Hey, its the top 10 worst bikes ever!! Someone on the forum

10. 1974 HUSKY 450 DESERT MASTER.

The head engineer, Reuben Helmen, designed this lost cause at the urging of his cousin- who he promptly disowned. This bike was 35 pounds heavier than previous Huskies, worlds slower, had an awkwardly spaced gearbox and a stupid power curve. It also had ancient Girling shocks that lived to puke seals and forks that had more metal shavings than fork oil in each leg. The exhaust burned your leg, brakes were gruesome and shifting was ugly. It also seeped mung and drool out of every gasket surface. Handling was best described as spooky. The engine pinged like it was running on kerosene and items fell off the bike like they were held on with Scotch tape.


9. 1981 HONDA CR450.

Actually, it was a 430. A 430 with a hopelessly spaced four- speed gearbox and a powerband like the tip on an X-Acto blade. It shook the steering head like someone removed the bearings, and tracked like a buffalo on steroids. The front number plate looked like a hangnail, and the suspension was a mass of confused Showa leftovers that didn't like each other. -This bike would get into a high-speed wobble at 38 mph, stalled easily and the odd spacing in the gear box always kept you over-revving the engine or bogging below the power curve.
Oh sure, it had a lot of power, but the power delivery was freaky. It would either hit hard, or hesitate, but you were never sure which would happen. Geared for off-road use, low gear would take you out to 45 mph, while fourth gear might squeak up to 80. Topping off its list of bad habits was that it was hard to start when cold, harder to start if you dropped it and when it got hot, and it tended to foul plugs and ping.



8. ROKON 340.

Brought out in the mid'70s, the Rokon was supposed to be the answer for those of us who hated to shift. All versions of the Rokon were very heavy, and loved to plow straight-on ahead, even if you sort of wanted to turn at the time.
To start the big Sachs engine you had to tug at a rope-starter, which took a strong arm and an even stronger patience level. It came poorly jetted, and when it loaded up you would rip half the calluses off your hand before getting things spinning.
We talked about the belt drive earlier, and the less said about this the better. The thing was fast and had disc brakes to slow it down. Sadly, they worked intermittently, and the master cylinder often boiled over, leaving you with a lever that came back to the grip and a corner that rushed up to meet you. Gearing down was impossible with the torque converter, which meant you free- wheeled into turns and down hills. Spooky.



7. YAMAHA SC-500 SCRAMBLER.

Another four-speed brute, this 1973-'74 two-stroke single ran hot, detonated fiercely, stalled constantly and seized regularly. After testing the bike, I noted: "It's gray and black; so is a turkey." Brutally fast, the SC-500 was cursed with state-of-the-dark forks and a pair of chromed shocks that would have faded on a busy barroom door. It shook its steering head like a dog coming out of a swimming pool and the rear end hopped around like the frame had a hinge in the middle. All things considered, the only thing this bike did right was not leak around the gas cap



6. HARLEY-DAVIDSON BAJA 100.

H-D brought this little stinker out to capture the small-bore trail bike market that was dominated by Hodaka at the time-the early '70s. They contracted with the Italian Aermacchi factory, which responded with a hopelessly tall, short-wheelbased, underpowered, ill-handling package that nearly defied belief.
Still, H-D put together a desert racing team that started to dominate the trail bike class, so people went out and bought the Bajas in droves, only to find out they weren't buying what was being raced.

The race bikes had everything changed! The stock bikes came with rigid footpegs, no horsepower to speak of, a huge overlay sprocket on the rear wheel that constantly came loose, a tank shaped like a mailbox, a saddle that felt like plywood and a strange metal hook strategically placed to rip your crotch off if you crashed. It also had stupid bars, dumb fat grips from a street bike and a suspension that had more side-to-side travel than up-and-down stroke. I called it "a re-hashed Italian street bike with no redeeming traits." Yes, we promptly lost the H-D ads at the magazine.


5. CZ 250 ENDURO.

It was hard to believe that CZ would foist a pile like this mid-'70s bummer off on the public, but they did. Seeing a chance to get a piece of the enduro market, they simply took a late '60s frame, a dated engine, electrics that would have trouble lighting-off an .049" model airplane engine and suspension components that did little more than hold up the bike.

It had rigid footpegs, a huge, bulbous tank, an exhaust that burned the leg, a speedo that didn't work and various bits and pieces that were attached with pure afterthought technology. The first time I fired up our test bike, the horn fell off on the ground. After I rode the bike 100 yards, the battery fell out and the wiring loom melted. In the next 20 minutes, the plug cap came off, the air filter fell off, the muffler cracked and wedged into the rear wheel, the gas cap leaked, both fuel lines cracked, a tire went flat and the throttle stuck wide open.

The feeble engine was also horribly over-geared, the kickstarter would stick on the frame, fork seals weeped like a garden hose and the motor mounts fell out. This mount signaled the beginning of the end for CZ sales in the United States, and rightfully so.


4. YAMAHA YZ490 (MOST YEARS).

Yamaha introduced the YZ 490 in 1982, after a solid run with the YZ465. Sadly, the 490 was heavier than the 465, nowhere near as reliable, horribly difficult to start (hot or cold), came with a grim suspension, vibrated enough to bring blisters to your hands and was impossible to jet.

If you jetted it rich enough to keep this dog from seizing, it would blubber, puke, foul plugs and produce no power. If you jetted it to run strong, it would invariably seize. It came with air leaks, a wandering ignition, gimpy motor mounts and the worst case of Yamahop at high speeds since the original DT-1. Yamaha issued a mountain of service bulletins to try to fix the problems. None of them worked.


3. PENTON 125 MUD LARK.

In 1973, John Penton was selling some great race and enduro bikes that were being produced by KTM in Austria. However, he was forced to buy a whole load of the Sachs 125B engines in order to get a supply of the "good" engines. So, to get rid of the B engines, John contracted with Wassel, an English fabricator, and they threw together a frame, a set of wretched Betor forks, ginky shocks and a layout that made you feel like you were sitting on the edge of a pinball machine.

John called it the Penton Trials, but not even Batman could have ridden it in a trials event. There was no power at all, the gearbox was spaced oddly and it wouldn't turn without plowing the front end. So, in desperation, John renamed it the Mud Lark, a sort of all-purpose play machine. In fact, it was a no-purchase dirt bike, and will go down in history as one of the few bad business decisions ever made by savvy John Penton.


2. ANY THREE-WHEELER.

Yup, the All- Terrain Cycle, or ATC, was introduced by Honda to let people who didn't have the skills to balance a regular two-wheeled bike ride in the dirt. Cute little buggers, the ATCs sold like crazy. Then savvy people started noticing that they handled like a shopping cart loaded with bowling balls with one locked front wheel going down a flight of stairs.

People started doing wonderful things like riding over their own legs and biffing over
the bars when the things got into a high- speed wobble-you know, anything over 20 mph. Suspension on these early three-wheelers? Nothing. Zip. Nada. Zero. Just three balloon tires were there to take the impacts.

As the years passed, the ATVs got more and more powerful and they gave them forks and shocks. This let the unstable triangle wallow around, as well as defy the laws of physics when trying to turn. The rest is history. Three-wheelers are no longer being made. However, be warned! They're still out there, wiggling and lurching around the trails and sandpits of America.


1. And the winner (or loser, actually) is:

THE 1971 SUZUKI TM-400R CYCLONE!

It weighed 242 pounds, dry, and delivered about 40 hp at 6850 rpm. Sometimes it delivered it at 4400 rpm. At other times, it would deliver it just when you least expected it. You see, the Cyclone had a weird ignition that would go from a starting mode to full advance whenever it felt like it. Even a change in temperature would change the power hit.

Picture this: you're exiting a hard- packed turn in second gear and you roll the throttle on. All of a sudden, the engine lurches into the fat part of the power curve and the rear end leaps out about three feet. The chassis shudders and sends you sailing into the clear blue sky in a nice arc. Moments later, you thump into the ground, painfully, and then a microsecond after that, the Cyclone lands on top of you.

Adding to the bizarre powerband was a set of forks that went rigid on square bumps and rear shocks that faded from anything hotter than headlight glare. Many companies produced endless handling and frame modification kits. None of these things seemed to help much, but the bike cost only $995 brand new and people kept buying them, trying to make them work. They all failed, to one degree or another, to tame the Cyclone.

The legacy of the TM-400 can be summed up in an ad that appeared in a newspaper:

"For sale-1972 Suzuki TM-400. Only ten hours on bike. Possible injury forces sale. $500 or best offer."

 

ahaha- i couldnt find rokon 340 anywhere on the internet, didn't try hard, but i have a rokon engine in my snowmobile... those bikes are worth about 6k running

 

Lol nice. I especially like the part about 3-wheelers. There are tons of them for sale cheap up here on craigslist, and I am always tempted to get one.

 

I owned 2 of those atcs 1 honda 250r and a honda 200x both were fun , I never allowed myself to go nutz on them. people who buy them are usually looking to do things they can't do on 2 wheels. mine wre usually used to haul wood logs out of the woods to cut up for fire wood. they are gone now can't really say I miss them as I have my 2 wheels to keep me busy.

 

Re: Hey, its the top 10 worst bikes ever!! Someone on the fo

I had a 3 wheeler in the late 80's. Yamaha YTM 225. Man that thing was a blast!!! Although there were several times when, flying through the air, I said to myself, "This is gonna hurt!!"

My younger brother got pulled over by the sheriff on a county road on it one day. Clocked him doing 65 in a 35, no helmet, no MC endorsement, no brake lights, no turn signals, no license plates...

We thought better of riding it on the road after that.

Still like to have one again.

I remember riding it @ Buckley ANG base in Aurora, CO one day while I was stationed out there. Guy on a TT comes up and says that I need a tricycle 'cuz I don't know how to ride a real bike. Told him to hot lap this thing once. Just once. About 20 minutes later, he says "You can have all of that thing you want!!" Guess he wiped out 7-8 times. :roll:

 

we used to have trikes on my gradparents farm (I think there is still one or two there) but we never got to play on them they were just for work and the couple times we were unattended long enough to hurt ourselves WE DID!!!!! evil machines!
Shaun

 

Re: Hey, its the top 10 worst bikes ever!! Someone on the fo

Bravo!!!!! Tears are still running down my cheeks! "Possible injury
forces sale". Now that's some funny stuff.


Thank you for sharing!

 

Re: Hey, its the top 10 worst bikes ever!! Someone on the fo

Here's a link to what I think is the original article - complete with pics!
Ten Worst Dirt Bikes of All Time

Found that when searching for pictures of these beasties....

{edit} Found an updated version of the list - just scans from a magazine though:
Update 10 worst list

 

Now wait a minute. The rokon had it's intended purpose and is still in production today in NH. I had one in the early eighties and has a complete blast on it, and it had 2 wheel drive. And cornering? It wasn't designed to run a labrynth, it had tractor tires on it for pete's sake. could it out climb, out crawl, and out stump pull than anything else on the market? Dang right it could.

 

Re: Hey, its the top 10 worst bikes ever!! Someone on the fo

I had a bike that was on the list of the 10 worst when it came out in the early 1980s. Just before I got my 1st XJ1100, used. It was the 1973 Yamaha TX750. It was a verticle twin, and the chain for the balancer would stretch too far, if you weren't watching it, and the engine would self destruct.

Mine also had a starter clutch that would slip constantly, despite being taken apart repeatedly and having the springs and rollers replaced. It would lock fine manually, but sounded like a can of marbles if if I used it to start the bike. It would catch maybe 1 time in 20 attempts.

The good news was that the bike had a kick start lever, and the starter clutch was external to the motor, so I could start the bike, and didn't have to split the cases to try to fix it.

The #1 worst bike on the list at that time was the Suzuki TM400!

 

Re: Hey, its the top 10 worst bikes ever!! Someone on the fo

Was it called a "Virago" by chance

heh

 

we have two yammi 225's pretty fun, one runs on oil and some gas, the other we just got a steal on, like brand new, paid 400, and shot carb clean through one of the jets and it fired right up.

 

shouldn't #6 read anything made by Harley? I had one once, I should know.

 

Re: Hey, its the top 10 worst bikes ever!! Someone on the fo

Ethan, I would have to agree with you if you're talking about the AMF years. complete junk unless you really like to turn wrenches.

Now, if someone were to give me a new 110 Screamin' Eagle, I would damn sure have it in my garage, but I ain't gonna pay that for a bike!!!

 

I beg to differ on how bad the 3 wheelers were. Growing up we had a Honda 110 and then a Honda Big Red. I was "stunting" long before it offically existed!

 

Re: Hey, its the top 10 worst bikes ever!! Someone on the fo

A friend had an AMF'ed HD, it was a piece of we all know what. and I agree with you, I'd take a new one but I could never see paying 25,000.00 for one, ever!

 

From what I read somewhere, the AMF/Jap Harleys had one redeeming feature: they taught HD about the wonders of quality control, at least as far as the engines were concerned.

After all, how many post-AMF engines do you hear about that leak oil like a sieve, as their predecessors were notorious for?