24
Something old, something new, all of 'em borrowed
and The Lame Turkey's blue. Here we have rounded
up every Japanese 250 trialer on the market for a
comparison test and the only trials rider (sic) on the
staff breaks his arm! No sweat, in the go-go motojournalism biz, you don't let a little thing like that
stop you; you go out and get someone who is a
better rider anyhow.
So, we got Bernie Schreiber, American Trials
Association's top Expert, Boyd Bernard for an
Amateur viewpoint, and dragooned two other staffers
(one male, one female) to become instant Novices.
Now we'll see which of our test bikes is an Expert's
mount, which is easiest for a beginner, and so on.
What we didn't expect was that our Expert, our
Amateur, and our two Novices would all pick out
the same machine as the "winner." So much for
preconceived notions .. ~
The bikes
We started out to gather all the Japanese
250s for a stra ight comparison, but by a
coincidence, wound up with more bikes
than we intended. They were :
Yamaha TY 250 Well into its second
mode l year, it has been in production
the longest of the group . Developed as a
prototype by Mick Andrews, though a
far cry from what he's riding now. It
was the first "stock" reed-valved tr ialer,
Suzu ki 250 Exaeta In production since
late spring last year , developed as a
prototype by Gordon Farley . As with
the Yamaha 250, this is the second t ime
around for this bike at Cycle News.
Hond a T L 250 Formally introduced this
spring, th ough prototypes were runnin g
with littl e fanfare in ATA trials since
early last year. Samm y Miller had some
hand in its development, as did
American Bob Nickelsen.
Kawasaki KT 250 Though introduced
last summer, just now appea ring in
quantity .
Prototype
s ignif icant
or iginally developed by Englishmen Don
Smith and Richard Sunter, and ridden
by them at the Saddleback internat ional
round last January.
