Quote:
Originally Posted by Jake
Now i am very particular to my very rosey tinted specs - comes with age me thinks - But to say the Japs were building quality back in the 70's seems to be stretching it more than a little bit
The actual build quality of many of the bikes was simply appauling, They were often very heavy,handled like bags of potatoes, paint peeled - that's if they were painted my Yamaha (an xs 1100 sport) had no paint on the underside of the tank, the engine paint peeled within months, chrome 1 micron thick if you were lucky and the downpipes rusted quicker than a Lancia beta.
Engines were often reliable but dont forget the many were not - design failures chocolate cams etc come to mind - you just do not hear of the failures so much these days. Even the premium jap stuff of the day were not in the same league as the premium European built bikes.
Generally the bikes rusted the electrics could not cope with wet conditions, (am i talking about jap or italian here - hard to tell isn't it they were both bad) but the japs also added cheap frames some were pressed steel and fairly poor quality with flex very common. cheapest of the cheap brakes, suspension and tyres all built down to a budget for very dry climates in The wet cold UK - They were terrible.
Performance wise against European competition at the time they were poor (i owned Ducatis, Laverdas, Moto guzzis and BMW's during that period the laverda was very very reliable ( and had jap electrics !), the Ducati i also used as an everyday bike and travelled often between Cornwall and Scotland it never let me down My BMW r65 was very reliable and my bmw r80 and r100s was exceptionally good. (my Guzzis were generally poor on the reliability front and worse than the japs on finish -i have owned several since that time all have been pretty unreliable - but they are still my favourite bike !!
These days I think the Jap's Builds good quality at the budget, with good engines and electrics if largely bland bikes in my eye (rose tints coming on here).
|
Many of the bikes you mentioned are about a decade after I started biking and the Euro / Jap contrast at that point couldn't be greater. Friends in London who couldn't get to Southend (about 30 miles) on their C15s and Bantams or the south coast on their A65s (about 60 miles) without breaking down while we went to Morocco and Greece on Jap stuff- 250 Yamaha / 300cc Honda - without any real problems. 650 and 750 Triumphs that couldn't do a long trip (Greece / Black sea / Italy) without having to be rebuilt or recovered while a 650 Yamaha / 550 Honda had only minor issues or no problems at all. Even towards the end of the 70's when BMWs were starting to be widely used they'd need more attention that our Jap stuff (earlyGold Wings by then).
I agree that the quality of the materials probably wasn't as good as the British or Euro stuff but to be honest I didn't care then and I don't care now. What mattered to me was the design, how reliable they were and "image". Value for money was probably in there somewhere but not that high on the list.
Mollydog's memory that BSA and Triumph (forget about Harley!) were THE bikes to own on the West coast around 1970 is a strange inversion of what my London based opinion was at the time. BSA et al were just oil covered greasy throwbacks with downmarket working class connotations and had lack of imagination failure written all over them. Can't afford a car or not able to pass your test - ride a BSA with a stick for a sidecar on L plates.
The Japanese stuff otoh were high tech, brightly coloured and forward looking. Modern cutting edge designs that worked and kept on working. These were leisure bikes rather than ride to work plodders and as such represented our London vision of what California was like - bright metallic paint and chrome glinting in the sunshine. A lifestyle. All I needed was a blonde girlfriend to finish the illusion!
In addition, because they were dismissed as here today gone tomorrow (how can anything rev that high and not fall to bits) Jap cr@p, it annoyed all of the ageing 60's rockers when we turned up anywhere on them.
In general I didn't (and still don't) pay much attention to magazine tests when it comes to choosing what to buy. All the Brit bike fanaticism and ride the flag marketing that filled the pages of mags back then put me off. I could see with my own eyes piles of broken Triumph parts littering the sides of roads yet year after year the new, improved, better than ever road tests were extolling their virtues. I nearly got caught by the long range Norton Combat Commando and how it could effortlessly drone on for hundreds of miles on a tankful of fuel but fortunately came to my senses in time.
There was one article however that did it for me. An oddball article, it compared two bikes - a 500cc Velocette and the then new Kawasaki H1. The Velo represented to me everything that was wrong with Brit bikes - an old design, an old image, an old mindset, whereas the H1 was cutting edge (it was 1970!) That article did it for me. I couldn't afford one then (although I came very close to blowing my student grant on one a couple of years later) but as soon as I could I bought one - and I still have it now.
However - that was then and then is now a different country. I look at what the Chinese are turning out and wonder when they'll come up with something that'll make the Japanese offerings look old and tired. History won't repeat itself but there is a lot of corporate complacency in the Japanese factories in recent years. That it's possible to compete with them now is evidenced by Triumph, BMW, Harley et al but they all have the drawback of only producing relatively small numbers of big bikes. The Chinese seem to be doing what the Japanese did back then - starting from the bottom up and producing in volume. At the moment it seems more like the 1950's with a huge range of never heard of them manufacturers but I suspect things will change.
20Likes
Threaded Mode
