I guess it all started back in ‘84, the year I arrived in London on a CG125, all set to make my fortune as a despatch rider. Getting a job was easy, I just followed despatch riders until I found one I could keep up with and arrived back at his office. I asked for a job and got it. I did three deliveries in my first day and made £5. I finished at 5.30pm but didn’t get back to my digs until 9.30pm, ‘cos I was totally lost. Well, I have to admit that my previous experience of London consisted of passing through it twice. I can’t believe how ignorant I was. For example, it took me weeks and weeks to work out where the West End actually was.
I made £50 for my first week's work, then I found out that the firm paid by cheque sent in the post. Hah, hah, good scam, guys. The cheque was always late, and by the time you got it that week’s work had kind of faded from memory, so quibbling was a bit fruitless.
The traffic was something else. I came from Plymouth and most of my short working life had been spent at sea. In London, the majority of drivers seemed to consider bikes as fair game. Anything going slow enough to be hit, or, God forbid, actually slowing them down was regarded as their well deserved revenge for having to sit in traffic jams. In the first week I was tailgated at Piccadilly Circus, had a rear indicator knocked off by an overtaking car in Kingsland Road, and was knocked off the bike totally by a pedestrian running through the traffic at Trafalgar Square. Fortunately, the little Honda was quite a tough bike and, even more importantly, it was very light on petrol, tyres and chains. In fact, it didn’t seem to use any of them!
After two weeks I became homesick and went home at the weekend. Those little push-rod engines can take abuse, 240 miles of virtually throttle on the stop riding would probably finish any other 125. The only mishap was when I persuaded the bike up to an indicated 70mph down a steep hill when the speedo needle swung around to the pin and then swung back again. After that I had a most optimistic speedo.
I had not yet passed my test, but in the lock-up at home rested a 350LC that had once been raced. I knew I shouldn't, but in the end I got it out for a short blast to take my brother's mate, Fungus, to see his stranded Honda 750 (the side stand had slipped down a drain, holing the casing).
The crackling rasp from the Allspeeds combined with the racing crouch naturally led to a spot of high profile riding including lots of wheelies. Fungus insisted on piloting the bike back, for some reason, after we'd found that the Honda wasn’t rideable. The route back included a long straight with a deceptive bend at its end. Fungus had the revs deep in the power band and the speedo reading three figures down the straight, when a Marina swerved into our path. The driver suddenly saw us and swung back out of the way.
Fungus, who had rolled the power off, savagely whacked it back on as we blasted past, then looked up to see that we had arrived at the end of the straight - we were going at least 30mph too fast, but give him his due he did try. Banking it over further and further, the back end let go and we slid into the gutter where the back wheel mounted the kerb.
I saw the lamp-post coming just before we hit it. The impact flipped me off the bike and I saw the pavement come up and hit me. Then I was sliding up a grass bank, back onto the pavement and then onto the road again. I stayed still for a while and found that I could still move, much to my surprise. I stood up, just in time to see the Marina arrive, a woman jumped out of the driver's side shouting, “I'm a nurse, don’t move!” I moved and reached for the strap of my full face helmet as it was full of mud. “Don’t take your helmet off or I'll leave” she screamed. I took my helmet off - she left!
About 50 yards down the road, Fungus was attempting to rise. He made it, blood seeping liberally from a gash on his face, but otherwise he looked OK. My poor old LC looked like a plane crash, most of it was spread across the road, the back wheel smashed. Long, long tyre marks spread from the centre of the road all the way to the kerb and stopped abruptly at the lamp-post which had a kink in it.
The evidence was rather damning, a few people had stopped, I told them we were alright and enlisted some help in getting the wreck off the road. Then we made a break for it, hobbling and limping towards home. We got about fifty yards when we heard the "Dee Daw, Dee Daw” of an ambulance. It pulled up alongside us and the ambulance man asked if we wanted a lift. We were not in a state to refuse.
At the hospital I was interviewed by the law, he didn’t believe our bullshit story about a rear wheel blow out at thirty, but as it was my bike that was totally dead he thought that a fair and just penalty. He was probably right. We got out just as the pubs opened and got totally rat arsed to celebrate being still alive. I was bruised and had a sprained ankle, whilst Fungus had a cast on his arm because the X-rays showed a fracture. He also couldn’t see so good as he had lost his glasses. Later on he kept muttering that the pillion was supposed to come off worst. I believe he still gets bills for a new lamp-post!
I went back to London, my Belstaff jacket well scuffed, and helmet deeply scarred, feeling very sore. I left the first firm and went to work for a firm that had better rates. I made enough to actually survive, which was rather encouraging. After a few weeks of this my driving test date came up, it was my second attempt. I didn’t have to take the first part of the test because I’d been running around on some other bikes equipped with a Sidewinder. This is an amusing contraption that enables. a learner to ride anything he wants. As a sidecar it sucks, but as a way of winding up bureaucrats it’s top hole, old chap!
It's designed to not hinder the bike when leaning and when I first bought it, I had it attached to the LC. Trouble was, because of the clip-ons, I couldn't see it except when going hard into left-handers - when out of the corner of my eye I would see this white tea tray rising to meet my head. Weird. So I bunged it on an XS650. I liked riding the big Yam, it sounded so nice after the CG and had loads of power. I didn’t ride it much, though, because I felt like such a dickhead hauling the tea tray around. It was also very easy to forget and I developed an expensive and nasty habit of glancing the Sidewinder off cars, especially difficult as I only had insurance for the CG.
The day before the test I took it up to a carpark and spent a few hours practising low speed manoeuvres until I could do them with my eyes shut, literally. The next day I took and passed the test, so I could rush home and take the sidecar off. I had also swapped the remains of the LC and another crashed LC for a Suzuki ER250, painted an unusual shade of green. My plan was to despatch on the ER and ride to and from Plymouth on the XS. I figured the ER would be the perfect despatching tool - very light, lots of suspension movement to soak up the pot-holes and for leaping over pavements, plus lots of acceleration with a reasonable top end.
Dirt bikes are great in traffic, in most respects, except for the brakes. The ones on the ER are tiny drums, slamming on the front caused the front end to dive for the deck until all of the suspension travel was consumed - then sometimes you might stop, unless there was a bit of dampness around, in which case the front tyre would let go. I fell off a lot. In fact, it stopped faster in the wet if you just threw it into the road rather than use the brakes. Mind you, it always could be kicked straight again.
The ER had a non standard paint job that attracted the pointy heads like blood brings sharks. I was stopped a lot and they always looked at the front brake first to check it couldn't be pulled back to the bars. One day I‘d adjusted the brake lever just right, only to find after the next fierce stop that it needed doing again. A short while later, I got into a race and took it up to full noise. Up ahead, I saw red lights and braked. Damn all happened except the back locked up. We were almost sideways, fishtailing into the traffic that had stopped for the lights. I let off the back brake just enough to flip it straight again, then banged it back on. We went through a gap between a Transit and a car, sliding to a halt.
The law, watching from a Passing Panda, were severely unimpressed. One of them spent a lot of time shouting at me, the other casually pushed the floppy front brake lever back to the bars. When they departed I discovered a frayed and threadbare brake cable. | should really have sussed this out when I’d earlier readjusted it. Funnily enough, some months later, I got a letter in the post from some senior cop letting me off the charge of dangerous driving. The only other big drawback of the ER was that it had a thirst for petrol and two stroke oil only bettered by a hard used LC. I was filling up the small tank at least twice a day, some weeks a third of my pay went on juice. If I'd had any sense I would've recommissioned the old CG because I wasn’t making any more money, just getting lost faster.
I tried using the XS for work but it wasn't reliable enough, and, as with every XS I ever came across, the lecky start didn't work - kicking it into life hundreds of times a day was too much like hard work. It had led a hard life in the hands of some class one bodger even before I got my grubby hands on it. During the first oil change I did, when I removed the sump filter, lots of bits of piston ring fell out. The last loony who owned it must've had a major mishap and rebuilt it without cleaning it out properly.
One day, the ER’s exhaust pipe disintegrated, so I went off on the XS to buy a new one. I almost fainted at the £70 for a bent bit of pipe... I paid up but had a puncture on the way home. Abandoned the XS, caught a tube or two home, fixed the ER, rode back to the XS, wrestled with a collection of rounded-off nuts, arrived with a collection of grazed knuckles at a tyre repair shop, puncture fixed, went back to XS and put it all back together, went home. Caught more tubes back, jumped on the ER and arrived home; knackered and £90 poorer.
A couple of days later I had some minor job to do on the XS. This entailed the almost obligatory grazing of knuckles when the spanner slipped off another strange sized nut. I flipped, strode away to the nearest bike dealer, used my flexible friend to put a deposit on an almost new, bright red Kawasaki GPz305. Signed loads of papers for the HP without reading them. In short, I went kind of mad. The price of the bike was about £1200, with interest I ended up paying £1800 and using my Barclaycard put me way over my credit limit. As well as a big bill I got a letter from the bank saying they wanted it back, cut up in little pieces. I sold the XS for £250. The bloody thing, of course, became reliable, and ran and ran and ran!
The 305 was a revelation. Fast, light, reliable, incredible brakes... I was like a pig in shit. The money started rolling in. On one trip to Swindon I had the speedo reading 110mph and for a twin it had very little vibration. After the ER and the XS it felt as smooth as vaseline on silk sheets. The love affair lasted just two months. One wet, misty November night I arrived at a left-hand hairpin a little too quickly. I slid off the seat and kept the bike as upright as possible, thinking I was going to make it when the bike disappeared from under me. The bike was sliding after me but my one-piece nylon suit turned out able to slide faster than the bike. I crawled out of the greenery in pitch darkness save for a light in a nearby house. Soon, a woman shone a torch in my face, “we heard the bang, s‘funny they usually come thru the hedge.” A close inspection of the bike revealed an amazing amount of damage for such a slight crash. The fork sliders were actually broken, so I had to leave the bike in the front garden.
Back to work on the ER. Aaaaargh! Until the happy day when the GPz was fixed. By then it was almost Christmas and I was determined to ride home to Plymouth with my new wife on the back of the repaired Kawasaki. Poor girl was totally unprepared for 240 miles of pure pain when it snowed, and then to be confronted with my four brothers... she refused to come back on the bike and went by coach instead. Sensible girl. The trip back was a real nightmare, a heavy mist brought visibility down to a few yards. It was night, dark, wet and cold. I came across a lad trying to start his dirt bike and then my bike started going onto one cylinder. Luckily, | found an open garage and sprayed the engine with WD40. It had taken three hours to do 70 miles!
The A303 is normally a brilliant road but that night I grew to really dislike it, motorcycles and life itself. By the time I got to Ilminster I was going far too fast, my speed had just sort of crept up and up... until suddenly there was a traffic island coming straight for me! We clipped it doing about 50mph. Bike and I parted company, the bike landing between an ambulance and police station. Fortunately, the police were all on Christmas leave. Also, incredibly, I was in one piece. The bike wasn’t, both wheels were broken!
I hitched back to London the next day. Back to work on the ER whilst one of my brothers collected the Kawasaki. I rang around the breakers trying to find some wheels as they were £200 each, new. I ended up with a Z400 Ltd back wheel and a Z250 front (with just a single disc, sob). One despatch company I worked for had a workshop full of 305s with blown engines, all with less than 20000 miles up, some with only 12000 miles.
A Kawasaki Z750 twin and a Z500 four came and went, after the ER finally succumbed to minimal compression and terminal dampness, and before the GPz305 was rebuilt. After the two bigger bikes, the 305 felt weak and slow, but this was solved when a mate had a go on it and crashed into a car. With less than 11000 miles on the clock it’d crashed three times it was obviously cursed. It was parked up whilst I claimed off the insurance. Whilst waiting for that money, I bought a SR500 single that was so slow that it bored me out of my head.
When the insurance money arrived I wanted to buy a GSX750, but ended up buying a 750 Bonnie off another brother. That was definitely not boring every trip was an adventure for all the wrong reasons. Fortunately, selling Bonnies was as easy as falling off them. Next, an XJ650 that didn’t handle and self-ignited when I had the audacity to connect up the stop lamp. A slow RS250 only impressed with its handling and the way things could be fixed with a big hammer.
After a while I heard about a fully faired GS850 that was going for £500. Without the GRP the GS weighed near on 600lbs, since I am little and skinny (5’7” and 9 stone) it took a bit of getting used to. The first week I tried to go through a gap between a blue Cavalier and a lamp-post. The gap was too small and I got stuck fast. The driver was in uniform and I was in deep shit. “Impatient little bastard,” was amongst the things he shouted, however he took no action as the paperwork involved when a plod’s involved in an accident off duty is horrendous.
Over the winter I made lots of money as the fairing kept me warm and able to work. I became used to the weight and could sling it around no problem. One night in particular stands out. There was a lot of snow on the road, ice everywhere and the wife was expecting a baby. One night I dashed the 35 miles home (another false alarm) - I'll always remember going between 10' snowdrifts, both wheels sliding, blood stream awash with adrenalin. :
For ages, almost 70000 miles, I rushed around London like a loony without stacking the bike, until one fine spring evening going home I rounded a corner and saw a Merc coming out of a driveway on my left. I hit the brakes and locked up the back wheel. As we were on a slight bend I didn’t have the space to get the brakes off and try again, but there was no problem I could just go wide, he had plenty of time to see me and stop. I let it drift out over onto the wrong side of the road, but he kept coming out. With the back still locked up I tried to slide back over to my side. I needed another 6 inches but they weren't there. To avoid going underneath I let off the brakes and highsided the car.
That hurt. In fact I smashed my tight leg up. In the hospital they rebuilt it with pins and bolts. I wanted to get out but the doctor wouldn't let me leave until after three weeks I was climbing up the wall with boredom and was only rescued when my brother spirited me out of there. Back home I made a determined effort to forget all about bikes, threw out my leather jacket, dumped all my bike mags, read books about anything rather than motorcycles. I lasted about a week. The GS had been recovered and I started looking at it. Smashed clocks, tailpiece and left-hand casing. Couldn't find any cases or clocks in breakers - so I took them up to my bedroom and araldited them all back together! With the help of a friend, I straightened out the back-end and rebuilt it.
Pressing the button started it first time and I couldn't resist going for a short ride. Lashing my crutches on the back, I went for a blast... it was brilliant. I had to go back to the hospital for physiotherapy three times per week and they would send a hospital car. The conversation on these trips usually led to a lecture on the dangers of motorcycles and that I should have learnt my lesson by now. One day, I rang up to cancel the car, rode my bike there instead. They freaked. I had to lie and tell them that it was just a little bike, but when I left I saw all these horror struck faces pressed to the window. Always one to show off I gave it a good handful... I got a message later that if I was going to ride my bike around then I need not bother showing up for more treatment... I bet that’s a first, getting banned from a hospital!
I went back to despatching eight months later. I needed the money and I was bored senseless because after despatching anything else seems tame. By then I had swapped the GS for a CBX550, a real sweet handling bike but the engines are delicate and I knew that it would not stand up to the job for long. t swapped it and some cash for an XJ750. I liked that one, a lot: of low down grunt and, I thought, good looking. But this one had a bad oil leak from the front of the cylinder block where an old camchain had worn its way through.
Then a Kawasaki GT750 which, at first, I thought was the business. That thought lasted for about 60 miles when I became really uncomfortable. I found the seating position spread my legs too wide and put all my weight on my bum which showed its displeasure by going numb. I hoped I would get used to it. I didn’t get a chance to. A few days later, in the rain, I hit a piece of wood at 110mph and proceeded to tank-slap at full throttle into a crash barrier. By more good luck than anyone had a right to expect, I got it under control and the rear wheel hit an upright, the impact threw me clear, back onto the road where, fortunately, none of the other traffic hit me. It was a close one, the bike was reduced to so much scrap.
After that I treated myself to a new bike, an XJ900. That was a year ago, it’s now done 50000 miles and I've just fitted a new camchain. It’s still as fast as new - I know because I've just had a race with a brand new one. It does 45-50mpg, is comfortable and it’s got far more ground clearance than any other big bike - I've only touched down the footrest once. Its small fairing keeps the wind off long enough to make cruising at three figures for long distances possible. The brakes are good enough and the lights adequate. After all those miles it still uses very little oil. The clutch was very weak and started slipping after 20000 miles but all I did was fit extra strong springs and an additional steel plate and it’s still going strong now.
The gearbox is a bit lumpy but using Slick 50 and Rock Oil helps. Not to mention paranoid 2000 mile oil changes. It’s only been dealer serviced twice, once at 8000 miles and at 28000 miles, and when the camchain was put in the clearances were done as well. At the 28000 mile service only one clearance had slightly tightened up. The only time it broke down was last week. It took about three seconds to suss out why, the filler cap was not passing any air, causing a vacuum in the tank.
By the sound of it, you would think I had found the ideal bike, but no. I still find myself reading all the road tests and looking at all the used tackle in the bike shops. Maybe, one day I'll find the perfect bike, but don’t hold your breath.
Max Liberson
[If you're interested, Mr. Liberson went on to have some nautical adventures, about which he wrote a book a few years ago - 2021 Ed.]