Trail bikes & riding back in the good ole 70s & 80s

[sudman]

Sounds like you were riding a lot of the same places as me, we used to ride from Foxton beach to Tangi down the old sand track, it's gone now but was used for coast watch back in WW2 it was just behind the 2nd row of dunes, done a few days in the dirt as well, we used to hold street mx's in Levin the black and white's would turn up in there MK3 Cortina's we would take to footpath or head down the railway tracks to get away, we end up coming out at Koputaroa, you would not get away with it today.

[DEATH_INC.]

No worries,2 weeks later I stuck it into the side of a Trekka at 60mph.

I hope the owner of that fine machine thanked you for putting him out of his misery

One of My cousins had an old Kwakka 250, something like the Bighorn of the early 70's, with a 360 (I think) kit on it. What a f*cking weapon, it was guaranteed to kill anyone/anything that looked at it the wrong way, let alone those of us stoopid enough to try and ride it....

Way back when I first moved to jaffaland, we used to ride at the old quarry at the Wiri container terminal, and a few other vacant lots around the area. Most don't exist now, and you'd never get away with it anyway...

[Motu]

I hope the owner of that fine machine thanked you for putting him out of his misery .

Everything was tougher in those days - car,bikes,and riders. I tore 2 slots down the side of the Trekka,one with the clutch lever and the other with the gear lever. There must've been some good flex in them as from the left lane I cleared the road and footpath and landed on the grass verge. I picked the bike up and rode home with bent handle bars and a sore foot.

[pete-blen]

Everything was tougher in those days - car,bikes,and riders. I tore 2 slots down the side of the Trekka,one with the clutch lever and the other with the gear lever. There must've been some good flex in them as from the left lane I cleared the road and footpath and landed on the grass verge. I picked the bike up and rode home with bent handle bars and a sore foot.

brings back so meany memorys...
falling off was just part of motorcycling back then...
Remember one night in ChCh riding though Woolston on
ferry Rd.. This dam prat tuned in front of me in a EK or EJ
wagon.. i can still see him though his front screen as I sailed
across the bonet... Pick yerself up go pick the S3 up.. put the
front wheel between yer legs..pull the front end straight...

Or you & a few mates standing on the summit road at 2 am
half pissed..wondering how far down the bank yer mates T350 went..
That was quite common..get half pissed then have a grand pix along
the summit Rd at some ungodly hour of the morning.." no cars up ther at that time"

Don't know why I'm still alive...but the 70s were fun..

[NordieBoy]

Pick yerself up go pick the S3 up.. put the
front wheel between yer legs..pull the front end straight.

Going down a steep firebreak on a mountainbike with v-brakes. Did a flying W and landed flat on my back.
Put the wheel between my legs and bashed the bars to straighten them.
Burnt both legs on the rim...

[cave weta]

[QUOTE=DR Girl;1130168287]The first bike I bought (before I could ride) thanks to that fab "NO1 UNDER THE SUN " TV ad by Honda was an SL125. Use to ride ride to school when not push biking. Then changed to the cool looking but gutless MT 125. Didn't keep for long. Bought & absolutely LOVED my orange XL175.[QUOTE]

I now believe in Parrallel universes! you and I have to be of a similar age...

I was 13 when I discovered trail bikes.... I stole my first bike.
My big brother finished work 1 1/2 hours after I finished school so I used to ride his 1972 Kawasaki 100G5 round and round the shed then rake all the gravel back before he got home! I learned to ride it litrally by reading the owners manual!
He sold it to me shortly afterwards and then started the progression to where I am today....

SL125 - MT125 (my flywheel dropped off regularly too) XL175 with a bassani power pipe. TS185B was my first brand new bike paid for by growing 1/2 an acre of watermelon and selling it on the side of the road. Ive had exotics like an Ossa 250
and a BSA Bantam lol. My XR200B with the prolink was my first bike that I didnt constantly loop over backwards- man I could wheelie that thing! all the way up prospect hill in Pukekohe in front of the school bus! I forget the order that I owned some of the bikes but Ive had, DT360, PE175N PE175T XR500B SP370, TT600Tenare RZ350, MVX250 XL250motorsport CBR600 GSX-R750 Mudbug, VanVan, ATC110 all before 1990- then I had a break while I played with tunnel hulled powerboats for 6 years and then I started the 'current era' of KTMs DRz400s and CRfs...

Aah its been great - thanks for letting me remenice......

[Big Col]

Dt360 Yamaha was the first bike I owned, used to ride around red rocks coast, got a ts 400 and rode that bike all round the town belt and anywhere there was dirt, subdivisions, wrights hill akatarawas plimmers steps to get away from popo. had a street legal yz400 (easy back then) Had a couple of tt500s was great times. riding gear was gumboots jeans rugby jersey helmet and gloves of course. later on was a new belstaff jacket. distance was never a problem we would ride all round the north island. Great thread this has sparked a few memories.

[DR Girl]

[QUOTE=pete-blen;1130170339]

Or you & a few mates standing on the summit road at 2 am
half pissed..wondering how far down the bank yer mates T350 went..
That was quite common..get half pissed then have a grand pix along
the summit Rd at some ungodly hour of the morning.." no cars up ther at that time"
Don't know why I'm still alive...but the 70s were fun..


So true, thats what the boyz I road with would do. We would be at some ones place whose parents were away for the weekend, have a few drinks then trail ride ideas would come up & off they would go!
I would never know till the next day when I phoned if they made it back all in one piece. No cell phones, also no cops with breathalysers. Plus no dilemma re having the right tyre for the ride, we only ever had one set !

[george formby]

Had a swag of cool old stuff, XL,s XR,s stripped down AG,s turned into hard out bush bashers. Was riding a XL185 and went to a PE 400, man what a difference.Used to ride around the albany area a lot in the early 80,s Where all the motorway and stadium and all that is now, what a blast.

My mate has a PE 400 sat in his shed waiting, waiting, waiting.......

When I get the time I might pop over & cajole him into giving it a couple of kicks to see what happens.

I learned to ride in the early 80's on a KMX 125 followed by an XT 350 with a liberal & frightening sprinkling of DT 400 & less frightening but more nimble DT 175 which is still going strong with a DT 125 R front end & decent rear shock.

I used to watch in awe the riders on CR's, IT's & PE's. My heroes at the time. Ring ding ding.

[XRJohnny]

One of my earliest cool trailbike memories, was in 1973 when i was a 3rd former at St Johns college in Hastings. One of the older boys, Chris Maindonald, had a green Honda SL100 that he rode to school. A REAL NICE looking bike. In the weekends he raced it in club motoX, & i saw him once beating all the real race bikes!
To see that little Honda parked up at school on the monday all covered in mud was WAY COOL! And that had a lasting impression on one very bike keen schoolboy.
Chris went on to be one of NZ,s best motocross racers of that era & also competed overseas. Today he owns a KTM shop on the Gold Coast.

[MD]

Me too! 70s trail biking was fantastic. They hadn't gotten around to fencing off all our rivers, beaches hills etc. We could just about ride anywhere. Yeah, Summit road was good. Find a spot, turn off the road and bump, bounce, slide, crash your way down the hill. Pop out in some Farmer's back yard.

My first bikes were trail bikes from 75 onwards. First was a XL100 followed by several SL125s. They were awesome. Cheap, ride em, wreck em, sell em, buy another one..repeat process. Just like DRGirl, I had an orange XL175. About the newest dirt bike I ever owned. It got washed away crossing the Waimakariri River in 76. Hilarious insurance claim. Got called in to the Insurance co. office. "Sonny we don't pay out on losses incurred on river banks, see page xxx". "That's great but as I wrote on my claim, mine was lost in the river bed. I actually said to them, do you require a dictionary, there is a difference between a river bank and a river bed. They paid out. Six months later it resurfaced and a fisherman tried to claim it, the insurance co. won. They rung me, which was kind of nice.

Anyone on here remember riding the dirt mounds affectionately referred to amongst us Christchurch dirt riders as 'Annex Road' in Chch in the mid seventies. Between Blenheim Rd and Lincoln Road. Probably a supermarket there now. It was a popular playground.

I tried a XL250 but it just wasn't as much fun as the legendary SL125

All those adventure rides and not a single photograph taken. Should have carried our cell phones with built in camera. The only pic I can find is the XL250. Posted this on here before - note I was wearing the fully OSH compliant safety gear at the time. Really needed sun screen.

[pete-blen]

Anyone on here remember riding the dirt mounds affectionately referred to amongst us Christchurch dirt riders as 'Annex Road' in Chch in the mid seventies. Between Blenheim Rd and Lincoln Road. Probably a supermarket there now. It was a popular playground.
[/QUOTE]

I use to live in Redcliffs...
Over that side of ChCh we rode at the back of the
Bromley Crematoryum off Linwood Ave.. All houses in there now..
also the sand dunes along north beach up to Spencer park..
Dam yer would get shot if went any where near there now on a bike..
I had a 74 TM125..Use to ride it there,,never got pulled up..

[86GSXR]

Here's a pic of a recent blat around in the Himatangi forest via the beach. Don't think we were supposed to be there but didn't see any signs Note my mates 78? XT500 leaning against the tree. The Yamaha still does the business pretty darn well, apart from a bit of blue smoke which made it easy to find when it disappeared ahead in the trees............

[XRJohnny]

Yes those orange XL175,s were sure a popular & much loved bike. I used to ride one to high school in 1976. In the christmas holidays while working at the local freezing works, i would take off the removable muffler [ modified by previous owner ] at lunchtime & ride it with a straight pipe to the nearby riverbank for a bit of a skid around. Boy i must have been keen! Those SL125,s & XL175,s were probably the BEST bikes ever made. It,s quite funny that Rick Seimen, editor of Dirt Bike Magazine, wrote an article calling the SL a " Turtle Chaser " because it was so slow & the XL " Expensive Pork " because of its excessive weight. That magazine never received as much Hate Mail as it did for those two articles!

[warewolf]

Will have to see if I can dig up any photos of my riding in the '80s. I started riding on mates' farm bikes in the Aussie wheat-sheep belt. The bikes were mostly run-down hacks I couldn't identify if they were my mates rather than their dad's. There was a CT125 Ag with dual-range box, need to be in about low 3rd to see it actually move! One of my mates left school the end of 5th form (i think you call it that here) to start working on his dad's farm as an employee rather than child slave labour, and was given his own brand new farm bike as part of the package: a 1985 DR250S monoshock! Man that thing had some suspension travel compared to the other hacks. Pillion pegs were near useless in rough terrain as they were swingarm mounted.

Sometimes we'd skive off school and all go riding out of town in a bush reserve. I had my first ride of a YZ250 then, was instantly seduced by the two-stroke MX power and handling. Couldn't wait to get the thing wailing in band, blurring the countryside, it just seemed to soak up anything thrown at it, didn't care how sideways it was as long as the power was on and the front wheel pointed where you wanted to go. Wicked fun. Made his XR200 seem pretty tame.

Another interesting bike & place I rode was a CT200 Ag on the shores of Lake Hume, Very flat land with massive erosion gullies you could play hide'n'seek in (and sometimes they'd be hard to see, approaching flat out in top ), ringed by huge steep hills. The hills were so steep if cattle turned downhill they'd be forced to run and couldn't stop, and if too far up their heart could give out before they hit the flat at the bottom! The CT200 had an auto clutch, so you could leave it in sixth and it would be difficult to stall, but of course using the gearbox yielded the best performance. The other very useful thing for this bike in that terrain was the zip start: yep, like a lawnmower it had a pull cord. So when you bailed off on the hill and it did stall, you could stand on the fallen bike with one foot to stop it sliding down the hill , pull the zip start, then worry about trying to right the bike and get mobile again. You couldn't actually stop the bikes when they were anything but across the hill, the angle was well past the friction of two locked tyres and two feet down, the whole kit and kaboodle would just slide downhill.

Of all the fellahs I knew with bikes, there was only one road bike, a 250 twin custom cruiser thing. Faaark was it smooth compared to the trail bikes, but pretty unexciting. Sure there were plenty of rego'd trail bikes like XL/XR/TT250's, but this was the one and only roadie.

Fun times, fortunately there were enough bikes around for me to blag rides on.