Me and my Stinger
The obsession with Stingers goes back more than 40 years to when I was on day release at college. The T125 was already old hat by 1974, it was three years since the last one had been made and close to two since any had been sold. And yet there they were, three of them parked up of a Thursday looking like nothing else; I found them mesmerising even if they were only 125s. Fast forward to 2004 and I get a call from my local dealer, Flitwick Motorcycles, about some random old Jap bike a customer has taken on. Apparently the guy was obliged to buy a T125 from a terminally-ill mate in order to obtain the pre-war Sunbeam Lion he wanted. After much discussion and tyre kicking I bought the then mauve Stinger for £250, complete but a total and out-and-out wreck, everything was seized solid. I told myself stupidly that everyone should restore at least one basket case and this was the going to be my crack at it. How bloody naive was that? The first few years I just fed it cans and cans of penetrating oil simply to make some form of progress. Sitting in my mother’s garage the Stinger would get a periodic hosing of GT85 and then ACF-50 along with the odd poke and prod. I dragged it out one day and scraped three margarine tubs of oily grit from the bottom of the engine... I didn’t know until then it had a finned sump! I only stripped it down when I’d found sufficient parts to start on the motor, just to find the pistons and rings were corrosion welded to the
bores leaving 3mm deep pits! Due to a myriad of parts issues, rotted out components and delays in finding suitable parts the bike remained ‘work in progress’ for eight years until
it finally fired up in 2017 some 30 years after it was last on the road! It will forever remain a keeper and may well end up next to me in my care home to remind me of just how special the 1970s really were. To all the companies, friends and contacts that assisted in getting the Yellow Peril back on the road please accept my heartfelt thanks… I couldn’t have done it without you!