Here is an example why the British Motorcycle Industries failed the Quality was so poor from Factory they needed more PDI to make them road worthy

[TAKerry]

2018-06-20_04-28-33 by Kerry Grubb, on Flickr

My bikes havent been started in years and they STILL leak!!

 

[TAKerry]

2018-06-20_04-27-03 by Kerry Grubb, on Flickr

Red Hunter.

[TAKerry]

My first street bike and the one I got my DL on was a Kawasaki H1, 500 triple 1973 model. My older brother bought the bike brand new. It became a hand me down. That thing was scary fast, in a straight line. Not to much on the handling side though. Looking back it was crazy giving a 16 old this bike!! It ended being given away when it had no value. Would love to get it back.

 

[edinmass]

1 hour ago, TAKerry said:

My first street bike and the one I got my DL on was a Kawasaki H1, 500 triple 1973 model. My older brother bought the bike brand new. It became a hand me down. That thing was scary fast, in a straight line. Not to much on the handling side though. Looking back it was crazy giving a 16 old this bike!! It ended being given away when it had no value. Would love to get it back.

 

The called the H-2 and H-1 the widow maker........and it sure did. Way too fast for its chassis. And you didn’t even think about taking on the curves..............the Z-1 was great up to about 110........and then you started into the tank slapper zone.......which was always fatal. Thr fast guys always had steering dampeners installed. 

[TerryB]

12 hours ago, edinmass said:

 

The real men rode H-1 & H-2 Kawasaki’s.........the Z-1 was for the people who couldn’t handle the explosive  power and the front end coming up on the hand grenade(triple). Naturally, I grew up in a Kawasaki dealership, and rode and developed some of the factory racers back in the early 80’s. I still have a H-1 new in the crate.

 

We also sold Hodaka, Ossa, Rupp, and a few other odds and ends. It was a great era to play with two stroke toys.........Honda Odysseys, Kawasaki Tecate’s, Kawasaki Jet Skis..........and my favorite oddball, the Rokon.

 

Below is my latest restoration.......when I started it for the first time, it was 41 years since I had ridden an Ossa.

 

Last week I was riding a factory Norton special......a John Player Norton, I didn’t take a photo.

 

Do you have an Ossa Six Day Replica?  When I had my Huskys, my friend rode an Ossa Desert Phantom after tearing through two Honda MR-175s.  He was tough on equipment.

[edinmass]

Had several Six Days......They were too expensive for me new, but my father was particularly fond of them. It was a great era to grow up riding dirt bikes and street machines. Little to no traffic, fantastic trails, local moto cross Scene.........and all for little money. We had played with a bunch of great junk...... Montessa, Puch, Zundap, CZ, KTM, Hodaka, Speedway, Can-Am, Bultaco..........if it was available, we ended up playing around with them. For some reason, the Italian makes were never common near us.....otherwise we just about had them all.

Edited July 21, 2020 by edinmass (see edit history)

[edinmass]

Here is my favorite ride of the 70’s and early 80’s. I rode to high school and college on this machine.....I think I owned five or six of them over the years...........I was always flipping bikes.........I owned hundreds of them.........my favorite pastime was riding on top of stone walls or horizontal telephone pole fences......which were common around Western Mass..........I got good at it. The really talented trials guys could ride a bike up stuff I wouldn’t even try to climb by hand.......they were that good. It was an era where there was plenty of time on the weekends for outdoor activities. We would post on a bulletin board at the shop For a meet up point, and often 75 dirt bikes would show up.............great fun, and good times.

 

 

Just writing this I can smell the Shell pink high test gas, and the castor based oil burning through the machine.😊

 

Edited July 21, 2020 by edinmass (see edit history)

[edinmass]

Bringing back memories........this was my office, camper, and business truck. Exact same year and color. I kept a change of clothes and cooler in it, always ready to go in a road trip to buy a motorcycle or snowmobile. I got the van as a three time hand me down from my father, then mother, then my sister. It had 275k on it with the original water pimp and alternator. I put on another 75k. It never died. It sat in the yard rusting for a decade after I was done with it. Since we had dealer plates, it became or go to the dump vehicle...........purchased new in 1971, it tossed a rod while dumping trash at the local landfill in 1993. I took the plate off of it And started walking out of the town dump, leaving it in front of the scrap pile. The dump manager was not amused. He made me get a tow truck and haul it to the local junk yard. That was back in the day when you could pick the pile at the dump.........good times for young kids building go carts, bicycles, and other assorted projects. Today’s kids don’t know what they are missing..........we got great stuff out of the dump.

Edited July 21, 2020 by edinmass (see edit history)

[1912Staver]

Ossa and Bultaco were decent sellers in my area. Montesa was a lot less seen. Also the narrow case Ducati singles , but nearly 10 years before my time. Most were already in pieces by my High School days. I had a MK3 street bike and a couple of dirt bikes all from the same mid 1960's time period.

My B.I.L. has them now.  A good friend is a big Parilla fan. Has a couple of the hot road bikes and a Wildcat. { and a Manx Norton } I had a radial fin Bultaco Matador ; mine was a dirt version but they are very similar to the first Metralla's . A serious Bultaco collector has it now.

 

Greg

Edited July 21, 2020 by 1912Staver (see edit history)

[TerryB]

My local Husky dealer had Penton and Montessa as his two other brands. The shop owner preferred Montessa for the handling.  The local Bultaco dealer also ran a funeral home.  Talk about an odd mix! Before buying my first Husky I looked at the Ossa Pioneer but the fiberglass gas tank had me worried as my riding was done mostly in rocky terrain and metal tanks seemed like a better setup.
 

Ed-wasn’t the US International Six Day Trials held in Massachusetts in the early 1970s?  

[TerryB]

Some items from my collection 

 

[edinmass]

11 minutes ago, TerryB said:

My local Husky dealer had Penton and Montessa as his two other brands. The shop owner preferred Montessa for the handling.  The local Bultaco dealer also ran a funeral home.  Talk about an odd mix! Before buying my first Husky I looked at the Ossa Pioneer but the fiberglass gas tank had me worried as my riding was done mostly in rocky terrain and metal tanks seemed like a better setup.
 

Ed-wasn’t the US International Six Day Trials held in Massachusetts in the early 1970s?  

 

If it was I was too young to know about it. I restored my Ossa to ride the Six Days in Scotland this year.........which didn’t happen.👎

 

I hang around an antique motorcycle shop in my area in Palm Beach. They love all the old junk I sold and serviced when new. They has a Z1-R come in the other day. It was fun explaining to the current young only I was in Waikiki for the role out of the machine during January 1978. It’s hard to explain to people today how cheap a five-year-old motorcycle was in the late 60s and 70’s. New England the riding season was so short you could find a five-year-old bike with 1000 or 2000 miles on it all the time. I used to buy BMW airheads for $50-$125, I would clean them up and get them running.......... and make a quick $200 when that was a whole lot of money to me. I ended up buying boring bar made exclusively for motorcycles. That brought a lot of project bikes my way when people would blow the engine And decide not to fix it.  It was great money on my weekends. By the time I graduated high school I didn’t want to go to college because it was making more money than the principle of my high school during my senior year. My father asked me to go and do for years at the local business school which I did. I’m gonna post a photo of an unusual machine I had below.

The photo is a rear engine twin track snowmobile. You kept warm, and never got stuck. The down side.......it was fast, and in a crash, hard to bail out before you ate the tree for lunch. Back when you didn’t have good winter clothing, so blackberry brandy kept you warm. 

Edited July 21, 2020 by edinmass (see edit history)

[TerryB]

Google says the US ISDT was held in Dalton Mass in 1973.  I was a big fan of John Penton and Dick Burleson back then.  Burleson was a multi time AMA Enduro Cham on his Husqvarna bikes and eventually had a Dick Burleson replica Husky360cc model in the mid-1970s.  

[TAKerry]

I lived to ride my dirt bike. It was a 1973 Kawasaki 100 street trail, Another hand me down. I stripped all the street stuff off. It was far from the fastest bike but I loved it none the less. My best friend had a Hodaka, I remember it being called a wombat something. Had a big chrome gas tank, ugly as sin but boy was that thing FAST! His brother had a raked out bultaco that he hillclimbed.

As far as dealers, our local Harley dealer was also a snap on lawn mower dealer. I think he sold more mowers than bikes.

[TerryB]

2 minutes ago, TAKerry said:

I lived to ride my dirt bike. It was a 1973 Kawasaki 100 street trail, Another hand me down. I stripped all the street stuff off. It was far from the fastest bike but I loved it none the less. My best friend had a Hodaka, I remember it being called a wombat something. Had a big chrome gas tank, ugly as sin but boy was that thing FAST! His brother had a raked out bultaco that he hillclimbed.

As far as dealers, our local Harley dealer was also a snap on lawn mower dealer. I think he sold more mowers than bikes.

Hodaka Dirt Squirt,  Combat Wombat, Ace 100, Road Toad.  Great little bikes!  My first ride was the AT-125 Yamaha enduro that a friend owned.  He would let me use it as he worked most weekends and did not have time to ride.

[TAKerry]

2018-06-20_04-26-42 by Kerry Grubb, on Flickr

A lot of people are familiar with the CZ and Jawa race bikes, Heres an early CZ.

[Larry Schramm]

On 7/20/2020 at 12:16 PM, TerryB said:

When you didn’t see oil you knew it was time to worry. Harley Davidsons under AMF ownership were no quality champs either.  During that time I took a tour of the HD plant in York PA, at the end of the tour the HD owners on the tour had a whole bunch of quality issues they wanted the company to hear about.  

 

Back in the day, I remember the standard comment about HD.  Always said, "buy two, one to ride and one for parts.  Also keep the boxes to put under the bike because they leaked so bad".

[edinmass]

We ended up buying out what was left of the factory parts and cycle inventory(Hodaka) in 1979. It was about 250 new motorcycles.......about 50 Road Toads and the rest were the giant enduro SL250’s. The Combat Wombat, Dirt Squirt, Ace 100, all great cheap bikes with Fuji engines. Terry B you Kawasaki was either a G4 or a G5. They evolved into a KE100. I recently saw a like new G4 in Orlando for 1400 bucks with less than 600 miles on it. There were a bunch of Beneli mini bikes around.....that would never run right. I learned not to buy them, as the people would buy them would never go away. Here are some Rupp photos, and the fastest and insane Rokon dirt bike from 1974. Notice the mag wheels and disk brakes on a dirt bike. The engine was a Sachs 340 snowmobile with a Centrifugal Clutch. Fast as hell, and dangerous. A dirt bike with insane power and limitless speed......with no engine braking. I took my worst spill on one of these at 80 mph.........it wasn’t pretty.

Edited July 21, 2020 by edinmass (see edit history)

[edinmass]

[TerryB]

12 minutes ago, edinmass said:

Yes!  A rope start Rokon automatic!  You needed those disk brakes.  The enduro team sponsored by the US Army rode them in competition.  Husky came out with an automatic in the mid 1970s that also free wheeled when you let off the gas.  I test drove a Rokon at the local Ossa dealer who was considering picking up the franchise.

Did you ever see or ride the Yankee motorcycle with the pair of Ossa 250s for power?  Puch made a decent 2 stroke enduro bike too back then.  The Japanese were slow to take over the enduro bike leadership letting the European brands take charge while they were busy winning in motocross.  PABATCO was the importer for Hodaka if memory serves me right.

[TerryB]

Yankee

 

[padgett]

and then there were the Suzuki RE-5, and Honda CB-750A not to mention the Boss Hoss. I still like the Squariel.

[edinmass]

I was supposed to pick up a Yankee at Hershey Fall meet this year.......it’s going to have to wait till next year.........not too many of them around. They have a reputation for being heavy and slow.......but it’s just an itch I need to scratch.......

[1912Staver]

Back to British, here were a couple of the good ones right at the end.

CCM / BSA, what BSA should have built themselves  , AJS Stormer.

Never owned either but sure wanted them. Those Starmaker's are the cat's meow ! Worked well on a road course as well.

 

Greg

 

Edited July 21, 2020 by 1912Staver (see edit history)

[TAKerry]

Yes Ed,  it was a G5, havent heard that designation for years. Mine was yellow, I had it painted lime green.

Did/do you participate in the amca? I used to be very active and attended quite a few meets.

[TerryB]

Triumph /BSA was strong in hill climbing events and some flat tracking in my area.  SWM, Maico, Penton/KTM we’re big names in off-road after the British were out.  I always had that idea to someday own a triumph or bsa but never did.  I did look real closely at the Triumph 800 adventure bike in spring of 2012, but didn’t like the handling and lack of low end torque from the triple cylinder engine they were using.  I have a whole list of would have / should have done including buying a British car that will continue to be unfulfilled.  At least I enjoyed all the things I did do!

[edinmass]

2 hours ago, TAKerry said:

Yes Ed,  it was a G5, havent heard that designation for years. Mine was yellow, I had it painted lime green.

Did/do you participate in the amca? I used to be very active and attended quite a few meets.

Yes, we were very active in New England. I did ice racing, three wheeler racing, hill climbing in New England and Pennsylvania. Did motocross in New England.....we called them scrambles back then. It was a wonderful era when with being just a kid with an hourly job you could afford cool stuff that was relatively new and current. Lots of drinking back in those days.........and cigars. Every ride was a new adventure, exploring new areas without a care in the world. I ran Sidi Full Bore boots...........I would pay a grand for a like new set today that fits..............early Bell and Shoui helmets. Going to see Evil Knievel at the local fair jumping his ton of lead Harley. And all the local veterans driving pre war Harleys and Indians. I grew up in Springfield Mass, and was born in the Indian Orchard neighborhood where the Hendee Brothers built the first bikes. I would buy a Norton Commando Springer Chopper for 100 bucks, clean it up, make it run, and paint a decent job with a spray can.......sold them by the dozens. KZ 400 & 440’s must have had three hundred of them. Buy  them in the fall cheap, pull them out in early March........new battery, carb clean, detail......and flip it for 300 more than I paid. It bought my first three 31 Cadillacs that way. My everyday car was either a 25 or 50 dollar junker............buy them right out of the scrap yard...........I had dealer plates so no title or bill of sale required. Would buy stuff at the police auction, and never bother with paperwork......dealer plate covered all the sins. Friday nite was street drag racing.......with Chinese Downhill rules...................run what you brung..........and bring money! 

Edited July 21, 2020 by edinmass (see edit history)

[1950panhead]

Every ride was a new adventure, exploring new areas without a care in the world.

I grew up in Springfield Mass, and was born in the Indian Orchard neighborhood where the Hendee Brothers built the first bikes.

 

[TAKerry]

I havent been to an amca event in a few years, my brother is still very active with old bikes, he races a 1935 Rudge.

[TAKerry]

2018-06-20_04-27-12 by Kerry Grubb, on Flickr

'38 Gold Star

[TAKerry]

2018-04-26_08-53-03 by Kerry Grubb, on Flickr

'49 3T