5 Classic mid-sized Dirt bikes of the 70s

Not everyone was a thundering 500 Class MX bike or monster trail bike, sometimes you want enough to get the job done and no more

This time it’s five classic middleweight dirt bikes of the 1970s has to be said that not everybody wants the biggest baddest dirt bike every time they go out sometimes you want something that’s easily controllable more manageable and of course cheaper to buy and so here are five classic middleweight dirt bikes the Kawasaki k175 Kawasaki produced a broad range of

Trail bikes during the 1970s from Humble 50s or they up to Mighty 500s perhaps one of their best remembered however is the k175 now the k175 was introduced in 1976 and was a direct descendant of the earlier 175 F series The kaaki had been producing since the F1 had appeared way back in

1966 the engine was of course an aircooled two-stroke but had rot valve induction and that’s slightly over square dimensions of 61x 58.8 and of course there was super lube automatic oiling which pumped oil directly into the crank case rather than into the flow of gas rather like other

Two strokes did at the time it was an excellent 26 mm Mauna carburetor fitted and the bike used Magneto ignition which was very reliable although the K was actually produced in 1976 it was based around earli machines and Kawasaki would claim a very healthy 21 horsepower at 7,500 RPM for the motor

But earlier test had actually shown around 15 horsepower at the back wheel on the dyno this is still a pretty healthy figure for a 175 after all and in fact in real terms was pretty close to what you were getting from a lot of the fourstroke in particular 250s and

Even Kawasaki’s own larger k250 only outperformed the engine slightly and that bite was quite a bit heavier and this is where the little 175 really sha the bike weighed in at around £250 or 115 kilos so it was very light and very Nimble if you got it stuck somewhere it

Was easy to extract the things and of course the lightweight also meant that the bike made the very best of the performance that was available so acceleration was actually very good for such a small bike so Nimble good acceleration easy to handle and easy to

Pull out of a potle and it was reliable too there’s a lot to love about about the K so over all you have to say the K 175 do you really need to buy anything bigger and I suspect that if you’re a guy in the 1970s looking for a trail

Bike that’s very much the question you’d be asking yourself the Maha DT 175 and 250 models for the 1970s yamaho were very no for their off-road bikes but not everybody wanted something like this 360 some people just wanted something a bit more accessible and with that market

Very much in mind in 1971 Yamaha introduced the dt250 and its smaller 175 staem and just like the Kawasaki before the bike was an evolution of a previous model in this case the 1968 dt1 engine of course was a single cylinder eiro two-stroke of either 246 or 171 CC’s

With the 250 having B and stroke dimensions of 70x 64 and the 175 having dimensions of 66x 50 am would claim a peak of 23 horsepower at 6,000 RPM for the 250 and 16.3 at 7,000 horsepower for the 175 the bikes were broadly of course very much the same although the 175 had

A six-speed gearbox compared to the 250s 5-speed as you would hope both bikes were commendably light adding to the agility and the acceleration and in fact the on 7 5 was even lighter than the Kawasaki before it breing for a very good all round package the make 250

Nuro German company Mak has started out producing cars but has switched postwar to producing these very nice scooters for later moving on to off-roaders and then Duro machine the gs250 would enjoy a very long production run between 1964 and 1979 however given mako’s pioneering attitude towards the development of the

Machines you can rest assur that the bike in 1979 was a very different beast from that first introduced in ‘ 64 and these later ’70s machines would of course enjoy the use of the long travel suspension system that moo had pioneered the engine used was a fairly standard

Single cylinder air called piston ported two-stroke unit that in base form only claimed around 17 horsepower although it could be tuned and was often tuned to give quite a bit more and compression even at standard trim was an High waterink 15.5 to1 so whatever horsepower your particular version was actually

Getting was then fed for a 5-speed gearbox to the 18in rear wheel but it’s when you begin to look at this machine dimensionally you realize what a really purposeful bit of Kit this is the seat height is 960 mm hopefully it sinks down quite a bit when you put your butt on it

And there’s a ground clearance of 384 mm too factoring its lightweight of 109 kilos and you’ve got yourself a serious bit of Kit indeed The Honda CR250 Elenor now I use the Elenor name here because it’s instantly recognizable to American viewers although for as Brits it’s a name that doesn’t tend to associate with the c we often just call it the CR although of course anybody that’s Seen On Any Sunday will instantly

Make the link to the Elenor Grand Prix which is very much shown in the movie now with a few notable exceptions Honda is essentially a fourstroke manufacturer both in production bikes and in their competition TT road races however when they wanted to go Offroad they knew they

Would need to develop a two-stroke so in 1973 they introduced the alzor with its Canam mx250 Canadian based manufacturer Canam began to produce motorcross bikes of 175 and 125cc capacities in 1973 but in 74 they would introduce their first 250 with an updated version the MX3 arriving in 1976 and although a great deal of work had been done to improve the suspension set upon the previous model

The MX3 became known as the Black Widow because of its ill handling this is mainly due to a rather flimsy frame design Desir to a smaller bike trying to contain a 35 horsepower monster of an engine and in fact Jeff Smith former motorcross world champion and Cam’s

Development Rider DED the bike out and declared it frankly unridable thankfully by the end of the70s and the arrival of the MX6 model Canam had tamed the woeful handling beast and Canam would finally have a competent chassis to cope with its excellent motor however a 1982

Production was moved to the UK and was taken over by Armstrong CCM bringing to an end medium manufacturer what collections of bikes would you like to see us do a video on maybe you got a bike that can use for a test ride either way get in touch

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