Memories (Deel Drie)

My then superior Alan, who at the time had a Yamaha 250, was also thinking of a new bike and after some discussion, he settled on a MZ TS250 Sport and I got a rather nice blue MZ ES150.
Not much happened to that one in the few months before it became a cat 5 after telescoping itself against a car one summer night. As I have mentioned, early (1970s) MZ switchgear is antisocial, to say the least. I have a scar on my left thigh which required 14 stitches after that incident, as well as 3 on my right knee when the TS125 slid on ice, at circa 5mph (!) into the kerb.
As mentioned before, the next bike was the 2nd ES150.

In a previous missive I mentioned going to the Elephant Rally. Some of the things seen there were an very old Danish in-line 4 towing an almost new Guzzi, a Horex m/c (love the name) and a real green elephant complete with machine gun mounting. The owner bought along his dog, which had its own goggles. The bike’s party trick was to trundle backwards in a circle without a rider.
Our group did a lap of the Nurburgring short circuit, the sole Velocette running without its fishtail (for the effect). We then did the full circuit, inclding the banking.
On the way back to the ferry, the Matchless’s ammeter disintegrated, shorting out the lighting circuits. Leaving the Arielt sidecar to come on behind, the rest of us raced to the ferry to get there before dark: we made it.
There are several entries in “Fishtail” during this period which mentions Terry Rigby with his MZ.
I also found out the hard way that the ES150 is not easy to turn in a sharp circle. The throttle cable goes through a rubber grommet on its way to the carb and while executing a U turn in a narrow lane one day it became trapped opening the throttle wide. The whole plot spun around depositing the passenger on the road while I hung on for dear life.
Next was a TS250 Sport.

One memory I have of the Sport was visiting my dealer one day and flicking down the stand as I came to a halt, the bike settling on the stand before I got off. Ken was surprised and said he’d never seen that done before. I’ve never dared to do it since, as falling off the bike as it topples can be humiliating.
Next was the India Enfield of which no photo exists and then a TS125 Alpine.

The TS125 was the first bike I really customised. The (somewhat useless) SLS front brake was swapped with the TLS front brake from a Honda CB250 K4. This was remarkably easy as the spindles were the same diameter. The forks had to be swapped left for right of course as the K4 brake was on the left hand side and a new spacer had to be procured to line the wheel up This was a mod discovered and advocated by Burwin Motorcycles of North London.. The rear brake light switch, which never works properly, was replaced with a front brake switch cobbled together from Honda and Yamaha parts. A MZ prop stand was fitted and finally, the lethal MZ switchgear was replaced with a user friendly Yamaha equivalent. The end result was a joy to ride.
I was living alone at that time and one day it was so cold I fixed the engine in my kitchen. I don’t think I would be allowed to do that now. The TS125 was also capable of laying down a white smoke screen like a destroyer’s black one when given a bit of welly, as I discovered once on the A2(M) and then again going up Shooters Hill from Welling.
Next was the ETZ250.

When I bought it was the colour seen, but after four years I painted it black: it looked much better.

Sanglas in background and T90 engine on rear of saddle.