Your First scooter /first car ?

[storkfoot]

the yellow and black vespa " the wasp " was my good old faithfull rally ..the green one i was doing wheelies on wasnt mine ..it was kamis ! ...the lammy in the piccys was one me and my mate sort of shared ...we went halves on it tbh and took turns on it ...that piccy was in scarborough 1979 i think

Have you noticed the yellow Chevette behind you? Could have been me!

Surely flairs and all that gear was pre '77/'78. Or, was Yorkshire in a time warp

[sean brady scooters]

the yellow and black vespa " the wasp " was my good old faithfull rally ..the green one i was doing wheelies on wasnt mine ..it was kamis ! ...the lammy in the piccys was one me and my mate sort of shared ...we went halves on it tbh and took turns on it ...that piccy was in scarborough 1979 i think

Have you noticed the yellow Chevette behind you? Could have been me!

Surely flairs and all that gear was pre '77/'78. Or, was Yorkshire in a time warp

they were not flares matey...oxford bags i,ll have you know lol

[fairspares]

Just before i left school i was a bit of a rockabilly ,i use to go to the youth club and bop away to the Stray cats etc, then in may 1980 at the annual float parade right at the back was a mod band playing (The Argent? ) with a load of scooters following behind , id never seen this sort of thing before and i was just flabbergasted, that was it, i started saving for a scooter and a few months later bought a red and chrome vespa ss 180 , my first rally being Skegness sept 1981 or thats what it says on the back of the photo .
First car a couple of years later was a 1.1 yellow mk1 Escort that needed the brakes bleeding but i was so keen to drive it one day going around a blind bend a van had stopped half way round , i pumped the brakes but nothing happened and piled into the back smashing all the wings and front end in , i let a scrap dealer take it away and stayed with just scooters for years after that

[sean brady scooters]

First scooter was a 1974 primavera bought for £75 with my Saturday job money from the drummer of a local Liverpool Mod band ‘The Sound’. It had the biggest ever windscreen with ‘The Sound’ in massive letters across it.
I rode it around for a week until someone said to me “how much is your insurance?” Eh? I was that naive.
Nobody told me how to ride it and when I slammed it from 4th straight to 1st.. I broke 1st gear and bent 3rd and 4th. My dad who was an aerospace engineer said it was impossible to bend gears, but I managed it. New gears (still naive) cost me three weeks wages.
I bought a manual and decided to do it myself, in my bedroom. Problem was I didn’t read the part which said to drain the gearbox oil. I managed to hide the stain with a strategically placed wardrobe for 10 years until my parents moved out.
It got ragged everywhere. It was black, then green, then grey primer, then bright blue. It had every piece of chromework you could think of, it all came off after a gang of bikers caught me and took some souvenirs (The 9ft high whip aerials).
I loved it and hated it in equal measures. I broke the engine casing when I hit it with a lump hammer to try to dislodge the clutch tab washer which had dropped into the engine. I repaired it with a bicycle puncture repair kit. Sure enough it leaked like the Torry Canyon, everywhere!
In the end it went in a skip, to make way for a brand new P125x, £325 from Nikspeed in Liverpool.

First car was a Bond Bug, bought from a work colleague of my dad for £275. He was all for it because it took me away from scooters. Ha, fooled him. I used it to follow scooter racing for two years. I used the money from scooter racing photos to buy a race scooter. Guess what soon got a tow bar and took my race scooter to race meetings? The now modified Bond Bug. Then it was Hammerite Gold and black, had a ported cylinder head, cherry bomb exhaust and Vauxhall Viva zenith carb. It holds the lap record for a 3 wheeler in the dark, around Lydden Hill (In the good old days when you could).
I loved and hated that machine too. It was heat seized on the way back from Flookborough (Scooter racing). It was nearly on its roof twice, it had two engines and gearboxes, three front axles and spark plug number three was rammed in (read cross threaded) with a ratchet wrench extended with a scaffold pole. I did 80 thousand miles in three years. I taught Pugwash to drive in it, trapped his fingers in the roof. He got me back by scalding my legs with his nuclear hot coffee and tried to kill me in it on the way to Mallory park. We even slept in it on our first visit to Lydden. We drove up to the Leeds Central Christmas do during a snow storm, in sleeping bags, both of us.
I sold it to a lad who worked up a Welsh mountain and if he’s reading this, I’m sorry about the spark plug and the stripped wheel nuts and the leaking master cylinder.

best so far ...love it

[sean brady scooters]

Just before i left school i was a bit of a rockabilly ,i use to go to the youth club and bop away to the Stray cats etc, then in may 1980 at the annual float parade right at the back was a mod band playing (The Argent? ) with a load of scooters following behind , id never seen this sort of thing before and i was just flabbergasted, that was it, i started saving for a scooter and a few months later bought a red and chrome vespa ss 180 , my first rally being Skegness sept 1981 or thats what it says on the back of the photo .
First car a couple of years later was a 1.1 yellow mk1 Escort that needed the brakes bleeding but i was so keen to drive it one day going around a blind bend a van had stopped half way round , i pumped the brakes but nothing happened and piled into the back smashing all the wings and front end in , i let a scrap dealer take it away and stayed with just scooters for years after that

lol...nice one

[storkfoot]

Just before i left school i was a bit of a rockabilly ,i use to go to the youth club and bop away to the Stray cats etc, then in may 1980 at the annual float parade right at the back was a mod band playing (The Argent? ) with a load of scooters following behind , id never seen this sort of thing before and i was just flabbergasted, that was it, i started saving for a scooter and a few months later bought a red and chrome vespa ss 180 , my first rally being Skegness sept 1981 or thats what it says on the back of the photo .
First car a couple of years later was a 1.1 yellow mk1 Escort that needed the brakes bleeding but i was so keen to drive it one day going around a blind bend a van had stopped half way round , i pumped the brakes but nothing happened and piled into the back smashing all the wings and front end in , i let a scrap dealer take it away and stayed with just scooters for years after that

I challenge someone to beat this. Absolute quality

[Burnside]

1st scooter was a blue and white Li125 with a 175 barrel, used to get a 7 day wonder from the old bill every week. That was my only mode of transport for 3 years until I finally bothered to get some driving lessons and pass my test.

I then bought a Ford Sierra 1.6GL in light blue. It had more problems that I can list but that was reflected in the price I paid for it, main issue was the blue smoke that came from the exhaust. So me with the help of a mate who had loads of tools totally rebuilt the engine, re-bored and replaced all the past it parts courtesy of the local scrap yard. Got to within 100 miles of running the re-built engine in when some doddery old idiot failed to see a junction and took the front of my car off with his Volvo less than 50 yards from my driveway. Total write-off and whilst waiting for the insurance company to pay out I bought myself a Mini 1000 for £200 and loved it so much I kept it for 3 years when I blew the engine up...and sold it to a mate for £500!

[Juan]

First scooter was a V90 bonedown, horrible piece of shite but it cost me a tenner around 84 or 85. First proper road legal was a PK 50 S B 936 ORS, a year old and think it cost me £345. Brilliant, loads of my mates had PK's when at school or just left.

First car was a Viva HC Estate in maroon. The boot wouldn't stay shut once you were over 30 mph so I reversed it into a massive Horsechestnut tree behind my folks old house several times and that cured it. Funnily enough it wasn't overly easy to open again after that but you'd manage if you were patient.

[rosscla]

First scooter was a rusted out old rally which we ragged around the local aerodrome. First road legal scooter was a modded up V100 in 1984. The mod thing lasted about 2 weeks before the chrome tat got binned and it was on with the combats.

First four wheeled transport was a purely practical thing, came after my Lince got knicked in 1990, a Renault Traffic. I was in bands and needed something to haul the kit in.

[DigDug]

First scooter LD 150 when I was 15.

First road going scooter a battered TV2 175 skelly - best thing about it was the seat.

First car Ford Zephyr MK III leather bench seats and column change - perfect shagmobile. Swapped a BSA M21 chopper for it.



(Reading Festival August 1974)