What Have You Being Doing With Your Non-triumph Today?

Got a puncture that will teach me to go off road with road tyres! The track started off fine but then it got full of big stones and branches, my warning light came on telling me to stop immediately. I had a look and they weren't flat at leas,t so I limped home to put a mushroom plug in




Came across this lovely little Loch so it wasn't all bad


A couple of pics at the start, it got worse

 

Some fun yes, but also some injuries done most of my physical damages on off road bikes
You know, the odd ACL, broken ribs, concussion, AC separation that sort of thing to spice up the days outing

I used to have a TY250 mono back in the day, red and white not a pinky.
Was your's a mono, as in what's the R suffix as can't remember now?

 

I had an old twin shock model first, then got the monoshock 250R. I though the R denoted the first monoshock model but I could be wrong as it was second hand when I bought it. Very tough bikes, I cartwheeled the old twin shock down a few hillsides in it's time!

 

Yes I think you are right now I've thought about it, R = mono.
That was quite a weird model in terms of setup. At any trial, when they were the rage, they were the most varied carburation of ALL makes. Some bikes pinked their head off, as in dangerously weak, whilst others were so rich you wondered if they'd forgot to turn the choke off

 

Youngest (14) messing in the garden on his Beta 125 this evening

 

And another....

 

Dang! Those two pics have got me yearning for another trials iron!

 

He is looking very accomplished

 

Well funny enough @Wessa we were discussing this the other day. Despite being only fourteen this one is his 5th motorbike and when he was younger he never had stabilisers or anything on his pushbike. Unknowingly I had created him a "balance bike" long before such things were common fodder by using a cousins unisex cast- off but his had a front brake; at the time of him first riding it he was TWO and the "seat" was a piece of sheetmetal welded to the seat post to allow him to touch the floor



The back wheel in the picture is my 2008 Beta 270

 

Here's his 1st motorbike a Polini 50



This ended up quite modified.... although at first he rode it without a seat due to leg length.

Initially the carb sat through the bash plate which never sounded like a good idea so the engine was raised
Naturally this meant the exhaust didn't fit so that was cut and shut and blended back in plus various wires and piped were altered. Then we decided to spice it up a bit by swapping the gearing, bin the rear 52 tooth sprocket and stick a 72 tooth replacement in that's better now more zing and he could power wheelie it on a snapped open throttle
Only real issue with this was it shredded rear tyres but with cheapo nasty parts two complete wheelsets (a front and rear) were £32 at the time

........and it went on, cracking little bike, one gear only that could out do me chasing him on a PW80 with three gears

When the time came to part, a Grandad came on behalf of his Grandson to buy it. I said best way to sell it is to demonstrate it working so here we have a test rider to show you..... da dahhh!

The old guy watched on and then exclaimed, " I'm not sure, it seems a little quick for my grandchildren!"

 

Here you go @Pegscraper two more pics to further wet your appetite and suck you in . This is from pre covid, 2018 making him ten, same son on his previous Beta 80.

 

And this was the above bike as bought. A proper meccano kit that was 80% complete and ideal for a bit of Father and Son bonding time

 

As I remember the old TY's weren't particularly light, I'll bet the modern offerings would make them feel a touch pre-historic! I used my TY's for local green laning and off piste on rocky areas in the Peak District and a couple of disused quarries, back in the day when nobody seemed too bothered so long as you weren't causing undue damage or annoyance. Happy days!

 

Happy days indeed, very thankful of the NCB ( National Coal Board, think slag heaps and big open areas) for my motorcycle riding apprenticeship playgrounds.
Them days we had a group of us, about x8 who used to do the local tracks, no hassle, no vandalism or anything like that thinking we were all the next Toni Bou despite us riding plaggies (Honda C50/70/90).
Our ages ranged from 13 to 17 or so, no licences, mot's or any of that nonsense

My 1st bike was a Suzuki M30 (think of a Honda C50 but two stroke) and I learnt a lot on that especially off road with bald road tyres
I'll see if I can find an internet picture.

 

I look at it and laugh now but similar to this was my early teenage years pride and joy

 

Although I had a car (escort van), parking was so hard to get in the inner city and fines expensive for a student, so I purchased a Honda 50 and painted it up in black and red and added some mirrors
Was a lot of fun in traffic, but vastly under powered for anything else I had almost forgotten those times, thanks for the flashback

 

Nice Castrol sticker, think we only had two oils in those days, Castrol and Duckhams and not the millions or so options like these days
One lad never used to buy two stroke oil and instead cadged everyone's waste engine oil It never seized but I do wonder if he started global warming off

 

So there seems a bit of interest here in off road bikes so I'll continue a bit.....

After the Polini 50 my youngest had a GasGas boy, 50cc and a really well proportioned bike for the target user. Two gears but no gear lever as such so with mushroom plunger you pre-selected high or low ( high probably did 25 mph and low was maybe half that). The clutch was a clever idea, think Honda c50 auto clutch but with a manual override lever (as normal) so if the child forgot to pull it then they could stop and it wouldn't stall; I think this must be where Rekluse clutches got the idea from.

It was marred by a diabolically unreliable ignition system and at one time sat in the garage for months after trying everything with it. I regularly couldn't start it yet when my back was turned the lad would fire it up
Ok smart arse, turn it off and do it again!

No go

The importer said, take the exhaust front pipe off and kick it to death

Err how does that work?

Don't know but that's what we did with them...

Final straw came when after so much abuse the kickstart spring snapped which was hardly surprising



Anybody want to guess what the exhaust pipes in the background are off (road bike)?


Sorry for pic quality, can't find original so thats a picture off a picture.

 

A Harley something or other?

 

My first TY had magneto ignition which never ever let me down. Not sure about the mono shock but there was no battery so I guess it had a similar setup. The lights on both were shite, good only for basic legality.