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Me at 18! Check out the scowl...

Here you can find out a little more about my past motorcycles & other bike related ramblings.

    As a teenager I really had very little interest in motorcycles until the fateful day when my sister landed a boyfriend who owned a new 1972 Honda CB175 "Super Sport". The first time he took me out on it scared the s**t out of me, but I was hooked & was soon bugging my parents to allow me to get a moped (a 50cc motorcycle). I'll never forget going out with my Dad one day in late December to his workplace & him showing me the Puch VS50D moped he and Mom had purchased for my birthday. It was one of those defining moments in your life, it may not have been the fastest most stylish moped available but it was mine & it introduced me to the pleasures of motorcycling which once in your blood is always there. I still remember the licence plate number, AUE 153J, I rode that bike everywhere, top speed 40 mph, 45 with the wind behind you with your chin on the tank...Downhill.....

1970 Puch VS50D

    By the time my 17th birthday rolled around I'd already set my sights a little higher. I was in the first of 5 years in college as an engineering apprentice & was already employed by a local engineering company. So I had the money & scoured the magazine reports for a bigger bike, this was early 75' & the only bike to have was the now legendary Kawasaki 750 H2 triple. Only trouble is that the law restricted new riders to 250cc max so It didn't need a rocket scientist to figure out that it had to be a Kawasaki S1C 250 triple. Further negotiation with my parents secured their help in the purchase of a brand new 1975 model. Just like my moped, the first ride was very special, a friend had purchased the same model a few weeks earlier & we rode back together in convoy.

1975 Kawasaki 250 S1C

    That evening I had arranged a date with the daughter of friends of my parents, we went to a dance & afterwards I took her home, my parents and her  parents were still out. So I got her a drink, got her comfortable on the sofa and........went out on my new Kawasaki! When I got home I think I was the only happy person, we never went out again, go figure..

    I kept the Kawa for a year or so, put around 20,000 miles on it, I used to ride it to the coast (80 miles) in the evening after work just for the sake of it. I passed my bike riding test & instead of trading up to the 750 H2 I always wanted bought a Honda CB500/4 instead. The Honda was reasonably fast & I had plans to customize it but in the summer of 76' I T' boned a car at an intersection & wrote it off. Luckily I got off with concussion & cuts & bruises only, no broken bones.

     Once out of Hospital I began thinking of my next bike which turned out to be a new 1977 Honda 400/4 Super Sport. It was ahead of its time styling wise in my opinion, was quick, handled fantastically well & was a joy to ride. In the summer of 78' I had my second accident, T' boned another car in the middle of town. This time I was un-injured & took out my anger on the driver of the car I still remember his young daughter pleading with me not to hit her Dad (which I did)... Anyway he paid for the damage &  I decided to do some mild customising by adding a Rickman fairing & ace bars (see pics below). Later on I went for a custom designed & built gas tank & seat combination which was not to everyone's taste but I liked it.

 1978 Honda 400/4 Super Sport

    With a Dunstall exhaust system installed the bike really howled like a banshee when wound up to the 10,000 rpm red line. My Mom could hear me from miles away in the dead of night when I was riding home from my girlfriends house. A neighbour told me once that he timed me taking my girlfriend home & back at 12 minutes, a round trip of 14 miles on twisting roads. That bike was designed to be thrashed & I obliged whenever I rode it, it was fairly poor mechanically when I sold it, the clutch was fried & it was burning oil after 20,000 miles.. Oh yes I forgot, I fell off it going round a bend one Saturday, I was going too fast as usual & hit the brake to avoid running into the back of a slow car & just lost it at 60 mph. The funny thing is when you're sliding down the road watching your bike showering sparks in front of you there is time to think things like I hope the guy I just passed doesn't run me over.. He didn't but only just stopped in time..

    I replaced the 400/4 with a new Honda 900F Super Sport in 1980, it was big & heavy & in a straight line went like a dingbat up to around 125mph. I fitted a Marshall 4 into 1 exhaust system which sounded fantastic but actually slowed the bike down! Still, on a Sunday ride with my friends it always started out fairly sensibly but inevitably ended up in a street race I still wonder how no-one ended up in Hospital or worse. Like I said in a straight line the 900 was great but was a handful around corners, once committed to a line in a bend it was tough to change your mind due to the weight & high centre of gravity. I managed to fall off the 900 late one evening on the way home from my brothers engagement party. It was one of those classics, late, tired, half pissed... it was wet & I lost it by going too fast into a tight right hander. I left the road, tore across someone's lawn, wrecked several rose bushes & eventually fell off when I collided with the rockery. I remember frantically trying to re-start the engine as the house lights started coming on, I didn't need the cops to put in an appearance...

1980 Honda FZ900 Super Sport

    Sometime before buying the 900 & selling the 400/4 I bought a 1972 Honda 500/4 with the express intention of customising it. It already had a Marving 4 into 1 exhaust system which sounded fantastic, a high pitched howl that really pissed off some people on my regular circuit. One guy even threatened to string a rope across the road at neck height !! Unlucky for him that he lived on one of my favorite parts of the road between my parents house & the pub in Stratford On Avon. He lived on a 90 degree bend & most nights on the way home I'd approach the bend flat out in 5th gear (around 100mph), brake, change down into 3rd, set up for the perfect racing line through the bend & aim to be exiting the corner at 80mph with the engine howling at 8000 rpm. It was always disappointing if there were other vehicles in front to slow me down..

    So anyway I did a customising job on the 500/4, made a lot of the parts at work, custom rearsets, gear lever, brake pedal, swing arm, etc, etc. I also had lots of chrome work done & a custom paint job. Oh yes I rebuilt the engine (several times) & for good measure had the cylinder head ported and a road & track camshaft installed. With the carbs re-jetted & fitted with K&N air filters the bike was transformed & really flew. A friend (Simon, again) clocked me at 120 mph which was pretty fast for a 500 in those days. I'd sold the 900 by now to my girlfriends brother & he couldn't understand how I could keep up with him in a straight line & pass him on the corners...

1972 Honda CB500/4

    I had several other bikes along the way, including a 1976 Kawasaki KE 125 trail bike which turned out to be a real blast. I had so much fun on that bike, it was so light & easy to ride. Of course the real fun was off road, we used to go up to an old disused railway cutting at the weekend & just thrash around for a laugh.

   1976 Kawasaki KE 125

    One of the last bikes I bought was a 1978 Honda XL 250s, it was in really poor shape but like my current Kawasaki KH 400 was purchased as a restoration project. I completely stripped & rebuilt that bike with the intention of making it more for show than go. You can see from the pics that I really went over the top, I mean who builds a dirt bike & has various parts of it gold plated??

1978 Honda XL250S

    Of course it wasn't too long before my friend Simon (yes, the HiFi guy) persuaded me to take it off road & get it dirty....He had recently rebuilt a Yamaha XT 250 trail bike in his bedroom (!) & yes he did actually ride it down the stairs when he finished it.... I used to do my rebuilds in my bedroom as well, what better place to work on an engine on a cold winters day?

1978 Yamaha XT250

    Anyway I digress, that Honda 250 was a fantastic bike, it had enough power to do 80 mph on a good day & the handling was superb. You could just throw it into a corner & get amazing angles of lean in total safety...... on dirt tyres!! If you overcooked it a bit it was so light you just picked it up scrubbed off a bit of speed & carried on without having to change your underwear..

    At this point I was in my late 20's & riding less & less, I eventually sold the Honda in favour of the comforts and convenience  of a car...

   I'd passed my car driving test several years earlier & was looking for a suitable first car. My girlfriend owned a Mini 850 which was a lot of fun to drive, not very fast but it went round corners like it was on rails. Of course I wanted my own car which turned out to be a 1968 Ford Lotus Cortina Mk2. It belonged to my girlfriend's brother (the same guy I sold the Honda 900 to). It was a little rough in places but the "piece de resistance" was that it had a factory installed Lotus 1600cc big valve twin cam engine. It wasn't fun to drive slowly due to the combination of wide wheels & lack of power steering but once on the open road it came into its own & for the time was very quick. On one occasion (with my girlfriends brother driving) we had a race with an Alfasud which was also a quick car. The guy driving the Alfa was so determined not to let us past him that he eventually lost control & spun it off the road denting both the car & his pride in the process. He was unhurt but didn't know how he was going to explain the damage to his father, who was the owner of the car..

    Of course (!) I eventually had an accident in the Lotus, inexperience coupled with a damp road caught me out one evening while driving to my girlfriends parents house. Going round a left hander a little too quickly I lost the back end, over corrected & ended up rolling the car, luckily both my girlfriend & I were only bruised & shaken but the car was a total write off. After that experience I learned a valuable lesson and bought something a little more sedate, and drove within my limits (most of the time anyway)....