The youth who'd sold me the bike had proudly told me he’d fitted a new final drive chain. I’d quickly taken the bung out of the full chain case to check, so was a bit perturbed by the gear change and transmission which were full of grinding noises. I lurched home far from happy with my twenty year old purchase. I began to think I should’ve bought an MZ.
The gearbox sprocket had two teeth missing, the others were hooked. The back sprocket looked on the way out as well. I took the old ones down to the breaker and found a set that would fit. They were a different size, ending up with gearing approximately 20% taller but at a quid each I could hardly complain. The lurches disappeared.
The gear change worked the wrong way around and needed a good stamp. First gear was quite tall with the modified gearing and I often didn’t bother changing gear in heavy traffic. Top gear became almost unusable as the bike wouldn't put more than 50mph on the clock in the lower gears. The suspension gave a rather strange ride as it was original fare with shot springing and damping. The frame was a strong hunk of pressed steel which didn’t let the 200lb bike get too far out of line.
The rear mudguard section had begun to rust through but it wasn’t, luckily, part of the heavily stressed frame. The seat was newish, very well made, taking out the worst of the road shocks, leaving me in a quite comfortable sit up and pray riding position. The bike felt tiny, a long way below me but the tall, wide bars made it easy to hustle.
All the controls were very basic but light in action and functional. It was an easy bike to leap on to and ride off into the distance. Slowly! Acceleration was adequate to 40mph but then it was big snooze time, the worn bore and piston reluctant to allow any more power out of the aged engine. I did the timing (fiddly with the points hidden in the magneto) and cleaned the carbon out of the silencer but it made absolutely no difference, 40mph was easy enough, 50mph was the top speed. Take it or leave it.
It was OK for the daily trudge into work, 10 miles each way through an almost constant traffic jam. Going any faster than the B120 could manage would've been dangerous. Because of its age and sorry appearance I could take some quite large risks, not worried about the odd scrap with a car and assured that the two stroke fog that followed us around would obscure the numberplate. Not that it would matter, the last time someone put their name in the logbook was some nine years previously!
After a couple of weeks I soon settled into the gentle, mild life with the B120. Faded blue and rusty, the bike looked so far gone that I never locked it and often left it running outside shops. The only thing that happened was some young infant decided it'd be fun to fully open the throttle, absolutely entranced by the mushroom cloud of pollution and the wailing engine which was vibrating so fiercely that the bike was bouncing on its centre stand.
Like anyone would, I slapped the kid about the head. All hell broke loose. He burst into tears. His parents came out of nowhere, screaming abuse at me and the police were summoned. I was lucky to et off with a caution! The Suzuki didn’t suffer any permanent damage, although it took about twenty kicks to start. The engine continued to turn in near on 100mpg. Nothing seemed to wear, my only worry the back section of the frame and the chrome mudguard rusting rough as the winter set over our great country. Some people hate the cold but I like the changing seasons, never knowing what each day’s going to be like.
There’s no protection on a B120 as standard but had an old perspex windscreen that fitted on the bars with a minimum of hassle and kept the worst of the. weather off my upper body - it’s the kind of huge wedge of plastic that throws even the most stable bike into massive wobbles above 50mph. so the lack of speed was all to the good.
The tyres were Japanese rubbish that didn’t really like wet roads but the slides were never so violent that I felt inclined to change them. The drum brakes were reassuring in the rain but lacked power for modern traffic conditions in the dry. Some of the cage antics were unbelievable, like reversing out of side streets, foot flat on the throttle. I did a speedway type slide, ruining the side of the car but otherwise surviving without any-serious damage. The B120 always seemed to get the better of any accident I was involved in, leaving me impressed with its general toughness.
Over one weekend I knocked the rust out of the back part of the frame, leaving lots of large holes which were filled with steel plate and welded up. The front guard was replaced with a two quid special from the breaker; just in time as it disintegrated as I knocked it off. Whilst doing the back end I noticed that some of the wiring was shedding its insulation. The 6V electrics were marginal and I tried to avoid riding out of town in the dark. The back light flickered at tickover and the front light was safe for about 10mph down country lanes. Once I started fiddling with the wiring I found great swathes of the stuff falling apart in my hands and had a very trying Sunday rewiring the bike. It made absolutely no difference to the efficiency of the lights!
The next problem was a front wheel puncture at about 30mph. This event was announced by a large bang and an even larger wobble. The front tyre bounced into the kerb, spinning the wheel at a right angle, causing me to cartwheel over the bars. Coming down to earth I bounced off the side of a car, rolled into the gutter and then had the Suzuki come crashing down on top of me, taking a hot exhaust in the marital tackle. Scream? Not half, mate!
The peds were in hysterics at the sight of me hopping around clutching my burnt groin, making strange desperate noises.Luckily, the damage was only temporary and after an hour or so the pain began to fade away. The Suzuki, puncture apart, was undamaged, the failure caused by the old inner-tube perishing away. I put a new tube in the back as well, as it wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat.
Such adventures could have put me right off the old commuter but the way it kept running and running, costing next to nothing and getting me to work just as quick as my old 550 had managed, continued to impress, nay, amaze!
The two stroke engine, with its separate oil supply, didn’t even have to be decoked, and once I set up the points, in 14000 miles of further abuse, I never had to touch them again - the thing was as slow as ever but never became any slower. The bike’s one step up from a C90 and for town work more than adequate. I’ve owned much better motorcycles, and hopefully will again, but for a while longer the B120 will keep me on the road.
Garreth Evans