Lars Gerestad's Jawa typ 244

Thanks to Lars Gerestad from Linköping Sweden for sending this note and picture.

Sending you a picture of my Swedish army Jawa. Swedish army number "255", it`s a single cylinder 250 battery ignition 1959 model. Whas used in the army for almost 40 years, from 1959 to ca 2000. When the Husqvarna automatic came, it whas then transformed to the home defense and army training school. This Jawa and the magnetic ignition modell "257" from 1962, did a very good job. These bikes have an exellent roadholding and is very well known in Sweden. I have been an army motorcycle instructor and love and know these bikes very well.

A beautiful example of an early
50's Jawa ISDT 350 Twin

Bram needs an air bottle for this side,
can anyone help?

Spare cables and levers are handy

Jawa used aluminum cylinders
with steel liners on the ISDT's

The starting point Perak frame

As far as I know the Jawa 350 Twin ISDT, model Pérak or Springer, was used in the Six Days Trial in 1951-1953 by the Czech team and in 1954 and 1955 by several private riders and the Hungarians. As usual in these years the competition motorcycle was almost the same as the standard production ones, except the following parts:

• Cylinders made of aluminum for better cooling, with bigger intake and exhaust ports and bigger transfer ports. The pressed in cylinder liners use Niresist steel.
• Reworked pistons to match the bigger ports.
• Stone protection on headlamp and below the engine.
• Spares for all control cables and levers, (brake and clutch).
• A small seat on rear mudguard to protect rider to be hurt by the rear mudguard.
• 26mm carburetor instead of 24 mm.
• 15 teeth engine sprocket for secondary chain instead of 16 teeth.
• Shortened mudguards.
• Trial tires instead of block profile, same sizes as a standard.
• Bottle with compressed air, (missing on my Jawa, I am still looking
  for one).
• High mounted exhaust pipes with standard fishtail silencers.
• Spare condenser and spare spark plug wire with cap.
• Power about 15 HP instead of 12.
• Reduced size of wheel nuts to remove a wheel with help of the sparkplug tool.
• Lead seals between cylinders and cylinder head, to be placed during examination before the race.

Riding off-road with this Jawa will result in an enormous respect for the riders in the 50's. In old films you can see the very high speed races over terrible circuits and that during six days!!

Riding this machine you can feel very well the very short rear suspension without any damping, and also the short front suspension, (with some damping).

The seat is comfortable, but riding over stones and through holes will cause directly a hard landing on the rear mudguard. The small seat there will keep you out of the hospital.

The engine is fine, especially at low revolutions. And the noise then is like a turbine, mainly caused by the marginal metal air filter.

Under wet circumstances the small sized tires, (3.00x19 and 3.25x19), are terrible and soon your motorcycle will be buried to the axles in the mud.

But riding like this is really fun as long as it is not a real race. Riders in the 50's were heroes!

During a lot of years the Dutch ISDT-team was equipped with Jawa (250 single) and the Czech team with 250 single and 350 twin. And also several East -European teams and riders used these Jawa's.

It is almost impossible to find a complete ISDT machine, because after doing there job most of them were used in all kind of crosses until they were thrown away as scrap. I was lucky to find an engine which could be restored with a lot of work and patience. But the cylinder liners are bored out now to the last-possible oversize. As described above other parts could be used from standard machines or could be remade with photo's as example.

Although I renewed the contact points, condenser and spark plug wires, the whole is still on 6 Volts accumulator ignition and lights. Everything conforms to the original ignition of the 50's. The Jawa is a very good starter in cold and hot condition, and also during a long trip with + 35 degree Celsius in the environment the engine runs very well without any sign of cooling problems.

The un-restored ignition

Returned to new with spare condenser

The Cases, in need of much work

Nicely restored with fin repair

Kevin Blackburn's CZ Typ 968 (250 Twinpipe)

(by Kevin Blackburn)

After a couple years racing in AHRMA sportsman classes I realized that I really wanted to build a classic 250 bike to ride. Not only did I want to get in on the Premier & Classic weekends but the class looked like a bit of fun to race. I had CZ 380 which I really liked and after considering a few other bikes I decided to find and build me a CZ 250 Twinpipe. I knew that these are neither easy to find nor an inexpensive project (I had no idea I found out later) but was really taken with the mystique and cool factor surrounding these fine bikes.

After looking around for awhile I decided to pick up a running builder bike from NW CZ/Maico. A few phone calls sealed the deal and R. Borg brought the bike out to the Premier/classic event at Chehalis in September of 2003.

As it turned out after tearing into it for refurbishing the engine was a complete mess and well beyond my meager machinist and mechanics skill.

The engine was sent to CZ guru Bertus to see if he could help. Among the unusable parts were strangely remachined cases, a strange clutch basket that was welded on the crank end, a "creatively" remachined flywheel along with the usual worn parts such as shift shaft, gears and countershaft. Luckily Bertus was able to locate and rebuild the parts needed, (thanks Bertus), and I received the engine back from him in February of 2005.

Meanwhile I started on the rest of the bike. My idea was to make a racer out of it and not a show bike. New suspension was needed via Progressive (since have gone to Ohlins) and new fork springs and valving. An aftermarket fiberglass tank is used. Excels with SS spokes were installed on redone hubs. Electronic ignition and a 32MM Mikuni was added along with plastic fenders and airbox. I use a tall firm GP style seat to keep from that vintage “knees in my chest" feeling.

Finally I was able to put my classic 250 racer together. The Madras Oregon event in the spring of 2005 was its first event and except for a few minor hitches the bike has turned out to be exactly what others have raved about. It is light and nimble, fast, fun and handles like a dream.

A Jawa speedway top end mated to the typ 514 bottom end, year unknown?

I must apologies to the person that sent me this picture because I lost their name and I always want to give credit to Czechpoint viewers that send me pictures and information. So if you were the person that sent me this picture thank you again and please get back in touch.

1978 CZ 250 Grass Track

From Matthew Keen comes these great pictures of a 78 CZ Grass Tracker. This bike looks to be powered by a 250 Falta motor and even the pipe appears to be a stock Falta pipe twisted on the header pipe so that it runs out the right side.

The 1964 DOT - CZ Scrambler

From my Canadian vintage racing buddies Ken Burningham and Tommy Mcfarland come these shots of a DOT/CZ Replica shown by Peter Remington in the DOT display at the 2005 Stafford Classic Bike Show & Swap Meet. This is a replica of the only 3 DOT-CZ Scramblers built. Ken tells me that John Banks raced one of the DOT-CZs in 1964. I wonder how DOT got (3) 250 Twinpipe engines back then, do you suppose they purchased complete bikes just to get the engines? If there are any DOT experts out there I would love to get some more info on those bikes.

Thanks again to Ken and Tommy for getting these shots at the Stafford show.

Olavi Peltonen's 1961 CZ 125 "Six Days"

"Hello! My name is Jukka Peltonen, from Porvoo Finland. I'm contacting you, because this bike should be quite rare. I have sent you pictures of my father Olavi`s restored 1961 CZ 125 "Six Days". I HOPE you never seen this kind of bike before... :) Take a look specially on the airbox (aluminium), gear shifer by hand too, (useful in enduro use), chain lublicator and to the twin spark system, (the other spark plug was replaced with a hand operated compression valve by my father). This CZ125 has very unique noise , because of the straight cut primary gears between the crankshaft and the clutch. This CZ 125 was my fathers dream since 1960... he has had all kinds of bikes, MZ, Bultaco, Husqvarna, Jawa Sixdays 250 and many others, but this project was his dream come true :)"

Olavi and his 61 CZ 125 "Six Days"

Frame looks like my Twinpipe MXer's

Air bottle, chain oiler, and hand shift knob

All wired up and ready for the 6-Days

The grandfather of the CZ Moto-cross