Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. I thought I would write occasionally about my old motorcycle restoration projects, mainly MZ, Jawa and CZ though there are others. I will also write about the places I go and visit while riding them and occasionally I may post stuff about industrial archeology too.

This blog is for my amusement and to record stuff I may otherwise forget in the future, but if anyone else likes it too, that would be a great bonus.

I frequently make mistakes in the workshop, and I will share them on here warts and all so I can learn from them and maybe you can too.

Saturday, 7 August 2010

New arrival 2


Another machine I saw on Ebay, a real rarity in this country, an MZ RT125/3. This must be the most copied motorcycle in the world, it is what the BSA Bantam was copied from. The original RT 125 was a pre-war DKW bike, and seeing the need for cheap transport for the masses, the allies took the design as war reparations after hostilities had ceased. The bike was copied in West Germany, Russia, England, Italy and America to my knowledge, maybe other places too. After the war, the DKW factory was in Russian hands and eventually became the MZ factory. This the /3 model is the last of the line, this example dating from 1960. The /3 is the one to have in my view as by this time it had gained full width brakes and 4 gears instead of 3 making it more usable in modern day traffic.

The photo shows the bike in the driveway of the seller, with one of his friendly dogs in attendance too. The bike needs a lot of work as although many parts of it have been powder coated, it has then been loosely assembled to make it mobile and easy to sell. I can tell that there are several small parts missing but I relish the challenge. I am not sure when I am going to get to it though, loads of engineering projects to do here.

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