Glad to find you

[chickenman_26]

Hi All,
I don't know why I didn't find this site earlier, but I'm glad I finally stumbled in here.

About 1-1/2 years ago, I was riding around Mesa, Arizona when I spied what I thought was some kind of new Ducati at a Duc/Guzzi/Aprilia dealer. Turns out, the bike was a '94 MZ Saxon 500 Country...a brand new one. The shop had once been an MZ dealer, and this bike was a left over demo bike with 200km (125 miles) on the clock. It had a broken inner fairing piece, a warped front rotor, leaking fork seals, sun-cracked tires, and it barely ran. The dealership was asking $2500 for it. After about 15 minutes negotiations, I wrote a check for $1500 and stuffed the bike into my pickup.

A friend who owned a former MZ shop in Tucson turned me on to parts supplies and gave me some valuable tips. And at the time, MZ in Florida would deal direct with owners. So I set about making the bike as close to perfect as was reasonable. MZ's entire stock of brake rotors was warped (just like mine). But because I was the tech editor of a motorcycle magazine at the time, I was able to get EBC to duplicate the rotor. It's now available to all. MZ also gave me at no charge a shop manual and engine manual for the Rotax-engined bikes. An engine parts manual was procured from Ron Woods Racing.

All I can say is that I love this bike. It takes me back to my motor cycling roots. Aside from commuting and general screwing around, the wife and I use it to explore ghost towns on dirt roads here in the southwest. I've tried longer trips, but Dave is right...the seat and rear suspension on the Rotax bikes pound your butt too much for anything more than a few hundred mile day trip.

Anyhow, I hope to be able to contribute here as well as learn. I've been a factory-trained bike mechanic (Kawasaki & Honda) since '76 and have owned more than 40 bikes since I began riding in '67. Currently, an Aprilia Caponord, A GL1500, and a BMW R1100R keep the MZ company in the garage. Again, glad to have found y'all.

[DAVID THOMPSON]

glad to see you found us and
it sure is fun to have a bike that every guy in town
doesnt have one like it

a friend calls my saxon tour "Hardly" because the engine
is the same as a bunch of flat trackers use

here is a link in the album of my 2 MZ BIKES
in case you missed them

http://www.mzriders.com/album_pic.php?pic_id=30

ar dave

[chickenman_26]

Well, it was good to find you, and now I'll leave you. I sold the bike on Ebay this week. The bike's new owner is a very well known person in the motorcycle biz, so perhaps you'll see it in a magazine article somewhere.
See ya.

Stu Oltman