Motorcycling is a bit like sex. There are lots of ways of doing it and to do it at its most basic level is much better than not doing it all. Sex is supposed to be free but in my experience there's always a heavy price to pay, even if it's not immediately apparent, and devices like MZ 150's work out as an immensely cheaper form of fun in the long term. Fun, do I hear you scream? MZ's fun? Well, I've been told I have a strange and perverse sense of humour.
It was stretched when on the second day of ownership of one of the few remaining pristine, low mileage 150's in the country we ground to a halt miles from nowhere, with only some vicious, probably psychotic, cows for company. The one with the horns looked with longing at the red MZ, I thankful for the presence of a large ditch between us.
I'd been steaming along at a stimulating 65mph, adding to ozone level with an intoxicating layer of pollutants and snapping the Iron Curtain hack through a series of bends under the impression that it was really a race replica, I was Barry Sheene (which gives away my age) and the lumbering Metro that had tried to run us off the road was an apparition sent to test my reflexes. In short, dears, I was a little wired and weird, in no fit mind to look into the intricacies of stroker engineering. Let it cool down, a wise voice counselled, which I did and which worked very nicely. Whew! The battle of the cows avoided.
I presumed that the piston had momentarily seized, a not uncommon peccadillo on strokers. The answer seemed to lay in switching from recycled 20/50 to proper stroker oil; doing that I never had a repeat performance, although it still burnt off great clouds of oil and was cursed by most of my neighbours, not least because it's vibratory, agonized screaming tickover would set off both car and burglar alarms. My refusal to take part in any of the community activities had already defined me as an anti-social bugger, ownership of the MZ just confirming their poor opinion of moi. Could I give a shit?
The next trick that the MZ revealed was night riding. The front lamp was so poor that eye strain set in after about five seconds, and blinded by oncoming traffic I had no clear idea where I was riding. At least not until we rode off the road, skidded along some grass and then tried to redefine some farmer's hedgerow. Say what you will about MZ's, they are at least tough. I was bruised and bloodied but still able to pull the hack out of the hedge, drag it back on to the road and ride off into the night - at 5mph.
MZ's electrics are the one weak spot in the otherwise robust design (well, okay the drum front brakes aren't brilliant and...). Regular disintegration of electrical components is all too common, fitting Japanese stuff the best remedy, although even then the vibes can have an affect if care in rubber mounting them isn't taken.
One of the more hilarious moments was the time when the battery split, soaking the chassis in potent acid. A bit of bodging of the wiring allowed the bike to continue running as long as a 3000rpm tickover was considered acceptable (it wasn't by the general populace who were reduced to coughing fits). Flaking pain, corroded wiring and rotting alloy were the result of the acid spillage.
Finish was generally quite reasonable, a lot better than Japanese commuters and quite susceptible to a good going over with polish and elbow grease. Chrome on the magnificently large silencer did soon start to do a runner and there patches of rust where the acid had spilt.
Cheap running was ensured by a back yard filled full of dead MZ's, a good half of them given to me free, the others ranging in price from a fiver to twenty quid. All it took was a bit of cheek in knocking on doors when a dead MZ was spied in gardens and a willingness to keep writing in adverts to the local Free Advertiser newspaper.
Quite a few of these bikes had been crashed due to retention, I'd guess, of the OE Pneumat tyres, early examples of which were bad enough to reduce MZ owners to gibbering wrecks and to becoming large statistics in the NHS budget. Tyres hardly wear at all on the 150's which makes it a hard task for the owner to tear off Pneumats in favour of Pirelli's or Michelins, but the utter transformation of the handling makes this heart breaking process more than worthwhile.
I get at least 20,000 miles out of a set of tyres, a similar mileage for the enclosed final drive chain and even longer for the brake shoes. The latter, especially out front, can be a little lacking in stopping power, whilst the front end seizes up under braking making it nigh on impossible to throw the communist tackle around erring cagers.
After a while I took to adding notches to the brake lever in celebration of the number of cages I successfully damaged, helped along by the largest set of crash-bars in the known universe which dug up huge holes in the tarmac and could take off the side of a car in the twinkle of an eye. What did I tell you? Fun, fun, fun!
The only problem with the MZ in traffic was that it didn't run very cleanly at low revs, often oiling up the spark plug, which then needed a dose of throttle and swearing to clear up in first gear. Cagers actually sounded their horns in alarm at the dense fog of pollutants that resulted, thinking the old corker had caught fire.
They became even more alarmed when I became bored, deciding that the High Street had the ideal ambience for wheelie testing. The ultra conservative steering geometry, that often insisted on going straight across roundabouts rather than leaning into them, made wheelies a rather desperate affair. Rev the engine until it threatened to bounce out of the frame, drop the clutch dead and pull back on the bars viciously. Fitting large ape-hangers allowed more than six inches and I actually scraped the numberplate once, the MZ ignoring my 'Wow, boy' scream and looping the loop. I ended up with what felt like a broken spine and 250lbs of MZ on my groin.
Despite compulsive throttle abuse the MZ turned in 70 to 80mpg with tiresome regularity. Comfort more or less matched the range after I replaced the stock concrete-like seat with one of those cute King & Queen types, the non-standard bars being a good match for the maximum top speed of 70mph - the MZ was like a boxer BMW in that top speed usually equated to maximum cruising speed as well.
The gearbox was every bit as nasty as a boxer but needed to be worked much more if there was a pillion, head wind or steep incline. The vibes never bothered me when the bike was thrashed into the red but then I'm used to basic hacks where it's a good day if there isn't a catastrophic engine failure. And on the MZ I've had many a good day, doing 18000 miles in two years of fun filled madness.
Regular decokes are the only real maintenance chore as both the cylinder head and silencer become choked up with carbon, turning performance so pathetic I have trouble staying with hard ridden FS1E's. I do a decoke every 1500 miles.
MZ 150's are cheaper than the 125's because of the learner laws (although it's possible to fit a 125 engine in the bigger bike's frame). A genuinely excellent one might fetch £250 but it's really not on to pay more than a hundred notes for a runner, and spare bikes are usually free. As I said before, this is fun on a minimal budget.
M.H.W.
****************************************************
I was working in the bar of a bingo club, picking up around £45 a week, so even at 1979 prices I didn't have a lot of choice if I was going to buy a new bike. There was an MZ dealer near my sister's house; thank god it wasn't a CZ dealer. I wanted the most bike I could get and the bike mags had some good things to say about MZs. I decided I could run a TS150, the current model was black and chrome with a big square tank.
The salesman showed me the controls. He also showed me the trick of starting it. You had to kick it over twice before switching on the ignition, then it would start first time. This almost always worked but trying to start it without those two kicks made starting most difficult. I fired it up and wobbled my way along the cobbled alley to my sister's back gate. I don't think the speedo needle even flickered and my feet never got as high as the footrests. I threw the thing in her garden then went back to work on the bus; it was the rush hour.
The next day, I looked at my bike gleaming in the sunshine. I know they're supposed to be ugly but this one was mine and it was beautiful......well, it did have a crude sort of charm. I decided to brave the long haul home (about six or seven miles). Touching an indicated 25mph, I made it unscathed and without leaving the gutter once. It took me about three quarters of an hour. On the way I optimistically picked up a test application form, just one test and a 250cc limit; we didn't know how lucky we were.
I used it for a couple of days to go to work, then came my next day off. I decided to go for a ride out in the countryside. Typically, that was the day the weather chose to break. It was dull and cloudy as I rode out across Dartmoor. By the time I reached Tavistock it was raining. I had become braver by now, the long open road to Yelverton had seen me doing more than 50mph, but now I was stuck at traffic lights.
It was a T-junction, when the lights changed I tore away to the right, blissfully unaware of the wet builder's sand someone had thoughtfully scattered over the junction. A couple of old ladies helped me up. My hands were stinging but I wasn't worried about myself. I hastily escaped from their fussing and picked up my wounded bike. Not a mark on it. Cautiously I continued my ride.
Filling the tank showed that I had been doing about 60mpg, it didn't change much even when I was doing longer distances and using the gearbox properly - I always managed 60 to 70mpg, giving a range of around 150 miles from full to reserve. The petrol to oil ratio of 25:1 meant I didn't actually use too much of that. Trouble was that garages that sold two stroke oil by the shot were already almost extinct; my bedroom was fast filling up with half full oil bottles.
I chanced illegally taking a girlfriend on a day's tour of Cornwall. That was fun until we found ourselves riding for a mile or so along a road two inches deep in cowshit. When you're covered from head to foot in real organic fertilizer you soon find out what it's like to have pubs really discriminate against you.
One incident stuck vividly in my mind. Suddenly, I found myself hurtling down a hill into a tight hairpin at about 50mph. I panicked, jammed on the back anchor so hard I was virtually standing up in the saddle. I laid the bike almost flat, then grabbing a handful of throttle accelerated out of it barely missing the hedge. I made it back up the other side and had to stop for a shake and a fag. Despite everything, the MZ was not perturbed; which says a lot about its handling.
Promotion meant commuting on the MZ to far flung branches. Somewhere around Bristol a fault developed, the indicators stopped working and the ignition light stayed on. The bike was under guarantee so I left it until I got home. I did the run from Brighton to Plymouth non stop in January. Apart from sweating a bit when I hit reserve 25 miles from home, the six hour journey went without a hitch. When I pulled up at home, my limbs were seized in the riding position and the scarf I'd worn over my mouth was spotted with blood. I went back to Brighton on the train.
The electrical problem was a burnt out fuse. The main fuse then blew in the middle of nowhere, so I dutifully dug out the tool roll. The standard tool kit sets you up like an RAC breakdown wagon. I straightened out my keyring and used that until I got to the next service station. You need to carry loads of fuses because not only do they burn out they vibrate out as well.
I managed to pass the bike test first time, then quit my job to sell loft insulation. It was after getting my paws on a full licence that I began falling off in earnest. The first serious prang happened one Saturday afternoon. I'd been out hawking my wares in the morning then had a session in the pub. The car in front of me was indicating left for about a quarter of a mile. Suddenly it stopped. The road was narrow, we were on a tight bend and there was a stream of traffic coming the other way; there was no room to pass on either side. I braked too late, crunched to a halt and sailed through the air to fall in a crumpled heap on the tarmac. I looked at the wreckage and then started worrying about the damage to the car, the appearance of the police......in the end, we exchanged insurance details and I rode around with the clocks held in place with bungee cords and slightly bent bars.
The first time it really broke down, I was really baffled. I kept kicking it over, it would occasionally fire a bit but just wouldn't run. Someone suggested it might be a petrol blockage. A friend tore the carb apart and reassembled it, much to my surprise it ran well again. This problem happened a few times but it only took a few minutes to fix once I got the hang of it.
I stuffed the MZ properly on a trip to Exeter. It was throwing it down and blowing a gale, my arms had been aching since hitting the A38 about 45 minutes earlier. I had to leave at the first junction after reaching the M5. Moving between lanes I glanced behind. Something was flapping about wildly at the edge of my vision. I looked for too long, suddenly the bike slid as I ploughed into the gravel track that ran beside the hard shoulder.
I ploughed a furrow in the soft verge with my face, watched the bike do cartwheels until it found a lamp-post to use as a brake and my female pillion was sliding along the ground nearby. We wandered around vaguely for a few moments, then an ambulance drew up and we climbed gratefully aboard.......The bike ended up in storage, the girlfriend disappeared and life went on.
Eventually, I dug the bike out but the handling was a little curious, thanks to the grotesquely twisted frame. I bought another bike for a tenner with a blown engine and set about changing things over. My engine wouldn't fit until a file was taken to the frame. In my ignorance I didn't realise that the sprockets being out of line might matter. The bike was thrown together in an hour. The battery was missing, the kickstart wasn't up to battery-free starting but it bump-started okay.
It was the end of January, bloody freezing and the fog was so thick that the other side of the road was invisible. I was almost wiped out after 32 miles of total concentration, riding to Cornwall almost as soon as the bike fired up with the wife on the back, at about 15mph through narrow, winding roads with pathetic lights. Half an hour later we were on the way back home, another 30 miles at under 15mph. When we got off the bike I just about collapsed.
That was the little MZ's last expedition, shortly afterwards a bit of heavy acceleration broke the chain, something to do with the sprockets being two inches out of line. The oil seals had gone, unnoticed by me, and the dry gearbox had destroyed itself. I never bothered with a rebuild.
Even now, many bikes and four years of despatching later, it is not easy to properly assess MZs. After all, for everyone who laughs hysterically when they see you on one there's someone else who never rides anything else, although that more usually refers to the 250. I've ridden a few of those as well and they have some oddities in common with the 150. The most obvious feature when you sit on an MZ after riding Jap bikes, and the feature I most dislike, is the bolt upright riding position. Another thing I've found with them is the absurd ease with which they can be wheelied on take off when changing into second. Definite plus points are the cheapness and availability of spares.
My MZ had survived only 9000 miles of chronic abuse and neglect. Looked after properly it would probably have lasted much longer. In that time I had not needed to change tyres or brake shoes and the fully enclosed chain had needed little adjustment. It had served its purpose well enough, taught me to ride a bike and along the way I'd learnt a lot by my mistakes. On the whole, I would say that I agree with the general opinion that the TS150 was an excellent first bike. With the 125 learner laws, these days, they can be picked up for next to nothing.
Phil Bull