Bikes remembered

There are bikes which become lost in the past until one turns up and people say “oh, yes, I remember them now…”

There are some bikes which disappear from the consciousness until someone turns up at a trial with one… Remember the RTX?

Turning back the tide is never an easy thing to attempt, the tide in this case was the rising cost of trials bikes which was putting people off entering the sport. The problem stemmed from a shift in reasoning where a trials bike was a lightly modified roadster and broadly speaking similar to the rest of the models in a manufacturer’s range. The fuel and oil tanks might be smaller, narrower mudguards would be fitted, a single saddle might replace a dual one, lights removed and so on. All easily done in the parts stores of Any Maker You Like Ltd.

Even when the Spanish industry started making dedicated machines it wasn’t too bad, but once the technological march started at the end of the Eighties things started to become expensive. Do we really need to point out such technology has to be paid for, and the more bikes sold the easier the cost is to distribute, but if the sales are down then the cost of an individual unit has to go up. Along with the technology advances trials themselves had become harder and more technical and there were people who clamoured for a simpler life when trials were cheap and fun.

It is a brave person who sets out to halt this progress but Nev Mason did his bit from his Humberside base. An importer for Russian motorcycles such as Minsk, Nev was well aware of the costs associated with sport and, given his working relationship with the Russian industry, felt he could make a new bike for the cost of a secondhand one. Colin Thompson is regarded as the most knowledgeable about these machines as Paul Norman, whose bike is featured here, says: “Colin was RTX works rider…” Relating this to Colin he good-humouredly knocked the natural ‘Norman’ embellishments from the story.

❝ ... a simpler life when trials were cheap and fun... ❞

“I knew Nev reasonably well through the trade and was a trials rider, he called me up one day and said ‘come over, I need your opinion on something.’ The something turned out to be a 125 RTX prototype, I rode it around his yard, said it felt right and had potential, next thing I knew the bike was apart, in Nev’s car and off to Minsk Motorcycles in Belarus.”

Eventually there were a range of capacities available for the twinshock machines from 125cc to 212cc with the rarest of all being the 150cc pictured here. The factory used their road bike engine and parts from the road bike range to build the machines on a dedicated RTX line in the factory. Colin tells me there was nothing overly fancy about the machine but, while built to a price or as cheaply as possible, the bike wasn’t cheap or rubbishy. Yes, maybe the factory did use steel tube of a more substantial gauge than other frames and maybe the carburettor came from India, and so what if the hubs were from an earlier Minsk model, the bike could be had for under £1000 and quite a number were sold. Nor was the factory unaware of trends as there was a prototype monoshock with a disc brake under evaluation at the time, the bike is still around and under renovation, so look out for a feature later.

Below: Paul is developing his machine: Rockshocks handle the rear though the mounts have been moved, footrest positionismovedtoo.

1: Nev Mason classed his RTX frame as a ‘perimeter’ type, in which the petrol tanks sits, and a glass fibre shield covers the top of the frame.

3: A basic, 150cc, four-speed Russian twostroke engine, parts are still available.

4: The tank cover hides a basic alloy fuel box and the top of the frame, the cover was originally made in the UK.

5: There’s hardly a gap anywhere between the engine and frame, the exhaust tucks away neatly too.

2: Minsk roadster forks were used but the sliders were turned down in lathes to make them round alloy, we understand more modern internals are inside the stanchions.