Kawasaki Triples Club

Inspired by Toddyboy and his nostalgic stories I started to write down my own memories about what got me into bikes and how I ended up being a triples addict. Like he says, apologies for the length but once you get going it's hard to stop! I've broken it down into chapters so here's the first...

CHAPTER ONE

I’ve always loved engines. I sometimes think it’s only Kawasaki triple engines but then I look back into the past and my mind is suddenly full of distant memories, lingering, indistinct but stretching back over the years, like two-stroke haze clouding the horizon in rear view mirrors.

Some of my earliest memories are of my dad running in his model aeroplane engines in the garage, the ear-shattering noise of those small two-strokes at maximum revs, the pale blue fumes filling the room with the intoxicating smell of Nitro-methanol and adrenaline. Watching him dismantle those miniature finned cylinders, easing out pistons the diameter of a half-pence pieces and show me how the they powered the crank and pushed the gasses through ports the size of a bullet hole. I was the first kid in school to get all those jokes about little ends.

Through a succession of Mammod steam engines and diesel powered control line planes my experience with internal combustion developed and blossomed into a passionate obsession. By the time I was thirteen, tiring of Biggles books and aeronautics, I inevitably begun to turn my thoughts towards the dream of propelling myself along the ground (in the fastest possible manner). My first experience of this had been with my dad’s Suffolk Colt lawnmower, on which I sullenly earned my pocket money each weekend. Even now, forty years later, I’m as intimately familiar with that little 75cc engine as I am with any other power-plant. It taught me about valves, ignition timing, carburettors and that poor old engine was stripped and taken apart so many times it’s testament to its design that it kept on running. I’d tried standing on the mower under power but the only way was to face backwards, legs apart with one foot on the drive chain housing and the other precariously balanced on the starter cord cover. Revs full, lever in and balance as the machine lurched forwards hoping that my Green Flash tennis shoes wouldn’t slip and sending my feet into the whirring cutter blades. My shocked parents soon put a stop to this sort of fun and perhaps were a bit relieved when I turned my attention towards motorising my younger brother’s childhood go-cart.

This was a tubular steel contraption with pedals and semi-perished rubber tyres that had been gradually rusting away in the back yard for years. It was a good design in many ways with a strong frame and well engineered steering. In my teenage imagination I immediately matched up this chassis to the familiar Colt engine and after several weeks of saving up and scouring the small ads in the back of Exchange and Mart I purchased my first engine from a local farmer. It was much older than the one I was used to but more or less the same design so I soon had it stripped it down and got it running fine. Next task was to get the thing connected to the back wheels of the go-cart which introduced the first big engineering challenge of my life. There was no place on the chassis for an engine, in fact even with the seat bolted on in the rear most position a gangly thirteen year old could barely squeeze in. There was only one thing for it. Using my newly acquired ‘O’ Level metalwork skills I welded together an engine mount behind the seat that just about managed to line up the drive shaft in a credible position to connect directly to the rear wheels. There was a minor problem in that, because the considerable weight of the engine was all behind the rear axle, the cart tipped back so it’s front wheels reached for the sky like some sort of wheelie crazed drag racer. It was only when the driver sat in that equilibrium was restored and the front wheels met with tarmac again but this, rather disturbing characteristic, didn’t bother me at all. I was imminently going to become a genuine, motorised human being and that’s all that mattered!



After much experimenting, broken chains, re-welding and judicious hammering my glorious missile, prepared to F1 standards, was wheeled out into the road one early Sunday morning, dad’s car relieved (by syphon) of a few pints of four-star. Unwitnessed except by our local milkman who stopped in amusement to watch the desperate efforts of this skinny lad crammed into a child’s go-cart frantically yanking the starter cord and praying it wouldn’t snap before lift off. Throttle lever set, and fine tuning the choke lever with the other hand, I kept one eye on the bedroom curtains for signs of the inevitable parental intervention. At last the engine caught and then roared into life, centrifugal forces engaged the clutch and I was away! That moment is etched in my mind, the pavements sliding by, my house left far behind, the road ahead rushing towards me, one hand gripping the miniature steering wheel and the other pushing the little chrome throttle lever to the limit. The engine noise clattering away behind my back, full revs, fuel igniting, pushrods dancing, valves bouncing, crank spinning. I was intoxicated in the moment, mechanically at one with my mechanistic genius, the wind in my face, master of the universe, as I hurtled to a terminal velocity of about fifteen miles an hour. At which point several things happened all at once. The chain snapped with an audible crack, the axle bent sending the cart into my very first tank-slapper, the engine over revved and my dad came running out the front door in his pyjamas screaming something about driving licences, insurance and not having had the sense to install any sort of braking system.

After that the scene was set and my next foray into the world of power was a seminal one because it was on two wheels. I was still at the age where I met up with mates after tea and we’d hang about getting up to minor mischief and go places you weren’t meant to be. A favourite activity was to climb over the tall perimeter wall of the local industrial estate where haulage contractors parked their rigs at night and agricultural tyre businesses dumped tractor tyres and inner tubes in huge, monolithic piles. It was a dark, dirty place that smelled of engine oil and coal dust with a compacted, cinder surface pock-marked with black puddles that glinted with the rainbow colours of spilled diesel. We loved it. And one night we found a treasure leaning against the back wall in the shadow of some ancient rusty machinery. It was black, like the yard and It had a presence that instilled a sort of awe in me at the time because it was just so big and heavy and seemed to compel us to push it into the middle of the yard and sit on it and try it for size. Its seat was broad, it’s handlebars wide and I remember the thrill of sitting there with my hands on the controls and feet on the pegs. I didn’t know it at the time but it was a Honda CB450 Black Bomber… and the keys were in the ignition.

I’ll never know whos bike that was or why it ended up in that yard. My mates said it was stolen and dumped and certainly no one ever seemed to notice that we went there every night over that long summer to take turns riding that bike round the cinders. One day it just wasn’t there anymore and I felt a great loss. But in those few, precious weeks something happened inside of me and I developed an affinity with the way a motorbike felt and how it was built and how it sounded. I loved kicking that bike into life and embrace the smell of hot engine, petrol and black rubber. I loved the connection between a twist grip and the rise in revs and the bark of exhaust. I loved mastering a clutch and learning to change gears and blip the throttle on the way down. I loved the slow, irregular tick, tick of cooling metal when we stopped for a break to share illicit drags on pilfered Players No. 6. My mates trashed that bike, jumping it over builder’s planks balanced on green and white Castrol oil drums, crashing it into nettle filled ditches, skidding it sideways, speedway style, through the filthy puddles but I mourned every injury it sustained and secretly despised them for their uncaring ways. It was me that kept it going and tended to it’s wounds at the end of every session. My sisters and her friends were all into the clichéd love affairs with Donny Osmond and ponies, Black Beauty, and the soundtrack to White Horses but me: I was smitten with that Honda twin and had, and always will have, a secret place for them in my heart.

At school my books were always covered with drawings of WW1 aeroplanes, Sopwith Camels, Fokker Triplanes and Spandau machine guns but as I approached the final years of this hideous sentence these had transformed into detailed technical drawings of motorcycle engines, racing fairings, and leather clad riders, crouched down behind Perspex screens into streamlined forms. I still really had very little knowledge of bikes and the different makes but I loved the proportions of motorcycle engines, the polished alloy casings, the shape of the air-cooled cylinders, the swoop of exhaust pipes and jewellery-like accents of copper and brass. One day, during one exceptionally boring lesson I was sketching out a new picture on the back of my exercise book. It had, for some reason, a mad black and red striped tank design and a crazy, spiky look. “What’s that then?” whispered a conspiratorial, but cynical, voice in my ear and I turned to see this lad studying my latest two-wheeled creation. In a sort of shocked reaction I spontaneously blurted out, “It’s a Beezer-bike”, (making reference to the red and black Dennis the Menace character from the Beezer comic I’d only recently out-grown reading).

Little known to me the term ‘Beeser” was a slang term in use at the time for BSA and my mention of this acted like some sort of magic code and his tone immediately changed, “Meet me after school”, he said, ”I’ve got someplace to take you.”

And so I entered another world. The world of bikers. Steve, for that was his name, took me back to his place and then onto a neighbouring house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. There, outside the open garage doors stood a collection of ancient, old men (or so they seemed to me) dressed in greasy denim, leather and tattoos, the smell of fags and beer heavy in the air as they laughed and joked about stuff I didn’t understand. But, despite being intimidated by their general demeanour, they hardly registered because there in the garage, hidden in the shadows but catching the last rays of a setting sun was a machine that captured my heart the instant I saw it. A DB34 BSA Gold Star in full clubmans trim. Jeez that bike was everything I’d ever dreamed of. Chrome tank, gleaming alloy, BSA badges projecting deep, red passion, clip-on bars and prominent instruments. I stumbled towards it mesmerised by the size of the engine, that massive lump of fine-finned brutality. In all the years since I don’t think there has ever been an engine that hit me like that one did.



To be continued...(I do get onto triples eventually :wink: )

Anyone want the next chapter?

I think Toddyboy will agree but it take some guts to post up a story you wrote onto this site.

So I drank another bottle of wine and wrote the next chapter.

It's ready to post but despite 75 people reading this one there's no comments so I don't know whether you're all thinking, "Pile of shite" or "What happened next".

Three B's for you (Bloody Brilliant Bic!)
Now that's what I call a really well written and readable story.
I knew there were others out there who could do it.
Well done mate. Lets have some more

CHAPTER TWO

Steve became a good mate. We shared a passion for bikes and his parents were far more lenient with their views about riding bikes and getting onto the road legally. He was a few months older than me and as his sixteenth birthday approached I could only observe in envy as he masterminded the plot to become the next Barry Sheene. It was 1979, the FS1E had been superceded by the RD50 and Steve had the one we all wanted; resplendent in red and white speed-blocks, cast wheels and micron expansion chamber. There was a period when the older lads had turned 16 but still hadn’t left school and they’d all turn up on their Fizzies and AP Suzukis and a few rare and exotic Italian Mallaguttis and Cimattis. Thee rest of us would pedal our push bikes up the long hill away from school and congregate at the top waiting for the ‘Ped-boys” to come by. As the approaching buzz of tiny engines laboured up the hill we’d sit on our bikes craning our necks backwards searching the cloud of blue and white smoke to see who was in the lead. Invariable it would be Steve, flat on the tank, his black gloves gripping clip-on bars, AGV hidden behind his cockpit fairing and denim flares flapping madly in the slipstream.

We’d start pedalling furiously down the hill leading into the village, judging our timing so that we’d match the speed of the fast approaching swarm of bikes. And for a few glorious minutes you became one of them, surrounded by screaming two stroke engines, wildly weaving to gain position, narrow back tyres, under damped suspension, the smell of Castrol R. In those moments I knew my true destiny, this is what I wanted to do, as much as I could, forever. And it was only a matter of time.



Although I spent every minute dreaming about speed and my daredevil future exploits when I finally got onto public roads I hadn’t factored in my dad and his puritanical views about motorcycling and the appropriate way to behave. He was an engineer and had owned many bikes in his youth but at a time when motorcycling was an affordable form of transport and his many Truimphs, and Panthers had all been drab utility vehicles adorned with luggage racks and leg shields. Maybe it was just the black and white photos but it seemed to me that biking in the 50’s had been a bit of a grim affair. In contrast my bedroom walls were covered in posters of metallic green Z900s, leather race numbers and rider names, Sheen and Roberts clashing in a blaze of yellow, blacks and reds and Mick Grant’s lime green H2R so when I finally brought up the subject of buying a motorcycle our views on this weren’t exactly aligned.



For various reasons, mainly financial, my sixteenth year had slipped by without me getting a moped so I wanted to get straight onto a 250 which of course my dad objected to on the grounds that it would be too hard for me to deal with the size and power. He had no idea about that Black Bomber, my years of riding field bikes round farm land and hours of illegal road riding on borrowed bikes – and I could hardly tell him. So began the battle of bike selection that became something of a breakfast routine over the weeks preceding my birthday. I’d show up with Exchange and Mart and Bike magazine with felt tip pen circles round RD and GT250s and he’d come prepared with cards from local shops advertising MZ 125s and Honda 200 Benlys: old man’s bikes! Christ, if I turned up on one of those I’d be the laughing stock of my mates. In the end I realised that without his blessing and support I just wasn’t going to ever get a bike so we managed to find a compromise and one evening he drove me over to Blackburn to collect a little Honda 125J from a friend of his who owned a bike shop.



Although a modest little bike the J was the sportiest of all the 125 Hondas at that time and came with quite a few features that overcame some of the negative aspect of their reputation. It had a front disc instead of a drum and proper clocks with a rev counter and idiot lights. But the best bit was the engine because it was good solid overhead cam single that in many ways reminded me of a modern, miniature Gold Star lump. At least that’s what I told myself during that first year as a legal road rider. I learned so much on that bike and ultimately grew to begrudgingly respect it for dealing with so many crashes and being constantly thrashed trying to keep up with all my mates on faster machines. Having passed my test I finally convinced my dad I’d earned the right to trade up to an RD250 and the little Honda was cannibalised by my younger brother and the engine went into an off road frame to became another field bike for the next generation of wannabe bikers. I’d like to say I was sorry to see it go but the truth is that once Keith got his oily mitts on the keys I never once gave it another thought. Id got better things to think about; I’d discovered two-stroke triples!

Good work Bic, keep it coming.

Great pics, awesome story. Don't stop there Bic.

Wot they said, next chapter please! Saarinen bars on the Yam, by the look of it.

Ha ha! We were totally into Jarno! He was our hero.

We used to take our ace-bars down to the blacksmiths and get him to bend them into shape.

CHAPTER THREE

The Yamaha and Suzuki twins provided the mainstay for the majority of bikers that hung round Lancashire villages at the end of the 1970s. Back then there were a lot more bikers, especially younger ones, and various pubs and cafes saw dozens of bikes congregating in the car parks every evening. There were still a lot of old school bikers riding old Triumphs, Nortons and bigger Japanese bikes. They dressed in jeans, old leathers, denim cut-offs, and wore black helmets and goggles with enamel badges and studded belts. Their bikes had ape-hangers and T-bars and their tanks sported airbrushed murals of death-heads and flaming skulls. You still sometimes saw patches and colours, ‘Angels and Satan’s Slaves mostly, but they were not that prevalent anymore. Mixed in with all these were the modern café racers who rode ported Japanese two-strokes with expansion chambers and clip-ons. These competed ferociously against the big GS and CB fours sporting Dunstall or Rickman frames, four into one pipes and full race fairings. AGV helmets, garish colour schemes, red or blue leather jackets, jeans and cowboy boots set them apart from greasy bikers but everyone got on fine together and we all sat at the same tables, shared the jukebox, bought each other rounds and bummed fags off everyone.



In the summer no one went into the bars because all the action was outside, talking shop and watching bikes leave and arrive in deafening groups, bound for the next pub on the list that night. Small groups of long haired youths would huddle round specific machines talking about the latest go-faster mods or swapping stories about near misses and heroic overtaking manoeuvres. Girls and girlfriends stood around casually drinking rum and cokes or sat astride the bigger bikes revving the engines and giggling while the lucky owners eyed them up wondering if they’d get lucky later on. Smoking fags, exaggerating stop speed figures, taking the piss out of daft buggers, cheering on a wheelie merchant as they waved goodbye – this was the life I’d dreamed of for years and I was the happiest I’d ever been.



The Royal Oak was the central pub in the region and the yard was bordered by a high stone wall so you couldn’t see the bikes coming through the village until they were almost at the entrance to the yard. But you could hear them from a long way off and people would stop talking, pause what they were doing and look up, listening to the rise and fall of revs, the matched blips on the down-changes into the last roundabout and up one, two, and maybe three gears before coming into view hard on the brakes, suspension loaded and riders already searching for an empty spot in the mass of parked bikes to cruise into, cool as you like, snicking into neutral and ignition off with a final bark of exhaust. You could recognize many bikes and riders by their unique sounds or riding styles, Jason with his straight-through Piper GS750, Andy on a 350 Yamaha running unsilenced stinger chambers, Bob on a Norton Commando with chopped of headers but there was a type of bike that sounded like no other and was unmistakable in its arrival; The ring-ding-ding of a Kawasaki triple.



These bikes were already legendary by the time I’d started hanging out there. Like Hurricanes to Spitfires the KH250s often outnumbered the RD Yamahas and, although not as well remembered now with quite the same nostalgic reverence, were almost common enough to be considered run of the mill. But the bigger displaced models, the 400s, H1s and newer KH500s could still give most other bikes a good run for their money. In all those years I never saw a 750 in the flesh but we all knew about them and had the posters up on our walls. I loved all these triples because they offered the kind of performance I craved for but in a package that just seemed to excel at offending everything in middle-class England that I wanted to rebel against. They bellowed smoke at sedate Volvo estate cars and spattered burned oil across clean driveways. They rattled and jangled at traffic lights in the most unrefined way and whether screaming towards the red line like all hell was breaking loose or popping and four-stroking through picturesque market squares they never failed to cause affront. Added to this they exuded the mythical aura of danger that only a bike with a reputation for evil handling can command. You had to be a brave soul to thrash a Kawasaki triple to the limit, “Widow makers”, was not a name to be fooled with and I idolised the guys who rode them.



My dad’s comprehensive workshop and tool collection had resulted in most of my mates coming over on weekend mornings and crowding into the front driveway to clean and repair the inevitable crashed bike or just tinker about and make huge mugs of tea to consume along with fags and bacon butties. The local postman, ‘Hunty’, was a few years older than me he’d been one of the old biking crowd for as long as I could remember. He’d always stop for a chat and have a fag and tell us tall stories about local riding legends from the years before. One day he says to me, “I heard you’re after a bigger bike mate? I got one back at home you might be up for”. I must have looked interested because he launches into a pretty hard sell for a GT550 that he needed to shift to make more space but I’d also heard a rumour that it had seen better days. Not wanting to piss him off I agreed to ride over to his place later on when he’d finished his rounds and take a look.

I turned up with my mate, Jason, both having agreed that unless the bike was mint I’d walk away. Those Suzuki triples were starting to show their age and had never been the sportiest of bikes but I had a soft spot for their engines and secretly loved the cast aluminium covers over the cylinders proclaiming, ‘Ram Air System’. At the right price it might make a good buy. To be fair, it was a good bike and had been well modded into the café racer spec of the time, ace bars, spannies, gleaming chrome and gloss black paint. Hunty wasted no time in firing it up and offered me a test ride which I duly did blasting down the A6 into town and back again. It was faster and had more grunt than my RD but hadn’t really blown me away and I wasn’t convinced. As I came to a halt I noticed a rear tyre sticking out from behind a shed and wondered over to peer around the corner to see what it was. And what I saw changed my life forever; It was a metallic brown Kawasaki 400 triple.

More specifically it was a 1975 S3 in totally original condition and it was absolutely stunning! “It’s not for sale mate”. Was the blunt response from Hunty – who still wanted me to buy the GT but I was having non of it. I offered him more than he’d asked for the other bike and then raised it again when he turned it down. He just wouldn’t budge. “Rare one that, fast as well, I want to keep hold of it”. I had to ride home frustrated and empty handed, lying on my bed that night staring at my Purple H2c posters knowing I’d come so near to getting my hands on one. That bike was like the holy grail, part of the appeal was that it was so similar to it’s larger sibling, even that weird brown colour with it’s red stripe and swooping three silencers mimicked the big 750 in every way. I finally drifted off to sleep dreaming of the impossible and wishing for a miracle.

Two day later, the phone rang and my mum shouts out to me in the garage, “It’s that scruffy postman on the phone, wants to talk to you. What mischief have you been up to?” “Nothing mum, give us the phone, quick!” I grab the phone and can just make out Hunty’s gruff Lancashire voice at the end of a crackly line. “So you still want the 400? I’ve changed my mind, you got the cash you can pick it up later if you want”. And that was it. The biggest wad of used money, green pound notes and tatty fivers curled into a fat roll smells like nothing else, like unwashed clothes, musty dirt, sweat and tears and bloody hard work. Collected laboriously over months and months and stashed inside a pair of old bike boots at the back of my wardrobe. Placed solemnly onto a wooden kitchen table and counted out next to an overflowing ash tray, a pile of expired MOT certificates, log book and plate of chocolate biscuits, that wad bought me a hand written receipt and a set of keys to the next four years of letting the good times roll.

Double post

Brilliant. You're getting better as you go. Keep 'em coming. At this rate you'll have your autobiography all done and dusted within a few months. Then I'll show you how to edit and format it and get it published on Kindle - FOR FREE!

Really enjoyed that Bic. Awesome photos too. So many parallels with my own youth! Loved the descriptions of how you felt when you discovered the 'magic' - took me right back. I can still hear, feel and smell some similar memories of my own they're so fresh in my mind.

Ha. Chasing the 'ped-boys' on bicycles. My oldest brother was so shit at riding a motorcycle that it kyboshed my chances of getting on the road when I was 16 ("Not until you've passed your car test my lad!"). Trouble is that the ped-boys often used to meet at Wooley Edge Service station on the M1 near Wakefield (it could be accessed from the bridge over the motorway) and that was a 1 1/2 mile steep uphill slog for a cyclist. I'd arrive there 15 minutes after them but the old Raleigh Record 12 speed 'racer' used to give them a run for their money on the way back .

The young Mitsui:

Brilliant picture mate!

CHAPTER FOUR

Ok, it wasn’t perfect. It had mismatched tyres, the right hand silencer had cracked and had an ugly seam of weld that tarnished the chrome and both sides were scraped and flattened from over-enthusiastic cornering, the throttle grip was missing its end, the gear change linkage was as sloppy as it gets, trip meter knob was AWOL and the spokes were covered in a dark patina of rust. But this was all stuff I could easily fix or live with and compared to most of the local bikes this was a beauty queen. In my dad’s garage that night, cupped hands round a steaming brew, I just sat and looked at it. And looked at it. And every so often turned the keys, the little green neutral light signalling systems are go, to kick it into life filling the garage with two-stroke fumes in homage to distant memories of model aeroplanes. I fell in love with those perfect, elegant proportions, charismatic, asymmetrical silencers and splayed chrome down- pipes, the (at that time cutting-edge) tail unit and oval back light, the two prominent clocks with those seminal rubber surrounds, and oh that engine. Being familiar with single and twin cylinders bikes I just couldn’t get over the width of those three cylinders jutting out either side from under that gaudy, candy tank with its hinged petrol cap that seemed light years ahead of the conventional circular screw-off ones I’d been used to.



I’d always been an early riser and that bike had me up at sunrise every morning to go for rides round my favourite roads before there was any traffic about. There wasn’t room in the garage, once my dad’s car had been put away for the night so it lived up the side under a heavy cover so it was easy to slip off and wheel the bike out without waking anyone up. Often I’d just push the bike down the road, hop on and wait to get enough speed down the gentle incline to snick into second gear and bump start the engine. All it ever took was the choke on for a few seconds, drop the clutch and at least two cylinders would fire up immediately. It hard to describe that feeling, I don’t know whether it’s done with your ears or the feeling through the handlebars but it’s a triple thing – to gauge whether all three cylinders have caught and if not then to juggle the throttle and choke to get the third one going. But it’s a very triple thing to then check over your shoulders to see if there’s smoke coming out of all three at the back! On those freezing winter mornings I remember it wouldn’t pull cleanly until the engine warmed up but this was always quick and by the time I’d reached the open roads everything was fine.



Everyone always talks about the ring-a-ding thing but I was far more taken by the Bwaaaarp- bwaaaaarp going up the gears. Having come from a tuned and ported 250 twin with a knife edge power band I was totally seduced by this new feeling of smooth, turbine power with loads of torque. I just loved learning how to get the best out of that engine, how it would forgive you cruising along in a high gear but not bog down and just pull you away. But you could also drop two gears with two blips and get the needle up there and just take off! Out with the gangs on Sunday rides it was a revelation as I was suddenly boosted up the ranks and found that it was easy to keep on the tail of bikes that had hitherto pulled away at every corner and disappeared into the distance on long straights. All at once I was a contender and found myself at the front with the fast boys and scrapping for lead on roads I knew best. My desperate quest for speed and acceleration was no sooner over than another challenge thrust itself to the fore; getting rid of that speed and braking into corners. I rapidly discovered why triple silencers were scraped and bashed on the undersides, footrests chamfered and why crappy worn out tires were not a great idea. That bike did not like breaking into corners at all and I soon became the master of banging down two, three gears, red lining the engine and slamming on the brakes all before I’d left the vertical. That’s not to say there weren’t numerous occasions when I’d panic, brake late and feel like there was some sort of invisible force pushing me into the hedge, or dry stone wall, or flooded ditch or any of the other roadside horrors that we did battle with every day.

I just think it was our age and the way we rode in those days but every trip brought a mixture of elation and adrenaline, terror and lurching stomachs probably in equal quantities. If twenty bikes set off for a raz up to Devils Bridge, or further afield to the Lakes, it was almost a given that there would be at least one or two casualties and a couple of near misses, not to mention the inevitable breakdowns, confrontations with other motorists and trouble with the landlords, café owners and locals wherever we ended up.



I remember everyone saying, “They all do that”, when listening to the rattle of little end bearings on a Kawasaki triple but my dad retorted with a dismissive, “Rubbish!” when I passed on this collective wisdom to the consummate engineer. One of his contacts worked at SKF and few days later he presented me with a little parcel with dozens of little roller caged bearings and wished me good luck. Back in those days the nearest official Japanese bike dealers were hours away from the small village where I lived and local bike shops remained emporiums of dusty brown boxes containing old British bike bits and walls covered with various silencer systems, chipped enamel signs and used tyres. Old geezers in dirty blue overalls worked on oily bikes at the shop front next to motley selections of bikes for sale. Trying to get specific parts for our bikes involved a long, protracted process of ordering and time delays that could take weeks so more often as not we just made do, repaired things or used different parts from other makes of bike. These were the days of home made gaskets cut from cornflake boxes and broken pistons welded back together by the local blacksmith! So having a dozen brand new little end bearings still fresh in wraps with virgin grease coating the rollers was something truly novel and I enthusiastically whipped the top-end off and replaced the worn out set along with a new set of rings that I persuaded a mate to part with. For good measure I changed the gearbox oil and gave the bike a good clean and polish.

I remember kicking the engine into life for a shakedown run and being just amazed at the difference this overhaul had made. Once warmed up here was virtually no rattling and what was already a super smooth engine just felt divine. All my other mates with triples were envious as hell and I was soon relieved of all the other bearings my dad had given me so they could all experience the transformation. Sadly my new found engine bliss was short lived because a few weeks later on a flat out stretch of the A6 my foot slipped off the footrest. I looked down at my light-tan coloured cowboy boot to see it soaked dark with oil and as my brain was registering what must have happened the revs suddenly dropped and those beautiful flying pistons started to seize. Whipping in the clutch and hitting the kill switch I coasted to a standstill to the side of the road and into a convenient layby. “Shit, shit shit!”

I slowly got off the bike, removed my helmet and gloves and apprehensively started to look for the cause of the problem. It turned out that the bolt on the oil feed banjo had come loose at the pump, a quick fix but would the engine be ruined or even turn over? I gave the kick starter a gentle prod and felt the plop, plop, plop of pistons moving so that was a good sign so I lit a fag and waited for the engine to cool down a bit. I wasn’t sure if this was the right thing to do but I was willing to try anything to ensure I didn’t make things worse and to be honest I needed a fag to contemplate the horror of needing to find the cash for a new engine if I needed one. To my utter relief, ten minutes later, the bike started up fine and I proceeded to ride slowly home, gradually increasing the revs and speed as it became evident that I’d somehow managed to avoid any serious damage at all. By the time I pulled into the drive at home I was grinning like an idiot with relief and when my dad mentioned that the little end bearings had started to rattle again I just happily said, “They all do dad!” And it did after that until the day I sold it.

A great read, all of it.

Thanks

Aardvark mate, I see you are in Lancaster. All of this happened in Garstang, just down the road. We used to race round the Trough of Bowland up to Dunlop Bridge and Settle. Or up the back roads to Cockerham Sands and on to Glasson Dock and through Lancaster, up to Devils Bridge at Kirkby Lonsdale. By then everyone was knackered or broken down or crashed!

CHAPTER FIVE

Like all bikes at that time, the two-stroke sports bikes came out the Japanese factories with all the trimmings to make it a sensible, respectable vehicle. Despite being marketed as high-performance motorcycles to us they still looked pretty much like the practical commuter bikes my dad would be proud to ride. Massive chrome mudguards, huge indicators the size of saucers and sensible rear view mirrors, big chunky, low footrests, ugly back lights and barn door number plates. Not to mention the standard exhausts that were usually heavy, over silenced and ugly. The posters on our walls depicted bikes with clip on handlebars, single seats, big, prominent rev counters displayed inside sparse cockpits and polished Perspex screens. Upswept expansion chambers snaking round alloy rear-sets and fat exposed slick tyres on magnesium cast wheels.

So we just went about changing our clumsy road bikes into pastiches of the bikes out heroes rode. Steve Baker, Jarno Saarinen, Rocket Ron and of course Sheene and Roberts. We’d junk the rear mudguards and replace the fronts with fiberglass replacements and fork braces, throw away the ugly chrome headlight brackets and dated rubber gaiters to expose the fork stanchions to fit clip-ons and Cibie headlight conversions. And of course, if you could afford a set of expansion chambers like Allspeeds or Microns this was the holy grail although, in Lancashire at the time there was also a guy called Dave Swarbrick who hand-made and hand-fitted matt-black chambers, and these were considered the best but cost a fortune. Big plastic air-boxes with superfluous chrome trimmings were discarded and the liberated space was filled with cool paper K&N filters or finely-gauzed, alloy bell-mouths. Discs were drilled, tyre letter painted, Dunlop, STP and Champion stickers applied.

This was all before the days of widely available aftermarket parts for bikes and most of the stuff we did was home made or cobbled together from used bits that some of the older guys were throwing away. The commonest source was when a bike got written off and (once the crashed rider was deemed OK or carted off to hospital) the frenzy would start as the vultures started eying up all the parts that had survived undamaged, the sombre mood of a post-crash gang transformed into desire, mentally counting their savings at home, and out-bidding each other for the spoils of war.



Sunday mornings were spent doing stuff to bikes in my parents’ drive, the garage doors open allowing access to tools and spare parts sitting on shelves of oil, grease and half empty paint cans. My closest mates would start arriving by ten, screaming up the quiet, residential road, making no attempt at discreet arrival, and revving engines when stopped like some sort of tribal mating ritual. God knows what the neighbours thought and my poor parents
must have just been relieved that underneath most of these bikers were pretty good lads really and were always meticulously polite. “Morning Mrs. Bicknell”, they’d shout and always say “Thank you Mrs. Bicknell” when she brought out trays of tea and biscuits for us all.



We’d all clean down our machines with old paint tins filled with a mixture of petrol and oil (no spare cash for WD40 in those days) dissolving away the previous weeks’ accumulation of muck, road grime and the inevitable cow-shit that the roads were constantly covered in. Once cleaned down we’d fight over the two little red oil cans I had filled with fresh engine oil and wait in turn for the compressor hose to fill our tyres, blow out air-filters and stick the pipe down someone’s arse crack when they were bending over some bit of inaccessible engine. There was usually some numpty attempting some over ambitious task like modifying ports with a rotary drill, changing piston rings or putting on new tyres. This was way before professional tyre services with hydraulic equipment so we’d just use a selection of tyre levers, big King Dick spanners and bike-boots on Fairy Liquid drenched TT100s and Roadrunners to bounce them over the rims. Getting a puncture when fitting a tyre was about 50/50 on those mornings.



Me, I never attempted any serious mechanical work in the company of these clowns preferring to undertake these adventures on my own in the comfort of a heated closed garage at night with a radio playing, Haines manual at the ready and tools laid out like a surgical operating theatre. Sign of things to come but I took my bike maintenance seriously and the Sunday morning antics with this gang more closely resembled the Laurel and Hardy re-runs that my brother watched on Saturday morning telly.



Eventually everyone would be finished and the motley crew of bikes would be lined up gleaming in the Sun, the village church bell ringing in the distance, a call for elderly church-goers and general boring townsfolk to begin the slow migration along the pavements into town. But for us it was a call to arms, a reminder that the pubs would be opening in half an hour and we only had time to troop into my mums kitchen and raid the Swarfega under the sink, the luminous green slime turning black and splattering over work surfaces and floor and causing my mum to tut and hover with a dish cloth.

We’d don our leather jackets over black Meatloaf and Motorhead T shirts, adjust our Levi jeans and pull down AGV helmets over a variety of long dishevelled haircuts and adolescent sideburns. Gloves pulled on and, for some, laboriously adjusted whilst the first engines reared into life as Tommy Ball cowboy boots prodded down in unison onto stubby two-stroke kick-start levers. The scream of engines and the clouds of CassieR fumes, the thunder of under silenced big fours, the rise and fall of blipping throttles, increasing in tempo, getting louder. Heart beats and adrenaline matching the thrill of the impending ride, excitement in the air ready to go. There was always one bike that wouldn’t start, one too optimistic modification that had gone wrong or yet another Kawasaki Triple only running on two, or even one, cylinder. Pushed up the side of the garage and left for later investigation the owner would sprint for an offered seat from a willing mate and, flicking the pillion pegs down, would jump on the back and we’d be off! “See you Mum, I’ll be back later, put me dinner in the oven to keep warm!”

You've definitely got the minerals for a full length novel here. The story will relate to anyone who rode bikes in the 70's and the pictures give it credence and nostalgia.
I lost most of my early days pics when I moved back to the UK after living in America in the late eighties.
Keep going. Your writing is improving with every chapter

My wife is getting pissed off with me. I'm always sitting in front of the computer banging away on the keyboard.

"What are you doing?" she asks.
"Writing down stuff".
"Why?"
"Not really sure. But I don't seem to be able to stop", I say.

I think I'm just enjoying remembering those times and the friends I had. It's one thing to look at old photos. But to write you have to really remember and think about what it was like. I miss a lot of that life when I was just 18 and had no worries and bikes were the centre of my universe. In that time 1979 to 1985 seven of my mates were killed on bikes, including my brother. I have a lot of stories about losing those friends and all the other accidents that happened along the way. Not sure what I'm going to do when I get to that time. I'm not sure at all.

I am not from Lancaster, I moved up here in 2002, when I found a lovely Northern Lass.
I am from Nottingham, born & bred.

The stories are great, it does remind me of my younger days with my mates. The pictures are also a great, I have not got any of my old pictures so only the memories.

I am not sure about your next part, with the passing of friends, fellow bikers and best mates. I lost several and nearly stopped riding bikes when my best mate lost his life. But decided to carry on, I am glad I did has I still enjoy riding just as much today as I did all those years ago.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to put in in writing.

Aardvark