whats your worst ever bike.
 

Have been trawling through the garage today and found a heap of old bike manuals etc.
Looking through them made me remember some of my old bikes, good and bad.
One in particular was an total pig of a bike, an old Yam DT175.
Everything that could fail, did, everything else just fell off. Still not sure why I put up with it for so long.

What bikes have you other peeps had that were total pants.

Red....

Raleigh Apollo....;):P

Well, I haven't been unhappy with any of them really.

I guess the worst one was my Z1000 which had a hinge in the frame and some rubber pushbike brakes - but a bullet proof motor.

That was written off when a car did a u-turn in front of me - OUCH

Honda CX 500
 

Bloody thing snapped its camchain the day after i bought it, been stood for 2 years. Rebuilt engine and the bloody thing would need a new cam chain every 30,000 miles without fail.

It blew itself to pieces after about 150,000 miles, but at least gave me a supply of bits to keep the other one going.

It handled like a pig.

Looked absolutely disgusting, i wanted a cheap fairing to get me thru winter, rang round various manufacturers until i found a cheap one. It was horrendous huge Gary Glitter type metalflake electric blue leftover from the 70's. No wonder no one had bought it. The mounting brackets were real Heath Robinson and as you got upto speed (relatively speaking of course) the whole fairing would begin to pivot and move backwards. Complete utter bag of poo.

Probably the worst point was the pi$$ take you'd get from other people, but it earnt me enough money to run GS1000 and Katana 1100.

My first bike... Suzuki AP 50 with an A100 lump in....mad bike 75 MPH... drum brakes and pants handling.... all my mates had fizzie's FS1E yam's...could they catch me....No way mine was the fastest 50 in town:D

Honda CB250 G5, rubber frame, no brakes, thin tyres, absolute pig, but it did commute me up and down to London for a while in all weathers and never broke down.

My H1E Kwak, Fitted with flat bars, J&R chambers, 13 1/2" girling shocks & Read Titan rear sets. Consumed fuel at 19 miles per galon and had an elastic frame that would not hold a straight line flat out over the Hoggs Back.
An interesting bike, wouldn`t mind another really, perhaps a 750 engine in an Lc frame!!!!!!
:o

Best and worst bike, CBX turbo in '85. 160 bhp, 130 rear tyre and really bendy frame. Lots of fun. Oh and a new gearbox, clutch, and crankshaft when I turned the boost up :lol::lol::lol::lol:

1975 Suzuki GT750A - need I say more?

First bike had to be the worst...........KR1S

Death trap, or maybe that was just the rider flying about on it. Lethal in the wet, and the engine was made of chocolate, needed a rebuild what felt like once a month.

And as for the colour.............mutant ninja turtle green..........:barfy:

has to be my first 'bike'. it was one of those suzuki moped things, blue and white, it didnt have a basket on the front but it was close. did about 30 tops. and i got laughed off the road on many occassions. still it got me into the world of bikes so for that i am grateful.

Here is a pic of my first ever bike. The Suzuki Across (GSX-250)

It had a 12L fuel tank that ran under the seat and the filler cap was at the rear above the license plate. The 'tank' was actually a pop open compartment that you could store your helmet in.

You can also fit half a carton of beer, a bottle of port and a bag of ice in there :D or so I'm told ....

Has to be a Guzzi V50. Easy to work on, but the word 'trundle' comes to mind.

by the way, dave w - everyone's FS1E could do 75mph (regardless of thoughts on gearing/revs!), it's just that it was always when you were out on your own.......!

Ancient BSA Bantam 175 (yes, it was even ancient when I was 19). It had electrics that were more prima donna than Naomi Campbell, and they would flounce out at the merest excuse. It used premix (of course), can't remember what ratio it needed so as not to seize but it was enough to kick up a right old smokescreen behind me. In fact it could have been designed for James Bond because as well as the smokescreen it's favourite trick was to spit it's exhaust baffles out at the following traffic. As far as I can remember into the dim distant past the baffles were held in by a long rod that passed through the middle of the baffles. It was like a foot long bolt with a hex head on one end and a bit of thread on the other. On mine the thread was completely cross threaded, so you would just be riding down the road (60 mph flat on the tank) and there would be a sort of "Puuuhh - BWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" sound as the baffles let go and let the raw power of 175 two-stroke cc's go completely unsilenced. When you looked in the mirror, you would see the baffles bouncing down the road behind you. If you were lucky, there would be no traffic following so you'ld be able to walk back and nail them back in. If you were unlucky, as you looked in the mirror there would be a car swerving about trying to stop the baffles smacking their paintwork. I once got chased all round Luton by a gorilla in a jacked up 3 litre Capri, cos the baffles had belted his spotlights. I got away with it by diving down an alleyway, but I never saw the baffles again.

I was going to take my test on it, but a problem with the front brake meant it was easier to put the lighting kit back on to my Ossa 250 trials bike and take the test on that. That was fun though, U-turn? On a trials bike? How tight do you want it? and doing the slow speed test was a laugh. Those were the days when you just rode around the block and the examiner just watched from the side of the road. The slow speed control test you had to demonstrate that you could ride in control at walking pace beside the examiner. First gear at tick over on a trials bike and as the examiner strolled along, he was leaving me standing :lol:

Suzuki gsxr wx,

1st week front sprocket fell off,

3rd week clocks blew,

1month cam chain tensioner gave up,

2nd month the engine blew up, (cam chain snapped)

1yar old engine no2 blew up,

Absolute pile of sh**e,
:pig:

Honda XL100 when I was 14.

Exhaust kept falling off leaving just the header. Had to carry a set of mole-grips around to refit it when it was hot.

It was also :pig: slow compared to everyone elses' RXS100s and GP100s so I had to thrash the pants off it to keep up, a habit that never left me.....

Cheers,


Ali

Happy days!

1955 T110 Triumph, went like a rocket, had a rubber frame, highsided me twice long before anyone had invented the term. How about an 83cc MV sport?, wonderful little bike but with VERY Italian electrics. The lights never did work and if you pressed the horn button the wiring would catch fire-I never did work out what was wrong.:lol:

John

H*n*a CB 650Z ( GED 126V wherever you are rusting away....) smoked like a kipper factory over 4000rpm & all of the personality of a lump of cheese.
PX'ed it for a Benelli 654 which was much more to my taste!

Well if you can call it a bike a Vepa ss 180 Hey it was the mid sixties

:lol::lol::lol::lol:

CB400 Superdream.

Needed a bike quick for work and the "Superdream" (Could have sued Honda for the name alone...) was all I could find in the short space of time. Engine was a pile of crap till I rebuilt it when it became a pile of crap that had cost me a fortune.

We finally had a party and "dismantled" it with some sledgehammers and an axe...

Replaced it with a Honda CM200 that was a million times better....

no bad ones just one boring one !! 250 Superdream ran without a problem used naff all petrol and never went fast no matter how hard i thrashed the engine.
60mph all the way from Brands to worthing on less than half a tank of fuel with the throttle to the stop most of the way

I loved my DBD34 but not the close ratio gear box!

many moons ago, a yam 650 twin, which i bought in about four boxes, i took them to my top floor flat, laid all the parts out on the living room floor to assemble it (like an mfi wardrobe) there was no seat, headlight and sidestand, managed to get these (apart from the sidestand) from the previous owner (after a good ol` rummage in his garage) put the bike together, then realised i could not get it out of the flat and down the stairs ! took off the wheels, bars and mudguards, and with the help of a couple of mates, got it out into the carpark, kicked it over and bang.....it started for two whole seconds then blew up ! never did get to ride it, sold it for £30 to a hippy....bout a year later, saw it parked outside a shop, painted purple and still with no sidestand, leaning up against a wall.......ahhh, the joys of biking !!:bouncy:

Like john my worst bike was a t110 triumph. It used to leave a trail of bits behind it and an oil slick, the clutch dragged when in and slipped when out, it blew head gaskets with monotonous regularity (possibly because it had had been tuned by a moron) handled like a pig and took half a mile to stop from 30mph.
Mind you due to my impoversihed state when younger I have had an amazing number of sheds, a nsu quickly moped (siezed due to my inability to get to grips with a twist grip gear change 3rd to 1st at max speed), my mothers puch maxi moped (touched the pedal down and rode throu a wood), a triumph t140 which was so highly tuned it used eat barrells every 1500 miles and bottom ends at least once a year, a honda cbx 1000 with 3 gears (rebuilt it with a replacement gearbox and the b*stard snapped its cam chain all 24 valves bent, had the crank reconitioned by a firm in the north at the same time, rebullt it and the shells they supplied had incorrect clearences stripped and rebuilt again and sold on) I could go on and on but I would end up in an asylum.

dave

Has anyone else noticed that ducati owners who have ridden heaps think they are reliable and owners who previously had hondas etc think they are unreliable?? :lol:

Not the worst bike I've ever ridden[1] but the worst I've ever owned was probably a Honda CB750F1, the first so-called Super Sports model, in 1982. Very smart, ultra-reliable, easy to service, but.....

...dreadful handling, single front disc was heart-stopping in the dry and homicidal in the wet, fuel tank gave a 100-mile range, coils packed up in the wet, chain wore out every 5,000 miles......

So I fitted decent shocks and tyres, twinned the front disc (nowhere near as easy as you might think), fitted those new-fangled sintered pads, sourced a five-gallon alloy tank for holidays and trips to the Bol, and packed the coils in WD-40 soaked plastic bags. Never managed to do anything about the chain.

Sold it and bought a Guzzi Spada, which started the love affair with Italian bikes that persists to this day.


[1] That would be the Neval Minsk 125, no shadow of a doubt.

Suzuki GT750 "kettle", 'kin orrible it was. Only good thing about it was the digital gear indicator.

Yamaha XS 750 tripple I bought it brand new and it was the most unreliable thing I have ever had the misfortune to own and that includes the MZs and British bikes I used to ride. On one occassion I locked the steering whilst parking at the Belgium GP and as I took the key out of the lock the internals came with it. Oh how we laughed (NOT)

RGV250M....bought in haste..as a daft yoof.
:mad:

Ran it up the..road..it coughed and spluttered a bit but "hey..its just a bit cold and its a stroker...." I thought...paid my dosh (it was a bit cheap at £2250)...and..it ran like a pig on the way home.

Started to take it apart and I think it was when I found the lockwired oil filler cap and a pair of womens lacy pants (i kid you not) over the airbox when I started to think..hmm this isnt quite right.

Yep..it was an ex racer..and id been fooled..MUPPET. Id been blinded by the mint (obviosuly unused!!) bodywork. Power valves were s****d and fortunatley a mate cobbled it together and I managed to px it against an NC30 the next week at an unsuspecting dealers.

You live and learn and all that !(mines on the left)

Cheers
Nat

Yam XS500B (stood for B*llox) - complete piece of complex diahoerra that I had for two years and was on the road for approx 6 months (after numberous engine rebuilds).

Moved like a tranquilised slug and had all the appeal of rabies.....why I bought it, f**ked if I know....:barfy: