ALBANY VINTAGE & CLASSIC MOTORCYCLE CLUB

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October 2014 Club News

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Arthur Barrot’s 1974 Honda TL125 Trials Bike

Arthur Barrot has sent in this story and photos from the early 1970’s:

"The photos were taken during a year off cruising around in the first of our camper vans.
It was 1974 and I had fitted out the van; including the surfboard on the roof and a Honda TL 125 trials bike on the back.

The TL was one of the first in the state, I think, and came without any lights. There was a blank core for another coil in the motor so I had an Albany auto electrician wind enough wire to run head, tail and stop lights (so long as the engine was running).

I temporarily fitted a total-loss battery under the left hand side cover, threw on a switch block, some turn signals, a horn and got the bike licenced – licencing requirements were not so tough then. The validity of the licence was never questioned and I managed with hand signals for the whole year. In those days other road users knew what hand signals meant.

Arthur (right) with Honda TL 125.
One photo was taken in the Victorian Alps and shows a group I met on the way to Gable End and Lake Tarli Karng. It was published in an article on trail riding in Trail and Track (aka Snail and Truck) magazine in August 1974.

It was taken over the Easter break and I was working in the mountains degreasing, priming and painting a logging camp up from Licola. Fantastic country; well suited to a trials bike. None of it was National Park then.

Van, surfboard and of course a bike.
The van and bike are somewhere near Yeppoon. The headlight isn’t on the bike because I had competed in a trial out from Rockhampton and had won the 125 class – mainly because I was the only rider on a 125!

Deirdre and I spent the second half of the year in the van and with a pillion pad over the rear mudguard and foot pegs screwed to the lower rear shock mounts the TL took us all over the place.

That TL is long gone (replaced by a 350 Bultaco Sherpa) but there’s another (licensable) TL in the shed waiting its turn."

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