QVMX go Pre '90

[worms]

Bloody hell, i just realised i was going to get the Motul girls for the Nationals next year, but their not VINTAGE, the sky is falling again!

wait we could allways get some Pre 90 girls, they would be 20 or so! are we happy with that?

we have got plenty of time to debate this , i could probally ask some grandma's along to keep everyone happy and in their comfort zones.

over to you Magoo

Cheers Trev

[TM BILL]

There has been a lot of good and bad points point forward from both sides of the arguments. Being relatively new to VMX, I would only offer this opinion;
I think we are all loosing site of why we are in the sport! IT'S ALL JUST ABOUT RIDING BIKES AND HAVING FUN, NO MATTER WHAT THE BIKE IS  OR WHAT YEAR IT WAS MADE, WE DO IT BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT WE LOVE TO DO. GET ON OUR BIKES AND RIDE THEM OR SIMPLY WORK ON THEM IN THE SHED, SIT AROUND WITH OUR MATES, DRINK BEER AND BENCH RACE!
Let's not loose site of the simplicity of being a motorcycle enthusiast!

Dont think that because some of us dont think theres a place for pre 90 in VMX that we dont like the bikes. No question there are some way cool bikes in the 85 to 90 era and beyond particularly the factory bikes . If i had more room in my shed i would own bikes of all eras , but at vintage meets i will ride my pre 75s and pre 81s and take the newer stuff to modern meets or trail riding. At the end of the day any day on any bike is better than a day at work or on crutches LOL.

[magoo]

Hey Trev, aren't you glad I started this? I am, it's great!!!

[firko]

To put any misconceptions away, I'm not against a pre 90 class at all. My misgivings are purely based around the class being introduced too soon. As I've said numerous times, the sport must move forward to survive but we shouldn't be doing it in a hapazard manner. Pre '85 was only ratified last year and now, with only one official National title to it's name, the shop floor is calling for a new class upper age limit! It wasn't all that long ago we were debating the same very points for the introduction of pre 85.

Anybody who really knows me will tell you that I have no particular bias in my old bike motocycle tastes. Although I raced in the pre '70/75 era and therefore it's my main interest zone, I have a genuine fascination with 80s big bore MXers, to the point that I'm about to import one from the USA. I say this because I see that it may be concieved that I am a pre '75 tragic with no interest in any other divisions. I love 'em all but even moreso, I love the sport and want to see it continue in a positive direction. That's why I'm advocating a softly softly approach to the further introduction of later classes. I want to see the pre '85 class approach some sort of potential before it's superseded and some new energy pumped into the tired classes we already have.

I must admit though, it's been a far more interesting debate than 15 pages of Suzuki footpegs

[Nathan S]

I've been reading back over this debate this morning and I think that we've all made our thoughts pretty clear on both subjects. I found one small point that Nathan has raised a couple of times that I feel needs to be questioned.....

I know plenty of people with pre-75 racers who won't race them (or race them very sparingly) simply because its too hard to find parts.

This is a total Furphy. I've been around vintage motocross for 24 years and have built a large and varied number of bikes. During that time I've hardly had any problem finding parts.
....

Yep, fair enough.
What if I change my original statement to:
"I know plenty of people with pre-75 racers who won't race them (or race them very sparingly) simply because its too hard to find parts, or those parts are too expensive.".

In this era of CNC mills and lathes, and TIG welders (etc), everything can be reproduced if you can afford to pay for it.
But lots of us, faced with needing to reproduce/find a part that's going to cost a significant amount of money, will prefer to leave the bike in the shed (either still broken, or after finding the money to fix it once).

What's a Montesa piston worth?
RM370 rod kit (not pre-75, I know)?
+0.50mm CT1 piston?
YZ125A rings?
Phantom gearbox bits?
Elsinore alloy fuel tank?
RM370 rear hub?
PE rear guard?

And finding parts for a resto that's not going to be ridden/will be ridden infrequently, is quite different to needing a solid, reliable supply of bits for a bike that will be thrashed around the track once a month.

[firko]

Jeez your a picky bugger Nathan  . The cost and sometimes difficult availability covers all vintage bikes from pre WW2 to Pre Iraq. It's a part of the game we play . It's unfair and unrepresentative to single out pre '75. If I did my homework I could list a bunch of difficult to find pre '90 parts as well. My point is that using the "can't find parts" excuse isn't valid for pre'75 and shouldn't be used as an excuse for not building a bike in any era. As a wheeler dealer and parts chaser extrordiaire you know quite well that most parts are reasonably easy to find if you know the ropes. You're just being argumentive now.

[Nathan S]

I dunno - I'm not trying to be argumentative...

But I find that its the little stuff that causes me grief on the older bikes. To use just one example: Finding decent Yamaha 34mm fork legs has been a real struggle, and I'm now at the point where I'm looking down the barrel at spending nearly $300 to get a pair rechromed... I know that's not a real lot of money in the big picture, but it would have blown my DT175 and DT1 race-bike projects clean out of the water.
In contrast, I bought a pair of excellent condition YZ465H forks for $80 at my local wrecker - with no sweet-heart deal.

When I found a cheap source of RT1 pistons, I bought one of each size without hesitation. But I've failed to find CT1 pistons at any price, and have even resorted to buying second hand barrels from Ebay in the hope that I can match up used pistons with other barrels.
And that stresses me.
I want to build a good CT1 racer (ha!) - because I really like the way it goes, and I'm comfortable and relatively fast on it. But while there's a cloud over the availability of basic maintence items like pistons, I'm not going to do it.

Maybe my experience is skewed, but on the whole, I've definitely found that the newer the bike, the the bits are cheaper and/or easier to find.

Its the basic rule of supply and demand - as a bike gets older, the supply of parts diminishes, and (if the demand is still there) the prices go up.

[worms]

not one comment about the pre 90 Motul girls?

Haphazard! i think NOT, proactive is a better word.
 until this point everybody rolls along doing what they must with no guideance from the Gods of VMX!, not a peep, but then how dare we.

so what are we really debateing, the right of clubs to move forward on what ever directions the memmbers vote for( it could be Trikes next), or does pre90 ( as you see we call it pre 90, NOT vintage pre 90) allow memmbers to ride these bikes as well. Just a little side note from the AGM, we didnt have a group of outsiders with placards screaming we want pre 90, it was brought to the table by the memmbers, ( where are the Gods when you need them?) so the push is from within and from pre 75 riders?

are we keeping up, as i went to my rule book , because the gods weren't available, no-where does it state pre90 can never, never be discussed and to be never mentioned anywhere.

Fact, it's included as a demo class until all memmbers contribute opinions by the 31 march 2009 which means we will have 1 race day with these horrid machines.

Back to the Motul girls, could the gods please advise if they want grandma's or pre 90 girls for this event?

By the way, i am trying to buy a 1974 OSSA SDR to race pre 75.

Pre 90 vintage, no way, is pre 90 an era, hell yes.

Cheers For now, off to the Vinduro where you can ride Pre 90 no hassels, hang on what does the 'vin' stand for in Vinduro?

Cheers Trev

[Wombat]

not one comment about the pre 90 Motul girls? Haphazard! i think NOT, proative is a better word.
 until this point everybody rolls along doing what they must with no guideance from the Gods of VMX!, not a peep, but then how dare we.

Back to the Motul girls, could the gods please advise if they want grandma's or pre 90 girls for this event?

Whoa, whoa, whoa!!! Settle down Trev. I just got out of bed and logged on.
Don't be booking boilers in a hasty spiteful rage!

The bikes should be vintage. Just the bikes. Not the girlies and not the food and drinks.
The riding apparel should also be vintage (but that's just my personal opinion on the matter).

So, bikes vintage and hotties modern...please.

[Graeme M]

I have said this before but I like to hear myself talk so I'll say it again. I believe that 'Vintage Motocross' is not about riding a bike that's 20 years old (or 15, or 30 or whatever). It seems to me that it's celebrating that particular time in motocross when it was evolving from a run what ya brung road bike to specialist off road bikes. The machines were often spindly poor handling things, but they were all short travel things. 7/4. The commonly accepted cutoff is 1975, simply because after that, we had a sustained period of real evolution that continued until 1990, took a short break, and began again in about 1998/2000 with substantially improved suspensions and four stroke engines.

I would really like to see this concept of 'vintage MX' recognised, even enshrined. I think we need different class names for the later stuff. If we must have year classes (and I don't even agree with that to be honest), then sure, have them within the broad 'era' structure.

I can't remember what I wrote last time, but I think I said that Vintage is Pre 75.
Then we have 'Evolution' - 1976 to let's say 1980-ish - ie drum brakes, twin shocks, air-cooled, not pre 75.
After that we have the trend to discs, water cooling and so on. What could we call that? I've proposed 80sMX and even toyed with getting a website going (which fell through cos I am too busy with this one!).

So, we'd have Vintage, Evo, and 80sMX.  How easy is that? You can have year cutoffs in that if you wish, but as Pre75 slowly withers due to age/interest/costs/bad hair days, perhaps something more likely to encourage larger turnouts would be worth considering.

Evo and 80sMX could use rules more in keeping with the technology than strict years. It shouldn't have to be about making sure it's a level playing field so the fast guys can win fairly. It should be about encouraging more riders to get out there and enjoy riding an old bike. I am never going to win anything but I love racing my '75 RM125 in whatever class it fits, even ACT's weird 'Old School' class. It's about having plenty of interesing bikes to look at. You only have to look at a Pre75 125cc dirt track class to see what technical superiority does to a class...

In 80sMX, we may not even need to use a Pre85 or a pre90 concept. Smarter minds than me could suggest what could be used. But then again, we could stick with existing year cutoffs.

And just because we already have rules in place that specify year cutoffs doesn't mean we can't throw the lot out and start again.  Lordy, surely we aren't that unbending?

As for race meets, I'd rather see fewer regular events that focus on the eras along with a few biggies for all classes. It'd make for more and better riding, keep rider numbers up, and encourage a more era sympathetic atmosphere. Speaking of HEAVEN, imagine a HEAVEN 'Vintage' meet at Bulahdelah, or even say... Rockley, that is purely Pre 75. And imagine that it isn't about endless classes filled with three bikes droning around, but combines classes in to say Clubman and Expert for the year classes - Pre 75, Pre 70 and Pre 65. Why, you might have full grids of magnificent old bikes ripping around the track. Fast guys way out in front, but in the pack blokes on TM125s mixing it with guys on YZ250s and Bully Pursangs. How much more interesting to watch and fun to be part of? And just imagine a full on 80sMX day at Canberra? No sluggy old shitbox TMs and CR250s with thei dumb low pipes to get in the road of everyone tearing around on sparkling 84 CR250s and 88 YZ250s... Sounds good to me.

Lastly, with this in mind, we might all loosely call any old dirt bike 'Vintage', and we might talk about VMX as a catchall for what we do, but Vintage in its true, unambiguous, unarguable way would be Pre 75. And that's that.

PS I also like some of Rick Doughty's ideas as in the interview on McCook's site...

http://www.mccookracing.com/interviews/rickDoughty.htm

For example: Evo 1 or Pre78 encompasses the early long travel bikes that really hadn’t figured it all out yet. Evo2- is what I call the “original recipe” because it is what we started with; air-cooled, drum brake and no linkage. Evo 3- is the pre-disc brake era (the introduction of disc brakes is a huge advancement). Evo 4- is Pre-90. Decade is anything 10 years old and older.

[Wombat]

Thanks for the link in your last post Graeme; a good and important read for all interested in this topic.

The first half is Rick's personal history, but the remainder explains the rift with the AHRMA and Dick Mann and how the VMX kicked off in the USA.
His thoughts for the longevity of the sport make good sense - to me at least.
Good historical stuff (and yes I recognise it's Rick's version of VMX history...).

Tidying up the classes is a good idea.
As keen as I am to keep newer bikes out of VMX I have to agree now with the need to 'tweak' the system.
Tweaking is what we do with the air screw on the carbie - softly, softly, a bit here and there until it's running real beaut!

Separating the classes in line with the proposal in this article, re-naming others to enshrine 'vintage as vintage' should ensure longevity of the sport.

But hey, it's all debate so let's keep the opinions coming; as long as we remember we're all here because we love this sport.
No-one is wishing to harm it.

[firko]

Once again, sorry to take take a different fork in the thread here but this debate has morphed into four seperate causes. The pre 90 debate has been refreshingly free of any major angst because I'm certain all of the holders of the vastly differing views all have the good intentions of the sport in mind and are mostly open minded enough to understand opposing views. The pre 75 sustainability issue to me is by far the more important issue as I honestly believe that we need to maintain the traditions of our sport. As I once wrote in an ADB piece "to appreciate the future, we need to embrace the past">
The third issue that's branched from the initial debate is what to call the pre 90 class. If and when it comes in, I don't have any problems with calling it post classic or something similar under the general umbrella of Vintage Motocross as a generic term for all old dirt bike classes. I'm not so anal as to want to disassociate pre 90 from the other vintage classes. The fourth issue to emerge from the debate has been Nathans assertions that parts unavailability is one of the factors in pre '75s problems. I maintain that pre '75s part availability is no better or worse than any of the later divisions with the probable exception of pre 90.

Finding decent Yamaha 34mm fork legs has been a real struggle

Nathan...This is your lucky day. If the forks on my DT1F are OK (BELOW)  you can have them for free. In fact you can have everything I'm not using which at this stage will be everything except the seat and engine. Just come and pick it up. Remember though that these bikes very old and have usually been to hell and back so to find a set of forks that don't need rechroming is almost a religious experience. Not everything can be done on the cheapo, for any age division. My point is still that from experience building bottom dweller cheapo bikes and expensive upmarket blingers, you can usually find the parts eventually. CT1 piston port pistons will be hard to find because 1: they're not a popular bike and 2: they were only produced for a one model stretch. But I bet you'll find one eventually and it won't cost much.


Phanton transmission bits? Stilletos, SDR and others all used similar or identical transmissions. Phil Young has used alternative model bits in his and Gary Hodges Phantoms for ever and he's the OSSA guru. Elsinore fuel tank? They come up in all sorts of condition for all sorts of prices with regularity on eBay. I've got two, and no, you can't have them. You can however find them in the exact same way I did!
Hve you tried Thailand for the YZA rings? I've had outstanding success finding parts for my DT1 and TS90 out of there. Jonesy buys his SL125 Honda bits there. Once again, easy peasy on eBay. And so it goes on. As someone else quoted, part of the fun of building these bikes is the hunt for parts. The elation when you find that elusive part easily overcomes the earlier frustration.

 

[Maicojames]

I will look with great interest at how the Pre-90 classes work out in Oz. Here in the US, we still had( this was before the last economic dump) many good "Ultima" or Pre-85 bikes going for cheap-namely 84RM250s and 125s from $800 -1800 US-that is running raceable bikes.

I realize that my point of view is called fearful and all. I just really like the older bikes, but to me my favorite era is 75-77-hence my debate about letting select 78s in the class. My personal finances have been in the dony for a while, now we have recession. I do hope and expect that all the classes are strong when I can $ up for a bike( though I am working on bits now).

For pre-90, I would say the 88 RM250 is a killer-and due to its dated for the era looks -a sleeper. A bloke I raced with had an 88-and stock it would run away and hide from my 89 and 90 RM250s. The 88 and 89 KX250 were great too, along with the much hyped 87 CR250. To me, the 88 was abetter engine, but like the 89 suspension was harsh. With years behind us, though the suspension will likely be made eqaul to the best of th era, and the 88-89 CR 250s will likely be top dogs in class. Personally ,I liked the next generation of bikes, notably the 93 KX250, 93-95 KTM, and especially the 93 and 94 Honda CR250.

[mike1948]

All the previous posts have given us an opportunity to make our point, hopefully we, in the long run, will agree to disagree, and then get on with riding our old bikes and having FUN.

I guess there is a requirement for strict class controls for state & national titles, so those of us who are ultra-competitive can compete on evenly matched machinery - though even in my early days, bikes being the same year did not make them equal.

I race maybe 3 times a year, in an area where there simply aren't enough bikes to run reasonable fields in most classes.  Probably 2 of those 3 meetings are an invitation to demo the old bikes at a modern competition.  The organisers try very hard to schedule us early, when the track is at it's best

Maybe there will only be enough riders/bikes to run 1 VMX & 1 EVO class, all capacities in.  One race will range from Firko's favourite lobito to RM125s, up against B50s & radial fin Maicos, and the same for the post 78s. 

And YES, these races are the most fun you can have.  If you're worried about the field spreading out, try to con someone into organising a handicap race.

No protests, no arguments, go at your own pace.  Maybe a trophy for the rider who fell off the most!

I'm quite sure the VMX resurgence was focused on reliving past glories, without the intensity, but retaining the Bull & Beer sessions afterwards.  Let's not get too tied up in the detail, at the expense of why we're doing this. 

ps, Firko, I lied about the Lobito.

Mike

[vandy010]

had a bit of a laugh today, met a bloke while rockclimbing and got talking about MX.
turns out he rides a modern WR450f and went on to say his club caters for the vintage guys as well.
turned out he was talking about an 88 model CR250.