michaelmoore

Tony, thanks for the extra photos. Tracking down the real info gets to be a problem, especially if some journalist who isn't too concerned about fact checking doesn't do any before going to publication. With that kind of forward damper mount on the swing arm your DMW frame would seem to be a late 1970s longer-travel frame. That would correspond with the October 1978 publication date of that top photo I have on my website (anything from MCW/MCN on my website is something that I got from the original paper that I have in my possession so I'm sure about the date of publication). The question that leaves me with is why MCW labeled it as a Fraser TL125 if it is a DMW? However, it does look like the swingarm in the December 1977 MCN photo of the "MK1 Fraser TL125" frame is similar to the later MCW photo. Damper mounts are about the same spot and both have an open back to the axle slot. "Four Stroke Finale" shows a Fraser TL250 and says that David Fraser Products was in Redditch. Is that anywhere close to where DMW was located? Maybe Fraser supplied frames to DMW as well as selling them himself so they could be the same frame under two different names? I note that your frame has a taller steering head above the spine than the other eBay frame photo shows, and that matches the MCW photo. Now if this is anything like some of the other Internet experiences I've had, someone should soon be piping up with "oh, David Fraser lives down the lane from me so let me pop on down and ask him about this, and my brother in law used to work for DMW so I'll check with him too." Seriously, that kind of thing has happened to me with stuff people have spotted on my website. Another enigma shrouded in a mystery. cheers, Michael

Hi Tony, I found the photos on your website as I was browsing through it, probably about the same time you were posting them in this thread! I'm a bit confused now. You replied earlier "The top picture you show is the DMW frame (Dawson Motor Works) and they also owned MP Forks. The other 2 pics are the Frasier for the TL Honda and the unknown for the Bult." That's four photos and I only had the three images in my post. The MK2 Fraser TL125 frame (top of the three photos) looks to be nearly identical to your DMW frame. I couldn't find a frame like that pictured in the DMW section in Morely's book. Do you know if perhaps the same people made the same basic frame and it was sold as both the DMW and the Fraser? Or did MCW misidentify a DMW frame as being the later Fraser TL frame? Knowing that you plan to have the bike at Donner gives me some extra incentive to try and resurrect the KT250 so I can ride at the event and see your bike. BTW, I enjoyed reading through the articles on your website. You do nice work! cheers, Michael

I'm familiar with those two bikes and other monocoque frames. I like steel frames and a fuel-bearing spine frame like the Fraser or Smith bikes looks like it will be fun to make for the KT engine. cheers, Michael

I've always gone with the philosophy of "dress for the crash, not the ride" and it seems to have paid off, especially as falling down at least once seems a normal part of a day's dirt riding for me. Other than the trials boots everything else is my normal MX/dirt riding gear. Chest/back/shoulder armor, full face helmet, MX gloves and riding pants, and my vintage Gold Belt. A Camelback may not offer much protection but I think that has been one of my best riding gear investments as I no longer have thirst distracting me while I'm trying to negotiate a section. Standing on the pegs at a dead stop can get you the same length of fall as missing the bottom step or two on the stairs in my house, and I've done that before and didn't enjoy it. At least in my house I don't have sharp rocks/branches to fall on. I also wear my RR leathers/back protector when I ride on the street. Protective gear that you leave sitting at home seems kind of useless. eta: I've seen some pretty quick riding being done "on the loop" between sections where a crash would have the same speeds as on an MX track. cheers, Michael

Bandwidth was a pretty serious concern when I started my website back 1996 since a lot of people were still on fairly slow dialup. I still get an occasional comment sent to me from someone who appreciates not having to wait while stuff they aren't interested in looking at loads. eta: I just checked and it looks like I've got 425MB of stuff on the website so having all that load automatically is probably not going to work. I have started rescanning a lot of the material and will be putting up higher res/larger format versions of much of what I already have. But with around 2000 images on the site that isn't going to happen overnight. And I've got new material that has been waiting to go up too. I doubt I'll be blogging. I've got plenty of fora/listserves to post on, and my website will be for recording how the projects go (when they go). cheers, Michael

majestyman340, I don't know that anyone has ever won a trials on an SR/TT/XT based bike, but I and other people have sure had fun roadracing them. I don't build anything expecting it to transform me into SuperRider. No one (in their right mind) is going to be calling me on the Monday morning after an event to offer me a sponsorship. I build stuff because I want to build it. which seems to be the reason Jay is putting that Hodaka engine into a monoshock chassis. "Oooh, sounds cool, let's do that" kind of thing. Being stuck in Modern Classic with the Yamaha is no different from being stuck in Modern Classic with my KT250. It seems like no matter what I ride, I end up getting stuck, and a five to go along with it. Tony, I'm very glad to see your post as I'd seen that bike on the Lewisport site and I was puzzled by the reference to DMW. On my website I've got this photo: I found that in MotorCycle Weekly 28 October 1978. The information with it showed it being a TL125 frame from Fraser. The previous December they'd offered this for the TL125: MCN in 1978 had this photo of Phil Smith's Bultaco and said he'd built a similar frame for a Cub: Your bike (and Smith's Bultaco) is very similar to what I want to do with my KT250. I've got the 4" tube on hand. I'd be pleased to add your photos to the others on my website, and if you could provide some additional photos showing more details of the construction of the bike that would be great. cheers, Michael

531 is a manganese-molybdenum steel, T45 is a manganese steel, and 4130 is a chrome-molybdenum steel (those are the major important alloying elements as most have carbon, silicon, phosphorus, sulfer and maybe traces of nickel, copper and aluminum too). 15 CDV 6 is chrome-moly-vanadium. "Chrome moly" has become one of those generic terms like "aircraft billet aluminum." If it is a real concern you need to press the person making the frames for exactly what was used, and maybe ask to see the certifications he got from his tubing supplier. For practical purposes they have the same mass/volume and stiffness. Strength and ductility of the tube are the main differences. If you have a tube loaded in bending and you don't want to add more material you may need to go to a stronger steel to keep it from bending permanently in normal use. But identical frames made from 4130, 531 and 1018 have the same stiffness and will deflect the same under identical loads (again, for practical purposes). This is something that is commonly misunderstood, and the popular press don't do much to help that when (as one did) they talk about "oh, the new swingarm we had made of 4130 that is an exact duplicate of the OEM mild steel swing arm made such a noticeable difference in handling." It doesn't work that way. Probably what happened is similar to a story I've heard about Erv Kanemoto when he was tuning for Gary Nixon. Nixon came in from practice and complained about poor performance of the rear dampers. Erv told him to go and rest and he'd sort them out before the next practice session. Since Erv didn't have any spares what he did was pull them off, clean and shine them up, and put them back on before sending Nixon out with the "better" ones. Nixon came back in with a second or so off his lap times and commented on how much better the new dampers were than the old ones. Mental tuneups for the rider can pay big dividends. cheers, Michael

I met Jay at Hodaka Days a few years ago. He sure can ride! I was going to build a Wombat trials special but when I retired a couple years ago I sold off half the project bikes to try and get the project queue cut down to only greatly overfilled instead of massively overfilled and all the Hodakas, small Rickmans, Greeves, Beezumph triples and Honda 160/175 (except the trials project) went to new homes. I suspect you are thinking of Charlie's (senior moment time as his last name is escaping me at the moment though I've known him for years) TY400 which is a modified DT400 engine in a modified TY250 chassis. He built that with assistance from Craig Hanson at Hanson Racing Technology in Chico. I met Craig in the early 1980s when I was RRing my TT500 and he's the one who got me started building frames and he has given me a lot of good information and advice down through the years. Craig rides a heavily modified TL250. If you've got some nice photos of Charlie's bike I'd be interested in putting them on my website. I found some shots that I took up at the PITS property but it was on one of those really sunny days and the bike was in very deep shadow and the photos aren't really usable. Kim Proctor modified a TT500 for trials here in Northern California, and I have some information about it in this article on my website. I never managed to get photos from Ken and I'm not sure where the bike is now. I did run across a French website about someone's TT trials project. I don't speak French but it doesn't appear to be very heavily modified from the stock bike. He does have a little text from M.A. who says that he wanted to do a project but it didn't get the go-ahead. cheers, Michael

"FSF" mentions the Yamaha (Sammy Miller had challenged Mick A. to a four-stroke show down) but no photo. I have a veglia recollection of someone sending me a scan of a poor photocopy of a photo of the prototype Yamaha that they'd found somewhere, but I haven't been able to find that anywhere on the computer or in my piles of paper. http://www.sactopits.org/ May 17/18 is the Cow Pile Trial (Vintage on Saturday, modern on Sunday) out at Marshall in Marin County. I suppose if I could round up some new rims and spokes for the KT250 and get my butt in gear I might even be able to make that. I'm hoping to have the KT together in time for the Donner 2-day AHRMA event in the summer. cheers, Michael

I found the site a few days ago and have been enjoying reading through the posts. I rode my first trials in the early 1970s on my Suzuki TS185R (which also served for my first MX) and I bought a new 325 Sherpa T (M125? The new style frame) in 1974. I rode with the NMTA (New Mexico Trials Association) there in Albuquerque for couple of years and was a decent intermediate-level rider. After graduating from Uni and moving off I roadraced for quite a while. About 1999 I picked up a Kawasaki KT250 and started riding AHRMA/Sacramento PITS vintage trials. I can occasionally trophy in the Novice (3 line) class and struggle to paddle my way through on a 2 line. I am far from being an ace rider! I've done a little porting modification on the KT and built a different exhaust and an alloy tank for it and some of the local KT guys who have ridden it have said it was the nicest running one they'd been on. It has been apart for the last several years as it needs the under-engine frame tubes bashed back away from the engine and both rims are cracked and need replacing. It may stay in the queue until I build a new frame, as the stock frame doesn't impress me much. Not because it is holding me back (I can fall off of most any dirt bike) but because chassis design and construction is a big interest of mine (I've built several roadrace frames and host the mc-chassis-design email list at micapeak.com) and I think Kawasaki could have done a nicer job. I don't have any plans to have a new trials bike. I had an hour or two on an early 90s GasGas and confirmed that I'm the limiting factor -- a new bike would be cool but wasted. And I've got plenty of challenges and finding out how big of an obstacle I can't clear is a challenge I'm happy to avoid. I do have a Honda CB160 Premier Lightweight project (yes, I like oddball stuff) but the early/mid 70s stuff (before the longer travel rear suspensions) is my main interest. The later stuff is too late, and the 60s stuff is generally just too early for me. For some time I've been accumulating parts to build a TT500 Yamaha for Modern Classic. I roadraced a TT500-engined special for 6 years and really like those engines. I've had a lower second gear cluster made to get a more trialsish gear spread. I'll modify a cylinder head to shrink the ports and I've got an SR400 crankshaft to put in to help reduce the displacement and compression. I've read that while Mick Andrews was at Yamaha there was a prototype TT trials bike made but I haven't been able to find any photos of that. I've got close to 2000 photos on my website (www.eurospares.com) and a number of them are of interesting trials bikes. I'd be pleased to get some nice photos of custom-framed trials bikes from the 60s/70s that show the frame details, so if anyone has something for the website that might fit that bill please contact me. cheers, Michael

Issue 5 of "Classic Dirt Bike" has an article on a person named Craig Malwem who is making new Majesty kits. Perhaps that is who you are thinking of? But it sounds like

Size for size, 531 is the same weight as 1018 or 4130. All the steels are equally stiff so if you keep the OD the same and go down in wall thickness you lose stiffness. 531/4130 are stronger and generally have a higher yield point, but that just means that you can crash a little harder before things stay bent. The way you make use of the thinner wall thickness is by going up on the OD as the second moment of area normally goes up faster from the OD increase than it falls off from the reduction in wall thickness. So 531/4130 may pay off on a frame using thin gauge tubing because it will add some dent resistance for those times when you throw the bike into the rocks. Also, if the frame is depending on the strength of the tubing to not fail or bend far enough to stay bent (because it was designed so the tubes are loaded in bending instead of compression/tension) then it may benefit from a stronger steel. There's probably a small market. As soon as you start looking into liability insurance for the builder the number of people likely to build things for that market probably diminshes pretty quickly. I noticed a different thread here about (I think UK) events that don't let people inspect the sections before riding, and someone in that made a pretty good explanation of the reasons why you can't ignore liability in this modern world. It is a shame that people get put into the situation of saying "sounds like fun, but it isn't prudent to go there" but that's life as we know it. FYI Morely's "Spanish Trials Bikes" has photos of a Bob Gollner frame for the MAR that was done "in the period." Majestyman, different prices probably are due to different production costs and different profit goals. Someone who wants to make a couple of frames for fun in their spare time and is willing to work for pennies an hour can charge less than someone else who plans on building a batch of 10 with all the fittings and spares and then tries to sell them and make a reasonable return on their investment. Make a small fortune by starting with a big one and then go racing (or building stuff for racers). cheers, Michael