Honda Express - Unwanted gift

Trip down to Southend for the last two days. I have left Susan there for a week so she can interfere with and attempt to reorganise our daughters life. This agenda is hidden under the guise of helping with painting and other DIY. We have never yet managed to organise Amy's life yet so I doubt we will be any more successful now.

Any way, a year ago I gave them a yellow Honda Express which I had rendered roadworthy. Despite dreams of zipping down Southend front leaving behind a thin blue haze of exhaust it has languished under a sheet in their back yard with only an All Terrain Bike and a mountain of dog ends dropped by the neighbours for company. So I have brought the unwanted gift back to Newark and it is now on Ebay. Might make £75, we'll see.

Admission to addiction

I think I have a craving I need to confess to. My name is David and I am addicted to putting adverts in the paper to see if anyone has an old moped for sale.

The excitement and adrenalin rush of it all. Cold sweats and bitten finger nails waiting for the advert to appear. The phone call from the hopeful seller. The 40 mile trip to view. Peering into the broken down shed to view the rusty heap. Paying £40 for something worth £25. Spending £60 on it. Selling it for £80. On Ebay.

I did it again last week, furtive advert in the Lincolnshire Echo not disclosed to wife "anyone got a Honda C90 for sale"? One reply which seemed hopeful and I arranged to view today. As my garage is full I decided to get rid of the Puch which you see here so onto Ebay it goes. It came from Epworth the birthplace of John Wesley. Space needed for my "new" Honda.

Unfortunately the guy selling the Honda has now rung to say he can now not go ahead. Gone into cold turkey. When the Puch has gone I will have a tiny space in the garage that must be filled. Must get in touch with the Lincolnshire Echo classifieds again tomorrow.

Born to be Mild

Out for a run this morning on my 1991 Honda C90 Cub. Seen here parked by the Little Witham river in Lincolnshire. The plan was supposed to be that I renovate mopeds in the winter and ride them in the summer. The main rationale for this being that I don't fancy getting cold and wet.



My recollection of riding a Triumph Tiger Cub in the winter in the early 60's is of being frozen to the point of immobility. Mind you it seemed to cure my chilblains as I have never had them since. My grandma's remedy for them was to soak the offending finger or toe in urine so maybe I had been doing that. My memory is not what it was.

Winter riding does not now seem so bad. There could be a number of explanations for this. Am I less sensitive than I was? My family support this thesis. Maybe I now have better weatherproof clothing. Looking at the pictures of me riding the old bike this could very well be the case. Perhaps I don't go fast enough. Almost certainly true.

Or is it global warming?

I bought the Tiger Cub from Tony Gray for £9.00 in 1963 and it was either a 1956 or 1959 plunger framed model. The registration number was KTL 266 and I wonder where the bike is now. If you know please get in contact.

In those days we painted our own helmets (you can probably tell). I still have the crash hat hanging in my garage. I originally painted it with green and black house paint, but whilst it was drying someone knocked it into some sawdust. My mother probably, always trying to spoil my teenage fun. The sawdust gave it an interesting texture but not much street cred with the other young bikers or the young women we tried to impress. It looked a little like a decorated half coconut on my head. Nothing for it but to sand it down and refinish in blue, black and white. An improvement though it still had a pimply appearance, a bit like it's 16 year old owner.

Blogger on a Moped

This Puch MS 50 V first rolled out onto the highway on February 1st 1971. George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" was just about to fall from the top of the pop charts when Leslie Dalby of Gainsborough became the proud first owner. Perhaps I am wrong but I suspect that Leslie the Puch purchaser was not a devotee of Indian mysticism like George. I know nothing of Leslie except that he possibly worked on the railway and may have used this bike to get to work. If any one reading this knows anything about him then please get in touch.

As far as I am aware I am the second registered owner. I came across the machine in a farmers shed in North Lincolnshire where it had lain neglected and partially dismantled for many years. After brief negotiations £40 changed hands and I loaded what appeared to be an incomplete heap of rust and filth into the back of my car.

As any resolute moped restorer will know sometimes the apparent basket case does not turn out as hopeless as initially feared. After a fair amount of hard work, a moderate investment of cash, and the assistance of Jim Lee (Puch expert), the bike was restored to a roadworthy condition. No problems with the MOT in April 2006 and the moped has since been ridden on several hundred miles of country road. It has a top speed of somewhere around 35mph and is great fun. Acceleration is as you would imagine fairly poor and therefore they are not ideal on busy roads or in urban traffic.

Puch mopeds were made in Austria from the 1950's. The MS50V model and similar derivatives are very well made with a sturdy pressed steel frame and a 49cc two stroke motor with fan assisted air-cooling. They would have transported many thousands of men and women to their place of employment during the fifties, sixties and into the seventies. Steyr Daimler Puch imported MS50V type mopeds and subsequently Puch Maxis into the UK and for a time they had a healthy share of the moped market. However despite their many qualities they could not offer the level of sophistication available to the UK commuter from bikes like the Honda C50, C70 and C90 and new Puch mopeds do not seem to have been available here since the 80's.

If you come across one, remember it is a piece of transport history. Buy it and either restore it or give it to someone who will.