Yamaha Power
for NVT125.
OUR FIRST
impression, after a brief spell of riding the Rambler, is that it is a match
for anything in its class.
During an
official off-road riding session we sneaked an opportunity to try the machine
on Tarmac as well as grass and discovered the single cylinder two stroke would
rev freely through the 7,500 rpm red line in all five gears.
What made
the performance even more impressive was the fact that the test bike we rode
was not even run in.
The engine
and gearbox are standard Yamaha units NVT neither make, nor need any excuse for
using without modification.
On paper the
gear ratios appear to be far too widely spaced with, for example, the first cog
rated at 30.93:1 and the second at 20.44:1.
In practice,
however they turned out to be excellent although it proved more difficult than
one would expect to lift the front and especially as the whole ensemble is
claimed to weigh-in at about 30lb less than the Yamaha from which the engine is
taken.
The engine
is carried in a British-designed Italian-built cradle frame which employs a single
downtube and spine.
The single,
non-adjustable, shock absorber is a modified lorry unit and Marzocchi forks
take care of the bumps at the front end.
Some of the
more weighty members of the test party, including MCN photographer John Noble,
found it a little too easy to bottom the suspension with the result that some
of the rear registration plates ended up bent out of shape.
Yours truly
added to the carnage, and illustrated the wisdom of fitting detachable indicators
to trail bikes, by sliding one of the machines down on its side snapping off
both the front and rear winkers in the process.
NVT freely
admit that they did not set out to make the Rambler a serious trail bike as the
younger fashion
conscious buyers they are out to woo are mainly interested in the appearance of
the machines and hardly ever use them
for green-laning.
Available in
either red or blue the Rambler would be among the finalists of any beauty
contest although
some sacrifices have had to be made to achieve the eye-catching result.
The dual
seat is, for example, far too short to carry any passenger you are not on
intimate terms with and the shapely petrol tank holds a mere 1-2 gallons.
Fashion has
also led to the use of a 260mm disc brake on the front which is totally out of
place for off-road riding. Nevertheless on the tarmac the Grimeca disc combines
with the rear drum unit to provide super stopping power.
The high
level exhaust is, on the other hand, both practical and attractive with a black
finish to match the top half of the engine.
The
switchgear is up to the high standard we have come to expect from the Japanese
but the buyers of the first 200 machines will have to put up with their speedos
marked in kph with the mph figure overstamped
in yellow on the glass.
Most young
riders will find the machine is everything they want it to be and they will
have the added bonus of
being able to tell their friends they have bought British-designed if not
British made machinery.
'A Bike at
the top of its class'
NVT
Motorcycles have, with a little help from their friends, produced one of the
most attractive dual purpose 125cc street-trail bikes on the market.
After more
than two years in the pipeline the NVT Rambler has at last arrived on the scene
powered by a standard DT125 Yamaha engine.
The Japanese
have also provided the switchgear and electrics while the vast majority of the other
components are Italian made.
Critics of
the "tank badge engineering" may scoff at the idea of the machine
being called British but the men at Shenstone are justifiably proud of their
creation.
"The
substantial British content comes from the brain not the hands," said NVT
chairman Mr
Dennis
Poore.
At least the
Dunlop Trials Universal tyres are British and so, joked the company’s sales
directorMike
Jackson, is the air that fills them.
Other
components, such as the NVT designed cradle frame, which could have been made
in Britain ended up being supplied by Italian companies for purely economic
reasons. They won the contracts because they submitted the best tenders.
"We
would dearly have loved the Rambler to be of wholly British content but we are
a commercial company who must buy from whoever offers us the best value," said
Tony Denniss, the development engineer who has led the project.
The
competitive £499 price coupled with eye-catching design work of stylist Mike
Ofield makes it a fairly safe bet that they will achieve their initial 12 month
sales goal of between 600 and 700 machines.
Dealers have
already placed orders worth up to £40,000 for the Rambler which, for the time
being at least, will be sold solely in the UK.
The
concentration of effort on the domestic market is very probably the result of
strings Yamaha have
attached to NVTs use of their engine.
Yamaha may
have either dictated a direct export ban or achieved the same result by limiting
the number of engines they make available.
With the
Shenstone workforce less than 50 strong the conditions are perhaps a lot easier
for NVT to swallow than
they would be if they had the facilities to produce the Rambler in greater
numbers.
As it is,
NVT have had to build up a stockpile of their Easy Rider mopeds and cease
assembly to concentrate
their efforts over the next few weeks on producing the Rambler.
Although
there had been a lot of speculation about the choice of powerplant for the
trail bike the decision to
use a Yamaha unit comes as no surprise.
The links
between the factories had already been forged by the Norton/Yamaha 750cc police
bike and HL500
moto cross projects.
The tie-up
is likely to be strengthened still further in the near future with whispers of
a 175cc version of the Rambler rolling off the assembly lines within a year.
