Leftovers, Spares and Bitzas Bikes...

[asasin]

I have brought back this thread to see who else runs true Bitza bikes in competition. are there alot or not?
My bitza is as follows. Cooper frame rear end modified to maico specs shock position etc. Yss shocks YZ250 motor Suzuki 125 rear hub. Suzuki 250 frunt hub ( I have thought about a T500 hub ) ,Husky tank, TM guards, cooper side covers , gripper seat ,high rise handle bar mounts , DRz foot pegs , beta forks revalved and lenghtened. Bitza pipe ( 3 different bikes).
This is for our classic class in NZ.
 It handles really well and stops good , I like the moter power  but cant stop the blooby motor from detonationg. in the mid range.

[JC]

Got a pic of it?  Love to see it

[firko]

Wow, my kind of bike! Let's see a photo of that Cooper thingy.
I've built a whole bunch of bitzas over the years, some horribly unsuccesful like the XL Honda powered Montesa King Scorpion or the Triumph powered M11 Bultaco, and some extremely successful like my current batch of custom framed Yamahas and my DT1 from Hell.

The DT1 started life as a pile of unrelated parts and was built on a challenge to build a competitive DT1 racer from my mate Geoff Eldridge. The heart of the bike is the frame which started life as under an RT1. Initially I started with the usual 2'' lowering of the subframe but early in the piece a friend donated a badly rusted and weather worn OSSA Stilleto roller that I soon noticed was of similar frame design to the Yamaha. Before long I'd cut the OSSA frame in half and grafted the front section to the Yamaha frame. The frame is OSSA from the front engine mounts up, including the steering head to the top rail under the tank. By a stroke of luck the OSSA top rail inside diameter was the same as the Yamaha outside diameter so the OSSA graft slipped over the Yamaha rail like a sock over a cock. It was then noticed that the rake was too far out, a bit like a chopper so I used the well respected old boilermaker raking technique of heating the frame top rail immediately behind the steering head to a cherry red colour and rolling the bike with considerable gusto into a brick wall until the rake looked 'about right'. I then gusseted the area to prevent any further involuntary rake change! The first series DT1 'square' swingarm was lengthened 2".

To simplify the build I used the OSSA tapered roller steering bearings, triple clamps and Betor forks to which I fitted OSSA Phantom dampeners and Ceriani springs. The one mistake I made at the front of the bike was to use the absolutely awful and heavy OSSA front wheel because it looked cool and had shiny S/S spokes and a nice Akront mudcatcher rim. I tried everything to get that bloody OSSA brake to stop..all to no avail. The tank and seat are stock DT1 and the front mudguard is a genuine Yamaha GYT high mount alloy guard, the rear a fibreglass replica of a stock DT1 'guard I'd bought at a swapmeet. The side panels are from a '75 Maico, painted candy apple tangerine to match the stock '69 tank colour. Rear shocks varied between alloy Konis or Boge-Mulhollands. The rear wheel was originally from an MX250 but I later went over to one from a Mk8 Bultaco Pursang. Despite it probably being ilegal, nobody ever protested it. The engine is where the bike excelled, the cases are early series DT1 fitted with YZ250A gears, DT2MX crank and clutch and DT400 CDI ignition. The cylinder was donated to the cause by this forums Yamaico Pete who informed me years later it'd been ported by road race legend Warren Willing. The GYT head was revamped to YZ250A specs by 'Professor Pete' Reynolds, a porting guru who now builds amps for rock bands. The carby is a 34mm Amal taken straight from a Weslake speedway bike using the stock Weslake settings and jetting. It was planned to alter the jetting to suit later on but it worked perfectly on methanol right out of the box and the carby never had the bowl off after the first ride.

Initially I used a GYT pipe fitted with a Supertrapp muffler but as we developed the bike "Professor Pete' built a sweet 'low-boy' fatty up pipe that crossed over the top of the engine into a muffler made by yours truly. Looking back, the pipe is what really produced the horses from the bike but in today's stricter rule environment it'd probably be considered politically incorrect....sort of like a pre '70 version of Diamond Lil, for those who are aware of that bike.

The bike performed extremely well, far better that the original expectations, often winning the pre 70 class on both motocross and dirt track with various riders including myself. Kevin Flood rode the bike to two runner up Nationals spots behind Boagies CZ in an era of two complete grids of pre 70 bikes when the top riders competed in the class. After a nasty crash caused by a stuck throttle at Pacific Park in which I ended up with a broken elbow, broken sternum, two broken ribs and other cuts and bruises I rarely raced the bike until I took it out for its last blast at the final Condo meeting in 1999. It now rests partially dismantled in the garden shed awaiting a comeback one day. That wonderful engine is to be utilised in my upcoming Hindall DT1 special however, only this time out with a 36mm Mikuni and Avgas.

Looking back without the rose coloured glasses, the bike was in reality an over powered heavy pig of a thing that tried to kill nearly everyone who rode it (and nearly succeeded on a couple of occasions, hence the name, christened by the late Tony Kirby). However the bike packed a very high cool factor and despite its high state of modification it still looked like a fairly standard DT1....the main aim of the exercise. Prior to building this bike I had little interest in DT1 Yamahas other than an admiration of their place in our sports history but owning this bike changed all that. Today, I've got a mini DT1 fetish thing happening with a restored '68 stocker and four DT1/RT1 based specials languishing in various states of build. I truly believe that a DT1 or RT1 is the cheapest way of building a truly competitive pre '70 class bike. The DT1 is the 55 Chevy of the motocross world.....infinitely hot roddable and way cool.
 

[Tim754]

"the bike was in reality an over powered heavy pig of a thing that tried to kill nearly everyone who rode it.." So you have had a VMX sidecar too Firko

[asasin]

Will post a pic when I get the tank signwritten,

[pancho]

 In the old 'good old days as opposed to the now good old days, just about everything was a hybrid, however the one I shall refer to is the 'transport' machine required to get me to work from Mulgoa to Clyde every day.
 As the four wheeled mode of transport was a seriously heavily used Austin A50 that leaked so much oil out the rear main that the clutch slipped I need to find/build something else and leave the A50 at home for necessary local trips by my better half...so having recently put my B33 engine into a slider frame, I had the duplex Beeza frame, plus various spare bits.
 So, dirt bike frame, little seat little home made tank, [a bit small] 350 flywheels & clutch, 500 barrel & head scrounged a headlamp and tail lamp, an old magdyno I had, nobbly tyre on the front and a grasshopper on the back [very popular tyre in those days] and up to the rego office. Bingo! a ride to work machine.The clutch slipped if I gave it a handful but for 6 months into a new house scraping and scrimping it filled the bill!
 cheers pancho.

[firko]

The TM/TS VMX magazine project bike.
This bike was inspired by a particular annoying bloke who continually waffled on about how expensive it was to build a race bike. I spoke with Ray Ryan about this and we decided to go with building a bike using left over, scrounged and donated parts using a particularly ugly '75 TS 250 Suzuki with a broken frame that a mate donated to the project. I'd previously found two TM 250 Suzuki frames in a skip bin so using the best of those frames I rubbed it back by hand and sprayed it with a couple of $2 rattle cans of gloss black. The TS engine was in surprisingly good order having being rebuilt a couple of years earlier so it was given a quick rattle can spray job and fitted to the TM frame. I wanted a pseudo RH look so a pair of RM125 side covers were painted and fitted. Dave Tanner donated a genuine opaque RH rear 'guard and John Glendenning donated a matching opaque Preston Petty Tony D that had started life on one of Gally's Yamahas.I cut the 'wings' from the leading dide edgres of the 'guard to help the 'guard fit the lines of the bike more smoothly. I fitted new seals to the skip bin TM forks and after a quick squirt of thwe ubiquitous rattle can black they and the matching triple clamps were fitted. I found a couple of usable tyres in the skip bin at Penrith wreckers so they went on to the original TS rear wheel and a TM 250 front wheel I had in the stash. I fitted a pair of Inter-Am gold anodized solid alloy bars, the levers and cables from the donor TS and a Taiwanese Gunnar Gasser copy throttle. A pair of $5 bargain bin grips rounded out the controls. I fitted a pair of Curnutt shocks that had once been on my AW Maico.

A mate donated the unknown brand plastic tank that'd lived on his TY Yamaha. It took me a week to meticulously remove the white enamel paint to uncover the original yellow plastic. Mal Sargent in NZ donated a set of TM tank graphics. The seat that came with the skip bin TM had a good cover but a rusty base and the other a good base but crap cover. It was a no dollar, no brainer to combine the good top with the good bottom for a perfect seat.

At this stage the bike was pretty complete and had only cost about $100 total. We still needed a decent carby and an expansion chamber so my mate Stan loaned me a ratty TM pipe and my parts stash unearthed a 34mm Mikuni that had once lived on one of my Maicos. I then decided to splurge $50 on a mildly ported TM250L cylinder, head and piston from a mate of a mate and the bike was fired up and ridden at our farm for an outlay of about $150. The bike wasn't a world beater but it would have made a perfectly adequate race bike. In the end the borrowed pipe self destructed so I bit the bullet and bought a brand new Circle F pipe from the USA bringing the total to around $500 give or take a few dollars. The bike was ridden occasionally but because I've got better race tackle it remained in my shed for the last few years until a couple of weeks ago when I pulled it out to check her out. I'd ratted a few parts for my TM400 build and the poor old thing was looking pretty neglected until I got a major brain storm that'll see the old project bike back in the limelight.
                     


With Bankstown-Wylie Park Club about to kick off American style short track at Nepean on the speedway track, we've decided to convert the old TM into a cheap but trick flat tracker. Yamaico Pete and I will be doing the build as a co-production with the finished result to be used by one of our Klub Kevlar mates who doesn't currently own a dirt track bike. Seeing that he was the person who originally donated the TS donor bike 10 years ago, it's kind of ironic that the bike will complete the full circle and go back to him. Of course it'll be a kind of courtesy bike for anyone who wants to try the new kind of racing without having to buy a bike. The serialised build will kick off on the forum after Pete returns from Indonesia and completes his current online el-Cheapo project. Stay tuned.