This was mine, a Beta MX5 and in 40 years I've never had a worse bike. Whatever could go wrong with it did, if I'd chucked it in a river it would have floated.
Bump - thought I would get this going again for newer members who missed it first time round. Already done my first bike, first 'big' bike after passing my test was a Honda CX 500, loved it at the time although some people said it was fugly!
Ok, bump helped.. First bike was a Honda CB750 Four supersport from 1977. Had a blast with it, but got me a katana 1100 gsx-f from 1991 after about 3 years. Then bought my first Blackbird, totaled it in Luxembourg “mountains” and bought a similar one within 2 weeks. Rode it for ten years and now finally can to my senses and bought a speed triple. Had loads of fun with all of them, and hope to have more fun to come.
Nice bump! I've just read through (and thoroughly enjoyed) this thread and found that my experience is not too dissimilar to Tiglet's. Bought a 1958 Model 14 AJS (a 250 single) in 1965 using saved paper round money - my mother was adamant that she didn't want me buying a motorcycle, despite (perhaps because of) knowing that I was totally infatuated with them. That was a year before my 16th. birthday and I tried my very best to make it reliable enough for me to take my test in May of 1966. Sadly, that was not meant to be and the bike wasn't going to make it to the test so I ended up borrowing a mate's Lambretta Li 150 FFS, please do NOT tell anyone I admitted that - I was THE wannabe rocker of Sutton, St. Helens! Test was passed first time so the morning and evening paper rounds and an occasional Saturday job meant the purchase of a 1958 Tiger 110 (with, no less, a slickshift gearbox!!) which soon got me back on track and cemented my lifelong love of Triumphs - and, perhaps, a lifelong fear of magnetos. I'd already been in thrall for some time to Triumph as the newspaper shop owner's son had a brand new Speed Twin and I would stand, stare and lust over that machine like the lovestruck, motorcycle-mad teenager I was. He did keep it in good nick, though and it sounded SO sweet. I probably could have bought a Jap bike - I did have a serious lusting for the first Yamaha 350 with Autolube ... YDS3, I think - but my principles wouldn't allow it and my ageing Tiger 110 managed to keep me going for some four years until, with a fairly good job and shift pay, I could afford a well used 1968 Bonnie. I'd made it. The rest is, as they say, history. I haven't been without a motorcycle since, though I had a slight brain fart in 1971 and 1972 when I went to the dark side with 750 Commando's - Roadster and Interstate. Still have the Interstate (another of my rebuild projects!) and also had a succession of UJM Jap fours through the eighties. Along the way I've bought a couple of project Triumphs ('67 TR6C and '70 T120) which I still have, but Hinckley was the real renaissance for Triumph and for me! My '92 900 Trident is PROBABLY the bike that I would hold on to if some catastrophic event meant that I had to forsake all other motorcycles and save only one, but that choice is, I suspect, partly down to the emotional attachment to the bike being mine from day one. And true love, of course. Nostalgia, eh? Ain't what it used to be ...............................
That AJS 250 - 14 takes me back to the early 70's. I had a Yam 125 and my mate had a BSA C15. We heard of a bloke who had an AJS 250 for sale so we went to have a look. I can't remember how old it was but it had been laid up in a barn for several years and the guy asked for £15 so we bought it as a project. The main problem with it as I remember was the spark plug snapping off as we tried to remove it. Anyway, later that week my mate had his C15 stolen. He was left with no transport so he offered to buy out my half of the AJS. He didn't have the money so he offered to buy me out in beer. So for several weeks I had free beer wherever I went. On the flip side I lost out on a share of a really nice bike. My mate's Dad was a dab hand (he was an engineer) with bikes and he did a great job. To be honest though it wasn't in too bad a state. The barn was nice and dry.
Jawa 350 @ 16 years old from my father. My older brother later wrote it off (luckily without any serious injury) but I had a blast for couple of years. Hard to find unmolested examples these days as everyone tried to turn them into all sorts of super bikes...
When I was a courier back in the 80's I was riding a Z1000ST (only coz I already had it, not a conscious choice as dispatch bike), anyway, most of the guys on the London circuit used to swear by Jawa/CZ/MZ as they were so cheap and easy to repair.
Ahhhh how I longed for FS1E, that was out of my dads budget, he was pleased as punch when he came home on Christmas eve 1979 and presented me with this beast Puch 50, (well not this actual one) I was to dogs dangly bits in my full face helmet, long gauntlet gloves, kinda lost the kudos when having to pedal up hills. Cue sad music...weeks of piss taking by my friends who had FS1E's (I cared then) made me give her up, never to ride again til 2018 (hooray)
Ha Ha, yes you are right DD, an adjustable spanner a couple of screwdrivers and a hammer was all the tool kit you needed! That's the beauty of 2 strokes, even a hapless eejeet of a ham fisted berk like me can fix them!
Started off with a Zündapp moped (like this, not the actual bike); And at eighteen got my first "proper" bike:
Yeah they survived everything. There was no money back then during the communists era and no chance of buying a "capitalistic" motorbike even if you had money so people had to make do with what we had. My uncle had the JAWA 90 Cross, how about that for a scrambler in 1970!! Pretty cool, it would do nearly 100km/h you could go off road when running away from police...
