I am sure that most of us will
remember the saga of their first motorbike. Inevitably for some it will have
involved the modern form of restrictive practise known as CBT (Compulsory Bike
Training I think its called?). For others of a certain age it will be the super
mopeds of the mid 70’s when manufacturers found ways to make a moped (with two
pedals so ostensibly it could be ridden like a bicycle!), into a pseudo sports
machine of 50cc that was restricted to 30mph. However, for those of us of advancing
years, we fondly remember the halcyon days before all that, when at the tender
age of 16 and armed with your provisional license, for which nothing else was
required other than the ability to fill in a form, you were able to ride any
motorcycle up to 250cc (with L plates of course).
Now strictly speaking, my first
bike was not a road going bike at all but in fact something called ‘The Trog’.
I really can’t recall why it was so named but ‘The Trog’ it was always known as
by me and my group of friends. We were around 14/15yrs old and one of my mates
who had some basic engineering talent along with help from a big brother,
managed to perform (what seemed amazing at the time), the feat of putting (I
think) a lawnmower engine into the frame of a smallish bicycle.
The only way to start it was to
run alongside and hold one hand over the carb intake to act like a choke and
somehow hold the other on the throttle whilst at the same time pushing it (or
getting someone else to push). If you were lucky it would fire up, if you
weren’t so lucky it backfired out of the carb singing your hand. Once running
and you managed to jump onto it, off you
went, thrilled by the feeling of the immense power it seemed to have(!). It probably went no more
than 25mph but at the time that seemed fast! Now for my first go, I made the
basic error of not knowing which way the throttle turned to make it go faster.
This was not helped by the fact that the twist grip was loose on the handle
bars and there seemed to be no spring in the carb to give some feel to it.
Anyway, not having yet mastered
the intricacies of getting it started and riding it, for some reason I volunteered
to look after ‘The Trog’ for a couple of weeks. My parents had gone away on
holiday and one of my jobs whilst they were away was to keep the lawn cut.
After having given it its first cut, I decided that riding The Trog around the
back garden would enable me to get some practise on starting and riding the
infernal beast and so I could hold my head up high with the gang.
The back garden was not huge but
by going down the side of the house as well, I made a little circuit. Not
realising at the time that my continual circuits were starting to create a
significant ‘track’ in my father’s well-tended and manicured lawn, I thought it
was great fun and saw myself as the next Jeff Smith appearing on the (sadly
missed) TV scrambles of the 60’s. However, towards the end of the second week, and
after several friends had also lapped the same track many times, it dawned on
me that I had rather messed up the green baze. At that stage there was little I
could do. Should I just ignore it and pretend it was nothing to do with me.
Unfortunately I really had no choice and when my parents woke up in the morning
after arriving back late at night from their holiday, I knew by the look on my
old man’s face as he surveyed what had become of his treasured lawn, that I was
in trouble. The end result was that I was told that when I became 16, I could
forget any ideas of getting one of those ‘evil’ motorbikes. I am not sure what
became of ‘The Trog’ but it lives on in my memory as my first motorbike.
By the age of 16 I was itching to
get on the road and get some freedom. I was still at school at this time. A
couple of friends had already bought scooters or mopeds (proper ones!), which
they proudly arrived on in the mornings, parking in the teachers car park. I
guess time heals as they say, so not long after my birthday I persuaded my
father to take me to a motorcycle dealer to have a look at what I might be able
to get with the £65 I’d saved from paper rounds, washing cars, birthdays etc. I
was lucky enough to be 16 just before they tightened up the regulations on what
you could ride as a learner at that age. I ended up buying a 1961 BSA Bantam D7
175cc. So, like many of us from that time of the 60’s and 70’s I started my
motorcycling days on a BSA Bantam. I thought it was the bees knees. I felt
great. I had a ‘proper’ motorbike, not a Vespa or a Mobylette but a big red machine
that had the immortal letters BSA on the side of the tank. It would get me to
just over 60mph with a following wind. At the time it seemed so fast….I
remember sitting in the classroom doodling ‘BSA 175’ on my exercise books and
looking forward to the end of school bell.
I could turn left up to the school car park while most of my year were
making their way out of the gate to walk or catch the bus. I would start up the
Bantam and take the road that went past the bus stop just to make sure I was
seen by my mates. However, this did backfire once when just around the corner
from the bus stop, the little red devil broke down and had to watch as those
envious faces at the bus stop had turned to laughs and various gestures out of
the bus window as the bus went sailing past me.
Of course the little Bantam was
not without its faults (even then it must have been about 10 years old) but
when it was running ok you forgave it and just enjoyed being on two wheels. But
breaking down and having to push it once to often, started to make me think of
getting something just a little larger and hopefully more reliable.
So the next step on the journey
of my British Bikes lead to another BSA, this time a BSA Starfire 250cc. It was
only about 4/5 years old and was the earlier version which had been called the
Barracuda for a short while before BSA changed the name. It was a good looking
bike for a 250 I thought. The blue and white fibreglass tank enhanced by
matching blue side panels and chrome mudguards. Most important of all though,
it actually sounded like a big motorbike with its throaty four stroke sound. It
went thump ‘thump thump’ rather than the ‘ ring de ding ding ding’ of the two
stroke Bantam.
Life is full of learning
opportunities and the Starfire I bought was one of these. Unfortunately I made
the classic mistake of viewing the bike on a dark evening under the light of a
very weak street lamp. I also elected to look at it on my own and at that stage
had little knowledge of what to look for in a
four stroke engine. I was seduced by the sound it made and the feeling
of a bigger bike than the little Bantam. Money changed hands (I think around
£110) and I was the proud owner of another BSA. I sold the Bantam for about £45
and all seemed good. However, the Starfire very quickly started making very
strange noises and it became apparent that a full engine strip and rebuild was
required. The problem with the Starfire models was the way young lads like
myself tended to thrash the engines and the previous owner had been no
exception. The basic single cylinder engine was a good design in the larger
441cc and later 500cc versions, with beefier bearings and less highly stressed.
However the 250cc model was always prone to bearing failures. Equipped with a
new big end and cylinder rebore/new piston, my Starfire was carefully run in
and I started to think about taking my motorcycle driving test so that I could
eventually save towards a bigger capacity bike.
Passing the motorcycle driving
test would allow you to ride any size bike (correct me if I’m wrong here but I
seem to remember that you needed to be 17 to actually ride a bike bigger than
250cc, even if you passed your test ). You would think that even in those far
off days the test would involve some pretty serious examination of your
abilities, so that you weren’t let loose on the general population of this
country riding a massive fire breathing monster without showing how competent you
were?…er..no, actually it was a very basic test. I remember arriving at the
test station and after showing my prov. License, the examiner asked me to go
outside and start my machine. He waited for me to get ready and then told me to
go up the high street and do three right turns, around the block, to come back
to him at the side of the kerb. This was pretty straightforward. I arrived back
and he then said to do the same but in the opposite direction. He also
mentioned that he would at some point step out from the kerb where I wouldn’t
expect him and put up his hand at which point I should execute an emergency
stop. It occurred to me that for 90% of the time, he wasn’t able to see what I
was doing as I was riding round the block. Any way when I came round the second
corner, he had obviously walked through a short cut and I could see he was standing
there….so I was expecting him to put up his hand. I guess I was doing about
15mph when he actually did it, so not too difficult to stop! He then directed
me to go back to the test centre where he asked a couple of questions from the
highway code. After that he told me to go back inside and wait while he wrote
up my pass certificate. All over very quickly…..I guess things have changed
quite a bit from those days?
