Ten greatest lemons

The good folk at Andover Norton in the UK speculate, “This contraption tried to convert a totally competent sports motorcycle into a caricature, a monument of bad taste and non-functionality…” and, it was “not offered in civilized countries, but only in the Colonies”.

This abomination was built in a couple of guises based on the 750 and 850 series twins, from the early ’70s right through to the early ’80s – though only very modest numbers were actually sold.

The ape-hanger handlebars instantly removed any notion of steering accuracy from an otherwise capable chassis, the 9lt peanut tank on the original 1972 version ensured you wouldn’t get far anyway, while the ‘one man plus hobbit’ seat and sissy bar ensured the owner’s reputation for being a drug-addled loon was carved in stone.

This was an invention of the West Coast USA Norton distributor and just 50 are said to have been sold.

Many manufacturers came up with some appalling ‘soft chopper’ versions of otherwise capable road bikes during this period, as they desperately tried to chip away at Harley’s market. This was easily the most appalling example.

As Spannerman commented: “Everyone wanted it to be the sophisticated Japanese answer to the Triumph 750, but it was a service disaster. Imagine having to replace the crankshaft every time an oil change was specified. The TX500 was nearly as bad but at least the service failure was (always) the head gasket. Yamaha entered the four-stroke world the hard way.”

The issue for the TX750 was the Omni-Phase balancer system. It employed one balancer to cancel out the effect of the pistons and another to smooth out the effects of the first balancer. In proper shape, it worked a treat and the bike was uncannily smooth. However, the balancer tended to whip up the crankcase oil into a useless froth, starving the crank of oil, while the balancer chain would stretch, throwing out the entire system. Subsequent design changes for the 1974 model fixed the issue, but too late to save the machine’s reputation.

Weirdly they’ve developed a modest cult following, particularly in Germany and Holland.

Though little, light, potentially very powerful and fast (up to 265km/h), the machine suffered from hopelessly inconsistent fuel injection at a time when the factory lacked the resources to sort it. Customers were paying US$30,000 (a fortune) in 1997 and soon began demanding their money back. The firm came up with an Evoluzione Strada version fitted with carburettors, but it was too late.

Bimota famously spiralled out of financial control and went down the slot by early 2000. Only 340 of the proposed 500 units were made.

In an era (1975) when it was considered desirable for a home mechanic to be able to service and tune their own motorcycle, the RE5 had enough complication to scare any would-be amateur mechanic witless.

The spec included lots of sensors and relays, three different oil tanks, five cables co-ordinated off the throttle, plus an automotive carburettor that proved very sensitive to tune.

Then there was the Georgetto Giugiaro styling on the first model, which was seriously ‘out there’ for its day.

It was a bold plan, carried out with huge corporate courage and determination, but doomed to failure. Now a desirable collector’s bike, the RE5 was quickly usurped by the ever-so-conventional and fondly-remembered GS750.

I was running Australian Motorcycle News at the time and somewhat reluctantly handed it over to Ducati nut Mark Reed to test, fearing it would get an over-enthusiastic, gushing review. He later returned from his first ride looking like someone had shot his favourite puppy. Oh dear.

So what went wrong? This was a time when Ducati was facing the new-found sporting might from Japan in the shape of iconic machines like Suzuki’s first GSX-R750.

With 16-inch radial tyres, all-enveloping bodywork and full-featured dash, it looked the part. However, the otherwise successful Pantah engine struggled against the performance might of the Japanese multis.

More critically, it was seriously hampered by the odd choice of carburetion, an automotive Weber. It performed poorly in stock tune and in fact AMCN (despite remarkable resistance from the local importer) was instrumental in finding a good alternative via the local Weber distributor. However, it was never a truly great match.

Adding to the woes was a questionable electrical system and stiff pricing.

It took two major make-overs to arrive at the liquid-cooled and injected Paso 907ie, which was an infinitely superior machine.

Harley first commissioned the liquid-cooled and fuel-injected VR1000 superbike project in 1988 and, if it had made it to the track relatively quickly, say in a couple of years, a significant part of the corporate history would be quite different.

Instead, it wasn’t until 1994 that the machine really took to the track in anger on a regular basis, by which time it had been well and truly swamped in the horsepower race. Despite that, the under-funded machine was becoming sorted by 1996 and was scoring some respectable results, with the odd podium place in the savage AMA Superbike Championship.

It also attracted some serious riding talent, with the likes of Miguel DuHamel and Doug Chandler taking a turn at the ’bars.
A small number ‘road’ versions were made for race homologation, though the popular story of the time was that they were only road-legal in Poland – the population of which could ill-afford the fantastic $US50,000 price tag (then close to $90,000 in Australia)

The VR1000 race project was given its last rites in 2001, while a version of the powerplant migrated across to the V-Rod cruiser line-up. Buell took up the American mass-market sportsbike cause, but we all know where that ended up…

Okay, so the idea of a V8 motorcycle had a huge amount of appeal for many of us – gawd only knows why – and we might even be prepared to pay a premium if it wasn’t one of those dreadful things with a Chevrolet powerplant shoe-horned into it. There were, unfortunately, a few catches.

It originally looked like a cross between a Kelvinator and a startled bullfrog, it cost US$45,000 or more, and it was doubtful that the company doing it all had enough money to pay the rent, let along provide warranty back-up. Then the original styling was toned down, to the point where it just became frumpy.

We’re told just four were built. That’s a pity really, as the specifications looked okay on paper, with about 88.3kW (120hp) from the pretty sexy-looking 850cc, quad-cam, 90-degree V8 punting a 200kg dry weight.

Kawasaki won a world championship with this bike’s namesake in 1981, and the two machines shared much of the design approach though not the actual parts. We can only assume the GP bike was easier to start than the production version, which is notorious for unexplained sulking fits.

One user group offers, somewhat despairingly, this: “Airlock in the fuel lines? Badly sealing disc valve? Dodgy low-speed ignition pick-up? Loss of compression caused by heat expansion? Well, the Japanese KR community say it’s down to setting the primary gear dampers up correctly…”

Then, once you do get it going, there’s a fair chance you’ll cook the powerplant. A period road test suggested: “It’s happiest between 8000 and 10,500rpm. When the engine hits eight grand at full throttle in first gear, the front wheel claws for the sky while the KR leaps forward…”

And this is where the trouble really begins. It was a ratbag bike designed by ratbags for ratbags. So it rarely saw much below redline on the tacho and didn’t take at all kindly to long-term, flat-out riding. It’s a great machine to own if you’re an enthusiastic two-stroke mechanic and a right bugger if you just want to ride it. (Note: If you want to see the world’s most fluoro website, visit the UK owner group at www.kr250.org.)

Such is the story of the Honda NS400R and the MVX250, both of which mimicked the V-three two-stroke engine layout of Honda’s successful RS500 Grand Prix machine (and NS500 works version).

The 400 is a sought-after classic these days, while the three-cylinder MVX was recently scored by website Faster & Faster as the worst two-stroke road bike ever made.

Mechanical issues were its most notorious problem, with the rear cylinder prone to meltdowns.

However, the packaging also played a major role. While the NS400R actually looked like a GP bike, the MVX was a more half-hearted road effort with that absurdly complex inboard disc brake on the front end. One has to ask why?

The twins were variants of the marque’s Jupiter family, sharing some parts with the Planeta model.
Allow me to offer a quote from a contemporary UK road test: “The first few days on the bike really were misery. Nothing seemed to work right, the machine jarred on my senses and I was not enjoying it.”

The author went on to say that he gradually got the machine adjusted better and learned to make a lot of compromises himself, which improved matters. However, “Our first reaction never changed: it is ugly, full stop.”

In Australia, the Jupiter 350s were famous for nipping up every 20 minutes or so in summer, until you got around to altering the jetting for local conditions.

Of course the justification for their poor quality was they were cheap transport for the masses. Then again, so was the Honda Step-Thru…

Personal Tragedies
We asked assorted staffers to fess up on their worst-ever motorcycle purchases…

I raced it, thinking it would be faster than the 250 because it was really just a 125 with a fat engine.
I holed the right-side piston at every race, usually while leading but always a lap before the finish.

The 200cc version of the bike had an electric start that didn’t work and doubled the bike’s weight. Its last ride was to the tax office for a compulsory ‘meeting’ just after an engine rebuild.

I was trying to work out why the new piston didn’t have a ring stop in the ring gaps. What would prevent the rings from sliding around, expanding when they got to the ports and being snapped off?

Twenty feet from the tax office, the rings slid around and got snapped off in the ports…

Yamaha’s 360cc trailbike was a beast of a bike. Mine had a kick-back like an angry mule, so brutal in fact that the crankcase split near the kick-start spline.

I’d bought my RT2 cheap as my hack for road and occasional trail riding. It had an aftermarket plastic front brake lever, which did nothing to assist retardation whatsoever.

I sold the RT2 – before my ankle got shattered or I was T-boned a car…

Not an especially robust machine, it was also slow, didn’t brake particularly well, and handled woefully once the suspension got a bit of heat into it.

I was eventually to discover the handling degraded even further if you picked up a hitchhiker with a Gladstone bag, and a dog. But that’s another story…

This was one of the few bikes I was certainly never, ever, sorry to see the back of.

I had to pull the head off twice before I finally found the misfire was in fact due to a bent distributor shaft. Then, soon after I sorted that, the generator stopped charging. With a new regulator fitted I was finally free to enjoy its fierce (for its time) acceleration, its top gear flexibility and the lovely whine from the gears that linked the two crankshafts. Top speed was down though on that of the Triumph Tiger 110 the Square Four was replacing in the Blackbourn garage.

Then some mid-corner bumps in a fast sweeper upset it, ultimately flinging me down the road while it cart-wheeled itself to destruction…

Story courtesy of Motorcycle Trader