I owned one of these machines for about 5 years in the eighties. I ´graduated´ to it from a Honda CD175, which whilst a fairly decent commuter bike, was hampered by being chain driven, fully enclosed and a real pig to adjust. Removing the rear wheel was a big job, and was rarely accomplished in less than 1 and a half hours, wheel out to wheel back in. So, I was less than convinced about getting another chain driven bike. What a revelation the MZ was! In all the time I had it, I only needed to adjust the chain four times, and rear wheeel removal was a real breeze, thanks to qd assembly and cush drive. Handling was good, once gotten used to, and though theoretical top speed wasn´t much, at about 80mph, it would do this up hill and down dale, often ´blowing off´ Honda Superdreams on motorway inclines. Sure, there were ´glitches´ but nothing tremendously big, and eminently forgivable on a bike costing so little. I had a front brake conversion on mine, so i never experienced the classic ´brake lag´ of the o/e equipment! The Honda TLS front drum brake fitted to my bike was more than adequate, and initially too much at low town speeds! (it just stopped - and I fell off!) Initially, I found the off-road pedigree of the marque a little terrifiying. The tendency for the front end to leave the ground when accelerating (especially two-up) took some getting used to. However, the good spread of torque was useful in the area of rural Wales where I then lived, as was the economy of running the thing at ´sensible´ speeds. The bike was a bit Jekyll and Hyde in that at speeds of 50mph or less the economy returned was in excess of 110 mpg, but if top speed was used, I was lucky to get 30 mpg! I spent a little time ´blueprinting´ my bike, and got some useful increase in performance, especially on acceleration. At lower speeds the bike wasn´t particularly happy, the combibnation of steep sterring geometry (undamped) and the original o/e carburetor made for somewhat jerky progress. However, once speed increased beyond 10mph, things smoothed out fine. All in all, a good all round bike very much worthy of the enthusiasm of their owners in general. |