The rear drum had overcammed, shoes down to the rivets had locked the back wheel up. A few desperate kicks freed it. An hour later the damn thing screamed into life at a million revs, my leg scarred from several kickbacks. A combination of savagely worn spark plugs and ignition timing with a mind of its own. The mileometer read only 7000 miles, it was the twelve years shoved to the back of a garage that had done for the bike. Decay had played its far from pretty tune.
Still, the T125 was given to me for free, keeping my complaints muted. As a seventies resurrection shuffle it had a lot going for it, inspired as I was by the past owners’ tales of 85mph flat out and burning off old British singles - this bike was from an era when earners were limited to 250cc and the Japs screwed as much power as they could out of their strokers regardless of the pollution and noise they churned out.
Of which the Stinger had an excess: Judging by the way the gearbox oil level did a disappearing act, the crankshaft seals were long gone (the owner admitted that this might be why he’d shoved it to the back of the garage but only after I'd spent weeks with aerosols sorting out the cycle parts - thanks, Mike!). The baffles had rotted away, leading to a banshee wail and the high level exhausts were guaranteed to burn holes in my legs.
So after a few more rides I was not a happy chicken. Anything other than full throttle had the poor old thing sulking like the wife after a drunken back-door job. What could I do? Nothing other than a full engine strip or sell the thing off to some gullible learner with the well worn line, they're all like that, mate. However, my conscience got the better of me (I can actually remember feeling sick after being ripped off as a seventeen year old), and the former was indulged, courtesy of another friend who raced Bantams in his youth and still had a pack of the damn things littering up his house. His wife is more understanding than mine, even my gear has to be kept in the garage! oi He went into a rant about crap Japs when the screws holding on the engine covers stripped their threads and let me do the helicoiling (which meant the covers went back on with help from couple of tubes of Araldite). He did a pretty good job and gave me a pair of racing Amal carbs, which he reckoned would sort the engine out.
Unfortunately, other than brute force, there was no way I could see that they would mate with the manifolds, so they were put to one side, in the hope that I might get inspired one day. Some of the previous poor running was undoubtedly down to the state of the air filter, which crumbled to dust when I tried to removes it. A couple of K&N fillers were persuaded on and I hoped the stock jetting would suffice. The bores and pistons looked like new so I shouldn't have been that surprised when the bike wailed up the street at an incredible rate, my poor old foot and clutch hand trying hard to keep up with the way the engine zapped up the rev range.
It was rapid! I came home with a big grin and soiled underwear. The clatter from the front drum which reacted to 80mph sorties by fading away to nothing but only after bouncing the forks on their stops, turning in a useful rendition of a pogo-stick. As I wanted to come to an orderly stop for a junction at the time (to impress the cops sat in a car on the corner!), I was a bit miffed to be fighting the bike for my life, the rear wheel skid halving the tyre’s longevity. I made it, swung down the road, did a right down a narrow lane and got the hell out of there before the sing-song wail of the jam-sandwich ruined my day.
So a bit more fettling. Every ride turned up a minor hassle, like the bike was falling apart under me! And the noise it made shattered milk bottles and had respectable neighbours starting a petition - I'd been viewed with suspicion, if not outright hatred, after I went for one neighbour's mutt with my large adjustable wrench. He liked to drop a load in my drive! After attacking him I was viewed as a mass murderer.
Imagine my joy and their horror when the Bantam owning mate turned up on a highly illegal D14. Clouds of pollution from the primitive pre-mix lubrication and so much noise even the cats were running around in circles trying to bite their tails. The dogs were climbing up walls. The wife locked herself away in embarrassment. We screamed off down the street, reliving our times as juvenile delinquents. Whatever he’d done to the 175cc BSA engine it was enough to keep ahead of the Suzuki. Never mind that tickover sounded like 5000 revs and starting was a half mile push.
We had great fun until the Bantam’s mill seized solid! The Stinger handled well, despite crap suspension and cheap tyres - the way the motor was slung beneath the frame rails meant a low centre of gravity and a neutral feel. The lack of stands and high slung exhaust meant the pegs were the first to deck down, a sign that the bike was about to fall off the edge of the tyres!
We were really cracking along when the Bantam went. My mate was so used to such seizures that he had the clutch pulled in before the back tyre had a chance to go into a terminal slide. I ended up towing him home (he always carried some rope!), which was pretty daft - he back-ended me a couple of times and I had some massive wobbles. With new plugs, the ignition timing set to perfection and everything running well, the mill actually put out enough low rev torque to slog it out with the extra 350lbs of payload!
My beautifully applied paint started seeping rust shortly after that adventure. I patched it up, but what a pain - the older Bantams were still running original paint on their cycle parts, despite some serious dents and bruises. I don't like riding around on a bike that looks like a rat, but every time there was some rain, rust broke out and I had to go wild with the Solvol. A real pain!
I was therefore quite open to reason when some old chap approached me at the Welsh Show. He was a bit mad, complaining that the tyres were wrong, the cables routed incorrectly and the air filters were all incorrect. Christ, my bike was the only one I'd ever seen on the road, they weren't exactly popular back in the seventies. He claimed to have most of the Suzuki strokers stored away at his home and wanted the Stinger to complete his collection! He insisted on giving me £1200, which seemed pretty cool. Even the wife cracked a smile!
Keith Vale