Starfire

CHAPTER 26

STARFIRE

Mid 1970’s

In around the year 1976, I was riding around on a red Yamaha RD 350, well not red really, it was more of a dark mauve in colour, the bike was originally an American import with some slight cosmetic differences to the UK model, the bike sported a different type of rear light unit and some other slight changes, like the blanking off, of the 6th gear for some bizarre reason, but otherwise with the same engine and other stock items that you would normally get on the same U.K. model.

The RD was one of the most fun bikes I have ever ridden, the acceleration for the bike of it’s size was awesome, at one time, I out paced a Suzuki 750 from a standing start, it did over take me once we hit over the 100 mph mark, but by god it was quick getting there, I think I wheeled most of the track, the RD 350 had a lot of pros, but also had a few cons.

The front end was far to light for the amount of power it produced, if you opened the throttle up hard, your front end always pointed skyward, this could happen at 80 mph with very little effort, and another drawback was coming out of a bend and opening up the throttle before you pulled the bike up in an upright position, a number of times I have had the back end skip out while I had not finished leaving the bend and turned the power on to early, I soon learned not to open the throttle up to early leaving a tight bend after I nearly lost complete control of the bike taking a tight corner.

This RD, eat spark plugs, guzzled two-stroke oil like there was no tomorrow, and only did 35 miles to the gallon at its best.

These specs may have had something to do with the way I rode the bike, the only reason I sold the bike was because it was unsuitable for any long range rallying, I needed a touring type bike and that is why I bought a Honda CB 550 which was perfect for the job, and the RD had worked hard and covered quite a few miles for a two-stroke, and to be honest the bike would have needed some major attention to the engine eventually, most likely a barrel re-bore and possibly the gearbox which was getting very clunky, so it was time to move on to a new bike for numerous mechanical reasons.

Like I say the RD was a fun bike, but not really practical for any long distance riding, and Yamaha cost me a fortune in oil and petrol just riding from Pontycymmer to Wick village.

I always had a couple of sets of spark plugs tucked away under my seat with my tool kit, which I always carried around with me in case of emergency’s.

I had a little piece of kit that was a lifesaver and saved me money, I bought it at a bike show in Earls Court Bike Show in London, it was a simple design that helped to clean the carbon build up on spark plugs, it consisted of a long black plastic tube around 6” long with a threaded white screw cap at one end and inside the tube there were a number of very thin rods of metal that were about half inch shorter than the tube .

The idea was that you would screw the spark plug you wanted cleaned into where the white cap fitted and then you would then shake the tube up and down vigorously and the metal rods would wear off the carbon that built up on the plug electrode .

Ok, it sounds a bit naff, but believe me it worked, because of this little piece of kit, I always had at lest two clean spark plugs on me if the RD fouled a plug while I was on the road, which it did on a regular basis.

( Photo 1 ) . The spark plug cleaner, a great piece of kit, as you can see, I still have it in my possession, worth it’s weight in gold.

I was always tinkering around with bikes, I already had a TRITON that I was busy messing about with.

The Triton was an old bike with a Norton feather-bed wide-line frame and a 650 cc Pre-Unit Triumph Bonnie T 120 engine, and to be honest it had seen better days.

I rode it a couple of times, but found it unreliable and it needed constant attention and every time I went out on it, I always came back from a ride covered in oil and my arms ached from leaning so far over the tank. It was not a comfortable ride, and I did find at the time that I was a little to small to get the best out of the bike.

The way this bike was set up, I had to stretch over the long range fiber-glass tank to get at the clip-on handle bars and because of this I was always in danger of falling over when I stopped.

I needed both feet on the ground to keep the bike upright and the way the bike was set up it was impossible for me to do so, and starting the bloody thing was nightmare.

I had to put all my weight on the kick start just to get the engine to TDC ( top dead center ), positioning the pistons at this point in the engine helped to start the engine easier before I even attempted to kick the bike into life, so before I attempted to get the engine going, I had to make the bike safe for me to do so, it did not have a side stand which made starting the bike complicated, I always had to find somewhere to lean the bike over onto, a wall or even a lamp post would do, just to start the bike up.

In the end I sold the bike to Vincent Thorne who went by the nickname of TATTY, he was well experienced with old Brit Bikes, I think I remember seeing him ride around on a BSA 650 of some kind.

I never seen the Triton on the road after I sold it to him, I have always wondered what happened to it.

Just to clarify the name of the bike and why it is called a Triton it had a triumph engine this bit is the TRI part of the name and a Norton frame TON and from that you get the first three letters of the triumph and the last three from the Norton, which put together makes the name TRITON, I know some of you may know this, but I have been asked to explain some of the references I have used in some of the stories because not everyone is as old as us, and they did not grow up with the terminology we use.

The bike would be worth a small fortune now if I had kept it.

( Photo 2 ) . Me on my 650 Triton, the time line of this photo is anywhere between 1972-75, nice bike, but far to big for me to ride comfortably, I don't think those flared jeans helped, photo taken in my mothers back garden in Upper Adare Street Pontycymmer.

So, after selling the Triton, I was looking around for something else I could tinker around with and possibly ride without too much hassle.

My RD 350 was running like a Swiss watch and the Yamaha was easy to maintain and I had it's peculiarities sorted, e.g. : spark-plugs.

There is not a lot to do on a two-stroke engine, after all it only as three moving parts in the engine.

All you have to do is to just keep it clean from carbon build up at the ports, and service the bike on a regular basis and give it the right oil and you will have very little trouble with any two-stroke engine as long as the Carbs are set up correctly.

I always gave it a regular service and I never really had a problem with it except for it fouling spark plugs and that fault was really down to me, I always made RD bike run a richer mixture then it really needed, I worked the bike hard and I didn’t want the bike seizing up on me at high speed, so I was quite happy leaving a blue smoke screen behind me when I opened her up around the bendy bits of roads.

On my travels around the valley, I notched a bike parked up in a front garden under the front window of a house, it was not far from where I lived in the Garw valley.

I passed it a few times, and noted that it had not moved an inch in a long time, so I decided to stop and take a look.

The bike turned out to be a blue B.S.A. 250 STARFIRE.

So I had a little look without touching the bike and then knocked the front door it was answered by a 40 something guy with unwashed hair that hung down to his collar and I asked him if the bike was for sale, I thought at the time this guy seemed a little odd, I put it down to the fact that he was still living with his mother at his age, he was wearing an old dark brown jumper that had seen better days, brown corduroy trousers and to top off his clothing choice he had an old dark blue waste coat over the jumper and the jumper had what looked like the dried remains of an egg breakfast down the front, which my have been there quite a while from how dry it looked.

The bike had grass growing up over the wheel rims, it looked if it hadn’t gone anywhere in a long while.

I thought this could be just the right project for me after all the B.S.A. Bike company had a very good reputation for producing good quality engineered bikes.

I ended up paying £80 for the bike which was not really cheap at the time, but the bike looked in good condition and I liked the style of it, and at the time I didn’t think that I would have had any real trouble with it.

So I pushed the bike home with help of my friend Emlyn and the first thing I did was to remove all the undergrowth that was hanging onto it and give it a good clean down, on closer inspection it was in a very good shape and overall everything worked fine and nothing was missing.

All I needed to do was to change the oil and tighten all the nuts and bolts and oil the cables.

I drained the petrol tank of its old fuel and filled it back up with a fresh gallon of petrol.

I kicked the bike over, only using 3 to 4 kicks and it tried to start, the bike starting showing signs of life by coughing and spluttering and with only another 3 kicks or so it burst into life, once the engine was warm, it ticked over quietly to itself, not missing a beat.

So at the first opportunity, I took it for it’s M.O.T. at Pan’s bike shop on Ewenny road in Bridgend, it passed with no problems which surprised me and put a smile on my face, I had the bike ready for the road within a week, with minimal cost, everything looked good to go and then the nightmare began, and this is where I stopped smiling.

I rode the bike to work all week, and it didn’t miss a beat, it started every third kick or so, it did clunk a bit in the gears, but overall no problems with the bike in any way, it was running as sweet as a nut and seemed like I had bought a real bargain and was very happy with my luck of coming across the bike when I did.

So the first Saturday that I had off from work, I took the Starfire out for a longer run.

Well that was my intention.

I travelled as far as Brynmenyn village before it broke down, a great distance of around 4 miles.

In a way this was a good thing that happened in my life, because this is how I first met my life-long friends, Brian and Wobble.

I broke down right outside the front of the Miners Rescue Center at Brynmenyn.

I was riding along with no indication of any problems and then suddenly the bike cut-out on me, which in turn killed all the power, including the engine and lights and I coasted quietly to a stop right outside Brian’s house.

So, I started checking the bike out, looking for the problem that made me stop my journey so suddenly.

I guessed it was an electrical issue, so I was checking for lose wire connections and then Brian came out and offered to give me a hand with the bike.

In no time we found the problem, it was indeed a just a loose wire, this was quickly fixed.

I said my thank you`s to Brian, and then turned the bike around and rode off back up the valley, and used my Yamaha instead for the ride, I parked the Starfire up, to go out on another day.

I was not happy with some of the wiring so I decided to check out the wiring completely before I rode on any long journeys, all Brit bikes had a bad reputation and issues with wiring, so just to be on the safe side, I would check the whole wiring loom out.

I was not taking the risk of the Starfire braking down on me again, it happened once and could happen again, I needed to check all the wiring loom out for faults first, just in case there was an issue with the loom, as I have an electronics background, I had an idea how the wiring worked, I intended to check all the wiring before I went anywhere far with the bike.

The second time, I had trouble with the bike was only a week later, and again I only travelled 4 miles and broke down right outside Brian’s rescue center once again.

The rescue center in Brynmenyn covered all the nearby mining valleys with emergency cover if there were any major accident's underground in the mines and the Brynmenyn station was run by Brian’s father.

This time I broke down, the bloody thing had a binding rear brake shoe, the brake had stayed in the on position after I used the brake to slow down in LLangeinor, it refused to release and my rear wheel hub started to smoke, there was so much smoke it looked like my bike was on fire.

As I pulled up outside Brian’s house, he must have heard me pulling up and came out straight away he could smell the burning brake shoes.

I got to know Brian as we chatted for a while as we waited for the wheel hub to cool down, we sat on the curb on the side of the road listening to the brake hub pinging and cooling down.

It was too hot to touch for a while, the brake hub needed to cool down on its own, putting water on it to make it cool down quicker would most likely damaged the hub by cracking the wheel brake housing or something very similar, so we just left it alone and waited.

So after sometime, when the bike cooled down enough Brian tapped the brake hub gently with a hammer to release the brake, it was now cool enough to ride, I turned the bike around and headed back up the valley and once again aborted my trip out on the BSA.

I rode home not touching the rear brake and only using my front brake and throttling the engine off to use the engine to slow me down, I did not want to risk the brake binding again.

( Photo 3 ) . The cursed B.S.A. Starfire from Hell, photo taken outside my mothers house in Pontycymmer.

The weekend after my smoky brake problem, I was riding down the valley as I would normally do, again taking the BSA out on a run and about a mile or so from Brian’s house, I started hearing strange clanking noises coming from the engine.

I found that I had no power loss and nothing seemed affected by the sudden noise, so I proceeded to slow down and stopped outside Brian’s house, I did not know what the noise was, but there was defiantly something seriously wrong when an engine starts making clanking noises.

So I stopped outside Brian’s house.

I did this on purpose, because I knew if Brian was at home, he would help me, and he had the tools which I could use, if I needed them.

You can't ignore strange sounds coming from your engine, you would be a fool to do so.

So I pulled up on the main road, and Brian was talking to a friend of his outside in the garden that I had never seen before, his name was Steven Jones.

This was the first time I had seen Steve and as you may have already guessed we now call him Steve Wobble.

So I have had some good things come out of having a BSA Starfire.

It gave me the opportunity to meet two lifelong friends, we now have been friends for more than 40 odd years which is really a lifetime especially in the world we lived in at the time.

We still meet up every two months or so for a chat about the old days.

Well back to Starfire the problem, the clanking noise turned out to be my duplex primary chain.

The duplex chain was slapping the inside of the engine case, the reason it did this was because the chain spring adjuster had snapped and the chain became slack and with nothing taking the tension up on the chain, the chain touched the inside of the casing when the engine was running, making the clanking noise.

So after finding the problem, I turned around again and I rode home very slowly, trying not to change gear very often.

It was a bit difficult not to use the gears with all the hills I had to go up and down to get the bike home.

But I did manage it, by keeping the revs of the engine in the right place when I was approaching the hills, so I would not strain the engine.

I phoned Keith the store man in Pan’s bike shop, and he ordered the new part for me, Keith was a great guy and would do all he could to help you out.

I was getting fed up with this BSA, but I did not give up on the bike, I put all the problems down to teething troubles.

I told myself, once I get to know the bikes little quirks, I could work around them and have some fun with the bike.

I thought this way because all bikes have their own little issues, I told myself that I would be able to get the bike running well, and make it has reliable as my Yamaha RD.

I used my yam for everyday riding to work and popping down to wick and to go anywhere further afield and I planned to use the Starfire on the weekends just for short trips until I was confident that it was behaving itself.

So this is what I did.

One weekend I felt confident that the Starfire was getting more reliable and safe enough for a longer ride, so I risked taking it for a round trip of 40 miles.

I rode the BSA down to Wick village from Pontycymmer, 17 miles in one direction is not really a long distance to travel, but for this bike it was an epic journey.

I never knew if I was going to make it or not with this bike and just remember there were no mobile phones back in those days, and I had to ride through a lot of areas on the south side of Bridgend with long stretches of just twisty hedge rows and with nothing in between, no house, no pavements and no street lighting.

The villages of Ewenny, Saint Brides Major and Wick, are what the Americans call one horse towns, if I broke down in one of these villages, the public phone box would have only been my salvation, I was hoping I would not break down and get stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Well to cut a long story short, I made it to Wick, but not without having a problem, when I arrived I was stuck in 3rd gear because the gear leaver had shredded all the groves on the gear shaft and I could not change out of that one gear.

Luckily for me Gaenor's dad ( DAI ) was a mechanic who worked for the ( R.E.M.E. ), ( The Corps of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers ).

Dai was x air force, and he worked on the military vehicles at the army depot at Coity road near Litchard cross.

We fixed the problem by cutting a deep grove onto the gear stick so it could be tightened down hard on the gear shaft itself, and then we inserted a couple of small silver metal strips between the shaft and the gear stick to give the gear stick something to bite on to when it was tightened down.

Well it worked as a temporary fix.

This temporary fix lasted until I managed to get rid of the bike, and I had no issues with the gear stick after this improvised fix.

So the next time I rode the bike out for an extended run like going down to wick, as you can imagine I was not confident in the reliability of this bike getting me home every time I took it for a spin.

I had a number of ongoing problems with this bike that would never seem to go away.

The lights decided to work when they wanted too, I checked all the electric connections more than once and found nothing wrong, I even replace the connectors knowing there was nothing wrong with them, just to try and solve the problem.

The issues never went away, I just put up with problem in the end not been able to identify the cause of the lighting issue.

The Speedo kept giving false readings, for some reason the Speedo clock would suddenly jump around and for no reason whatsoever settle back down again as if nothing had happened, I replace the outer and inner Speedo cable and made sure there were no kinks at each end, I checked the businesses end that gets turned at the engine and I even carefully checked the Speedo itself.

I found nothing wrong once again, everything was working prefect, I was beginning to think the bloody bike was possessed, with the constant oil leaks that were impossible to stop and all the other issues.

I really was beginning to think this BSA was cursed.

At one point in time when I owned this bike I started to refer to it as ( Tylwyth Teg ) after the troublesome Welsh fairies that mess around with humans, like nicking your screwdriver or the spanner that you just had in your hand seconds ago in the garage, and then never been able to find again, it did not matter how hard you look for the missing tool, you would never locate it and then it would suddenly appear as if out of nowhere where you left it.

These Fairies/Pixies have fun watching humans looking bewildered and search for something they know that could not have gone anywhere far, I think this bike was like that, it was having fun with me at my expense.

I bet the Tywyth Teg have a very large collection of 10 mm sockets somewhere out of sight.

They would also nick one of your socks, and then use it as a hat or a sleeping bag, if you can't find a sock, I bet one of those little shits is wearing it and watching you look for it, and having a laugh with his mates, who are all wearing odd socks.

On this occasion that I took the bike out for a ride, I had another problem and this one could have killed me.

Oddly enough on this day the Starfire was behaving.

I had no trouble with it whatsoever on the ride down, I arrived in wick without the bike missing a beat.

I was at my girlfriends house, and we were going out for a ride somewhere.

I pulled off like I would have normally done a thousand times before.

Gaenor lived in a Cul de Sac that had a short stretch of road that lead onto a side road and then that lead onto the main Bridgend to llantwit major road.

I put the bike into first gear and pulled off as I always did.

( Photo 4 ) . The junction at Wick village, I slid onto the road from the right side of the junction, and the bike ended up where the red car is parked up.

It was a very short run to the exit of the Cul de Sac, so I only opened the throttle enough to pull off and then closed the throttle again to stop at the junction which was really only a few yards/meters away.

Suddenly the bike started to gun itself toward the junction.

I had the throttle closed.

The Star-fire kept going.

The bike hurtled towards the junction like it had a death wish, directly opposite the junction I was now heading at with increasing speed was a dry stone wall.

I had to make a quick decision on the spot, I only had seconds to think about what I had to do next, I couldn’t stop the bike and there was no way to avoid the wall in front of me, so I decided to lay the bike down on its side.

I pulled the front brake in as hard as I could, locking the front wheel up.

The wheel then started to slide on the gravel that builds up at these type of junctions .

The bike went over and went down on the road like a sack of potatoes.

Gaenor literary stepped off the bike has it went over on its side, and she just watched me slide away from her.

I stayed with the bike.

The bike and I slid right across and over the junction, then travelled across the road itself and stopped at the wall, both tires where facing the wall as if the bike stopped itself from doing too much damaged to itself.

I was more embarrassed than hurt, I had some gravel rash but nothing serious.

It was a nice day and most of Gaenor`s neighbours where out in the front gardens of the Cul de Sac watching what had just happened.

They all watched me and the bike do a Torvell and Dean routine, it looked like I was acting out the finishing move of the Bolero dance routine.

I felt like a right dick.

I had been riding for years and this incident made me look as if this was the first time I had ever ridden a bike.

I got up to my feet dusted myself off and picked the gravel out of my leather jacket, the small pieces of stone gravel has embedded themselves into the leather of the jacket, I picked the bike up off the road, and pushed it back to Gaenor house, still being watched by all her neighbours.

I was trying not have any eye contact with them, like I said I felt like right Nob.

I parked the bike up onto the main stand and checked the throttle.

It was totally free with no restrictions, it worked fine, it was moving quite smoothly.

I found nothing wrong with it once again.

I even took the Carb apart to see if the throttle slide was sticking in the Carb itself, it ran smoothly, showing no signs of sticking.

The throttle was not even open when the bike decided to kamikaze the wall.

So, I had checked it over and was happy to go again, a little confused and cautious, but happy to give it another chance, also Gaenors neighbours were still watching me and I wanted to get away from their constant gaze, I could feel their eyes burning into me, I think they were all waiting for the next performance.

Gaenor said, she would only get on the bike if I rode it to the main road and pull it into the ( The Star pub ) car park, out of sight of everyone, I think she felt embarrassed as well, and there she would get back on the bike again, so that is what she did, she walked over to The Star and I rode the bike to the main road, and she walked the short distance without looking back and strangely enough I had no problem with the BSA to the disappointment of the crowed that had assembled to watch me fall off again, and for the rest of the ride that day, I had no problems whatsoever.

Around two weeks later, I was coming back from Bridgend and travelling through LLangeinor which is around 4 miles from my home, llangeinor is at the base of the valley, as I was riding along I heard strange noises emanating from the engine again.

I though, here we go again, what the fuck is wrong now.

I shut the throttle off and slowed down immediately and looked down at the engine while I was still riding the bike.

From my position I could see oil leaking out from the left-hand side of the engine cover, so I stopped completely and switched the engine off and flicked the bike on to the side stand to take a closer look.

I now carried a collection of tools when I rode on this particular bike, just in case something like this happened again, I even named tool kit, I called it ( the just in case kit ), I put the tool kit together just for this bike with all the tools that I think I would need to fix the bike at the side of the road, the tools were all British AF and Whitworth size tools.

I removed the left hand engine cover while I was sitting on the curb at the side of the road, once the cover was off, I found that the new duplex primary chain adjuster had snapped once again and this time it had put a hole in the engine casing.

It was only small hole, but big enough to allow hot oil to leak through.

So as a temporary fix, I chewed up an old paper pay docket from work that I had in my leather jacket and made it into a mussy paste and pressed it into the hole on the outside of the casing to stop the oil leaking out.

I was hoping it would last the remaining 4-mile journey until I arrived home without losing too much oil.

I rode home very slowly, with a great reluctance to change gear because now there was no chain adjuster to take up the slack of the chain.

The primary chain was jumping up and down without anything to stop it moving, it was making a hell of a noise has I rode along.

I managed to get the bike home in one piece, and parked the bike up, the following week I ordered a new chain adjuster and a new primary chain.

I didn’t use the bike for a few weeks after the spare parts arrived, I was losing faith and interest in this bike now, I used my RD instead, after a while I did some work on the BSA, I fixed the hole in the casing with Araldite paste and fitted the new duplex primary chain and the chain adjuster.

The bike was ready for the road again.

It was Saturday night and there was a party down Wobble and Mikes flat in Bridgend, one of the guys at the party called Martin John asked me if I would give him a lift to the little Chef Garage that is situated on the road to Porthcawl a couple of miles outside Bridgend nearby to laleston village, the garage was open 24/7 the only one in the area that stayed open in the evening, I wanted the petrol that night because he could get a gallon of petrol to use in his off-road bike the next day.

I agreed to take him has I needed to fill up with petrol and top my tank up, so has the saying goes to kill two birds with one stone, it suited both of us for me to give him a ride.

We arrived at the garage in a few minutes it was only a couple of miles away, I filled my tank up with petrol and Martin filled up his petrol container at the same time and in no time we were heading back to Bridgend, up and over barn hill on the A 48.

We had just passed the Ewenny roundabout and has we came parallel with the shop that sits next to the playing fields of Bryn-teg school, a huge amount of smoke billowed from under my petrol tank.

So, it was emergency stop time.

I slammed my anchors on and stopped as quickly as I was capable of doing, locking the back wheel up in the process.

With all that petrol that we were carrying, we were a two wheeled incendiary bomb.

I had the presences of mind to reach down below the seat and switch the engine ignition off and then flick the side stand out.

The tank was full of petrol, I had filled it right to the brim and martin was still carrying a plastic gallon container of petrol.

We both stumbled and stepped away from the bike waiting for it to burst into flames.

We waited for a little while, there were still wisps of smoke coming from under the tank, I could smell plastic burning, so I guessed it was a wiring issue.

When we thought it was safe to approach the bike, we pushed it under a street lamp, so we could get a better look on what the problem was.

I removed the tank, there was only a couple of bolts so it did not take too long, as I have already said I carried a comprehensive tool kit around with me on this bike.

On examination, I discovered that a wire had chaffed and earthed itself onto the frame, me switching the ignition off killed the connection to the battery and without knowing it at the time I made the bike safe.

Funny this happened when there was a shed full of petrol on the bike.

This is me being paranoid about this bike again.

This was the last straw for me, I was starting to think this Star-fire was trying to kill me at every opportunity it had.

I had spent more time fixing this bike than riding it, owning this B.S.A. was like having an engineering degree condensed into a short practical experience course with the added bonus of dying if you failed the course.

There are many ways to motivate people and maybe this was a new way of approaching this motivating problem and getting results.

OK, just joking, but it beat me in the end, so maybe I failed its test or I’m still alive so maybe I passed, I should get a T-shirt with ( I SURVIVED THE STARFIRE ) proudly emblazoned on the front.

Anyway after this incident the bike had to go, I was not going to spend any more of my time on it.

( Photo 5 ) . The BSA Star-fire in Pontycymmer with my dog ( Fella ), I would swear, he growled at the bike a few times.

In my opinion this model of bike was the worst engineering project that B.S.A. had ever produced.

I liked the style of the bike, but it was far to unreliable, also very under powered for its size and over all it was a piece of shit to ride, to heavy when cornering and nowhere enough power to overtake anything.

Like I say, worst bike I have ever ridden, I sold the bike for the same price I paid for it £80, to a guy called Cyril Ricks, I was happy to sell it to him because the guy was a dick, I have a few stories to write about this idiot in the future, he was a right clown.

I put my time with the bike down to experience and I have hated the Starfire model ever since, I spent some money on spare parts for this bikes over the period that had it, so I technically lost money on it, but I was just glad to see it go at the end.

A couple of weeks later the guy I sold it to, Mr. dickhead Ricks asked me if I wanted the bike back for what I sold it to him for, because he had enough of it of the bike already.

You can guess what my answer was.

After I sold the bike, just out of curiosity I went back to the guy house where I had bought it off.

The scruffy guy answered the door to me, he was still wearing the exact same clothes that I had first seen him wearing the first time I went to the house, and still with the egg stain on his jumper, I asked him if he had any issues or problems with the bike when he owned the Starfire.

I told him of some of the issues that I had, and he completely understood where I was coming from.

He said, the bloody thing was a nightmare.

I only had a short chat with him, and as I started to leave he said, “ I bet it tried to kill you “.

I said, “ fuck yes more than once, it tried to ram me into a wall and caught fire while I was riding it at another time “.

He just nodded, he said, “ I’m not surprised, when you came to buy the bike it was one of the best days of my life “.

And with that statement he walked back inside the house and closed the door behind him and that was the end of the conversation.

So, I think that he had a similar experience with the Starfire.

I knew how he felt, I too was also glad I didn’t own the bike any longer, and to see the back of it.

( Photo 6 ) . My Yamaha RD 350, great bike.