The Rad that came in from the Cool

The Rad that came in from the Cool

A friend of mine is a former citizen of Ostdeutschland, the country that we knew as Emmtsedland. He was a teenage schoolboy in Berlin during the last years of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. His stories of motorcycling in a socialist utopia are not entirely what I expected.
East Germany had a system of vehicle type approval identical to the one in West Germany. For teenage motorcyclists the great challenge was to have a machine that looked different enough to impress your peers but not so different as to provoke the type of person who enforces type approval.
My friend explained how youthful enthusiasts would shorten indicator stems and mudguards. If you knew someone who was a good welder you had the possibility of cutting a section out of the silencer and shortening that as well. This did nothing for the performance or fuel consumption. It looked cool and it sounded different, therefore it was cool!
A popular modification was to hammer a long metal rod into the centre of the silencer. When the rod was removed there would be a subtle difference in the exhaust note. Once again fuel consumption went up and performance went down. The problem of higher fuel consumption was compensated for by back street deals on cheap Russian fuel. The only drawback being the high water content which would soon overflow from the water trap and swamp the carb!
Another innovative way of reducing motoring costs in Osten was to ride stolen motorcycles. As the pressure for change steadily grew, East German government employees were concerned about their future employment prospects and the value of their pensions. Towards the end riding on the pavements was treated with the same blind eye that ignored type approval and ownership irregularities.
The modification that tickled me most and was essential for street cred was a change of rear dampers. The front dampers from an ES with Earles type forks are longer than the TS/ETZ rear shocks. By changing to the longer shocks you made your bike look really cool. The damping and springing rates were totally wrong but why would a keen young kid care about that? The scarcity of ES machines in their homeland may be connected with this fashion!
All that and full employment too; we would have been defecting eastward if we had known!
© M. Tisehd 2003

The Rad that came in from the Cool - 2

I have a few corrections and additions to last month’s tale of teenage life in East Berlin. The period of relative anarchy did not end with re-unification. For about a year after the collapse of the East German Government their former employees, including the Police, were uncertain about their position in the new Germany. This encouraged teenagers to see how far they could push their luck.
In addition to a steady supply of cheap, and stolen, MZs young East Berliners had easy access to free cars. Incredible as it may seem to us, classic East German cars in good running order were given away! Many Trabants passed into the hands of young people and were soon reduced to scrap.
To return to motorcycles, I’m told that there was an East German four stroke called the AWO. It may have been based on a 1930s BMW and became part of Simson. Whatever their lineage, the fuel tanks of the rare AWO shaft drive singles could be persuaded to fit the TS. These handsome tanks were sought after by MZ style gurus, making the AWO an endangered species!
ETZ forks with a disc brake were regularly fitted to the TS model. The damping and springing characteristics could be stiffened by adding more oil to each fork leg. My friend was surprised at the capitalist fashion for pre-loading the fork springs. His MZ-eering qualifications are better than mine…
Some further specifications on modifying your MZ silencer with a rod of iron: it may be possible to improve the power output at low revs with little effect on fuel consumption, the secret is not to hammer the rod too far! As this practice would upset your MoT tester you are not to try it! I only record these experiments in the interest of historical accuracy.
I once explained to a girl from Zschopau how MZ riders in the capitalist world had regarded Pneumant tyres as inferior. She clearly did not believe me and said, “But they were the best!” Apparently there were four makes of tyres available in the old days. Pneumants were difficult to obtain as they mostly went for export!
I could tell you how TS frames were considered superior to the older ES frames. This had an effect on the surviving population of those beautiful ETS Trophy machines. I could tell you, but it’s too sad!
© M. Tisehd 2003
Previously published in: Thistledown
August & September 2003