15th March 2008

15/03/2008
Today is DAY ONE of Project 250. I have owned, run and loved MZ’s iconic 2-stroke machines since I bought my first ETZ301 Tour in June of 1995. At that time I was living with a bunch of students in Hatfield, Herts, although I had a job to pay for the lifestyle. Long story!
Anyway, we were planning a major European tour on the bikes. I’d only passed my test about 6 months previously (don’t tell the authorities!) and I was still riding my 15-year-old Honda 125, rebuilding it most weekends trying to keep it running to get to work in Paddington… I digress. I persuaded my father to lend me £2000 for a bike to do the trip and just to move up to a more reliable machine. The group knew someone selling a fairly old but well looked-after Honda CX500 for about that much…
After looking around and having a think, I realised I could have the old CX or a BRAND NEW MZ 301 Saxon Tour. Brand new, eh? I was sold! The bike (one of the last genuine German-built ones) was purchased from Raceways in Rotherhithe two weeks before the trip and I spent every spare moment getting it up to 500 miles for the first service before we went away.
The tour was a great success, I was riding with a CBR600, a GPZ750, a VFR750 and (until it broke down) Justin on his CB400 Superdream. Heady days! The bike acquitted itself remarkably well considering the company, carrying me and my luggage everywhere at 80mph all day, up hill and down dale, over 3,000 miles and 10 countries in 3 weeks with hardly a murmur.
There was one worrying moment in Slovakia when it started making very rattly exhaust noises, but that turned out just to be the exhaust ring working loose. A quick adjustment and all was back to normal.
When we got back home I used the bike for YEARS, all year, rain, snow, hail, sun, for the commute to work. It went to France again a couple of years later with another group of friends, and all over the UK. After a few years I felt the urge to upgrade, so bought a Skorpion Traveller, which also went to France a couple of times.
But I never got rid of the 301, on the basis that it owed me nothing, was worth nothing and could always be cobbled back together in an emergency, albeit missing 2nd gear and speedo drive by now. It’s surprisingly easy to live without 2nd gear if you rev it like mad in 1st and don’t mind the sluggish bit when you hit 3rd…
Anyway, over the years I had lots of bikes but the little MZ was always at the back of the garage. Then, in another long story, Justin acquired a 251 Tour via a deal with a work colleague, and I suddenly had a fully working stroker again. This coincided with the coming of the BUELL. The most disastrous piece of motorcycle engineering I have ever been stupid enough to buy. It spent more time off the road than on it, so the 250 was pressed into service more and more often until I admitted it was my main bike and but the 301 barrel on it. I rode it in this build until the odometer returned to 0… I know the piston and barrel have down a lot more than 60,000 miles – without a rebore, just a new set of rings when I transferred it to the 251 gearbox. Still, it was time to retire the poor beast – the gearbox had basically fallen apart and was making the most pained rattling noises – everything was on its last legs, mostly held together with gaffa tape and faith. Thankfully I’d had no serious electrical problems though. I nursed it up to the big 0 (100,000kms), got my treasured video of the event and transferred to Justin’s Skorpion (our 2nd one, my original was written off in a misunderstanding about roundabouts).
Now the time has come to put my ship in order and start the rebuild project. I should have nearly enough bits for two complete bikes, due to gifts of odds & sods over the years, although one of them will be a serious bitza. I’ve acquired half an old-style ETZ250 and about 1/3 of an ETZ125. I don’t know how much of the 125 will port across, but I’ll find out in the fullness of time!
So, today is Day One, I’ve been doing some spannering on the Skorpion recently and have remembered that I can actually work on bikes successfully (the Buell knocked my confidence a bit), so now I have a job of work on my hands. The first task is to get the garage into a fit state for serious mechanicing – rather than occasional maintenance. This will entail moving some other frames & stuff out, having a bloody good tidy up so I can find all the tools etc. and getting rid of everything that’s not necessary to the project in hand.
I don’t think Justin will let me put his half-built Harris into a shed though, which is a shame as it lives on the ramp. Oh well. Still, I’m sure I can get rid of the donor GSXR frame. When I start breaking down the bikes I’ll gain some more space anyway. So that’s tomorrows task, at least it won’t matter too much if it’s raining. When that’s done I can start breaking the bikes down with a view to getting the frames powder coated.
I’m intending to get at least one bike out of this that, while probably not concours standard, will go around the clock again, so there is a lot of incentive to do stuff like that properly. I don’t want to have to revisit the frame for at least another 10 years!
Then it’ll be engine rebuilds, probably electrical fixing, accessories – panels, fairings etc. – rebuilding, recommissioning, legalising. I’ll throw a big party the day I get an MoT, I can tell you!Today I have been mostly thinking about the project, finally in a more focussed way than over the last 6 months or so; tomorrow I start doing stuff.