Hacking: An essential diatribe on slumming on various minor motorcycles

The rumbling little Honda C70 expired in a spectacular manner. And it almost took me with it. We were bouncing along a congested city street when the front wheel hit a huge pot-hole. The suspension was so shot and loose that the bars were twisted out of my grip. I had time to hurl some abuse at the bike. Then I was thrown off into the path of a red bus. How he avoided running me down I don’t know, but he did. The C70, meantime, scraped the side off an Escort, ending up under its rear axle.

I had half my shirt torn off and a painful amount of skin burnt into the gravel. Plus a few bruises after ricocheting off the side of the bus. The poor old Honda and Escort were locked in a fatal embrace. Both were written off. As I had no insurance it seemed like a good time to disappear into the surging crowds.

After a painful visitation to the hospital it was time to bring out my reserve bike. What could be worse than an ancient, decrepit step thru? An equally old and wrecked MZ 150. That it still ran was a testament to Iron Curtain engineering. I had spent some excessive time welding the rear subframe. Also, the wheels had been painted matt black. Other than that, it was just as you'd expect an 80000 mile stroker to be.

I had not done too many miles on her up until then. The gearbox being restricted to just second and third had not inspired much favour. Top speed was a tank buzzing 50mph. Acceleration just about able to keep up with an invalid carriage. Brakes totally lacking in predictability. A huge cloud of blue smoke clung to the machine whilst the engine ticked over. Those were just the good points!
 
I was soon piloting this device on my daily commute into work. I kept telling myself that the twenty kicks needed for starting was a good form of exercise. This was whether the motor was hot or cold. Something to do with an aged spark plug that had corroded into the cylinder head. The engine made such a racket I hardly ever heard the exhaust. It sort of pinged, rattled and knocked at the same time. Much amusement was had watching peds leap out of the way as I crawled along the gutter. They probably thought a dustbin was rolling down on them.
 
The first day’s commute went well enough. I ignored the rude gestures and shouts from onlookers. The second day the points closed up, causing massive explosions in the exhaust. Some poor copper hit the deck in panic, thinking the IRA had arrived. By the time he was afoot again I had ridden the bike behind a lorry, out of sight. A safe distance away I spent an hour sorting the problem. My mates in work reckoned it would be safer and faster to walk.
 
Two weeks and 400 miles later, the engine vibration and noise reached ferocious levels. Riding home from work in the dark I was not surprised when all the pitiful lights blew. I carried on regardless, but three miles from home the MZ ground to a halt. The engine was seized solid. After waiting half an hour for the alloy to cool it freed up. Starting needed about fifty kicks. By the time I arrived home I was a physical wreck.

After many years of hacks the breed was really beginning to piss me off. Because so many people were resorting to them as cheap transport there was a huge shortage. For ten to twenty notes it was all but impossible to pick up anything that ran. My disillusionment lasted for about a week. Forced on to a pedal cycle I was reduced to a nervous and physical wreck. Every car driver appeared totally affronted that I was able to use the road for free. Only years of motorcycle trained I reflexes saved me from death.
 
Salvation came in the unlikely form of an old Raleigh moped. A neighbour dug out this mechanical horror from the back of his shed. Grease covered and complete, he assured me that it still ran. Really nothing more than a small bicycle with an engine attached to the back wheel. I spent a weekend pedalling furiously up and down the back lane. The new spark plug I'd fitted was duff!

The Raleigh managed about 30mph on the flat. Up steep hills I had to pedal like a madman to keep the momentum going. From a standing start it was also necessary to pedal. I soon learnt to ride it like a bicycle, keeping up the momentum. It squirreled through incredibly small traffic gaps. Small kids would run alongside, trying to pull me off. Everyone in work thought I was mad but it was incredibly cheap to run. About 150mpg! I used it for about two months until a motorcycle dealer offered me £250 for it. Apparently in certain circles they are collector's pieces. No accounting for tastes.
 
As I'd swapped it for an old set of ladders I was well ahead on the deal. Someone in work was selling a Suzuki B120 for a tenner as it was a non-runner. The piston rings were seized up and broken but the bore was still usable. The bike had sat rotting away for a couple of years, so there was a lot of rust and perished rubber. I ignored all that and put the bike into the usual commuting chores. All the way to work there was a terrible graunching noise. The bike lurched and grated, like the transmission was about to fall out. The full chain enclosure hid a rusted taut chain with no sign of oil. I used some grease out of the garage at work. Hoping it’d free up whilst I toiled away for ten hours.

The ride was just as bad homewards. Nothing for it but to strip off the chain, replace it with a length I had in my garage. I ignored the missing teeth on the sprockets. Transmission was much improved after that. Seven punctures in the next five days convinced me of the need for a newish set of tyres and tubes. They cost more than I'd paid for the bike which threw me into a despondent mood.

As week followed week various bits rusted off or perished through. I discarded those which could not be fixed with Araldite or a welding torch. Or replacement with the bits of old motorcycle that littered my garage. There was very little that I could say about the B120. It was a typical hack that required a lot of effort to keep going and wouldn't top 50mph. Brakes, handling and starting ability were all in heart attack country.

I suppose you could say the B120, and its like, were never boring to ride. The death grip on the bars and ever present knowledge that the engine was going to lock solid saw to that. The B120 escaped that fate. Its demise was unique in my hacking experience. I had forced the bouncing bike up to 55mph on a late night foray into the countryside. The lights were pathetic, of course. Combined with a cloud suddenly obscuring the moon, we never saw the sharp bend. The first I knew of our leaving the tarmac was the bike butting me in the balls. Then the front wheel dug in throwing me over the bars. I landed in a huge clump of brambles which closed in around me. It was extremely painful extracting myself. The bike had torn itself apart. The frame had snapped, the two halves flung way. apart. There was nothing for it but to stagger the three miles home.

I had planned to persuade a neighbour to use his car in a rescue mission the next day. When I awoke I nearly fainted when I saw my image in the mirror. I was transformed into a monster. Huge red pimples had formed where the brambles had broken through my skin. Which was pretty much everywhere. My face was bloated beyond recognition, I could have made a fortune playing the elephant man in the movies! The doctor was summoned and he assured me I would recover in a few days. I never left the house until my features were back to normal.

I still had a hundred notes left and tracked down a Honda CG125 for £75. Rough but running, this 1981 example had been around the clock at least once. The owner reckoned the engine was out of a later model but did not know which. True to form, top speed was about 50mph and the heap bounced all over the road. I soon found out that the death rattle from the engine was serious. A pint of oil was needed every 50 miles and fuel was only 45mpg.

After eight days of mild use the engine locked solid, the back wheel skidding along the road. We slid to a halt in a tangled heap of flesh and metal. I pushed the brute home after removing the chain. Every bolt I tried to remove snapped off. Even the rear wheel spindle sheared off when I tried to undo the nut. The whole thing was rusted and corroded beyond restitution. I felt really ripped off... in hacking terms £75 should have bought a device that would last for years!

Another MZ came along, this time a ratty 250 that refused to run. An ETZ, that like the CG had been around the clock. Mine if I took it away! That was more like it! I had a spare engine in the garage. I stripped the two motors and used the best bits from each. Simple and good quality engineering made a pleasant change from the Japanese crap. Still, most of the bits had seen better days.

The resulting creation only needed ten to twelve kicks to start, ran up to an astounding 65mph and handled OK if all you were used to were ancient hacks. Mine had so much slack in the suspension it could only bounce all over the place. Disconcerting rather than underpant soiling. The drive chain kept falling off which added to the amusement and unpredictability of every trip. This was eventually traced to a non-standard rear wheel that was way out of alignment. A couple of spacers put the chain to rights.

There were other problems. There always are! The fuel kept cutting off - a decades worth of crud in the petrol tank. The perished wiring caused small fires and blew bulbs. The front wheel bearings were on the way out and the guard kept falling off. Nevertheless, with the usual bodging, over six months were done.

Failure was the simultaneous demise of a number of chassis and engine components. It was too expensive to fix (tyres, pads, shoes, crankshaft bearings, pistons, etc). It joined the large pile of junk in the garage. I was forced to use the pushbike for the next three weeks. I was so desperate that when a horrible C50 was offered for twenty pounds, I grabbed it with both hands. This was dog slow, about 25mph down a hill with a strong following wind. Fuel was okay at 85mpg and oil consumption was reasonable in hack-land at a pint every 120 miles. It was the handling that really got me. I am used to old motorcycles but the way this thing bounced all over the road really tried my nerves. I think it was down to the shot linkages in the front forks. Or maybe the worn Cheng Shens that floated over the road as if it was ice.
 
I soon decided that I was riding a death-trap and that my days were numbered. I even took to the pushbike again on several occasions after I'd really frightened myself. Trouble was that the engine continued to whirr away and I was loathe to give up before I had to. Which perhaps explains why a year later I’m still bopping about on the terrible C50. I did fit a set of slightly less used tyres and put some washers and grease in the linkages. To no avail. I have fallen off at least twenty times. The thing is so slow and light that I have just stepped clear of the bike. The poor old C50 has rolled, slid and on one occasion somersaulted down the road.
 
Cars have been seriously damaged but the tough little Honda just shrugs it off. Usually, the motor is still running, so I just step back on and keep going. The C50-90 range must have the toughest engines in the world but the rest is crap. The pressed steel frame eventually rusts through from the inside out. To be truthful, I can’t wait for that to happen to mine, but until it does I’m stuck with the ultimate hack!

Bert Willows

Loose Lines [Issue 42, May/June 1993]

From time to time, I do a blitz of the dealers, usually with total anonymity. Posing as either a cash buyer of a new bike, with the dosh burning a hole in my underpants, or as a seeker after a good deal in the used market. Reactions of salesmen vary not very greatly. They will vigorously deny that the prices of their used bikes are way over the top compared with the private market and become wild with indignation when I suggest that the normal discount off the manufacturers RRP for a new machine is somewhere in the 5-15% range, depending on the marque and model.

When I point out that the RRP is there only so that they can offer an apparently high trade in offer when part exchange is involved they almost burst blood vessels in their indignation. Even in the current credit squeeze, they also don’t favour cash unless you're buying a second-hand bike that they aren’t going to put through their books. They much prefer HP where they can grab a large amount of commission on the unusually high interest payments.

A whole load of excuses are trotted out to justify their high prices. The most amusing one of my recent experience was the chap who reckoned that his prices were justified as he had just spent £100000 upgrading his showroom, although to be honest it looked more like it had received a new coat of paint and a flimsy partition to produce a separate clothing section. Selling motorcycle clothing is apparently very profitable as the margins are huge, although as much of the stuff is dreadful they need those margins to make up for all the clothes they fail to sell.

The clothing manufacturers don’t even seem to understand the materials from which they make their clothes. Leather will give a little and settle nicely into the body after a year or so, the last thing it needs is horrible pleats and expanding sections. I have been unable to find a proper leather jacket for the past three years! The waterproof stuff is generally so badly cut as to make the wearer look like he is casting for a part as the hunchback of Norte Dame. Even when I’ve been lucky enough to find a waterproof that fits OK it has invariably been ruined by slashes of luminescent purple or orange; the wearing of which would make one an immediate target for unemployable youths lobbing bricks if they could keep the hysterical laughter in check. But, I digress...

Another dealer even went so far as to refuse to give me his best price, insisting that I should go around all the dealers and then come back to him to see if he could better their best offer. He saw no point wasting his time giving me a quote which I could then use to beat the next dealer down. After much nagging, the assurance that I had the cash on me and caressing the machine as if I'd fallen desperately in love with it, he offered me about 2% off the retail price, which I took as a personal insult.

Of course, when you consider that Japanese motorcycles suffer from high shipping costs, import tax, car tax and the dreaded VAT, something like 35% of the final price has nothing to do with the dealer’s margins, the importer’s cut or the manufacturer’s profit. The actual cost of building a motorcycle that retails new for £5000 is probably around the £2000 mark, allowing 5% mark up for the importer and 20% for the dealer (before discounts).

To digress again, I have heard that it’s possible to avoid most of the taxes if you buy a new bike abroad, use it there for six months and have the proof on hand to show the customs authorities when bringing it into the country. My telephone blitz on the local VAT office produced nothing but evasion but no outright denial. If any readers have done this, write in... there can be few better excuses for taking a six month holiday than doing a rapacious government out of its extortionate taxes!
 
Buying new bikes is merely a question of price and service. The Japanese have done the punter a favour in recent years, reducing servicing requirements to an oil and filter change plus very occasional valve and carb adjustments. They could go even further by completely eliminating the necessity for the last two and vastly extending oil changes by having a separate compartment for the gearbox oil. The obvious benefits of a guarantee have to be carefully weighed against the cost of dealer servicing - perhaps the best compromise is to let the dealer do the oil, valves and carbs but do the more general maintenance oneself. Some mechanics are so poorly trained that they do more damage than good - this is not just a general statement but backed up by a steady stream of letters that the UMG receives, and in many of the contributions published.

Just to confuse things further, some discounters have good service facilities, other dealers who won't let the machines out of the door for much less than the full retail price have poor reputations. Some of the discounts are so good on new bikes it's worthwhile ignoring the guarantee and doing your own servicing, as if you were buying a used bike privately. You can always threaten a storm of bad publicity if something serious goes wrong. Not that most dealers will take much notice.

By way of contrast, buying used bikes from a dealer is one of the quickest ways of losing dosh known to man. For a start, most of the large dealers set absurdly high prices on the bikes, often little less for a one or two year old machine than the purchase cost ofa new discounted one. The reason for this is exactly. the same as with the RRP, it allows an apparently large trade in price when part exchanges are done and dealers are always in hope of finding some mug off the street who will pay up the required dosh. As with new bike prices, when you politely point this out to them they will swear on their mother’s life that it is not the case.

They will then go to great lengths to insist that the bike has been given a thorough going over by their wonderfully well trained mechanics, that the guarantee that comes with the machine is worth a lot more than the paper it’s written on and that, anyway, the model in question is so good that they will have no trouble shifting it even if you don’t want to buy it.

At that point it’s always amusing to throw in an observation about a common defect that the machine suffers, even if in reality you have to make one up. It’s a safe bet to accuse Hondas of having camchain troubles, Kawasakis of ignition failure, Suzuki of rectifier burn outs and Yamahas of any, or all, of the three once they are ageing a bit. It’s especially entertaining to watch the salesman’s reaction when you hit the nail on the head. One insisted that Honda CBX550s never, ever had any camchain tensioner problems. He started the machine in question up with a great flurry of revs and all but embedded my head on the cylinder, stating that it was one of the quietest engines he’d ever heard.

He was so perturbed by the nonsense about the camchain that he insisted I take the machine for a test ride. The praises were still ringing in my ears as I roared up the road. After a few 10000rpm sorties in the lower gears, ten minutes later I returned to the showroom... the tell-tale camchain rattle all but drowned out the exhaust at tickover revs.

He insisted that it was merely a bit of clutch rattle that would be sorted when the carbs were balanced by his mechanics, although he had already stated that the machine had been given a thorough work over. By the time I was ready to leave the price had dropped by almost a half, which is about the right place from which to start bargaining when buying used from a dealer.

That may seem a bit unlikely, and may even get you a slap around the head from a suitably enraged dealer, but I have actually been caught out by my own impudence. Having offered really silly money for a bike, occasionally the dealer accepts the crazy offer with apparent gratitude and I have to pretend that I’m just going to the nearest bank to get the money, making sure that I don’t return there in the future. So, a silly offer is always worth a try even with the large, flash dealers. 

Bill Fowler