From: Janet A. Mele (jamele@erols.com)
Date: Tue May 18 2004 - 07:28:38 PDT
>From George Mele, Crownsville, MD
Am missing part of the thread on this subject of discussion but have to
emphatically AGREE with Mr Eames comments on Russian Motorcycles. I was
Judging Chairman at Aberdeen East Coast Rally and some of you may have seen
my display of Soviet military vehicles including the KMZ sidecar motorcycle.
Believe me, there is absolutely no comparison between an authentic Russian
military motorcycle and the Urals and Dnepr kit bikes --or Chiang
Jiangs ---commonly seen on Ebay at "bargain" prices.
I have researched this subject to the point of interviewing a former manager
of the KMZ/Dnrepr factory in Kiev, Ukraine and personnel at Aberdeen Proving
Ground familiar with military and "export" models.
KMZ (Kievskiy Motocycletnyy Zavod) motorcycles built for the soviet military
were of excellent quality and relaibility. Assembly was supervised by
serving officers and NCOs who would have gotten a 95 grain FMJ in the back
of the head if they shipped defective equipment to the Soviet armed forces.
Inspection by these troops was very picky and KMZ over the course of a
decade accumulated literally mountains of out-of-spec and defective
components. Starting in the 70's as military bike production decreased, KMZ
started to build bikes for the domestic civilian sector and for export under
the "Dnepr" and "Kossack/Neval" names. Without question, these latter
civilian bikes--including the commonly encountered kit bikes rely heavily on
parts and components scrounged from KMZ military reject scrap piles. They
are neither military production nor military quality although someone with
moderate mechanical skill can get them running well enough for use.
The KMZ "MB" series of bike is an entirely different breed. MB (actually MV
in english letters) means "MODEL' VOENNYY" or Military Tactical Model in
Russian. Relatively few of these were built and those were consigned to
Airborne and air assault units and to special front-line combat support and
communications units. The MB series was geared lower for off-road use and
had a driven sidecar wheel. Its most unusual and unique feature was a
manually operated differential lock so the bike had maximum traction in deep
mud and snow. They are built heavy and well and can absorb a lot of abuse.
In sum, this is a model unique to the military, relatively rare, and used
by elite units .
Is one of them worth big bucks? Maybe when you consider that the same money
MIGHT buy a low-line Hyundai that will depreciate down to a couple of grand
by the time it is paid for--or the fact that CD rates are hovering at the 1%
rate!
Just my two rubles worth guys........
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat May 07 2005 - 20:29:58 PDT