How most bikes become extinct

[lingeringstin...]

I've seen it all before. 25 years ago you couldn't give a BSA Bantam away. They were considered universally shit by all but a dwindling number of Bantam Nerds. Consequently there was a thriving community of Bantam racers because Bantams were two a penny and it made for cheap fun.

Fast forward only a few years after most Bantams have been raced to death or rotted unloved in back gardens and suddenly all The Olde Boys with fond memories of their Bantamed youth are scurrying around rebuilding Bantams back to factory standards with fancy new paint jobs and Bantams you literally couldn't give away a few years earlier are changing hands for thousands in a mania of midlife crisis nostalgia.

Consequently up goes the price of Bantam spares and now anybody with just a Bantam "hobby" is priced out of enjoying it so they move on to Vauxhalls or chinese scooters because nobody in their right mind should pay more than a hundred quid for any Bantam, EVER.

Then just a few years later there's not a Bantam to be seen anywhere on the roads, with the only living examples being museum fodder. Oh sure people still try to flog clumps of BSA rust at jumble sales by attaching the word "vintage" to it but nobody's buying because nobody has a road going hobby Bantam anymore to upkeep. Total extinction. You will never see another Bantam on the roads ever again.

I laugh because I see it all happeniong with MZ's now. Have a look on Fleabay and see the insanity prices people are currently asking AND GETTING for "vintage" MZ pieces of crap. The end is nigh!

So is my "vintage" tax exempt (somewhat modified) MZ worth a fortune now? No, it's still worth less than scrap metal value because much of it isn't even MZ anymore and The Purists wouldn't stand for that. Not that I care because I have absolutely no nostalgic emotional ties to my MZ and I don't care if I use Japanese, Chinese or British parts to make it go, all of which currently make it go.

If I can't get engine parts anymore I'll either modify it to take non-MZ innards or fit a different kind of engine altogether. Paint is of no importance to me and chrome is a fashion annoyance. But I do think it's really funny/sad that once all the MZ panic buying dies down in about two years you will never see another MZ on the road ever again.

Apart from mine because it's not precious. And that's the whole point. It seems like when you make bikes precious they quickly disappear forever. To me that's sad because a bike that's only on display in a museum or hoarded in garages by little old men (or James May) and only brought out twice a year to bike shows is a wasted bike.

I think pretty much all bikes come to this end. A bit like a star going supernova breifly before blinking out.

[Meatybeaty]

Hi , got to agree with you, the shortage of any commodity makes it more valuable and that's whats happening here, love to see though the younger lads getting hold of the 70s and 80s bikes and restoring them and riding them once that's done, hopefully if more of the younger boys (and girls) get into it ,the bikes may be around for a while yet

[ScaredyCat]

[roboff94]

Same with anything that has abit of a following really, people who had then when they where younger come into money and buy them all back for silly money. Then when theres non left for sale, people want too much for them.

I'm big into my VW's, and was after a MK2 Golf a while back. I remember my grandad having a 16V (oooo) which he used as a van for a long while, give to my uncle who blew the gear box up, then scrapped it, BBS wheels and rainbow interior included. All because it was unfortunately in its 'banger phase' that most cars will have to go through. People are asking 5k+ for a nice 16V now, which in turn means people want more money for the bog spec ones too. Its a viscous cycle.... things like instagram and facebook dont help either, makes stuff unnecessarily cool in my eyes
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'88 Honda H100 SII - 89' Honda VFR400 NC30

[UnspeedySam]

There's at least one. A guy called Mark Holman who organises Southampton Bike Night rebuilt one last year and rides it around here at tediously slow speeds quite a lot.

I really should sell and/or finish my MZ project. Although it's the 251 which isn't in any way classic or desirable.
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Riding: BMW R1150RT `02 bought mildly crashed
Fixing: Also the BMW as I get less broken bits
Gone: ZZR600 '00, TRX850 '97, RXS100 '93, JS125-6B '07, BMW R1100RS '93, Kawasaki ZX-6R-J2 '01, Honda Bros NT400 NC25 '88

[craigs23]

I hope I don't appear a hypocrite, but I was a little dismayed to see a Ducati 851 and RC45 sat gathering dust beneath the service counter at Wemoto today.

[ScottT]

[spottedtango]

Completely agree. I see it happening to a lot of crappy bikes from the 1980s and were/still are crap but are now going for silly money like the super dreams.

I wouldn't mind a superdream supernova.

The problem I see coming is it appears alot of people are buying all this old crap and restoring them. There's gonna be a flop in bike prices at some point when you've got all these restored old bikes trying to command silly money but noones really wanting to buy them.

Especially when you can get a much better and newer bike for less.

[M.C]

I thought there were plenty of Bantam's and they hadn't reached silly money (when I briefly looked at them).

Also old people trying to relive their youth is just f**king sad. Move on, let someone else enjoy the bikes.

[ScaredyCat]

[stevo as b4]

I don't agree much with MC here. If you wernt there first time in the days of two strokes, tough shit son!

Time and place thing really. If it wasn't for the older 1st time owners buying them, then they would still be getting ragged to death and scrapped like most Chinese 125's are these days.

I'm glad there's fewer Aprilia RS125's around now, and I hope they get classic status soon and that prices are on the rise. It means would be owners will be the ones with plenty of money to spunk on them to make them mint, improve and modify them, and look after them to the letter with regards to maintaining them as they should be.

Look at me with my silly £1500 KMX, since buying a 90% restored bike I've spent probably another £1500 directly on it, and about £500 on KMX 200 engine parts I may use to upgrade it with one day.

If the average teen had bought it, they'd have never known how much a fully adjustable custom rear shock could improve it, or the effect of other useful modifications done too. They would probably wreck it off road and it would be scrap in two years or so.

Sure I could have bought a newish KTM 125 Exc for £3500 or so, but it's not going to be the same or have the appeal of nostalgia or memories of early biking days etc.

[Teflon-Mike]

The early 'Classic' movement started happening in the '80's, as 'old' Brit-Twins, with hammer straight on a kerb-stone push-rod "owner serviceability" had their lives stretched by folk who didn't trust 'Jap-Crap'.

I had a copy of Motorcycle & Motorcycle Mechanics magazine, with a picture of a 1984 Honda VF750 and a silver painted 'Robotic-Dancer' on the front with headline "Mechanics for Robots only?" in which the article contemplated the complexity of the Honda V-Four 'concept' with four cylinders, sixteen valves, four over head cam-shafts, two convoluted cam-chain's, a oil cooler and a radiator..... Author was 'sure' that in just ten years the DIY Enthusiast would have become as familiar with such intricacies as they had with over-head cam-chains in across the frame air-cooled 'fours' from the mid 70's....... With my VF1000 motor in bits in the shed.... I am not entirely sure history has born out his theory! However....

The relative crudity of engineering of the old Brit-Bikes, was serendipitous to the "Cult of the Classic".

Construction was the legacy of small work-shop 'Batch Building', like push-bikes, where most maker's had started, in an era of make-do-and-mend, when consumer-goods were expected to be an almost 'life-time' investment, buyer's expected to 'last'... with lots of mending!

So the bikes were made of steel, with parts bolted together; owners or the local black-smith could take them apart, hammer bits straight on a vice or anvil, braze up holes or cracks and bolt them back together to keep them running, without much more specialised equipment than a few spanners and a plumber's blow-lamp!

This made them particularly viable proposition for the "Home Mechanic" either to restore, or just keep running!

1984, same year as that 'Mechanics' article on the VF, we had a Honda CBX550 in the shed, that one month after it's first MOT was deemed 'Scrap' having chucked its cam-chain & mashed all its pretty little valves! I had mates with 125 Super-Dream's with bent selector forks they had no idea what do do with; others with GS550's or GPz500's with manifest faults from nefarious carbs through cracked swing-arms, and I have viewed more SOHC Honda 'Four' internals than I ever would have wished to, along with enough molten two-stroke pistons to keep a Chinese cheese foundry stocked for a year!

The blokes that kept old BSA's, Nortons & Trumpets going.. bikes that at the time were often not 'that' old, certainly less than 20 years, and would not qualify for 'Classic' insurance these days, certainly had a lot of justification for their arguments against the 'Jap-Crap'...

Which gave rise to an anomaly; the oft deserved 'prejudice' against the Japs meant that the Jap-bikes suffered dire 'depreciation' and fell into the bargain basement of budget bodgers very quickly, perpetuation the reputation, as those owners more quickly made 'problems' and lacked the resources to sort them, whilst the 'old' Brit-Bikes held their value better, and more often were bought by more conscientious owners, better prepared and able to give them the attention they needed.

40 Years of consumer 'Value Engineering' though has seen construction practices change to a more 'integrated' product; fewer parts made of metal, more made of plastic more parts that are 'model specific', making it far harder to 'make do and mend' with a bit of tin-plate, basic hand tools and some ingenuity!

The 'Problems' I face trying to 'Restore' a Honda CB125 Super-Dream, a 1984 vintage machine, now 32 years old, are very different to those 'one of my old mentors faced trying to restore a 1955 AJS 350 Single, back in the early 1990's...

And the more worrying revelation of the comparison, is how many of the basic skills of 'Make-Do-And-Mend' we have lost over the years.....

And I don't mean things like Old Donald, looking at a sieve of an oil-tank, and diligently dollying tin cut from a Cortina wing-panel to shape and carefully brazing sections in to make the old part 'good'... or picking up a bit of stock and turning down new bronze bushes to size for a shaft he's salvaged by re-grinding under-size...

So many of the 'Basics' have been lost or forgotten; how many even have basic hand tools like files or hack-saws in their tool-boxes these days?

And its a presumption that the 'answer' to any problem will be on the shelf in some-one's shop.. its just a matter of how much it costs.

I find Custom & Classic shows these days, some-what disheartening, in the number of 'Cheque-Book' Resto's & Catalogue Customs! A parade of 'Brand New' Nortons & Triumph's constructed from the assemblage of reproduction components around a blasted & stove enamelled old frame! Or yet another OCC pastche, built from a 'kit' frame and Harley Motor, dressed with whatever pats cought the owner's eye in the brochure.

One of the few bikes to make me actually 'smile' at a show a couple of years ago, was a 'Heap' of a Lexmoto Vixen, ridden in very sheepishly by a Lad on L-Plates.... very obviously held together with a lot of optimism and prayer, if there had been an award for "Spirit" I would have had no problem awarding him it.. after giving him a good talking to about the virtue of lock-wire over the crimes of the cable tie, of course!

With biking ever more becoming a purely leisure pursuit, and more coming to it later in life, and seeking that extra dimension of the 'project-bike' as a purely leisure interest within it....

I am rather disappointed, at how the "Classic Scene" has actually crystallised around the cult of the Brit-Bike, and bikes of 'that era', with chrome mudguards and wire spoked wheels..... and significantly failed to progress and embrace later, more avante-garde machinery... it crops up.. but is so often over-looked... simply because it doesn't 'look' like an old bike should.

While the Brat-Chop movement, is something of an anathema. It's almost like the 'will' was there, and a few of the right idea's to avoid the cliche's and the cheque-book builds.... but the clue-less leading the stupid, they seem to have no idea how to actually do it, other than throw away whatever they can get away with, and bolt bits from the book to slap on what's left! Oh.. and add stupid tyres!

Interesting to note how many come on here asking about how to build a 'bobber' or a 'cafe racer'.. when they mean a Brat-Chop, moaning about the cost of late 70's & early 80's UJM's that are their idea of the basis for one... because? Last of the bikes made of tube and tin, that might be more readily reshaped in a shed!

As far as the future? I'm sanguine. The idea of the Re-Teened nostalgia special we often encounter, with folk restoring old RD125LC's or TZR125's, is probably the last swan-song of that 'cult' in the classic movement....

The last 'lads' who could have stepped onto a 250 on thier 16th Birthday are now if not, certainly almost pensionable! And I'm not so far behind them! I'm 45 years old & missed out on a 250 on L's by 6-years, and was one of the last to be able to step onto a 125 without a CBT; but the entry into biking as a teenager was waning, more even than biking in general, even then, what, thirty years ago.

That old 'progression' from a light-weight on L's to a full licence in your youth, has I think long passed, with DAS having been with us almost twenty years, and the majority of full-licence holder's now having first ridden a bike, not in their mis-spent yoof, but middle life; and stepped straight past lightweights onto middle-weights; and completely avoided 'utility riding', and all it entails, keeping a bike in service as 'cheap wheels', just to get to and from work every day. They have come into biking as a life-style activity; and one where the 'style' is for sale.... make-do-and-mend is just not in the imagination! Its all in the style on the shelf, and they expect and are happy to 'pay' for the style they want....

I think, that the classic scene is likely to crystallise and harden even further, with the bikes that are already recognised 'classics' that have that style and the reputation, more and more often saved, by sponsors and specialists, rather than a man in a shed avoiding kids and missus! To become architectural art installations in the conservatory, while the 'custom' scene will carry on the way it is, with ever more kit-chop pastiches, while the 'Brat-Chop' scene sees ever more old bikes command ever dafter prices, for middle-aged enthusiasts who never cobbled together a 'field-bike' in their youth, do it to poor unsuspecting road bikes instead!
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My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[Rogerborg]

[redeem ouzzer]

Not sure what the point is here other than usual shitposting. I restored this as documented on here

https://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y164/BLUEX5/1D30CDB9-C346-4E0B-991E-6DF4BC398FFC_zpsolo5zngo.jpg~original

It gets ridden every couple of weekends, makes a nice antidote to a 130bhp 1100 or a rev o matic 400. Yes a did restore it out of nostalgia, but so fucking what? It's not like i can't afford it. It was a revolutionary bike for me when i was 17, disc brake, first 2t with a seperate starter motor and my first bike with a rev counter, worlds apart from my A100.

Let folk enjoy their money how they like.
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Be a REAL MAN!

[jjdugen]

Slightly au contraire.
I enjoy making bits of Jap fit other bits of Jap, surprising how many parts are actually interchangeable.
If you look at each model year of output from the big four, they all seem to be, within very close limits, exactly the same. It takes little persuading to fit seat and fairing panels between them. Same with suspension components. Like the look of a swinging arm design, if you are within the production envelope of that design, you can usually transfer them between models with little in the way of mods.
As a for instance, my '97 'blade has an R1 front end, but only the 1999 - 2000 year fits with no problems. Same with the Aprillia swinging arm, the 2000 model RSV just goes straight in, no mods whatsoever. Chucked an'08 'blade 190 section rear wheel in to match the Yamaha spoke design, once again, no big deal.
Finished t off with some remarkably good Chinese fairing off a 954 'blade, minimal modding, just basically making up brackets.
if you have the eye and a tape measure, no real obstructon to building what you like.
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The CBR900RR has been sold. Aprilia Falco worms its way into my heart.
Try Soi 23 on Amazon for a good read.... Self promotion? Moi?

[roboff94]

[stevo as b4]

If I was 17 today but into RS125's or even older stuff like TZR's and LC's then I'd probably fuck them up.

It's no good having the interest and enthusiasm for classic machinery if you don't have the time, money, tools or skill to do anything with them.

The argument that all these bikes should be given to young lads to play around with on the remote chance on or two of them could do something worthwhile with them is a bit far fetched and ludicrous IMO.

[M.C]

[lingeringstin...]

"They're expensive, shit, and attract creepy old men who want to tell you their life story."



Dear GOD- that happens all too often. If I stop for a piss in a layby on the way to a rally or pull in somewhere for a roadside cuppa then out come the Olde Codgers, seemingly out of thin air, who shuffle and surround my bike and scratch hairy chins and mumble among themselves and then want to tell me in minute detail how they used to have one JUST like it back in nineteen-hundred-and-frozen-to-death, and if you don't get away from there quick they'll steal your soul and you'll be whisked away to fairyland forever!

[DRZ4Hunned]

[wilbur]

[blue_painted]

[lingeringstin...]

Too right. Seems like most people I meet in the LIDL parking lot are about to buy a brand new Fill-In-The-Blanks-Bike as they stand there talking total bike bullshit to me while clutching four tins of cat food, and they don't even have a cat.

I suppose this should be a new thread but for now... What they say, and what goes through my mind:



"I used to have one just like that."
(No you didn't because I built it myself out of random bits of other bikes spanning several decades.)



"I've got a (fill in the blanks) at home, and it will do (fill in the blanks) doing a wheelie, two up, on the motorway, in first gear, outrunning every cop car in existance, and the helicopters too."
(No you don't. You read motorcycle magazines and regurgitate words and phrases that you think sound impressive."


My mate's got one of them that was clocked at (fill in the blanks) by the Old Bill.
(No, it's physically impossible for THAT bike to go THAT fast no matter what you do to it and anyway you have no mates.)


"Ooh, I bet that's worth some money."
(Yes it is, it's worth about the value of the petrol left in the tank.)


"That'll look good once you paint it."
(What is this PAINT you speak of?)


"How fast will it go?"
(I literally have no idea because it has no speedo, handles appallingly, runs on the cheapest tryes money can buy, has crap brakes and anyway I would die of fright long before I could ever push this wobbly, twitchy thing to the very limits of it's ancient technology no doubt causing the engine to suddenly fly apart and probably lock the rear wheel, flinging me arse over tit down the road in front of it as has happened to me at least once on this very same bike when I broke the engine while belting along at top speed on the busy M1 one summer's day coming back from a courier run to Milton Keynes.)

[weasley]

I used to have a 1992 Honda CRX VTEC (the mk2 'proper' one). They are 25 year old cars going for £5-6k now so long as the rust isn't visible. But they are only going for this money because people are paying it.

And also, on the "questions people ask" thing:

"You have a bike? What is it?"

"Yamaha YZF600R Thundercat"

"........"

Unless you use a buzz word like "Fireblade", "Ninja" or "Enfield" they haven't a clue, which begs the question, why ask?
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Yamaha XJ600 | Yamaha YZF600R Thundercat | KTM 990 SMT | BMW F900XR TE

[Mudshark]