Where are all the old bikes?

[Smithy]

Right I'm bored today so time to be maybe a little controversial. I will try to convey the essence of what I've been thinking and hope I don't offend anyone.

I miss cheap, old bikes. I am fed up with motorcycling in the 21st century. Bored of the 'classic' scenes both British and Japanese, bored of brat/scrambler/café racers. bored of adventure bikes, Harleys and modern bikes. Right that's off my chest time to unpick it.

My primary loves for motorcycling are that I can go places and do it cheaply. I've never believed in spending money for spending's sake I don't see the point. Some people I know have a new sofa just because the old one is two years old. If my sofa is still comfortable I will keep it.

I love going places, they don't have to be exotic just lovely to me. I was lucky to be a kid in an era when we could travel freely by bicycle so I went youth hostelling with friends by bike from the age of about 13, no grown ups just us kids set free. I also went by train on hostelling walking/climbing holidays with friends in the Lake District from 15 or so. It was wonderful so when I was old enough to get a motorbike the freedom increased as I was no longer bound by leg power or timetables.

I bought CZs and MZs and old Brit stuff because they were cheap and easy to fix and also cheap to run. I did love my A10 etc but primarily they were tools for transport. I had a mate with a Harley (back in 1974 before everyone with a wannabe complex bought one) and what impressed me most was how it could cover long distances without straining the motor. We started buying old air-cooled BMWs at what was universally known to us as 'a pound a cc' which was cheap.

What have we got now? Bantams costing up to £5000, more exotic bikes costing tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds. Brit bikes so over-restored they aren't used, Harleys that are more in danger of being polished away than getting wet, modern bikes beginning at 4, 5 or £6000 for a basic starter bike etc. You get my drift.

I was lucky enough to acquire Rufus' GN250 in a swap but that is the exception rather than the rule these days. I genuinely worry about the price of even the most basic of second-hand motorcycles. I know there are many Chinese bikes out there which may be the equivalent of the CZs etc of the 70s but what else is there?

Come on Thumpeteers are you my salvation? Is motorcycling disappearing up its own tailpipe? Am I just missing the point of modern biking and just being an old fart? Are there models out there that don't fetch inflated prices?

Answers on a rusty petrol tank please.

Ian

[Richard]

Sadly even old MZs are now suffering price inflation, and we're not just talking ISDT and BK350 'exotica', we're talking well over £1k for a TS125!!

I'm keeping my fleet of rattly old strokers as an investment.

[iansoady]

I think there are a number of factors. One is that modern Chinese bikes - especially 125s etc - are so cheap that they're effectively disposable (although I suspect they're not as hard to rebuild as may be thought). Another is that unlike in the good(?) old days people don't have the skills or necessity to do their own maintenance and bikes become harder to fix anyway without electronic equipment.

I'm sure there are bikes around.... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Chituma-125cc-CTM-125-C-Motorcycle-With-Honda-Engine-Red-Motorbike-Petrol/174265090138?hash=item289302405a:g:u8AAAOSwVhNeqG2p

My Guzzi V50 cost me less than £1,500 and I only spent money on it to make it look better. A lot of bike for the money. Of course the Norton was far more expensive but is a lovely machine.

[Moto63]

Evening Ian.. I suppose it depends on what you mean by “cheap “.... there’s a kwak ER500 on fleabay for a ‘buy it now” price of £995 which I think is reasonable “cheap”, looks in half decent condition. A good weekend scrubbing and cleaning and be a lovely little bike.  Probably not the most inspiring bike to ride but then again it is a “ride” ... good topic though, hopefully get a few more thoughts on this one👍
Cheers, Michael

[spooky]

I think there are still plenty about, but as Michael said depends on how much. I know where there is a GN250 for around £800,used to be one of mine ! If it's still there. A bullet 350 for about £1000 and my cb350 for a bit more

[SteveC#222]

I'd love a old MZ to do up as a long term project but even a wreck is several hundred quid! ( i remember buying them for a couple of hundred for a good runner!!). We have an old C90 cub at work that we are trying to restore - really clean examples are going for thousands! ( we use to buy 'em every winter for £50 and thrash the life out of them........erm....thats probably why the remaining ones are several thousand )

I'm afraid the the cheap runner is a thing of the past. ( I know a few folk who have bought the chinese ones and they've had a lot of problems, even with new ones).

[Moto63]

Yes, I’ve seen two completely separate Chinese 125’s with cast rear wheels that have collapsed/disintegrated. Both looked reasonably new bikes at the time too....Total and utter junk. I personally wouldn’t even pay a tenner for one, let alone a few hundred of my hard earned. I’d rather pay more, even for a scabby jap bike.🤪

[Smithy]

Gentlemen

Once again you have risen to the challenge and made some excellent points which certainly merit further thought whilst I am out walking the dog.

Looking at your comments I think I have been guilty of a little yearning for the past, after all the reason I can't pick up old bikes for a very few hundred quid must be linked to the fact that I no longer earn £20 a week. Also I might have been wearing rose-tinted specs a little as the reason many of my old bikes needed to be easy to mend was that they broke easily.

Some of the bikes you mention like the ER5 are very good candidates, I had one on which I did 40,000 trouble free miles. I suppose I'm being somewhat ungrateful towards my GN250 and CBF500, both of which were cheap, both of which are reliable and both of which wouldn't interest the kind of hipsters and wannabes I don't like.

Thank you Thumpeteers for bringing me back down to earth and getting me back on the right track. I will do less moaning and more planning post-lockdown trips.

Ian

[CrazyFrog]

I agree with you in general Ian. There are still some good cheap 2nd hand bikes around, cb500's, er5's and the like, but nowhere near as many as there used to be. The almost endless supplies of decent used 250's which were available for pips in the 80's and 90's have long since dried up, and though I do like 125's, they are not really attractive to most people. The 'classic' scene also has a lot to answer for.

As you know, I like my MZ's and rode them pretty much exclusively for 20 or so years. However, I'll be damned if I'm going to pay £2000 for a 30 year old MZ 250. For goodness sake, you can get a really nice er6 or something similar for that money. MZ's we're always just cheap, reliable, characterful hacks to me, and indeed to all members of the MZRC back in the day. The crack was to buy the cheapest old nail of an MZ you could find, smother it in Hamerrite to keep the rust at bay, and then proceed to knock up stupidly prodigious mileages. Though it is still a worthy club, all of this has now largely vanished from the MZRC. It's almost the same for Jawa's, except that if you are patient you can land on a 2nd hand modern one for silly money. I paid £1800 for my 3000 mile 3 year old 350 classic last year. Unbelievably, this is less than I've seen old 634 oilmasters advertised for! You quite often see these being advertised at around £2000, and probably in need of an engine rebuild and other serious expenditure before getting a reliable machine. The world has gone mad!

[Richard]

Don't even start me on the cost of getting hold of a bike and sidecar these days...........

[RonXBR]

https://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C1223101

Still the odd one about.

Ron.

[BrendanO]

Well, I sold a very competent NTV for a friend in Jsnusry on Ebay, went for under £500.

But yes, lots of pricey stuff, superdreams for 4 figures, etc.

Then again, I'm currently tempted by a CB200 low miles...but as its headed into 4 figures, I may bow out.

[johnr]

cheap bikes are still out there, theyre just not the same as the cheap bikes we used to get. cheap bikes now tend to be mid 90'd or early noughtys jap middleweights, after all, if you sell a million cbr600's then eventually the market for them will slump and stay slumped till there arent many left. look at gsx1100's, gsxr slabsides, gs1000's. they were plentyful and thus cheap, people bought them and ragged them into the ground. eventually there werent many left, so the valused creep up and nostalgia makes people want them again. so folks want bantams and th prices shot up, ditto fizzys, lc's, even honda step thrus, all follow the same pattern. so if you want a cheap bike, pick wisely from the selection of available cbr/zzr/fzr/gsxr/ etc and hope you get the one that gets the upturn in the market in 15 years or so.

[Moto63]

Sound advice me thinks.. 👍

[johnr]

my take on what to buy that will increase in value in coming years, honda grom, sachs madass, in fact anything from sachs, they did a stonking thumper powered by a dr650 engine as well as a lovely roadster with a suzuki 800 vee twin engine. i reccon any of these bought and kept clean will make money in future.