It was a long way to push the Yamaha but I didn’t have much choice. The 1982 SR125 had seized solid yet again. The usual ploy of pushing the bike backwards in gear to free up its aged piston did not work. The bike was worth less than nothing so I could have just dumped her. But that would have left an empty void in my life, so it was off with the chain and a long, lonely five mile push back to the council estate.
I was worn out and weary when I got there. Several, so-called bikers had whizzed past, one shrugging his shoulders as if to say, tough luck, mate. I had been stopped by the police once and told to put my crash helmet back on. He wouldn’t listen to me when I pointed out that the engine was not going to run and threatened to book me for a long list of offences. Guess how hot your head gets in a helmet when you have to push a bike three miles?
The elevator was still working. I upended the bike on its back wheel and smashed it into the lift. My flat was on the third floor and there was no way I was going to leave the old wreck to the mercy of the local hooligans. They could strip a car bare in five minutes let alone a motorcycle. Before I could close the doors, a couple of old grannies came in and started to harass me about riding down the stairs in the middle of the night on the Yam. I denied all knowledge, naturally.
The one bed flat had once been the family home, but now it was just mine. There was little furniture - just a pile of tools and old bits of motorcycles. The walls were oil stained where they weren't damp. I quickly pulled the engine out - it was only held in by two bolts - and did a rapid strip down. About the 103rd!
I poured some old engine oil into the bore, let it settle for a few minutes then tapped the top of the piston with a hammer, plug spanner combination. After a few furious whacks it freed up. The problem with the SR was that the rings were standard size, the piston plus forty and the bores plus sixty and plus 1001 in places where the score marks ran deep. The rings had become all gummed up and seized in their slots...
I was enough of an old hand at the game to get them out without them cracking up on me. It was a terrible mess I'd have to do something about when I got the money. Like never! I cleaned it up as best I could, put some extra splodges of grease on whatever I could reach in the depths of the engine and the cylinder head. The latter was fed by an external pipe which I'd been forced to fit when the oilways had gummed up, partially through not changing the oil for about 10000 miles when I first bought the hack (it was scrap material then so it never seemed worth the effort).
Various modifications to the chassis have been deemed necessary when cycle parts rusted through or fell apart. I had one petrol tank burst asunder but the protective coating of grease, oil and grime stopped the bike igniting on the spot. When the seat fell off I carried on home on the frame rails, it wasn’t worth trying to tape the wrecked seat back together. In this hacking game you have to know when to give up. Such niceties that are merely cosmetic such as speedo and sidepanels have long since faded away and the exhaust retains half the original down pipe, the rest sourced from the neighbourhood, including a car end silencer and a bit of lead waste pipe. The whole, as is the rest of the bike, held together with jubilee clips, Araldite and prayers.
The brakes do work, after a fashion (but not one that is likely to catch on) but as the machine will only shake up to 35 or 40mph their lack of efficiency hardly matters. The suspension has often been bruised by rolling down three flights of steps, the angle of the forks modified by colliding with various cars and walls, and all the bearings were in need of replacement when I bought the bike (for £20). Nevertheless, handling is adequate for the available speeds as long as you don’t get caught in the wet (bald tyres) or the dark (no lights).
My renovation complete, I leapt up and down on the kickstart whilst still in the flat - I wasn’t going to roll the bike down the stairs then find that it would not start. No way, Josh! After 197 kicks the beastly beast rattled slowly into life eventually being persuaded to pick up on the throttle, idling nicely at about 2000rpm. There was no way it would go past five grand even in neutral, but I had learnt to adapt to that. Within seconds there was this massive battering at the door, something to do with the way the bass staccato of the exhaust rumbled through the whole highrise - but I didn't open the door to find out. I just killed the engine by pulling off the HT lead.
The next day, down the stairs went we to the usual hail of recriminations and abuse riding the bike was a lot safer than walking about the estate! Apart from robbing and beating up people there wasn't much else worth doing. The SR's performance was even worse than normal. It crept up to 30mph so slowly I would have been better off on a horse and cart. Much better off. The machine was banked over in one direction, I in the other and the bars turned in a third - and that was just to maintain a straight line!
Ignoring various traffic lights, much like when you‘re on a bicycle, to keep up the momentum, I went for a ride out into the country. Well, I was always an optimist, if nothing else. The sun was shining, the bike was eventually persuaded to roar up to a buckling and bouncing 36mph... what more could you ask for? Well, I've got a pretty long list as it happens.
Three days later I had an accident, if you can call crashing into the side of a big Jag on purpose, an accident. I pretended to limp (pity this wasn't America), wailing at the damage done to my once perfect SR. As the bike had bounced off his car and exploded into several different bits which were scattered all along the road he couldn’t really argue the case. I managed to screw £125 out of him and a lift back to town in the Jag, deciding that there was nothing left of the SR worth saving. The car owner looked totally dismayed when I vacated his car seat, leaving a large puddle of rusty oil behind...
I went mad that evening, blowing nearly a hundred notes on a night out with the lads. All I could afford after that was a Honda C90 for a tenner, complete, tatty and not working, although the engine still kicked over. One advantage of the C90 was that it would fit into the lift without needing to be upended. I soon had the cylinder head off - no piston! Very funny. Luckily I had something, I don’t know off what, that fitted in my pile of spares. It was old, scored and had seen many better days, but then so had the C90.
I won't lie by telling you that it came into life first kick. It didn't, starting took three days and nights to achieve. As well as being optimistic I am stubbornly persistent. I need not have bothered, the centrifugal clutch slipped so badly the Honda couldn’t make it past 15mph. I sold the C90 to some old dear on the estate who wouldn't notice the difference for £75.
I quickly bought a wrecked Honda RS250 for that before the high life beckoned again. The engine was OK, but the frame, forks and wheels were all mangled. I stripped off the bits using such high tech skills as a massive crowbar and 20lb hammer I could hardly lift. The frame was heated with a blow torch, clamped in the window frame with an old Morris Minor engine hanging outside off the headstock, as soon as the tubes were back in alignment | cut the rope holding the engine. The engine descended at a rapid rate, went straight through the roof of an old Ford Escort that had been stripped and abandoned, not stopping until it bounced off the tarmac beneath the car.
The council men were dismayed when they came to repair the window and suspicious of the oil stains, I having hastily moved all the motorcycle bits into the bedroom. But after being plied with a few bottles of lager they decided I would need a whole new window and frame... oh well.
The RS hit the road with CB125 wheels, Bantam forks and RS100 petrol tank and seat... yes, it looked pretty awful but after the other hacks was splendidly rapid at 60mph top whack. I mentioned that the engine was OK, but it wasn't really - it was just less shagged than usual. Either the frame was not as straight as it should have been or the forks and wheels did not suit the RS, for it weaved and wobbled as soon as you let the clutch out, becoming worse the more speed you put on.
The other problem with the speed was that the SLS drum brake from the CB125 had almost no braking effect. The shoes were down to the studs, the drum oval and the cable sticking on. The only time it worked really well was when it locked on solid (an over-cam effect on drums when the shoes are worn out). We skidded off the road, narrowly missing hitting a phone box, straight through a hedge, ruining someone’s garden and then adding insult to injury by taking their front door off its hinges. It was either that or whack straight into the stone wall.
There was no-one in the house, so | abandoned the RS, looking worse than when I had bought it with a frame broken in two and a huge crack running through the engine, and did a runner. Glancing back at the front of the house, it look like it had been torn apart by a bomb blast. Belfast comes to Brighton. God knows what the owners made of it when they returned but they were doubtless insured...
I was at a loss for the next couple of days, down to pulling out the bicycle, itself a bit of a wreck, and sorting through my collection of motorcycle bits to see what I could make up. I had a frame (YB100), a set of wheels (RXS100), forks (RD200), tank (CB250G5) and seat (B44) plus enough electrical and miscellaneous bits to cater for several bikes... what I was missing was an engine! Anyway, I kept the boredom at bay by assembling these into something that part resembled a motorcycle. It sat there in my living room, mocking the hell out of me! When the dole cheque arrived I decided to spend the whole amount on whatever engine the local breaker was willing to part with and go without food and beer for the next two weeks. All he would let me have was a FS1E motor in a bike that was so smashed up that he had to take a welding torch to it to extract the engine.
Back home, a great deal of fun was had putting the bike together. It took two weeks of swearing and cursing to make everything work. Its only virtue was that of cheapness, in every other area it is utterly despicable. As slow as a Tomos, as vibratory as a jackhammer, uglier than a CZ and worse handling than a Cossack, we bounced along the road frightening both pedestrians and myself. Not in one, single, solitary area does the machine excel in any manner whatsoever. Its only virtue has been that it has run for the past three months without too many problems.
When I say that, it is, of course, relative... drive chains last about a week due to chronic misalignment, I have the choice of a total loss battery system or igniting the machine in flames when one of my dodgy rectifiers malfunctions, the brakes provide endless hours of amusement and the only reason the cops don’t confiscate the machine is because by the time they, like just about everyone else, stop laughing hysterically I've done a disappearing act. Bit of useful Zen, that, you just pretend you're not there and fade away into the night.
I could lie to you by telling you I love this Frankenstein creation of my desperate situation but I won't. I bloody hate and curse the horrible thing and totally refuse to be charmed by the way it keeps running and running regardless. I really must find another rich yuppie to crash into!
Gringo