OLLIE’S ODDJOBS
Ollie glances backwards through the smoky haze of history to recall his MZ years…
Ollie glances backwards through the smoky haze of history to recall his MZ years…
Most people can remember their first bike, often with considerable affection. Mine was an MZ TS150 Eagle, which was the posh one in lustrous black with the rev counter and the chrome tank panels. It cost me £349.99 and I loved it. It took me everywhere, and I mean everywhere. I went from Land’s End to John O’Groats on it and won a long-distance award for riding from Exeter to a rally in Buxton. In February. It only ever broke down after I’d tried to do any work on it. And then I stuffed it into a grass verge in a burst of spirited enthusiasm one night, and that was that.
Years passed. And then I acquired my second MZ for a tenner. This was a 1973 ES250/2 Trophy, one of those curious beasts with leading link forks and a vast front mudguard. It had been sprayed matt black and came with three tea chests full of spares and three spare wheels. I stashed the tea chests and wheels in my shower and looked forward to a jolly summer of blue smoke and belting around on my bargain buy.
Like my TS150, much of the bike appeared to have been carved from chunks of solid aluminium, possibly with a chisel. I did wonder for years where the East Germans got all this aluminium from, and being one brought up on Fritz-bashing copies of the Victor and Battle Picture Library, I’d assumed it was all a lot of melted down post-war scrap. I’ve subsequently discovered that most of it would have come from the Hungarian and Romanian bauxite mines and DDR smelters. They had lots of the stuff. Stylistically, the ES250/2 is actually prettier than the later models. If you ignore the front end, that is.
Regrettably, unlike my first MZ, this one was abysmal. It would take ages to thrash it into life, probably because of worn out crank seals, but to be honest the problem could have been anything from the rat’s nest of wiring to the spark plug I couldn’t get out. It was a challenge to get it to run for more than five minutes, and often it would conk out without warning and more thrashing away would be needed before it spluttered into life again.
It was, I felt, appalling to ride, with its mudguard and front-end lurching about, and I could never quite get to grips with the fixed headlight, which made for a disconcerting riding experience. As did the handlebars being mounted on the steering stem, rather than being fitted to a top yoke. As I steered, the headlight pointed resolutely straight ahead, while the huge front mudguard pointed in the direction you were going. This would have made riding it at night on a twisty road a challenge, with the 6V headlight bulb adding to the excitement, had I felt inclined to ride at night… which I didn’t. I suppose that had I been able to get it to it run a little better I’d have got into the groove of the thing, and such foibles would have just become part of the riding experience.
Given that the thing cost me a tenner, I shouldn’t really moan and I suppose it’s possible that the bushes on the Earles forks might have benefitted from a drop of oil and wouldn’t have caused things to lurch around quite so much. (Not grease. They were designed to use oil because East German grease wasn’t very good, allegedly. I suspect that ongoing maintenance wasn’t top of the list of previous owners’ tasks. It certainly wasn’t on mine.)
After few months of unenthusiastic ownership, I popped a small ad in the local paper (remember those?) to sell it, saying ‘offers invited’ and a very strange man with a foot-long white beard and appalling body odour turned up on my doorstep. He brought with him with his very large twin sons, neither of whom appeared to have a chin.
He went into paroxysms of delight over the MZ and offered me £50 for
it. Then I told him I would throw in the spares and he got even more excitable and offered me £100. ‘So, you, er, like MZs, do you?’ I asked.
‘Yes. I’ve got nine,’ he said. And he and sons took it all away. This was a relief as I hadn’t been able to use my shower for some time, and I was beginning to get a little noisome myself.
The ES250 experience rather spoiled MZs for me. For ages I’d been smug in the knowledge that the MZ brand, to which I had been such enthusiastic fan, had combined quality German engineering with a rugged socialist work ethic and that my TS150 had as a result been superior in almost every way to its peers, from wherever they came. Apart, possibly from the tyres, which seemed to be made of some kind of leather. Now my confidence had been shattered by the knowledge that they made some terrible motorcycles too.
I’ve since made the acquaintance of several ES250s and their owners and been assured that they’re an engineering marvel. The handling remains a challenge and is best described as ‘interesting’. The riding position is unusual because the footpegs are a long way forward, which is not uncomfortable, and you can barely feel the engine thanks to the rubber mountings. The front brake isn’t great, as MZ never really got the hang of braking until they discovered discs. You can fiddle with the drums to make them better, or just try not to get into situations that test the limits of retardation. So it’s perhaps just as well that the eengine isn’t exactly bursting with power.
I don’t think I’ll be desperate for another go on an ES250 at any point soon. But if anyone has a TS150, I wouldn’t object to finding out wwhether they’re as good as my fuzzy, ring-a-ding memories suggest…