Some interesting m/c history

[1Alpha1]

My very first brand-new dirtbike was a 1970 Yamaha DT-1 Enduro. I bought it late in the year and it cost me $525.00. Last one the dealer had on the floor.

About one year later, I started racing MX, so I bought a Yamaha factory GYT kit for it. Price of the kit was $200.00. It consisted of a factory Yamaha expansion chamber, cylinder, head, piston and carb.

http://www.pulpmx.com/stories/look-back-old-moto-mags/gps-classic-steel/gps-classic-steel-100

 

[Toddppm]

So, do you still have it?

 

[stihl sawing]

Well lets see some proof.

 

[1Alpha1]

So, do you still have it?

That was so long ago, I'm really not sure what I did with it. Rode it back and forth to high school until I got a car. I then stripped it down, installed the GYT kit and went racing.

My two younger brothers and I were always buying, selling and trading motorcycles and stuff. Bunch of horse traders we were.

 

[LegDeLimber]

Had a '71 model (orange!) was about '76 when I got as a rolling frame and the engine was in a milk crate & pickle bucket.
Of course all of the lighting was long gone, fork tubes were badly worn & pitted.
Needed a dose of fork oil about every ten days, even fresh seals (twice) didn't slow it down.
Slowly worked my way towards a bit larger carb (home cut job)
A little bit skimmed off of the cylinder head, by hand just flat file, sandpaper and a lot of eyeballing the edge of that raised area, as I worked at it.

a variable speed drill and a 99cent set of those stones from the good old "Globemaster Tools" table Plus a 10 inch "rat tail" file w/ a 90deg bend in the end by heating and bending then quenched in oil.
This allowed me to wallow out the ports a little. Back then we passed around badly "xeroxed" sheets of papers with most of the port measurements based on checking from top and bottom gasket surfaces.
Sorta wish I still had them..... would be interesting to compare to todays numbers and thinking.

Of course we took advantage of the reeds "torque induction" as Yamaha called it.
It let you open up the transfer holes in the intake side of the pistons for some more mid-range grunt.
i liked the stock holes a bit more squared out and added one more hole above them.
You needed to be really nutso fussy about the finish of them as just filing strait in & out
left stressors. Pretty much every piston that I personaly saw that had cracked from the holes
always had been left with the little scoring from the files work or even sanding in the in&out motion.
You Always have to rotate the paper, NOT pull it back and forth.
Ran all of mine till the piston was worn small enough to need replacing.
But also have to keep in mind I was NOT racing them, so there was much less strain on things.
always ran a good synthetic oil and You'll love the name.
"Analube" and yes everyone pronounced it like it had 2 "L"s in the name. lol!!
Can't find a pic of the orange label type that I ran, so here's a green one.

 

[Uncle John]

Had one of these. 64 Honda Super Hawk. 305 cc Wow!

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[lone wolf]

My very first brand-new dirtbike was a 1970 Yamaha DT-1 Enduro. I bought it late in the year and it cost me $525.00. Last one the dealer had on the floor.

About one year later, I started racing MX, so I bought a Yamaha factory GYT kit for it. Price of the kit was $200.00. It consisted of a factory Yamaha expansion chamber, cylinder, head, piston and carb.

http://www.pulpmx.com/stories/look-back-old-moto-mags/gps-classic-steel/gps-classic-steel-100

Mine was a Yamaha Dt250.

 

[1Alpha1]

Had one of these. 64 Honda Super Hawk. 305 cc Wow!

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That is one beautiful old school bike.

 

[Uncle John]

That is one beautiful old school bike.

I didn't like the short stubby handlebars, so I had scrambler handlebars put on it.
Other than that I think it was exactly like the picture.

 

[1Alpha1]

Had I known that some old Honda's would appreciate in value like they have, I would have held on to them. Well.....I could say that for many brands actually.

But, at the time, they were riders and trading material. Between my two younger brothers and myself, we've owned over 100 m/c's.

If I had to make a list of them all, I'd be real hard-pressed to do so. I'm guessing I could recall about 50 of them at best.

 

[Fubar]

Had one of these. 64 Honda Super Hawk. 305 cc Wow!

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i have owned two 305's super hawks and a 175 Dream , fun to ride , i wish i still had those , they are worth a lot now .
the only new bike i ever owned that was a 1982 440 LTD Kawasaki belt drive , ah the good ole days ..

here is my current ride a 2004 Honda silver wing buried under 8 to 10 inches snow .

 

[Stihlofadeal64]

Well lets see some proof.


View attachment 406299

Looks like a MX360 I had years ago. Brought back many memories.

 

[Aerialist]

I like classics, here is my 1974 Moto Guzzi:

 

[amberg]

I bought a new honda xl 175 back in 1973, I thought I was on top of the world when I took the muffler of and put a mega phone ( think that what it was called ) on it, you could here it for miles.

 

[amberg]

I think that I had a honda 160 back in the day. It Was more of a street bike if I remember. look a lot like the one you got. I think it was a CB 160, I do miss that bike. ( I guess that I that wish I had it now )

 

[J.W Younger]

I think that I had a honda 160 back in the day. It Was more of a street bike if I remember. look a lot like the one you got. I think it was a CB 160, I do miss that bike. ( I guess that I that wish I had it now )

I had one of those too, in 1965, before that I had an Allstate 175.

 

[J.W Younger]

The allstate liked to eat pistons, one about every 2k miles. It had 2 pistons but only one spark plug.

 

[Conquistador3]

Weren't Allstate/Sears 175's made by Puch in Austria?

Personally I like classics... but built with modern quality control, materials etc:

Here's my Honda CB1300 Super Four. 2009 model, completely stock apart from MUPO shock absorbers and fork internals, R&G Racing exhaust protector and K-Factory engine case protectors.
Long story about this bike. My brother had a 2003 which I rode a few times and really liked, except for temperamental fueling and a saddle even more uncomfortable than a OE BMW one (I also have a BMW, so I speak from experience). He later sold it because he had grown tired with Honda being unable to fix fueling.
At about the same time I was dating a girl and made the terrible mistake of involving her in the new bike choice. I put under her nose a CB1300 and a VFR (Interceptor) brochure and she picked the VFR.
I ended up falling out with the girl and with a bike I genuinely hated and which I ended up destroying in a crash. No big deal as it was obviously a Friday afternoon special.
Fast forward to 2006. I recovered from the crash (I lost a good chunk of skin on a leg and lost mobility in my left thumb for a few months: that's why I won't buy anything from Dainese and Held ever again) and was ready to get back into bikes again. I bought a track bike, reasoning tracks are safer than roads.
They may be safer, but they are also more boring and pretty damn expensive.
So in 2009 I bought a Kawasaki road bike which lasted a massive four months. I didn't crash it, but grew so frustrated with poor quality and continuous problems I could not take it anymore. So I PX'd it for my present BMW which is... in another plane of existence, really. It quickly replaced the car as my mean of transport.
In 2012, after realizing the track bug had run its course, I sold the track bike and started looking again into the big CB. Much to my mirth, I found Honda had fixed the fueling issues and the saddle. Much to my chagrin I found the bike wasn't imported in Europe anymore, so I started looking for a used one. Easier said than done as Honda imported only small numbers of them, reserving most of the production for the Japanese market.
After a few months of searching, I found a dealer about 80 miles away had just got one as a PX. I went seeing it and it was an absolute gem. I pretty much bought it on the spot.
And the rest is history, as they say.

 

[J.W Younger]

Weren't Allstate/Sears 175's made by Puch in Austria?

Personally I like classics... but built with modern quality control, materials etc:

Here's my Honda CB1300 Super Four. 2009 model, completely stock apart from MUPO shock absorbers and fork internals, R&G Racing exhaust protector and K-Factory engine case protectors.
Long story about this bike. My brother had a 2003 which I rode a few times and really liked, except for temperamental fueling and a saddle even more uncomfortable than a OE BMW one (I also have a BMW, so I speak from experience). He later sold it because he had grown tired with Honda being unable to fix fueling.
At about the same time I was dating a girl and made the terrible mistake of involving her in the new bike choice. I put under her nose a CB1300 and a VFR (Interceptor) brochure and she picked the VFR.
I ended up falling out with the girl and with a bike I genuinely hated and which I ended up destroying in a crash. No big deal as it was obviously a Friday afternoon special.
Fast forward to 2006. I recovered from the crash (I lost a good chunk of skin on a leg and lost mobility in my left thumb for a few months: that's why I won't buy anything from Dainese and Held ever again) and was ready to get back into bikes again. I bought a track bike, reasoning tracks are safer than roads.
They may be safer, but they are also more boring and pretty damn expensive.
So in 2009 I bought a Kawasaki road bike which lasted a massive four months. I didn't crash it, but grew so frustrated with poor quality and continuous problems I could not take it anymore. So I PX'd it for my present BMW which is... in another plane of existence, really. It quickly replaced the car as my mean of transport.
In 2012, after realizing the track bug had run its course, I sold the track bike and started looking again into the big CB. Much to my mirth, I found Honda had fixed the fueling issues and the saddle. Much to my chagrin I found the bike wasn't imported in Europe anymore, so I started looking for a used one. Easier said than done as Honda imported only small numbers of them, reserving most of the production for the Japanese market.
After a few months of searching, I found a dealer about 80 miles away had just got one as a PX. I went seeing it and it was an absolute gem. I pretty much bought it on the spot.
And the rest is history, as they say.

Yes on the made by Puch, it was an odd duck with an open combustion chamber covering twin cylinders and one spark plug.

 

[Conquistador3]

Yes on the made by Puch, it was an odd duck with an open combustion chamber covering twin cylinders and one spark plug.

A yes, split single. It was invented by Garelli before WWI but production stopped in the 20's because they were switching to building GP engines for the military. A former Garelli engineer went to work for Puch after WWI, brought his expertise with him and designed a split single with just enough alterations not to incur in his former employer's wrath.
Honda briefly toyed with the idea in the late 70's to build a 500cc V8 (as GP rules specified engines had to have four combustion chambers, not pistons) but since they had already decided to settle on a four stroke design, the engineering challenges proved too much even for Honda and they settled on formed oval pistons for the NR500.