It was stretched when on the second day of ownership of one of the few remaining pristine, low mileage 150s in the country we ground to a halt miles from nowhere, with only some vicious, probably psychotic, cows for company. The one with the horns looked with longing at the red MZ, I was thankful for the presence of a large ditch between us.
I'd been steaming along at a stimulating 65mph, adding to the ozone level with an intoxicating layer of pollutants and snapping the Iron Curtain hack through a series of bends under the impression that it was really a race replica, I was Barry Sheene (which gives away my age) and the lumbering Metro that had tried to run us off the road was an apparition sent to test my reflexes. In short, dears, I was a little wired and weird, in no fit mind to look into the intricacies of stroker engineering. Let it cool down, a wise voice counselled, which I did and which worked very nicely. Whew!
I presumed that the piston had momentarily seized, a not uncommon peccadillo on strokers. The answer seemed to lay in switching from recycled 20/50 to proper stroker oil; doing that I never had a repeat performance, although it still burnt off great clouds of oil and was cursed by most of my neighbours, not least because its vibratory, agonized screaming tickover would set off both car and burglar alarms. My refusal to take part in any of the community activities had already defined me as an anti-social bugger, ownership of the MZ just confirming their poor opinions of moi. Could I give a shit?
The next trick that the MZ revealed was night riding. The front lamp was so poor that eye strain set in after about five seconds, and blinded by oncoming traffic I had no clear idea where I was riding. At least not until we rode off the road, skidded along some grass and then tried to redefine some farmer's hedgerow. Say what you will about MZs, they are at least tough. I was bruised and bloodied but still able to pull the hack out of the hedge, drag it back on to the road and ride off into the night - at 5mph.
MZ electrics are the one weak spot in the otherwise robust design (well, OK, the drum front brakes aren't brilliant and...) Regular disintegration of electrical components is all too common, fitting Japanese stuff the best remedy, although even then the vibes can have an effect if care in rubber mounting them isn’t taken.
One of the more hilarious moments was the time when the battery split, soaking the chassis in potent acid. A bit of bodging of the wiring allowed the bike to continue running as long as a 3000rpm tick over was considered acceptable (it wasn’t by the general populace who were reduced to coughing fits). Flaking paint, corroded wiring and rotting alloy were the result of the acid spillage.
Finish was generally quite reasonable, a lot better than Japanese commuters and quite susceptible to a good going over with polish and elbow grease. Chrome on the magnificently large silencer did soon start to do a runner and there were patches of rust where the acid had spilt.
Cheap running was ensured by a back yard filled full of dead MZs, a good half of them given to me free, the others ranging in price from a fiver to twenty quid. All it took was a bit of cheek in knocking on doors when a dead MZ was spied in gardens and a willingness to keep writing in adverts to the local Free Advertiser newspaper.
Quite a few of these bikes had been crashed due to retention, I'd guess, of the OE Pneumant tyres, early examples of which were bad enough to reduce MZ owners to gibbering wrecks and to becoming large statistics in the NHS budget. Tyres hardly wear at all on the 150, which makes it a hard task for the owner to tear off Pneumants in favour of Pirellis or Michelins, but the utter transformation of the handling makes this heart breaking process more than worthwhile.
I get at least 20000 miles out of a set of tyres, a similar mileage for the enclosed final drive chain and even longer for the brake shoes. The latter, especially out front, can be a little lacking in stopping power, whilst the front end seizes up under braking making it nigh on impossible to throw the communist tackle around erring cagers. After a while I took to adding notches to the brake lever in celebration of the number of cages I successfully damaged, helped along by the largest set of crash bars in the known universe which dug up huge holes in the tarmac and could take off the side of a car in the twinkle of an eye. What did I tell you? Fun, fun, fun!
The only problem with the MZ in traffic was that it didn’t run very cleanly at low revs, often oiling up the spark plug, which then needed a dose of throttle and swearing, in first gear, to clear up. Cagers actually sounded their horns in alarm at the dense fog of pollutants that resulted, thinking the old corker had caught fire.
They became even more alarmed when I became bored, deciding that the High Street had the ideal ambience for wheelie testing. The ultra conservative steering geometry, that often insisted on going straight across roundabouts rather than leaning into them, made wheelies a rather desperate affair. Rev the engine until it threatened to bounce out of the frame, drop the clutch dead and pull back on the bars viciously. Fitting large ape hangers allowed more than six inches and I actually scraped the number plate once, the MZ ignoring my ‘Whoa, boy’ scream and looping the loop. I ended up with what felt like a broken spine and 250lbs of MZ on my groin.
Despite compulsive throttle abuse the MZ turned in 70 to 80mpg with tiresome regularity. Comfort more or less matched the range after I replaced the stock concrete-like seat with one of those cute King & Queen types, the non-standard bars being a good match for the maximum top speed of 70mph - the MZ was like a boxer BMW in that top speed usually equated to maximum cruising speed.
The gearbox was every bit as nasty as a boxer but needed to be worked much more if there was a pillion, head wind or steep incline. The vibes never bothered me when the bike was thrashed into the red but then I'm used to basic hacks where it’s a good day if there isn’t a catastrophic engine failure. And on the MZ I've had many a good day, doing 18000 miles in two years of fun filled madness.
Regular decokes are the only real maintenance chore as both the cylinder head and silencer become choked up with carbon, turning performance so pathetic I have trouble staying with hard ridden FS1Es. I do a decoke every 1500 miles.
MZ 150s are cheaper than the 125s because of the learner laws (although it’s possible to fit a 125 engine in the bigger bike's frame) A genuinely excellent one might fetch £250 but it’s really not on to pay more than a hundred notes for a runner, and spare bikes are usually free. As I said before, this is fun on a minimal budget.
M.H.W.