Wobble and weave

Back in the`seventies the first thing you did if you bought a Japanese bike was to throw away the Bridgestone or Yokohama tyres at first opportunity and fit TT100`s or Avon Roadrunners because the Bridgestones were considered rubbish.
In the ads.for used bikes it was quite common for the seller to make a big thing about it."Clip-ons,rearsets,TT100`s,taxed and tested" and so on.
Nowadays Bridgestone BT45/6 are highly regarded,quite an improvement in customer image compared to before.
Remember someone writing to a magazine saying they`d seen an ad. for a Honda 750 V5,didn`t know Honda made a 750 V5.
Ad.read Honda 750,V5,tax and mot etc. (V5=registration document).
 
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I think the worst tyres I ever experienced were the Pneumants fitted to my ride to work MZ250 Supa Five.Seemed to be moulded from plastic.
The front Bridgestone I removed from the 400/4 I fitted to the MZ and I felt a lot safer,shows how bad they were.
The MZ also came as standard with a East German spark plug branded an "Isolator" which lived up to it`s name by expiring after a week.
You may laugh but the MZ was actually a good little bike,as smooth if not smoother than the 400/4 once you got past the lumpy tickover(rubber mounted engine so it would bounce around at tickover,a bit like a Norton Commando),and would cruise quite happily close to it`s top speed of 85 mph.
Riding up the A1 heading for the BMF Rally at Peterborough at a steady 80 I remember passing groups of CB750`s,Z650`s,Gold Wings etc.all being ridden as if they had plastic conrods-great fun.
Using the MZ to travel up to Cropredy Motorcycles near Banbury to pick up a copy of the Green Book just before I got the Mirage I remember the guy there (not Gareth,the other one) looking at the MZ and saying"What have you got apart from THAT??"I always liked their underdog/anti-fashion style,wouldn`t mind one now.
 
I was once asked if I would like (as a gift) a barn find MZ race bike, your damn well right I would! it turned out to be a road bike but with no speedo, just a rev counter, I felt committed to take it, and did so, on arrival at home, I cut out a big patch of the fuel tank surrounding the gorgeous alloy fuel cap, with ISDT winning dates pressed into it, and didnt even take it iff the trailer, 15 minutes later it was clam shell craned off onto the scrap metal at the local metal recyclers, that fuel cap was welded into the tank of my 1952 Fergusn tractor and is still there, the only bit on the bike that I liked and still do. All this was only a vusual thing, I would like to have treid it out at the time and I would still like to have go on one, I mean its got two wheels hasn't it, and don't anybody mention the two wheeled Wolseley that got buried, (good thing) and later dug up and recommisioned (not sure on that one).
CLEM
 
At the risk of harping on about MZ`s..........There was a customer available ISDT replica 250 which the factory referred to meekly as the "Cross Country" model,assembled under supervision by factory apprentices which would top out in the mid-nineties on the road.
All the singles were based/developed from the DKW RT125.Also offered to BSA as part of WW2 reparations.BSA made a mirror image version of it with right hand gearchange and called it the Bantam.Harley Davidson also copied it.
Walter Kaaden joined MZ after the war when there were no more V2 rockets available for him to play about with and developed exhaust chamber technology and disc valve induction to produce the water cooled 125/250/300 twins for road racing.
Problems the East Germans had was developing a reliable ignition system that could spark consistently at high rpm,so were often plagued with retirements.
When they kept going they were quick.Sometimes MZ would turn up at a GP with one bike and a mechanic and ask top flight riders if they would be interested in competing,as long as it didn`t clash with contract obligations they had with their factories.
Alan Shepard won the 250 US GP at Daytona Speedway in `64
MZ rider Ernst Degner ,who worked closely with Kaaden famously defected to the West at the Swedish GP in `62 I think,taking MZ development secrets and a couple of engines in the boot of his car.
The following year he signed with Suzuki.
In an interview Kaaden said a couple of years later MZ were attending a GP and found themselves next to the Suzuki team in pit lane.A lot of MZ equipment had gone missing in transit so they asked Suzuki for assistance.
Every Suzuki special tool fitted the MZ`s perfectly,"They even pinched our blue and silver colour scheme" he said.
Even in `69/`70 after the V4 125/250 Yamahas had been banned Peter Williams said the disc valve MZ`s were still more than a match for the TZ Yamaha twins.
Someone once remarked Barry Sheenes title winning Suzuki RG500 was basically four MZ125 singles on a common crankcase.
 
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Wobble and Weave - I say let go of the bars and let the bike go balance your weight on the pegs to avert a high side.

Throttle can help - None the less - It a situation you do NOT want to be in.
 
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Worst tankslapper I`ve ever experienced (and this was quite recently) occurred on the A38 road just north of Bristol (England).
It happened whilst riding my everyday Suzuki GW250 (I don`t drive a car) but could have happened with any bike.
Between Rudgeway and Milbury Heath there`s a central hatched area separating the two lanes (single carriageway road) and whoever prepared the surface thought it would be a good idea if the hatching stood what must be 10 -20 mm proud of the surface. (I haven`t stopped in the middle of the road to measure it).
The result is if you stray into this area to overtake,or avoid any obstacle parked or stopped by the side of the road,at say 60-70 mph you will experience an almost terminal tankslapper which you will not have time to respond to.Luckily on the GW it reached a point where it didn`t get any worse so I survived to tell the tale.Even filtering past stationary traffic at 20 mph is enough to get the bars twitching.
This is not helped by the fact that closer to Bristol the hatching is level with the road as it should be so to suddenly encounter this danger area with no warning is exciting to say the least.
Some would say you shouldn`t enter the hatched area anyway,but sometimes it is unavoidable so if your`e ever travelling down that stretch of road,beware!
 
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2 bad ones for me - Suzuki GT750 got out of hand after a handful of throttle - saved it - second one on a Kawasaki GPX750 threw me off having crossed some very tall white lines in the road - they are still there !! - £1000 worth of damage - irony was i was on the way to trade it in for my waiting ZX10 - had to let that one go but a month later managed to get another
 
Never had a bad one personally - but the best i ever saw was a doozy. Dale Wylie back in the day at Levels track. From day one there's been a bump exiting the front esses - and it's still there now. He was on a BSA and hit the bump wrong and it started to slap......and slap....all the way down the front straight.....he's not backing off........ferocious lock to lock slapping......OK end of straight......goes straight ahead into the flat grass area on the inside of the left onto the back straight. We think, great, he'll drop it now. But no.....one speaker pole on it's lonesome in the middle of a big grass area - and he hits it.
No injuries luckily. You can't get down to that point now as there's a tyre wall at the end of the front straight. Couple of guys have had bad injuries simply because the extra room isn't there now.

Tyres. i bought a new T350 Suzuki on a Wednesday and raced it hard starting that Saturday. Bog stock incl high bars and the Inoue tyres. The ones with the red line around the side. They stayed on all season. I traded it at the end of season and the shop foreman was amused - the only bike he'd ever had in with the sidewalls worn out and tread left in the middle. I got approached by T350 owners to ask what I'd done to it as they were a second or so off my times. To shut them up I jumped on a mates one - with flat bars, girlings and TT100's - and went out in a proddy race. Had a fun dice with John Woodley on a CB750 for about 4th place. Next T350 5 places back. Just ride harder......
 
My one and only was on my first big ride of my 3c sometime in 1989. I was heading to Bemboka on the Snowy Mountains Hwy to visit a mate and came upon a bunch of slow-moving cars, so I pull out and attempt to pass all 6 in one go. As I passed the last car I saw one coming toward me so I flicked the bike back in, That might have been a touch aggressive as it stated slapping as I crossed the painted lines. What I remember was the bars suddenly started banging away with me trying to counter each sudden slap. It stopped as fast as it started and I pulled over for a little rest. The energy produced was impressive. Happily, it hasn't happened since. I had a similar situation happen on an MX track once, that was my one and only almost high side. That flick was so hard I was almost doing a Handstand over the bars. So much power, I could see you could bend handlebars resisting that amount of force.
 
Back in the day when the Kawasaki Z1 was king of the road, I was working at the paper mill in Burnie (NW Tasmania). One of the young apprentice fitters who worked there bought a Z1 as his first bike - no learner restrictions in those days. He wanted to see how fast it would go, so one nice warm sunny day he found a bit of straight road opened it up. At around 180kph it got into a wobble that turned into a massive tank slapper that he couldn't recover from and it spat him off.

Unfortunately, because it was such a nice day, the only protective gear he had on was a helmet. The rest of his attire was tattered old jeans, T-shirt, sneakers, and no gloves. He spent a couple of months in hospital getting skin grafts on his elbow, shoulder and back, and reconstruction surgery on his hands. The company kept him on as an apprentice, but he mostly worked in the office until his hands had recovered enough so he could go back on the tools. I think that took about a year of operations and physio.

I had a Honda 750 at the time and his example cured me of riding around in a T-shirt on nice days.
 
I’ve experienced quite a few scary moments over the years but so far managed to avoid crashing following the onset of a tank slapper. The worst bike I rode/raced for shaking its head was a FZR600. It was flighty enough with a steering damper fitted, but without one virtually impossible to ride fast.
 
Metzelers are a great tire to grip ashpalt and predicability melt and slide. The only problem with Metzelers, I noticed, is that they wear out FAST !

All factory Breganzies prior to around 74 were shewed with Metzlers - Where they not ?

The Kawasaki 3 cyl 2 stroke 750 was probably the most dangerous (suicidal) ride I've mounted. Talk about uncontrollable wheelies, handle bar slap and weave... etc - It had it all.
 
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