It was bright red and shiny, a one year old, one owner Kawasaki AR125 with just 7000 miles on the clock. It had a wheel at both ends and after a three minute crawl around the housing estate my wallet was under new ownership. The bike was a baby boy racer's wet dream, complete with bellypan, Micron of the bee-in-a-biscuit tin variety and performance enhancing decals. I asked the bloke selling it if the new pipe made the bike any faster. ”Not really," he said, "I just like the noise.” He hadn’t adjusted the carb either, so I soon went back to the original which emitted a subdued throb better befitting my advanced years.
I suspect the use I made of the AR was more typical of a middleweight tourer than a learner bike. While I suffered the indignities of further education, I used it to blitz a round trip of about 200 miles cross country to see a girlfriend on occasional weekends. Apart from that it was mainly a toy for holiday cruising and while I only covered about 6000 miles in four years, it rarely did a journey of less than 40 miles.
My bodges apart, the AR was pretty reliable, the only real problem being the suspect quality of the metal in the frame. First, the grab rail came off in my hand, breaking the costly surrounding plastic as it did so. Then, when I took this in to be fixed. the frame itself turned out to be cracked and the engine had to come out before it could be welded.
I never came off it, though I probably did the next best thing. Having taken the carb to pieces, for reasons which in retrospect escape me, I managed to put it back on with the needle fully raised. This made the bike rather reluctant to start, and l was pushing it up and down the street when it burst into life, throttle wide open. My mates howled with laughter as I struggled desperately to keep up with it, but hitting the kill switch did no good, and the runaway machine dragged me a good 20 yards before we both collapsed in a grinding heap of metal, GRP and flesh (I was wearing shorts at the time).
My other major flirtation with intensive care came when the rear tyre burst as I was doing 60mph with a friend on the back. All of a sudden it felt like I was riding a large blancmange, but luckily I was on a straight road and I just held the bike steady until it rolled to a halt. Apart from that, the only failure was a broken spring in the gearbox which meant a 35 mile ride home in fifth gear. What fun.
Consumables were much as you might expect. The AR needed a new chain and sprockets when I bought it. I replaced the front tyre with 7500 miles on the clock and the rear 1500 miles later. I also got through a set of shoes on the rear drum brake and a couple of bulbs, but that was about it.
Being blessed with a full car licence and an empty bank balance, for a long while I had no real incentive to pass my test. The bike would not do more than 75mph but it cruised happily enough at 70mph. True, overtaking was a matter of momentum rather than acceleration, but it was nippy enough in town, provided you kept the revs between 7000 and 8500rpm, and could still beat most cars away from the lights.
But I eventually decided a bike licence might come in useful, two years after buying the 125 I passed Part Two. But five minutes before the test I poured a pint of oil into the fuel tank instead of the oil tank in my excitement. Elated by my success in the test. thinking the extra oil would do no harm. I rode home and chucked the bike into the shed. Three days later I left for France. leaving the bike at home.
On my return, a year later, I forgot all about my mishap with the oil, but when I rode the bike it didn't seem to perform quite as well as I remembered. The discerning reader may by now have detected that I have the mechanical ability of a three-toed sloth. But while I would be hard put to tell a camchain from a Camembert, even I could tell the difference between 65 and 75mph.
Deciding some attention was in order after the months of neglect, I put the bike into a local dealer for a service. He took eighty quid off me and gave it back in much the same state as before. with a glib, ”What do you expect from a 125?' So I trusted his superior understanding of such matters and rode the bike to Shit City, where I had finally succumbed to the call of Mammon. I rode it up the A13 to work for about a month on and off before the clouds of white smoke belching from the gearbox convinced me that something was indeed amiss. This was when I committed fatal error number two. Having lost all faith in the professionals, I decided I would use the AR to teach myself mechanics.
The rest is a familiar tale. Taking the engine to bits was easy enough, as was tracing the problem to the shot rings. But for one reason or another I never got round to putting it back together. It sat on the kitchen floor for six months until my landlord gave me my marching orders and I flogged it to a breaker for a handful of pennies.
All in all, I would recommend the AR125 to anyone thinking of taking up biking. It's sporty looking and cheap to run. It had as much go as the rest of the learner crowd and was light and easy to ride. In the madness of London traffic it was as quick as a stonking great KLR600 I acquired shortly afterwards.
Charlie Davidson