Vintage Dirt Bike Q & A

I was enjoying Rays comment about hopping up a CR125 in the mikuni specs post i opened up and i had to laugh. That was a cool little tale. It led me to think of my first effort at go fast. I was a kid w/ no bike and my mom felt sorry for me, only because i was running around the house with a pair of bike handlebars making 2-stroke sounds as only a kid addicted to every issue of a mid seventies dirt bike magazine could do. My dad relents and brings home a motorcycle for me! Only it was a yellow CT90. Wow was i disappointed. My cousin got a new XR75 that year for christmas! Anyway,,,,, i soon warmed up to the little toad and got over myself. Then i took out my meager toolkit complete with hacksaw. I removed that huge rear metal fender, hung a rubber mudflap on it, lost the chrome luggage rack, morphed a pair of handlebars with a crossbar onto it, sawed off the huge chrome cigar muffler and bolted on some kind of really large lawnmower muffler, lost all of the lighting equipment,,,,, do you get the picture. I drove that bad boy everywhere! I ended up wishing i had kept the headlight i kept her out so long. I really am glad my Mom had pity on me and Dad came through with a motorcycle for me. Those were the days.
I just have to ask- What did you do to your first scoot?

I think I performed your 'CT90 mod package' on all my early bikes. A bare frame with dozens of empty bolt holes was, like, ideal.

My first motorized vehicle was a Rupp Roadster II rolling chassis with a West Bend 510 (?) 2-stroke lawnmower engine and belt-drive torque converter. The T.C. was set up for a low-rpm Briggs/Stratton or similar four-stroke motor and never worked well, but a lot of fun was had nonetheless. This bike taught me that no mechanisms were so incompatible that machine shop doohickeys couldn't force them to work together.

I remember drilling out frame/swingarm tubes for shock mounts, cutting a hole in a rotary-valve engine side cover for a small disc filter (to let more air - and dirt - into the carb), replacing silencers with straight pipes, putting knobbies on a Yamaha YL1 100cc twin street bike, painting a Suzuki TS125 baby blue, etc. etc. I'm sure there were other things too, most of which I'd probably rather forget. ;>)

Ray

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'74 CR125M (175cc), '75 MR175, '82 RM250Z, '08 YZ250F, '14 Zero FX electric, '14 Zero MX electric, '18 Alta MXR electric