Basket Cases

[Greg Harding]

Hi Everyone,

In an effort to stimulate interest in trials (at a local level as a bare minimum) I have, for a number of years now been inviting an lending old trials bikes to anyone who shows an interest! Starting out with TY 175,s as they are a good all round bike and not too heavy! Incidently one of my TY 175,s has had fifteen different people ride it in the time that I have owned it! Yes they are old bikes which have seen some action and wear their scars proudly! Quite a few people have had some good fun and some have gone on to buying their own bikes which is great. I find most newcomers are reluctant to spend enough money to buy a better quality bike, which as we all know makes riding easier and possibly more enjoyable! With this in mind, I find a free ride is good for them to get a taste. Now I have 2 x TY 175's, 1 x RL 250 as seen here ($200 special) and we have just got a TY 250A going, all of which I am happy to lend, more about the A model later.

We are posting a photo of the riders on Sunday, which in "TOP GEAR" terms was between wet and mildly damp! Coffs district has had enough rain to make our personal waterfall flow quite well which is a welcome rest area!

[Greg Harding]

Hi Everyone,

Just sharing the latest TY 250A, you may recognise the spare parts bike previously on page 2. The story is I bought both of these together for $300.00 the more complete one was basically all there but didn't go. I had it on the backburner while I was playing with the RL as it was not as easy to fix. With some help from mechanic friends, the A model lives! I assume it had been left sit for some time! The fly wheel was unusually hard to remove and we destroyed it in the process! However the spare parts bike had an excellent fly wheel. So points and condenser and clean out the carby and all systems go. The tank was extremely rusty so I left E10 fuel in it with magnetic hex drive bits and nuts inside. For 2 weeks I would drain the tank, leave some fuel, shake the crap out of it, drain and blow the metal bits out of the magnets, repeating the process on a daily basis. Suprising how the E10 desolves rust! The forks from the spare parts bike turned up a couple of weeks later and linished up good and now work well.

You can see it in the group photo at the back with Stu on it along with RL 250 and TY 175C hidden!

[Greg Harding]

Hi Everyone,

In my last quote, I discussed a TY175 which has had fifteen different riders in the time that I have owned it. Have decided to post some photos, as I think it is not a common model, I believe it to be a TY175JE which superseded the JC. Plus I have a slightly older JE basket case with the same graphics on the tank! As you can see in the photos, almost original condition and complete except no speedo. Every time I took a photo of the compliance plate, the flash reflected and you couldn't see anything, so I remedied the problem by putting my finger over the flash! I think this is why the photo is red?

[David Lahey]

Nice to know your blood is oxygenated Greg. The ADR plate photo is great and I see it also shows the frame number stamping in the same shot. It may well be a JE. There is a listing of the various common and uncommon TY175 models in an early issue of VMX magazine. Unless someone else wants to look the number up, I will - as a nice bit of bedtime reading tonight.
There is one of those same TY175s in our local trials club so they can't be too uncommon in Australia.

[David Lahey]

The TY175 reference in VMX magazine was contributed by Stephen Fox and lists:
1978 TY175 model with serial number range 1N4-100101 to 200000 as TY175JE
1976 TY175 model with serial number range 1N4-000101 to 100000 as TY175JC

[Stu]

David, how soon do we see your words of wisdom in VMX? Looking forward to them...

[David Lahey]

Hi Stu - my copy of VMX turned up about a week ago. Number 41 I think. There will be a couple of things about Trials in the next issue too.
David

[Stu]

well done on getting trials out there in the mainstream OZ print.

[Tee-Why]

Hi Stu - my copy of VMX turned up about a week ago. Number 41 I think. There will be a couple of things about Trials in the next issue too.
David

Congratulations to you David for getting a column in VMX, good to see some more exposure for Twinshock and Classic trials bikes in another medium.

[David Lahey]

Hi Stu - my copy of VMX turned up about a week ago. Number 41 I think. There will be a couple of things about Trials in the next issue too.
David

Congratulations to you David for getting a column in VMX, good to see some more exposure for Twinshock and Classic trials bikes in another medium.

Thanks Roger. I hope it is helping you out over there. I've had a few phone calls already from people who are interested in Twinshock Trials bikes but had no idea that anyone was riding them, until they saw the articles in VMX - especially the Brooweena article. It has worked out well having the contact phone numbers in there too.
David