piston rings reducing speed to 50mph instead of the 70mph when newish, but which took me only three hours rather than six to get back.
The next day I did a bit of maintenance and found that the oil pump control cable had snapped, which meant that only tickover supplies of oil had been lubricating the engine, which illustrates just how tough these little reed valve units can be.
The RS100 isn't a stylish or exciting machine, but provides good cheap biking fun, especially as it costs the same as a fifty to insure. It's easy to fix and even when thrashed mercilessly mine gave 70mpg. It'll keep up with the restricted 125s and is easy to tune for beyond 80mph with a file, filter and power pipe. Its suspension is pretty crude but this doesn't stop it handling okay. Because of its plain looks it isn't likely to get pinched.
I don't ride one myself any more, having progressed to better things (VT250) but to an impecunious beginner who can't stomach an MZ I would strongly recommend it. The weak points are basically its pathetic 6V electrics and the slightly less than stunning front drum, but these are more than made up for by its reliability and bulletproof motor.
I still see my RS puttering around town four years on from when I sold it and fourteen years from when it came off the ship from Japan. Sometimes, I wish I'd kept it - it introduced me to the keen pleasures of biking. My fondest memories of it were the evening runs out to certain girls' houses, hunched low over the headlamp trying to pick out the catseyes and feeling the alternative warm air off the rises and pockets of chill in the dips, as we screamed through the rolling autumn landscape. My Rock Steady ‘undred, it never let me down.
I looked around at several cheap 100s and 125s but what I could afford at the time was mostly rubbish. Then an old school mate mentioned he had a bike in his garage, a 1976 Yamaha RS125, a two stroke single, that had been sitting there awaiting reassembly after a rebore. He didn't want anything for it so I was quite happy to take it off his hands. I decided to do a proper job and strip the bike down to the frame.
A Haynes manual would have made everything much easier but in a fit of misguided enthusiasm I just attacked it with a borrowed toolkit and acquired a small mound of nuts, bolts and parts after I'd reassmebled it. Replacement parts included an engine, back wheel, forks and ignition switch.
Once I'd tarted up the frame, I should have replaced the swinging arm bushes and rear shocks, which were both knackered, but I didn't. A pair of cheap shocks would have improved the handling no end and would have been £35 well spent. Having put the new motor (which I'd bought from a breaker without hearing it run) in the frame I had to wire it all up. A combination of 1980 motor and ignition switch and 1976 loom and clocks produced some interesting bodges, especially inside the headlamp. It sort of worked. In the day at any rate.
Riding 5 miles one night, first the lights and then the indicators stopped working (as it was a 6V system they weren't that bright to start with) because the generator couldn't keep up with their energy consumption. Some more rewiring helped ease the problem.
Starting up for the first time was not that easy. Putting petrol in the tank produced a leak around the tap, I could push my thumb through the corroded metal. A nearly new tank from a breaker solved that one. Fifty kicks later it actually started. Farting, lots of blue smoke at first before settling down to a somewhat ratty tickover. It didn't run for long, though starting it again was no problem.
This proved to be the way of things before it got a rebore. It would stall as soon as I stopped and pulled the clutch in, sometimes, but other times it would run perfectly. Cleaning the carb and fiddling with the pilot jet made no difference at all, nor did changing the points. I guess there were times when it just got bored with running and packed it in as a bad job. And yes, I had decoked the exhaust and cleaned out the exhaust port, so it remained something of a mystery.
The most amazing thing happened soon after all this - it passed its MOT first time. This was probably due to having cleaned the spokes diligently - he remarked on this and didn't do much else other than poke it a bit. He even missed the fork oil leaking out of the right-hand gaiter that I'd fitted to hide the pitted forks. Anyhow, I was free to start ring-a-dinging in earnest.
Looking back at it from the rarified heights of a D reg XBR500, the little heap was positively lethal but at the time it was great. An indicated top speed of 60mph later proved to be a real speed of 70mph - amazing. Oil consumption from the gearbox (700cc only) was almost negligible, with almost no leaks once I'd tied down the various initially loose bits. Fuel consumption wasn't all that good at about 55-60mpg but I was thrashing a knackered two stroke, which explains a lot I suppose.
Other consumables could be ignored (apart from two stroke oil of course) as it didn't produce enough power to wear out the chain or the front tyre and there was no vibration to explode bulbs. It did eat four or five spark plugs and one rev counter cable, though. The only other thing I had to replace was the brake fluid reservoir, which spontaneously exploded on impact with a roundabout - most embarrassing!
Mind you, if it had been made out of metal rather than plastic it would have survived, like the Honda one I replaced it with... The only real problem with it was that it just had to smell rain to stop dead - even dry air and wet roads killed it. A good clean of the HT lead usually got it going, though a new one would probably have cleared the fault entirely.
The combination of squashy forks and rear shocks plus knackered swinging arm bearings gave a ride that could be best described as dangerous. I'm still nervous about corners now! The feeble acceleration was still quicker than many cars, though.
One old duffer in an ancient Rover and in broad daylight, was sitting looking at me as he pulled slowly across my path. He didn't even bother to look left, which was quite perplexing as he was turning right from a lturning on my side of the road. The feeble wheep of the horn was rejected in favour of opening the throttle and grabbing the clutch while braking - I mean panicking - desperately. A relined 9000rpm scream shook him into wakefulness and I carried on living.
After a summer's worth of abuse the engine gave up the ghost, it destroyed part of one ring which flew around the crankcase and one part stuck in the plug gap, which was quite interesting at the time, me being halfway across a set of lights. On pulling it apart (quite an easy job as long as you have a flywheel puller) I discovered lots of damage. You should have seen the sideways wobbles on the crank! So, I patched up the better condition old engine with some bits from the newer one and a rebore. That rebuild cost £50, against £150 for the first one.
I only fell off twice. Once due to my own fault, once due to diesel and rain - talk about learning the hard way - and it was fixed easily and cheaply from a breakers both times. Possibly a bit of aggravation could have been saved if I'd spent £200 on a running bike, but I wouldn't have learnt so much. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.
Anon
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When you're seventeen with hardly any money choice of machine is somewhat limited. The parents were no help at all, just coming out with tedious lectures about the dangers of motorcycling, taking no notice about the fact that I'd already done a day's training. I looked with longing at the sporting 125s but even if I was given one free there was no way I could afford the insurance.
After much running about I found a 1980 RS100 abandoned in a back yard with a huge, spider covered, plastic sheet over it. It looked so rotted that I got it for a fiver! Cracked, flat tyres and a solidly rusted chain made it hard work to push the mile, or so, home. I put it down to part of the bonding process between man and machine.
The engine still turned over, much to my surprise, so a new plug, HT lead and battery were fitted. Pouring in a gallon of petrol revealed that the bottom of the tank had rusted through and two quids worth of fuel found its way over the engine and on to the floor. As all this was taking place in my bedroom, there being no garage and too many hoodlums outside, for weeks afterwards I had a room that stunk like a petrol station. It gave my mother something to nag about .
One used, faded petrol tank later I was ready to try again. The engine wasn’t, the points were a mass of corrosion. I cleaned them up, put them back in, taking the time to get the ignition timing spot on. The engine still refused to start, although now I had a fat blue spark at the plug. I fiddled with the ignition timing and plug gap to no avail.
My rudimentary toolkit had some problems taking off the cylinder head. I eventually got the nuts to shift by giving the spanner a short, sharp shock with a huge hammer. Aha, I thought, the rings were corroded in their grooves. Then I noticed that the piston waddled about on its small-end bearing and that the con-rod did the same trick on the crankshaft, which in turn was so loose had the engine ever run it would have splashed out bearings all over the place. It dawned on me, then, that the bike had been taken off the road because the motor had failed and not, as the owner told me, because he became frightened of riding motorcycles.
Apart from the chain and tyres there wasn’t much wrong with the chassis that a wire brush and can of paint couldn't sort out. Whilst I waited for an engine to turn up I stripped the bike down, cleaned the rust off and painted it up. Mostly white, apart from a few runs on the tank (covered with go-faster stickers) it looked passable from a couple of feet away. I felt pumped up with pride at my work!
Two months later I found an engine, Micron pipe and K and N filter out of a badly mangled bike. The owner hobbled about encased in an excess of plaster, so pissed off he was more than happy to accept fifty quid for the lot. For some reason one of the engine mounts was half an inch out, so I had to fashion some steel plate to make up the difference........it worked but must have added 20lbs to the stock 210lbs.
I could hardly wait to see if the engine ran. I opened the window, then pumped frantically on the kickstart. Nothing. It was whilst tearing my hair out that I realised I had not turned the petrol on. Idiot! It came to life at about 8000 revs with a terrifying din in the enclosed space of the room, huge clouds of smoke rapidly filling up the house. I turned the thing off before I died in a choking fit.
Five minutes later the street was filled with wailing sirens, as no less than three fire engines screamed to a halt outside the house. They knocked the old man aside when he was foolish enough to open the door an inch, came tearing up the stairs with a monstrous hose poking out in front of them. Only an incoherent screaming fit on my part, pointing at the motorcycle, stopped them filling the house with water. After that the RS was exiled to the street where it was shackled to a U bracket that was supposed to stop the drainpipe falling off. I slept with the window open even in the depths of winter, ensuring that I could hear any vandals at work. I kept a bucket of ice cold water next to the window, after the first urchin had a dose the bike was left alone.
All togged up, insurance paid, MOT certificate granted, I was ready for my first serious ride on a lovely Sunday morning. The clutch and gearchange seemed very natural, lots of feedback from the former made a steady take off possible. The motor seemed very sedate, a muted wail out of the Micron. When I gave it full throttle, power suddenly appeared, as if out of thin air, the little Yamaha hurtling towards the junction with a death-wish. Clutch in, brake frantically, skid to a halt with inches to spare.
I didn't give it full throttle in first gear for a few weeks after that. The RS was much more controllable in second or third. The engine was good fun, running cleanly at low revs then giving a nice kick when the throttle was whacked open. I soon found that top speed was 70mph, maybe 75mph if I laid flat out on the bike, but that always made me feel as if I was going out of control.
Coming home after about a 100 miles in a day, I was in an exuberant mood, ignoring the twinges in my muscles and backside. Riding into a headwind got the speed down to 55mph, the glorious wail replaced by a sullen, sulky deep note. There was no difference in speed gained with the throttle against the stop and having it half open.
When the direction of the wind changed so that it was hitting me on the side, speed was down to about 35mph. Not because the RS couldn't go faster but because the bike was being shaken about by the wind so furiously that I thought I had only moments to live. I had, before that, been rather impressed by the way I could bank the RS over until my boot grazed the tarmac. I slept the sleep of the dead when I eventually got home.
After about two weeks I felt right at home on the RS. My mother, in fact, reckoned that it was my second home, complaining bitterly that she had to watch the TV all alone, the old man clearing off down the pub every night. She became even more distraught when I fell in with half a dozen other lunatics on 100s and 125s, filling up the house with my new found friends and various pillions. No pleasing some people.
After about 500 miles the performance did a runner. The exhaust was full of carbon and took a whole day to clean out. I later found that the engine needed cleaning out every 3000 miles. In theory this was a simple head and barrel off job, in practice I managed to snap one piston ring and strip two studs. I began to dread doing an engine decoke, there was no knowing what the strip would reveal, but there was no avoiding it - the alternative was moped-like performance.
The paranoia finally caught up with me 8000 miles into the game. The piston, rings and bore were all wrecked after a fifty mile, 70mph race with half a dozen other learners. I was pushing the engine so hard that the footrests buzzed so much I had great trouble keeping my feet on them. A sudden loss of power and huge clouds of black smoke were my reward. Being towed ten miles home left me shaking in fear!
Good used piston and cylinder were acquired. I took the opportunity to fit a race reed valve, the stock one having a large crack in it. The rebuilt engine was good for 70mph but vibrated a bit more, the new reed made no difference to top end power but made it run poorly at tickover until I tweaked the pilot screw. Spark plugs lasted only 750 miles.
Fuel stayed fairly constant at 75mpg, tyres (Pirellis) lasted over 12000 miles and the cheapest length of chain did 8000 miles. The brake shoes never showed any signs of wearing, probably because they never worked well enough to burn off any material.....the front drum needed massive effort to pull up in anything approaching a reasonable distance. It reminded me of a push-bike brake!
All the more surprising, then, that I never fell off. Several mates lost their front ends in the wet when their discs suddenly locked the wheel up solid. My drum was far too mild a device for such unruly behaviour, so it wasn't all bad news. I did have the back drum lock up solid once, but a few swift kicks with my boot soon freed it off...... the rear mudguard was so minimal that I wasn't surprised that the back end was covered in crud each and every time it rained. When an RS125 fork with disc turned up in the breakers for £25 I put that on my bike, which gave me violent braking that could twist the forks up like a banana. By then I was sufficiently advanced in the art of motorcycling not to kill myself in the wet, but I wouldn't recommend that disc to complete novices.
I used the Yamaha for getting to work and all kinds of adventures in my spare time, usually as part of a pack of howling strokers. The RS held its own against the likes of GP100s and MTX125s, but was obviously lost when coming across rich youths on derestricted replica 125s.
I had the RS for just over a year and did 16000 miles. What's more, when I sold the bike after passing my test, it fetched £275, which meant I'd not only had a year's biking for free but had enough dosh to buy a running but rat Suzuki GT250 twin. The whole cycle of renovation and riding had begun again. I can't see any reason not to buy an RS100 for learning on - you'll have lots of fun, make loads of friends, won't shed too many tears and still have something that can be sold for a reasonable price when the test is passed.
Larry