BSA Bantam – The ExhaustNotes Blog

¿Quantos Pistones?

By Joe Berk

The question du jour (and for several upcoming blogs) is as stated above: How many pistons?

A thought occurred to me the other day: I’ve owed singles, twins, triples, fours, and even a six (a Honda CBX, which was a wonderful motorcycle). There have even been (and are) companies that offer 8-cylinder bikes. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8: What’s should be the right number of pistons for the perfect motorcycle?

Man, I don’t know. I’ve owned a lot of motorcycles of varying engine configurations. This blog focuses on the singles. There will be future blogs on other engine configurations. What I’ll describe are my experiences with singles, and (spoiler alert) they’ve all been good. Your mileage may vary.

Honda Super 90

My first motorcycle ever was a Honda Super 90 previously owned by Sherm Cooper of Cooper’s Cycle Ranch in New Jersey. Sherm was a famous flat track and ISDT racer in the 1950s and 1960s. Mr. Cooper had customized the Super 90 I bought from him with an upswept pipe, a skid plate, and knobby tires.

On my Super 90 in the 1960s. It was a fun bike. I wasn’t old enough to have a driver’s license yet, but that didn’t slow me down at all.

I owned the Super 90 before I had a driver’s license, and I rode my Honda all over. It would hit 65mph given enough time and road. I had a lot of fun on that bike.

BSA Bantam

Somewhere in my misspent youth as a goofy teenager, I owned a 125cc two-stroke BSA that actually ran, but not well enough that I was willing to venture very far from the house on it. I rode it in the fields behind our place for a couple of weeks and then parked it on the front lawn with a for sale sign. My first and only Beezer sold quicky.

My Bantam was all black (I don’t know if that was its original colors), it had a lot of power for a small bike, and then it was gone. I didn’t own it long enough to get a photo, but decades later when visiting a motorcycle museum in Australia, I did manage to get a photo of a concours condition Bantam.

Honda SL90

I sold the Super 90 and the BSA Bantam you read about above, and I was a working kid, so I was pretty flush with cash but I didn’t have a motorcycle. I didn’t have a driver’s license, either, but that didn’t slow me down. I bought a new Honda SL90, a model Honda had just released, and I loved it.

The SL90 wasn’t any faster than the Super 90, but it had that SL look. Honda had a series of SL bikes back in those days, including an SL175 and an SL350. I’d really like to own an SL350 today, but the prices on those bikes are in the stratosphere. I rode the wheels off my SL90, and I kept it immaculate the entire time I owned it. You know, it’s funny: I can’t remember selling it. But I guess I did. I just checked my garage and it’s not out there.

Honda Cub

One of the families in our neighborhood had a welding business (I guess their welding business was good; they bought new Cadillacs every year). The guy who owned that business somehow acquired a 50cc Honda Cub. You know, the little ones with a step-through frame. I offered him $50 for the Cub. Suddenly, I owned a 50cc Honda Cub.

The Cub had three speeds and a centrifugal clutch. I sold it a month or two later for $75 and considered myself a wheeler dealer. Seiko recently came out with series of watches commemorating the Honda Cub. I’m wearing that watch as I type this blog.

Honda Cubs are still in production (new ones MSRP for $3,899.00, not including transportation to the dealer, California emission equipment, government fees, taxes, finance charges, dealer document preparation, electronic filing fees, tire tax, and, well, you get the idea). As I understand it, more Honda Cubs have been built than any other motor vehicle of any type. I’ve traveled a bit in my life, and I can tell you that Honda Cubs are everywhere. The people who keep track of such things stopped counting when the total number of Cubs went over a hundred million. Soichiro outsold Henry Ford. Imagine that.

KLR 650

I had always wanted a Kawasaki KLR 650, and in 2006, I scratched that itch. It was one of my all time favorite motorcycles. I used mine as a touring bike, and that touring sometimes included offroad excursions here and in Mexico. I had fabulous rides in Baja with the KLR.

I covered a lot of miles in Mexico on my KLR. It never let me down. It was the perfect motorcycle for Baja.

I sold the KLR just because I was busy riding other machines. Looking back on that, I wish I’d kept it. The KLR was a fabulous motorcycle. I think it made less than 40 horsepower, and that was all I needed. I could touch 100mph on mine. The ergonomics on it were perfect for me. I loved that bike.

CSC 150

My CSC 150 Mustang replica was kind of my comeback bike after I crashed big time on a Triumph Speed Triple (that’s a story I’ll tell in a subsequent blog).

My new buddy Umberto upgrading a preproduction muffler tab to the production configuration, while simultaneously demonstrating proper personal protective equipment use. Welker is pulling fire guard duty.

Our CSC 150s parked in front of the Desert Inn in Catavina, Baja California Sur, about 330 miles south of the border. My bike is the fire engine red one, second from the left.

I caught a lucky break after the above-mentioned motorcycle crash: My buddy Joseph Lee told me about a new venture, the California Scooter Company, that was resurrecting the Mustang motorcycle. I consulted for CSC for the next 6 or 7 years, and one of my brilliant ideas was to ride the little 150cc Mustang to Cabo San Lucas and back. I and three of my friends did so. You can read about it here.

Janus Gryffin

I never owned a Janus, but I spent a four day weekend riding one through southern California and northern Baja with the Janus CEO and his videographer (you can read about that ride here). It was a Janus promotional ride that I talked them into doing, it was a lot of fun, it resulted in a couple of magazine articles for me, and I had a hoot doing it.

The Janus CEO taking the Gryffin offroad in northern Baja.

The Janus Gryffin uses a CG-250 Honda clone engine (the same one used in the CSC TT 250: see below). I had a good time on that ride. Hell, I’ve had a good time on all of my rides through Baja.

CSC TT 250

I talked CSC into bringing the TT 250 to America. On one of my many visits to Zongshen (in Chongqing, China), I noticed a 150cc motorcycle on a platform in their marketing department. It was a sharp bike, I knew that the CG 150 engine has the same exterior dimensions as the 250cc engine, and I asked the Zong wizards if they would make that bike for us (us being CSC) with the larger engine. The answer was yes, and the CSC TT 250 was born.

My TT250 On Mexico Highway 2 at the Rumarosa Grade. it was a fun trip.

The bike was wonderful, and they initially retailed for $1895. They sold like hotcakes, and to this day, they still comprise the bulk of CSC’s motorcycle sales. I had a blast on mine. Many of the folks who owned CSC RX3 motorcycles also purchased the TT 250, and we ended up doing a ride through Baja on those bikes. They were awesome.

CSC RX3

My last single-cylinder motorcycle was a 250cc RX3, imported to the US by CSC Motorcycles in Azusa, California. The RX3 is a Chinese motorcycle that looks a lot like a slightly scaled down GS1200 BMW.

My RX3 along the malecon in Loreto, Baja California. That’s the Sea of Cortez in the background. I covered a lot of miles on this motorcycle. It was one of the two best bikes I ever owned (the other was my KLR 650).

Joe Gresh (shown here in the Gobi Desert) and I rode RX3 motorcycles across China. It was the ride of a lifetime.

A lot of the China haters claimed that Zongshen copied the styling from BMW (hey, nearly everyone else did, too, on their adventure touring bikes in those days). There sure was a big cost difference, though. BMWs were going for $25K; the RX3 sold for $2895 when it first came to America.

The RX3 proved to be a remarkably reliable motorcycle. We took a dozen Chinese riders on a 5000-mile tour through the American west, Gresh and I rode a 6000-mile loop through China, I rode around the Andes Mountains in Colombia, and we did numerous Baja rides with groups of CSC riders in Baja, all without a single mechanical breakdown (well, we had one guy break his gearbox in Baja, but he was a guy who liked to shift without using his clutch, so I’m not counting that one). The RX3 is a wonderful machine.

I was one of the key guys involved in bringing the RX3 to America, and I’m proud of that. It was one of the high points of my professional life and my riding life. I wrote a lot of blogs for CSC and several books about my adventures on the RX3. I think the RX3 is one of the best motorcycles in the world. I wish the bike was still in production.

You know what? In searching for photos of my old twins, I found another single I’d forgotten all about. It was my Triumph Cub.

I never put the Cub on the street. I just rode it a bit in the fields behind my apartment building and then sold it. It was crude compared to other bikes of the era, but it was nice. It would be worth way more today than what I paid for it or what I got when I sold it.

Next up in our Quantos Pistones series? The Twins, of course. Stay tuned.

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Évora!

By Joe Berk

I know, we’re a motorcycle (and other interesting stuff) site, and you might be thinking this blog is going to be about a Lotus Evora (the Evora is a Lotus sports car). The Evora is probably an incredible automobile, but that’s not why we are here today.

The word Évora is a feminine word of Portuguese origin; it means “she who lives near yew trees.” That’s about as irrelevant as the big photo up top. But hey, we’re a motorcycle site, and who wouldn’t enjoy a photo of a Barbie-themed pink BMW cafe racer carousel ride? I saw those carousel Beemers as we walked into Évora. They called out to me. I had to get a photo.

But I digress: Our focus in this blog is indeed Évora, but it’s not about the Lotus. It is about a small 2,000-year-old town in Portugal, a World Heritage Site, named Évora. Before I get to the Évora photos, let me digress a bit more and tell you about our stop as a gas station on the ride from Lisbon to Évora. That gas station had a magazine rack. They still do printed motorcycle magazines over there, you know.

On to Évora. One of our first photo ops was the Capela dos Ossos (the Chapel of Bones). It was one of many churches we would see on our travels through Spain and Portugal, but this one had a rather bizarre twist: The walls and columns are covered in bones.

Yep, I said bones. Human bones. Weird stuff, this is.

An interior shot of the Capela dos Ossos. The little 18-55 Nikon kit lens was earning its keep.

The thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone…or something like that. Skulls, too. Go figure.

The Capela dos Ossos is a small chapel (it’s located next to the larger Church of St. Francis), and it was built by Franciscan monks in the 16th century. I guess they wanted it to stand out, and to accomplish that, the guys dug up medieval cemeteries and used the bones from an estimated 5,000 dead folks as interior decor. It was weird, man. Bones. I tried to imagine the conversation hundreds of years ago that led to this decision. Sue and I have had interesting discussions about our interior paint and wallpaper choices. I get it that these decisions are not always easy and everybody has opinions. But bones? Those old Portuguesers must have had some spirited interior decor conversations. Paint? Nah. Wallpaper? Nah. Tiles? Maybe a little, but everybody’s done tiles. Bones? Yeah, that could work.

All this kind of made me think about cremation as an alternative to burial, but I’m not going with either option. I’ve already left directions to my heirs. I’m going to be stuffed when I go. Stuffed with bullshit, and mounted in front of my laptop. You know…so I can keep writing the blog.

One thing I love about travel anywhere is that it gives me lots of photo opportunities. Here’s another picture of a more conventional statue in the bone barn.

High ISOs, the 18-55mm Nikon lens, shooting in RAW, and Photoshop’s noise reduction filter brings it all home.

Gresh asked me about two-stroke motorcycles in Portugal. The only one I saw was this older Zündapp. It was very clean, it was plated, and it was obviously still in use.

I would see a few more two-stroke motos in Spain, but two-strokes have pretty much had their day on the Iberian peninsula. Bultaco, Ossa, and Montesa (or was it Montessa?) are no more. Gresh loves his two strokes and he owns several. I’ve only had one, a BSA Bantam two-stroke.

An excellent resource: The Clymer BSA book.

My Beezer didn’t look anything like the one you see on the Clymer BSA book above (which is an excellent reference, by the way). Mine was a clapped out, rattle-can black beater bike. But it was fun and frisky and for a 175 it had power way out of line with its displacement. Maybe some day I’ll get another two-stroke motorcycle, but the odds are low. The way the world is going it’s more likely I’ll have an electric motorcycle first, but that’s a topic for a later blog.

I’m digressing again. Back to the main attraction. Colors abound in Portugal. I grabbed this photo of a few plates on display.

As we walked through Évora, the door handles and knockers caught my attention. Here are a few photos.

The macro shots of the door knockers were fun. Take my hand…

A set of stereo knockers. The one on the right sees the most use.

Many of the doors were cool, too. I’ll show more of these photos in subsequent blogs. I took a bunch.

Cork is a big industry in Portugal, and we saw many different cork products (cork bowls, cork pads, cork purses, cork hats, and more). Did you ever wonder where cork comes from? Cork is made from tree bark (something I did not know). The tree is called a cork oak, and the bark can be harvested every 9 years after the tree matures (the bark grows back). Spain and Portugal are the dominant suppliers.

Our local tour guide with a chunk of cork oak bark stripped from the tree. Who knew?

Évora is a colorful place. Walking Évora’s narrow and climbing streets was fun, and the photo ops made it even more so.

Évora dates to the Roman occupation of the Iberian peninsula. The remains of the Temple of Diana are on a hill overlooking the city’s center; the temple was built in the first century. It’s known today as the Temple of Diana, but that’s not what it was when the Romans built it. A 17th century priest, Father Manuel Fialho, is believed to be the person who tagged it as the Temple of Diana. It’s too bad we don’t do politics here on ExNotes; this story screams out for a Father Fialho comparison to Fox News or CNN (depending on which way you lean).

Portugal is a well-developed nation with excellent roads. I’d say it is better-maintained and cleaner than a lot of places I’ve been in the US. The expressways were every bit as good as ours, and other than the fact that signs were not in English and there was little traffic, the freeways were no different than the ones in southern California. The climate is about the same, the towns and roads are much cleaner, and we didn’t see any homeless people. Prices on everything except gasoline were similar to those in the US (gas was around $8 per gallon), but the average wage is substantially lower (their average annual income is about a third of ours). Somehow they make it all work.

The photo below shows the view from our bus just before we entered Spain.

Espana bound. Spain was a quarter mile in front of us. We didn’t need our passports to enter Spain nor did we need to stop. It was like driving across the state line between California and Arizona.

I’m skipping around a bit. There’s more to cover from our time in Portugal, and I’ll touch on that in subsequent blogs. For now, it was on to Spain.

To be continued…

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A 1950 BSA Bantam

I provided just a hint of the Motor Museum of Western Australia’s treasures so far, and a few days ago I started that with this teaser of a Beezer photo…

The bike you see above is a 1950 125cc two-stroke BSA Bantam, and it’s significant to me because in the late 1960s I actually owned one of those bikes. It was nowhere near as beautiful as the one you see here. My Bantam was painted kind of a rattlecan flat black, it had no muffler, and the lights didn’t work. I bought it for $30 with no title, I rode it in the fields behind our place for a month, and then I sold it for $50 after leaving it on the front lawn for a day with a For Sale sign. Grand times, those were. I didn’t even know the Bantam’s displacement back then, but I knew it was a Bantam, and the thing had a surprising amount of power. I guess that’s what two-strokes do, and it kind of explains good buddy Joe Gresh’s fascination with the oilers. It’s the only ring-a-ding-dinger I ever owned.

The Bantam at the Motor Museum of Western Australia is just flat stunning. I had no idea they came in living color, and I sure like the colors on this one.

Colors that would rival a modern Harley. This is a good looking motorcycle.

Check out the decal on the case behind the engine. I’m guessing it held tools or maybe electrical connections (one of the early Bantam models actually had a battery, but it was located in the headlight).

BSA stands for Birmingham Small Arms. Yep, they started as a gun company, kind of like Enfield. You gotta love the stacked rifles logo.

Everything was mechanical and simple back then. Take a look, for example, at the front brake and its adjustment mechanism. Simple. Cool. You could actually work on a motorcycle without an iPhone or a computer. Better times, I think.

Some of the old British motorcycles of the 1940s, 1950s, and even into the 1960s had magnificent mufflers. This one stood out.

This, my friends, is a motorcycle muffler!

In researching the Bantam, I found a few facts I did not previously know. For starters, the design was based on a German DKW, and it came to England, Russia, and the US (yep, Harley had a variant) as war reparations at the end of World War II. Incredibly, the British redesigned the engine as a mirror image of the German original to put the shifter on the right side (or, as they might say, the “correct” side). They did a few other things, too, such as converting everything to English units (from metric) and incorporating English electrics (think Lucas, the Prince of Darkness). The 1950 Bantam only had a three-speed gearbox, but it would hit 50 mph. Interesting stuff.

So there you have it. Classic bikes galore. And there’s more. Stay tuned to the ExNotes blog, as we have a few more photos from the Motor Museum of Western Australia to share with you. There’s good stuff coming and you’ll see it right here.

More Dream Bikes? You bet! Just click here!