DT175 etc. - what were '70s enduro events actually like?

[trevor saxe-coburg-gotha]

When you see the neat little machines that were referred to as "enduro" - bikes such as the Yamaha DT175 - they seem a long way from the much bigger, taller, heavier (although that older iron wasn't always particularly light) stuff of modern events. All that Red Bull Bavarian stuff, where they're hooning up almost vertical forest trails and the like. Were the old events basically very similar - but just easier? Or were they more technical and akin to trials stuff? A question for older hands, this. ; - )
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"Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent."

Mobylette Type 50 ---> Raleigh Grifter ---> Neval Minsk 125

[Fladdem]

Like this I'd imagine, although this may be what was called scrambling. One of my favourite videos to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI9VyobubyM
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Current:1991 Honda MT50 (Soon to be a H100/MTX/MT5 hybrid), 1976 Honda Cub C70, 2005 Honda Varadero 125, 1993 Yamaha TTR250 Open Enduro , 2010 Road Legal Stomp YX140, 1994 Honda CRM 250 MK III, 1999 Cagiva Mito 125, 1992 Honda CB400 Super Four, Stomp T4 230, 1984 Honda H100s, 2009 Sym XS125K
Past:2003 Aprilia RS125, 1982 Kawasaki GPZ550(FREE BIKE!)
I'm having more fun than a well-oiled midget.

[trevor saxe-coburg-gotha]

Yeah! I used to love watching the scrambling on World of Sport (hosted by Dicky Davis). So basically - "enduro" in the days of the DT175 was short course stuff, with riders remaining seated for most of the circuit, and maximum speeds of about 65-70mph?
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"Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent."

Mobylette Type 50 ---> Raleigh Grifter ---> Neval Minsk 125

[Fladdem]

I'm not really sure. I have often wondered what it was like before. I don't know anyone old enough to tell me really.

I quite like the idea of picking up a PE 175 or IT175 and then having a go at Vinduro. I'd do it on my bike but it's 4 years too new to fit into any classes.
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Current:1991 Honda MT50 (Soon to be a H100/MTX/MT5 hybrid), 1976 Honda Cub C70, 2005 Honda Varadero 125, 1993 Yamaha TTR250 Open Enduro , 2010 Road Legal Stomp YX140, 1994 Honda CRM 250 MK III, 1999 Cagiva Mito 125, 1992 Honda CB400 Super Four, Stomp T4 230, 1984 Honda H100s, 2009 Sym XS125K
Past:2003 Aprilia RS125, 1982 Kawasaki GPZ550(FREE BIKE!)
I'm having more fun than a well-oiled midget.

[Teflon-Mike]

Anomolouse era, Trev. It was a period of divergence. What is now called 'Enduro', in the 20's through 50's was 'Long Trials' like ISDT or the classic long-trials of the Scottish Six-Day or the Red-Rose; They were a bit like 1970's Car-Rally; Bikes would 'muster' at the start, and the bikes would be put through scrutineering, and 'part tagged'.. it was a 'reliability trial' so the bikes would effectively get an MOT at scrutineering to make sure the bikes were road legal and everything on them worked as it should; and 'key' parts would be tagged or marked or wired so that they couldn't replace them on route.
They would be given a route-map, that directed them to 'check-points'... route and navigation was often up to the rider, a'la 'Regularity Trial' to Road-Traffic-Act, where cant be a test of 'speed', but of 'navigation'... of course, the stages were cunningly arranged so they had to go down back-lanes and unmade rights of way (modern Green-Lanes) to be able to stand a chance of making thier time.
End of the event, they weren't scored on their event time... UK road law prohibited a test of speed remember... so they had thier score sheets tallied; they got so many 'points' for reaching the allotted check-points inside a time window, and penalty points for being too early or late, or missing them entirely.... Then bikes were submitted for re-scrutineering, where part marks and tags were checked, and the bike re-MOT's and again, points awarded for stuff that still worked, deducted for stuff that didn't or breaking tags or loosing marked parts.
HOWEVER, post WWII boom in consumer vehicles, working man affluence and leisure time, lead to increase in participation in 'club' sport. The 'classic' multi-day events were too big, too expensive and most blokes couldn't get that much time off work in one go to do them; so at the grass-roots, shorter 'Day' events started getting organised. However, show-room motorcycles had got an awful lot more 'reliable' since the 1920's, and even the classic multi-day events were struggling to thin the field with broken bikes and de-hydrated competitors! And riders were demanding stuff a bit more 'challenging'.
Day-Trials then started taking on 'special stages' they had had some of these in the classics for many decades, things like changing tyres, or having to man-handle the bike across a river; but 'Observed Sections' of extremely challenging obstacle strewn terrain started getting added between check-points.
Now, as the 50's marched into the 60's, clubs started loosing a lot of unsurfaced rights of way, as counties followed government funded schemes of road-improvement, putting down propper tar-top on them; so started getting harder and harder to organise good 'rough road' long trails; and so more and more 'observed sections' started getting incorporated, and not on public ROW but private land, woods, stream-beds, old quarries etc.
Out of this evolved modern sport of 'Observed-Trials', often called 'Pocket trials' at the time; courses of nothing but 'observed sections' laid out around a venue, and bikes adapted specifically for this discipline started to evolve.
Err... around about 1967, I think 'Trials' was awarded its own European Championship, think 'Scrambling' had got its own championship a couple of years earlier; 'Scrambling' evolving from grass-track, where tearing around a farmers pasture, road regs didn't deny a propper 'race', and where Grass-track & speedway, had started to become something of a specialisation, running on a pretty much flat oval, with evil lightweight single cyclinder bikes with little or no suspension, brakes or gears, not more 'practical' road-bikes. Scrambling STARTED as a sport for essentially fully equipped road-bikes.. get the kids off the street or local park, sort of thinking, and main distinction between it and grass-track was, it was laid out on tight twisty courses, often on the side of a hill.
This left the classic trials and one-day long trials sort of in a but of a hiatus, sandwiched between the specialisations; and late '70's and early '80's it was still trying to define itself.

Some events were like modern Enduro's essentially 'long' scrambles; but like an endurance race, running for set duration, scored on laps completed, rather than for a fixed number of laps, scored first past the post, but they generally didn't run over the big man made jumps of a modern MX. And most did require bikes to be street-legal or comply with road-regs, as far as having lights and minimal equipment; which some events would still 'score' for working at the end of the event. And again, some events might have had special sections, whether 'observed' or 'challenge' style.

When I started buying T&MX, around about 1980, aprox 1/3 of the paper was 'Regs Available' all the events going on up and down the country each week to enter. Never paid much attension to it, but pretty sure they listed Grass-Track, as well as 'Moto-Cross' and 'Trials', and even that had more events listed than 'Enduro' did; so many events still listed as 'Long Trial' or 'Road-Trial', as the more traditional trials were swamped by 'Observed Trials'.

Late 80's, early 90's, really saw 'enduro' as we know it now, taking more formalised shape.

Prompted by the specialisation of the lightweight, two-stroke, long travel suspension MX bike, and the American innovation of 'Arena-Cross'... This was developed in the USA, as a 'Spectator sport' to rival Dirt-Track; a dynamic, spectacle, of tight twisty jump strewn course, folded up into a foot-ball stadium, where they could pack the bleachers with paying customers.... and run it under flood-lights on a week-night.

That prompted more challenging 'ramped' courses in out-door 'Moto-Cross' than the bumpy hill of an old scrambles course... and in turn, lead to lots of blokes breaking arms and legs and backs, falling from great heights.... And the ACU and local clubs found themselves facing hefty hikes in insurance premiums to put on events... clubs and ACU passed these on to competitors, AND, for a while, regs for MX licence demanded a full medical, as with road-racing, but unlike even road-racing, competitors had to buy ACU competition Insurance, up-front, for the season to get thier licence....

And it almost killed the sport in the UK....

Fighting a loosing battle trying to put on events, a 'Rebel' governing body was formed, called the Amateur Motorcycle Association... Motocross may be substituted for Motorcycle, in common parlance and much paperwork, but I believe at its inception they avoided using the term 'motocross' in order to organise 'Off-Road Speed-Trials'.. using the much more palatable term 'Trials' to gain sanctions and insurance to run... yup... motorcross events! Though frequently keeping the ramps down!

However, wasn't the only gripe against ACU 'MX'... the water-cooled two-stroke bouncers, were getting ever more expensive, and frighteningly expensive to maintain, with GP style service schedules pistons and cranks lifed in running hours; AND it was getting so competative, unless you had this years machinary, AND the budget to have full rebuild before every event, your odds of winning were slim...

Yet, event entries stayed high... BUT, disparity between talent and tackle, from front runners to back markers, with the 'mass start' of a traditional scramble was helping make the events as dangerouse as they were...

So, following American Arena-Cross practice, events were being run more and more often in heats; meaning a lot of very short races, with only a hand-ful of riders on the start line, racing for perhaps only five or ten minutes, for the right to go through to the next heat.

It was a LOT of money, for NOT a lot of racing....

AMA had been organising 'Enduro' events under Trials Regulations... having an 'observed section' or 'challenge' even something as lip service as a having to stop the bike in a marked box, run to a tree and ring a bell, before running back to the bike to continue, could be used to legitimately claim the event a 'trial' not a 'race'.... and they started attracting MX disenchanted MX riders; Expected to run for two, three four hours or more at a stretch, deterred the over-tuned MX bikes, and levelled the field towards older, air-cooled MX machines; a lot of folk started running out-moded MX tackle in Enduro events, with 'total loss' lighting kits... basically push-bike lights! (though there were kits; I bought one for my DT50 in 1986... little rubber stop lamp, and a front race plate with a plastic push-bike headlamp lens moulded in, run off a 6v torch battery!) Only had to work at the beginning & end of the event, didn't they? But rapidly recognised that actually, the 'penalties' for non functioning equipment, were often pretty miniscule, and I think it was the AMA who first dropped the requirement for a bike to have street-gear.... or meet street legal regs.

Worth mentioning that at that time; while Day-Light MOT's existed; they were only available for machines 'sold' for road use, before such equipment was mandatory... and the regs for road registering a 'special' required all 'mandatory' street equipment, as a factory road bike; so making an MK machine road legal in those days, did require fitting e-marked lamps and indicators, as well as electric horn and number-plate.

BUT, this allowed Enduro to evolve as 'long course scrambles' and, as the road-regs to allow machines 'adapted primerily for off-road use' to be street-reg'd, full on MX bikes to compete, and the requirements for street-gear and the old 'points' system for equipment, a hang over of the old reliability trials to wither away.

So, the short answer is...sorry, what was the question again?

Oh yeah, DT175 era 'enduro'... Well, early 'DT'175's weren't actually 'DT's they were the T-Shock Yamaha 'Enduro'. The DT 'badge' came along in 1976 I believe with the DT250/400MX, with the new mono-shock rear suspension, and was the engine code for the 'big-block' engine.... then got carried over to the smaller models. By the time the 'DT'175 was launched, Yamaha's 'official' competition enduro bikes were the IT series, that were a hybrid confection of the YZ scramblers, DT road-bikes and TY trials bikes.. the 'DT' 175 was never a 'true' enduro bike, although many were entered, some quite successfully, especially in the launch year or so, when most of the competition was still wearing T-Shocks.

But, the 'enduro' events in the UK, of that era, the late 70's & early 80's were pretty much whatever the organisers wanted them to be... but, essentially a time bound, 'long distance' scramble, without the big man-made bumps; a penalty system for equipment, legacy of the old reliability trials, and possibly some sort of special sections or challenges, and differentiated from 'Long Trial' mainly only by running in a loop on a closed course, rather than point to point 'cross-country'... usually.
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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?'

[Fladdem]

Damn, Tef. I was wondering what had happened to you recently, lots of your posts were starting to shrink but then this!

Very interesting read, it's a shame I can't give a "cool" and an "informative" rating.
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Current:1991 Honda MT50 (Soon to be a H100/MTX/MT5 hybrid), 1976 Honda Cub C70, 2005 Honda Varadero 125, 1993 Yamaha TTR250 Open Enduro , 2010 Road Legal Stomp YX140, 1994 Honda CRM 250 MK III, 1999 Cagiva Mito 125, 1992 Honda CB400 Super Four, Stomp T4 230, 1984 Honda H100s, 2009 Sym XS125K
Past:2003 Aprilia RS125, 1982 Kawasaki GPZ550(FREE BIKE!)
I'm having more fun than a well-oiled midget.