A decade of broken bones-80's motocross

A fella i met recently remarked he was fixing up an old Motocross bike he had bought. He wants to race it  Bit sad i thought, seen he was nearly my age with a belly and too much disposible income. But then i became 'sucked' into the conversation like the nostalgic 'saddo' i am and quietly thought to myself 'yeah i'd love to do that!'

. He had bought a bike and refered to it as an 'Evo'? bike. It was one of the bikes i had raced back in 1987- a Cr250 Honda and i enthusiastically explained to him how to do 'this' and 'that' and found i was suddenly 23 again for a short time.

After selling my last dirt bike and walking away from the bone breaking, adreanaline soaked sport that is motocross in the 90's vowing never to get back on one again i ended up looking at a box of old photos with cobwebs on and recalling the thrills and spills and thousands spent selfishly in the persuit of a plastic trophy worth bugger all- why does any sport that is potentially fatal at worst, lock a persons brain up in a must beat 'em at all costs' mode. It costs a fortune, is noisy (a lot noisier twenty yrs ago) anti social, dirty and dangerous?

Any sport which you may become 'sucked' into has its risks and if you start young enough in any sport you will have reasonable success with a little drive. Especially with like minded folk around you. Today sports like this may be frowned on not least because of environmental concerns, but you cant help where you grow up and who or what may influence you in your spare time.Plus when you are younger you want more fun than routine.

being around mountains and deserted hills in Wales where many old Coal mine spoil heaps were left as monsterous reminders of our appetite for mineral enegy, many of the locals would ride wrecked old bikes up and down the black coal slag heaps. A few of us 'grew up' and some of us didnt. I didnt, i enjoyed the thrills of bouncing down a 200 ft spoil heap in the pouring rain and racing around a makeshift track with my pals. At least we wern't doing drugs or stealing cars and it was a great outlet for the abundant energy of a our teen yrs.

My job became a way of funding this and eventually entering the world of competitive motocross. The bikes we rode in the early 80's had rubbish suspension and brakes and unreliable motors,-even the Japanese hadn't really got their act together then. From 1980 onwards technology made leaps and bounds each year until most MX bikes now look similar, go well and are much of a muchness, except for the stickers.

There are rarely bad 'uns now, but folks who raced in the seventies and sixties would no doubt say the same. But i reckon more advances in the design, suspension and tolerances were made in the 80's decade- thats when computers began to aid iin the design and manufacturing for the first time. Also in the UK it was a time when motorcycles sales were at there highest historically. They have not matched that time since.

Look at some of the bikes opposite and see what a difference ten yrs made. I used to think Yammie monoshocks couldnt be improved upon until i rode a later KTM from '83 and became amazed when even later rear discs were fitted as standard to Honda's then the seats were nearly all the way up to the tank cap on Suzuki RMs so your balls were punished less and less and getting of a start line was easier.

Now all this stuff is commonplace- decent rider ergonomics, lightweight, power, reliability, handling etc- anyone who rode an '82 KX420 wil know the meaning of 'leper' as they tried to remedy their poor handling, detonating KX in a MX paddock in 83-84 or how if you landed hard of a large jump on a KTM 400 with twin shocks in 1980 your feet would be swept of the foot pegs because of poor footpeg position- or trying to start a Cr 480 Honda after three laps of mud in the urgent thick of a 20 minute race-or how the pads in an '87 500 KTM would not last an hour in a muddy hare& Hounds race or the imploding gennys on a Can AM 400 or a shearing Woodruff key on an '85 500 KTM Or fighting with a wayward YZ 490 in '82 which felt as though it had a hinge in the middle or the overly long front suspension on any early crosser or rapidly deteriorating Jap shocks or the abundence of Left kickers from Europe ( which i personally loved) -get the picture. They are a lot better now it seems just more expensive and prone to exploding because the design engineers seem to press engine parts to their limits with mega high revs to produce the lightweight power of a good two stroke- a major pollutor.

The 80's decade every year bikes looked dramatically different, every year seemed to be planned obscelecense, with more gimmicks to increase sales than did any good- anyone remeber the '85 Cr 250 with that stupid exhaust chamber under the exhaust manifold, which was a lot slower than the '84 model or yamahas usless 'plenum chambers, and a host of alliterated gizmos fitted here and there to encourage potential owners to buy their bikes.

All interesting and great stuff to anyone who was famillier with that decades bikes, but it was a decade of 'lottery buying' when you bought your second hand yr or two old bike for the next seasons racing- after a good year on a 500 i tried a year on a 125 coming from a bad arm injury, but wish i hadnt chose an '87 KTM 125 -the previous yrs machines were great but many owners of the '87 125 bikes who used them hard would find exploding bores/ pistons and gearbox selectors. They were a bag of S*%^e!.

This term i now see regularly when enthusiasts refer to  all of these 80's bike is 'Evo' bikes.I guess is accurate enough but all the bull*&it terms folk use for anything today seem so passe in converstion like the cheesey words used to sound 'cool' and with it, some recent conversations i have had- people have refered to conversations between two as an 'interface' Bleagh! and 'social networking' and almost made up words like 'synergy'- what the f%*$ is 'synergy', i think it was a certain type of valve fitted to an '86 Suzuki?!

Seen as i have attained the staus of an old fart and proud of it, 80's bikes to me are 80's bikes. The flippers i use for scuba diving will always be 'flippers' and not 'fins' as the younger generation like to remind me etc etc. The world is flat and in my mind it will always be flat!!

Tell me what were your memories of 80's motocrossers. My hero out of Dirtbike mag -back then was Tom 'Wolfman' Webb and Rick Siemens.