Here comes trouble, thought I. The noise was something else. Could be heard for miles away. The deep bass rumble of an open two into one exhaust. The offbeat nuance of the Lav's firing pulses from pistons that moved up and down alternatively. As the bike turned into my street, the ground trembled and the windows shook. I went out to greet the rider, only to find most of my neighbours rushing around in a blind panic. Their faces were not a pretty picture when they saw the cause of the commotion.
My new motorcycle, propped proudly on its stand in my drive. I had to shout at the erstwhile owner who seemed unable to keep still. Eyes out on stalks, hands shaking and a weird gait. Well, the bike did have rear-sets and clip-ons. Did my back in on the previous day's test ride but I'd soon sort it out with some flat bars.
The Montuic clicked away, the metal cooling down, and dropped a bit of oil on the drive. The chassis was comprehensively refurbished and looked almost as good as new. The bead-blasted alloy shone with an unlikely fervour. Only the matt black exhaust let the side down with almost as much rust as paint. But I had a chrome universal mega ready to replace the unlikely end can. Cash and doc's changed hands.
A few days later the bike emerged from my garage with flat bars and new silencer. The latter much to the relief of the neighbours who were truly appalled to find they had a born-again Hell's Angel suddenly in their midst. Actually, a couple of the old chaps owned up to having bikes in their youth, with a gleam in their eyes suggesting I might yet subvert the whole street!
The Laverda merely rumbled rather than bellowed. The new riding position allowed me to get out of the street without becoming a stretcher case. Those with memories that go back to the late seventies will recall the Montuic as the racer version of the rather plain Alpina. Its 60hp 500cc twin cylinder engine being hot stuff and its styling grabbing the mind of anyone with a bit of blood left in their veins.
Mine sported nonstandard suspension, brakes and swinging arm. I had asked if it'd been crashed. This was denied, the reason for the mods being that old, worn stuff made the bike hinged in the middle. So I was expecting a taut handler that would whip through the bends and ride inside all this modern Jap stuff.
Now I don't know what it was like when new, though I do recall some testers complaining about weak swinging arm bearings. But I do know that my bike was a bit naff. It may've been the nonstandard forks messing up the steering geometry. My first few tries at high speed cornering revealed the 400lb bike as a bit of a pig. It shuffled around all over the place on the edge of its tyres. At one point it tried to lurch right down to the tarmac until I reacted with a violence I didn't know I had in me!
My old Bonnie was bad but this was another trip altogether, unless my mind was playing tricks on me and I'd forgotten how to ride. By high speed I mean anything over 60mph, at lower velocities it was dead easy to control. It didn't like accelerating into or out of bends, preferred to be set up on line and guided through on a neutral throttle. Not much fun, that!
The engine was a bit of a character. Again, a new one with stock carbs and exhaust might be a very different bag of tricks, so don't harass me if yours is perfection personified. Below 5000 revs it whirred away, stuttered, churned and vibrated, but didn't really produce the goods. Then there was a 1500rpm flat spot, before the power suddenly bellowed in. In first through to third gear this was enough to lighten the front end, make the bars go twitch-twitch. It always brought a smile to my face when it came on cam. Lovely. But hell for the rest of the time.
As someone who was fifty quite a long time ago, it was rather undignified to have to hustle everywhere like a drunken young whippersnapper. The bike didn't really feel safe in a straight line at 80mph, though there was enough power to put 120mph on the clock. I think so anyway, because the speedo tried to vibrate out of its housing, making everything look a bit blurred.
Yes, this was a bit of a vibrator in the great tradition of big British twins. Hold on to your false teeth, and all that. A daily wielding of the spanners was needed to stop things falling off. Long distance trips were limited to about a 100 miles before I felt seriously ill. Needed a good fifteen minute rest to get over all the violence and brutality.
Not to mention the scary brakes. Again, not standard stuff. A vicious concoction of twin front discs that judging by their very powerfulness were probably liberated from some 1000cc mammoth. It wasn't so much a matter of doing a stoppie as avoiding being thrown over the bars just using one finger pressure on the lever!
In the wet I dared not touch that lever. Incredibly dangerous stuff. Engine braking was also fierce enough to lock up the back wheel if the throttle was slammed shut. Like an on/off switch. The back brake, luckily, was both mild and sensitive. It was amazing that I never came off the bike during the autumn rains.
As winter approached I was happy enough for the excuse to use the wife's car for work. The Lav also became rather difficult to start as the cold weather fell across the country. Took a good five minutes of backfiring before the thing bellowed into happy life at about 7000 revs. The bike had been rewired and ran nonstandard (Jap) switches, so the electrics were generally reliable and competent.
Or so I thought. One day I came out to find everything dead. Check the battery was my first thought. Well, it wasn't, but you don't want to hear about my swearing fit and wondering if I should do for it with the hammer, do you? So I found the battery, which had split and dropped most of its acid on the surrounding chassis. Nice scars, too! My old Triumph used to run with a dead battery but the Montuic refused to start (the electronic ignition pack wasn't standard, either).
One new battery, insulated with some old inner-tubing, later I was back in business. I wasn't convinced that it was worth all the effort. I'd been instantly enamoured of its shape and thrown into ecstasy by its juvenile noise. Anything that looked and sounded so meaty had to be good, didn't it? Yeah, well, we all do silly things sometimes.
I used it less and less as the winter deepened and wasn't really that keen on getting to grips with the bike when March came around. No, it'd have to go and I'd have to find something else to relive my youth on. All was not lost, I made a £500 profit on the sale. Its replacement? A 1967 Triumph 650 Bonnie, in fairly original but not immaculate condition. It needs a bit of love and care to keep in shape but it's loads more fun on the road than the Lav. Okay, maybe a low mileage stocker would have been a different trip, but I sincerely believe that in this instance British is best. I won't be buying a Laverda again.
Clive Jones