Norton-Triumph memories

[belgiumreporter]

When going through some boxes in the attick i've found these old photographs. They are the only pictures left from the bikes (and the Alfa-Romeo ) I used to own back in the seventies.

There's this double feeling that if only I would have taken some more shots, but as these are analogue (paper) copies they have survived. Would they have been digital, like so many early digital shots I've made on diffrent media chanses are they would have been lost forever due to non compatible media types, forgotten back-ups  crashed hard drives and so on.

For those interested The red Norton is a street race adapted 650 Dominator in the back is my white Alfa Romeo duetto spider and the green Triumph with my son on it is a 750 Tiger. I would have liked that I still owned the car and the bikes rather than the photographs but who wouldn't? Anyway the photographs help me remembering exactly how they looked as memories tend to fade harder than photographs.

[olddocfox]

Belgiumreporter: You are certainly right about memories fading faster than photographs! I never had a fine British motorcycle (or even a beat-up one). I did have a Yamaha and a BMW in my misspent youth. Fortunately, I trapped some memories of the BMW on paper and a PDF file attached >>> HERE.

[yashica1943]

I owned a few motorcycles and scooters,including a NSU Quick 50, a Honda 400/4, the biggest owned was a Honda VT500, excellent bike, but I rode BMW 750's and 800's for a job for about 14 years. In that time I had tested several big Norton, Triumph, Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Cagiva, Suzuki and Moto Guzzi.

Favourite at the time was the original Kawasaki 900 - amazing.

Later I tested a Cagiva 750 Elefant wonderful comfortable ride - still have the sales brochure, should have bought it.

One of the memorable rides was on the first Honda Gold Wing ever imported into Britain leading to my first ton down the M3 when it was a relatively quiet motorway. One of the unusual ones was a Moto Rumi Scooter and the rare BMW K1 (not at the same time).

Oh, and I nearly forgot, several hundred miles on a Honda 750 automatic gearbox bike and the same on a Honda CB 400 auto! Ithink that the auto Hondas had been tuned for less speed and more torque, if I remember correctly they had two gears, you started off in first gear then top gear would be used nearly all the time, they seemed to be aimed at motorcycle couriers, not enthusiasts because the were not fun to ride, just efficient.

I also used to borrow a Honda CX500, again better than expected and efficient.

A short trip on a Kawasaki Turbo 650 - terrifying.

My Yamaha 250 two stroke twin was interesting and thirsty.

[belgiumreporter]

I can see apart from camera collectors  there's a few people on the forum who are passionate about motorcycles as well   I'm somewhat sad i haven't documented the bikes i've owned a bit better, some only exist as a faded memory no photographic record (anymore) here's what i did find on some of the latest bikes i've owned. The best bike i ever had was the yamaha 850TDM, it drove like a british bike and didn't have the mechanical problems wich came with the Brits or electrical Italian troubles (and was somewhat faster as well ). For the moment i've settled down a bit with a Kymco 300 scooter but as long as i can ride there will be others...

[yashica1943]

I missed out some of the bikes I owned such as a Suzuki TS 125 trail bike, a new MZ 250 and a Greeves 197 Scottish. The rarest bike I actually owned and rode was a Velocette Viceroy which was abandoned in somebody's garden and I bought for £30 and was restoring it. More of a scooter, but it was a 250cc boxer twin with big wheels. Had to be sold, with the Honda 400/4 due to a divorce.

[yashica1943]

What I remember about the Viceroy was that when getting the engine running I found that it had reed valve induction and that the ignition points were easy to replace, they were exactly the same as the Austin Mini's. Various sources state that either 214 or 600 were built, but some were scrapped because the engines were a good shape to power sport hovercraft!