CD175 A wrench back in time to when I was but a callow youth of seventeen. Someone, about a month ago, was selling a 1969 Honda CD175 for two hundred quid. Though not the most economical device in the world, especially when caned, they’re otherwise cheap and cheerful. This one was faded but intact, right down to the infamous mudguards and full chain enclosure. Starting was as easy as falling off a Kawasaki H1. Alas, forty thousand miles had left the gearbox as impossible as gaining entrance to a Cardiff disco in a twenty year old leather jacket.
I tended to hold on to second, resulting in an engine screaming for mercy as loudly as a Khmer Rouge hostage. These single carb OHC twins are good for 17 horses but only if you rev them like a youth on a Cagiva Mito - the combination of a flat spot (around 4000 to 6000 revs I’d guess, there being no rev counter) and huge gaps between the ratios even when the selectors aren't as worn as most sixties Honda boxes.
One curious side effect, perhaps Honda’s original intention, of this lack of apparent go is that many commuters never broke into the real power. Such mild usage giving what's basically an incredibly tough power unit a longevity equivalent to an Indian Yogi fed on organic health food.
Water fell as I was returning the CD after a fifteen minute test ride. The tyres turned as dodgy as a holiday in Baghdad and the drum brakes took in water with an ease only matched by my ancient leather jacket. Yes, flashes of wild slides came back to me as the visor misted and I feathered the brake levers with a sensitivity only gained after years of amusing Oriental girls 20 years my junior. Nice if you can get it.
I arrived at the nervous looking owner's abode in one piece. Complained viciously of the tyres and brakes, not wanting to hang around for long in soaked clothes. British fucking weather! Luckily, 1000mg of Vitamin C (Boots’ chewable type’s best) every day stopped me catching a cold. Few people seem to believe such a simple remedy but it works for me, even when coming from forty degrees of tropical heat back to sub-zero UK temperatures.
l offered fifty quid, hard cash, natch! It really pisses me off when someone starts muttering about the classic status of sixties Hondas. For the malcontent CB450, maybe, or even a CB72/77, but the rest of the stuff only has uses as cheap and cheerful hacks. I left him my telephone number and rode off into the setting sun, the residue of heat and heavy breeze whipping the water out of my soaked leather. You have to be pretty easy going when buying secondhand bikes.
About a week later I saw the same machine parked up in town. The new owner turned up, reckoned the engine was on its last legs. As evidenced by the fifteen kicks needed to start it and stroker like smog. I think the previous owner must've poured some of that gunge into the cylinders that gives a temporary coating to the engine’s moving parts. Even at fifty quid I would've been well pissed off; not so much the money (though that's bad enough) but that I hadn't sussed the con.
Grey Games Against my better judgement I made the trek up to London, a beady and cynical eye to be run over the grey imports on offer. It has to be said (again and again) I don't like dealing with dealers. There’s the odd nice chap in the game, of course, but it’s hard, in most cases, to even get the time of day out of them let alone a decent deal on a motorcycle.
In Japan there's the leisure market and the hardcore working bikes with little but the odd feet-forward imitator, with and without roof, in between. Alas, the vast majority of imports are race replicas, which I find well weird as in other markets, such as Oz and NZ, there are lots of sensible 250 singles on offer. I did mention this to one dealer, but he sort of snarled and spluttered before coming up with the usual incantation of a high yen and tiny profit margin even on a £3000 race replica.
It's along time since I lived in London, something like thirteen years. Having commuted East to West and South to North, I still know my way around the place well enough to land a job as a DR if things turn really desperate, as they have a habit of doing every now and again. I’ve never really trusted London motorcycle dealers since one tried the HP scam on me. I phoned up, received a nice low quote for the monthly payments only to find a much higher one on the bit of paper I was about to blithely sign. Still, early dealings with such people prepares one well for a future in the big wide world.
I tried a few grey importers, having more flashbacks when I came across bits of London that I'd long since forgotten. I wore my old leather, it had street cred and was worn enough to convince the dealer (and any loitering muggers) that I couldn’t come up with excessive dosh. They were all selling the same dubious trip. Bright, flash race replicas.
Of these, the CBR400 was the most populous and popular but I had trouble just getting my leg over it let alone adapting to the riding position, which in many ways was the mildest available in this genre. One chap even went so far as to suggest I would benefit from a course of weight lifting... thanks but no thanks, I reserve my energy for the important things in life.
Had these bikes been cheaper say, 1500 notes - I might've been tempted. It wouldn't take much effort to tear the silly plastic off, fit sensible handlebars and used lights. I actually came close to buying an old GSXR1100 with this scenario in mind, but I can’t take, these days, the level of paranoia involved in riding without insurance. Paying £400 for third party didn’t bear thinking about! You can still buy a good, working motorcycle for that kind of dosh.
Not a grey import, though. I did come across a Suzuki Goose, even went so far as to have a test ride. It seemed appropriately named, there not being two lines in the whole design that worked well together. This 350cc thumper went as well as a nice (if such a thing’s possible) Honda 400 Superdream. Which Is to say, it had potential as a hack, one of those competent motorcycles that won't let you down until the whole thing's worn out, when the built-in obsolescence finally catches up with the plot. The dealer reckoned 70mpg was possible, which I took with the same kind of seriousness as I would a claim that the Japanese make good rubber (either tyres or condoms).
I lied about thinking the deal over - one look at the most primitive dog that was snarling in a corner had convinced me the punter wouldn't be the winner in a dispute over the guarantee. What is it with these dogs? A lot of them are worse than wild animals. At least with the latter you're free to kill it off if it turns up in the High Street. One brute tried to break through a plate glass window to get at moi - no good saying it was fear that turned the monster wild because the first I knew of it was the glass rattling in its frame. Shit, and they won't let me buy a Magnum.
London seems torn between becoming a refugee camp for the dispossessed and a fashion show for the stupidly rich. Too many cars, too much pollution and too many arseholes on the doors of diverse clubs that refused me entrance. I don’t have that kind of trouble in Bangkok or even Antwerp...
Suzuki 650 Tempter A brief sojourn in Antwerp, where I once worked for a year, gave me the chance to bop around on a rare (in the UK) Suzuki 650 twin. Think of a GS450E in the mildest of custom modes with bigger bores and you'll comprehend exactly where this machine’s at. I happen to like Japanese twins, having fond memories of wild times on a CB450 Black Bomber, XS650 and GPZ500S, amongst others. The Suzuki was more of the same but unfortunately had inherited some of the remoteness of the original Suzuki twin, the GS400, both in the engine and the chassis.
Antwerp used to be quite quaint, what with loads of cobblestone roads, old buildings and quite a few very sexy Oriental girls (in the days when the EEC hadn't gone omnipotent and Belgian visas were relatively easy for them to acquire). Those cobblestones were nasty on a bike that gave no feedback from the road, whilst Belgian drivers gave every indication of just being let loose from a lunatic asylum. Until quite recently driving licences weren't compulsory in Belgium.
Perhaps I just don’t understand their laws. When I failed to give way to some clown in a Porsche 911 the driver went berserk, sticking his fist out of the window and looking like he was going to burst every blood vessel in his face. Now, I think 911s should be banned, not because they're bad cars but because I can’t afford one. The passenger seat of nearly every one I see is occupied by a stunning nubile. I would’ve given the car a good kicking but it would've meant falling off the Suzuki. I just used its narrowness to disappear into the dense traffic.
I don't know if it was wear or just bad design, or a bit of both, but the front disc was as pure a piece of crap you'll find this side of the junk they sell you in fast food joints. Well, it was over a decade old but there was only 22 thou on the clock and the bike was otherwise well preserved (the Belgians don't ride in the winter because their weather turns Siberian). Had I not suffered the nasty twin front discs on an XS650 and profoundly remote brakes on a GS550, the way the front wheel locked on the slippery road surfaces would’ve had me off.
My Northern Extreme boots saved the day. | thought I'd really got lucky with these. Neat looking, perfect fit, flexible yet tough, I could walk for miles without the slightest pain, straight out of the box, and they had eyelets that allowed them to be tied up very quickly... finally found a good product in our increasingly tacky world; at least until the first time it rained. Soaked through is the understatement of the year - both my feet were dyed black! To be fair, they ain't sold as motorcycle boots but, after that soaking, even a slight drizzle caused some dye to run.
The collapse of Communism means Antwerp’s now full to bursting point with Eastern Europeans, mostly mad and desperate to make money every which way. Late on the first night, recovering from scaring. myself silly on the Suzuki, I was wandering down a dark street with just the neon glow of a couple of bars for illumination. Whoosh! I moved with the speed of a race track winner, spinning on one foot, just in time to avoid some lout jumping on top of me. I didn’t see him or anything as he was hidden in a doorway, just pure instinct working overtime. He staggered, caught himself, looked shocked that I wasn’t where he’d assumed and ran off up the street. I let him go, he was about twice my weight and half my age. Nice, though, to know the survival instincts are still finely honed... must be all those years fighting motorcycles that had more power than the frame could handle. Just one example of the marketing delusions we had to handle back in the seventies and eighties.
Grand Delusions One of the hassles with modern life is learning who to believe. Vested interests, hugely profitable multinational companies and marketing exercises as expensive as they are ingenious combine to hide the reality from the punters. Although this is supposed to be the information age, shelves groaning under magazines, books, CDs and videos, often the contents of such things are warped by individual neurosis, blind ignorance or the need to appease rabid advertisers. The UMG differs significantly to nearly all the magazines on the shelves in that it’s mostly written by its readers and carries no advertising whatsoever.
For sure, the latter means that its appearance is very basic and because it relies merely on the cover price for income there aren't any large marketing efforts to make people understand that what they see ain't necessarily what they get - the UMG’s always relied on the intelligence of its readers to get across the message that it’s packed out with interesting motorcycle tales rather than overwhelming their senses with superficial gloss. These tales are highly subjective, though mired in the harsh reality of on the road survival... and if they get too far from reality they don't get printed - one poor chap sent me a highly abusive letter when I refused to print his unlikely tales. Something about claims to have done 135mph on a stock CB400 Superdream. The speedo was probably in km/h.
Although I have quite specific tastes in motorcycles, it doesn't stop me running articles on bikes I'd cross the road to avoid. Even if cycles that bad are rare, the spirit that the motorcycle experience evokes being so strong as to make life interesting even on some old turkey of a bike. I’ve never been of the school of thought that exulted in the sheer adventure of riding a bike so old or nasty that roadside rebuilds become all part of the glory of the experience. Thanks, but no thanks. Nevertheless, doing Europe on a rat C90, or some equally unlikely adventure, and making it back home in one piece against the odds, is the kind of story that I really enjoy publishing. The UMG has long attracted mad buggers who don’t seem to give a damn about the consequences of their acts. I hope they keep on contributing.
Even though I wouldn't really object to dealers and motorcycle manufacturers handing over large amounts of money to advertise in the UMG, although I’m sure a lot of readers would, it seems that the UMG is out there all on its own as far as getting any support from the trade goes. I don’t mind, I'm still here after all this time and don’t have to go into hysterical tirades to persuade readers that the UMG’s one of the few periodicals on the shelves that isn't dominated by advertisers - you might like to note that in the majority of publishing companies it’s the advertising execs not the editorial people who end up with the top jobs. The bad news, though, is that with paper prices increasing by fifty percent, more cover price rises are on the way. Don't blame me, there’s nothing I can do about the paper mills!
Every now and again one of the glossies sallies forth with great indignation, denying that it takes any note of the advertisers but invariably if you read back through the tests you'll find that the companies advertising in the magazine have been lavishly praised in the past and, at most, are criticized only mildly in the future. Most of the sins, though, are ones of omission - it's up to the punter to find out that the tyres wear out in 2000 miles (when the handling tries to imitate a H1), that the whole bike’s so remote that it’s dangerous to ride in the wet and that the only way to ameliorate the total lack of comfort is to ride everywhere at ten-tenths.
Just occasionally, one of these youths with more skill than intelligence, more surplus adrenaline than writing ability, actually admits in print his preference for a motorcycle on which he can sit without wrecking his back rather than some svelte replica; but only in the context of having to use it in a practical manner - i.e. on UK roads for actually getting somewhere. That 99% of the magazine’s readers have to take that into consideration appears not to be the point.
This interaction of advertising bucks and fawning, if not flowery, prose is as sickening as it is frightening. Warping as it does both the manufacturers plans, the readers desires and the journo’s minds. I take great delight in pissing off acquaintances, who harass me about not doing certain things in certain ways by replying that I ain't living in a TV commercial or soap opera. Everything has become incredibly warped by the media.
That's bad enough in the motorcycle press. At least it’s visible and there’s a wide range of magazines with a few journalists who don't give a shit and tell it like it is - more or less. Even worse is the food industry. Yes, I know, this is a motorcycle magazine and you don’t want to read a lot of paranoid crap about food, but it’s such a major rip-off that I really can’t stop myself. I could devote the whole magazine to this but it's the wrong place and you probably wouldn't believe a word. Read some independent books on nutrition if you’re interested (not the drivel turned out by conventional, food company funded, scientists). All I can say is that the more I read the angrier I became. It really is a massive scandal! Makes the machinations of the motorcycle companies seem very small beer.
Bill Fowler