AJS Bobber 125

This is where it almost all began - and I'm glad it didn't.

For a brief period, when I realised that bikes had vanished from my license and the only way to do it was to start again... I planned to just do my CBT and ride a relatively cheap 125cc bike for a while within the city. I fancied something a little different, something with presence, I fancied a bobber.

My favourite for a little while was the Yamaha XVS 125 Dragstar, modified for that bobber look, but when I saw the AJS Bobber 125 I was bowled over by the look of it. A genuine hard-tail bobber with a learner-legal 125cc engine in it.

Very, very cool and quite rare too...

The bike has clear nods to classic Harley-Davidson bikes, from the lines of the frame, the fuel tank and the wheels. It's a full-size bike which is surprisingly long for a little 125cc bike. It looks like a larger-capacity bike, that's for sure. Just a shame that the engine is an inline twin, rather than a better-looking V Twin.

The bobber was sold new in 2014 to the original owner, ridden 14 miles and then placed in a shed until it was bought by the previous owner in 2018. I bought the bike with just under 700 miles on it.

Sadly, the original owner hadn't stored the bike very well so the chrome had suffered somewhat, though the bike did still look really rather good.

The bike had a few modifications before I bought it, it had a side-mount number plate fitted, mini bullet-style indicators with the wiring through the frame, an uprated LED headlight, a cool tail light mounted under the mudguard and the mirrors had been removed with blanking screws fitted in place. The tyres had also been changed so the bike was on Metzeler ME888 Ultra Marathon tyres which were very good.

Not liking riding without mirrors, I added some simple bar-end ones, added a nice leather tool roll to the front and cut down the exhaust pipes before fitting more aesthetically pleasing 20" Harley-style, side exit slip-on pipes. Nice and loud.

I loved the all-black look of the bike with just the right amount of chrome on show, the tank I found to be a little boring so I designed and cut a matte black vinyl decal with a union flag design and the number 76 in a cool, bobber-style font - as the bike had a real 70's bobber look to it and I was born in '76.

I thought that I would tidy up the bike, swap the air filter for some U-shaped silicone hoses and K&N filters and remove the big, ugly square box that housed the battery and electrics and relocate them with a smaller, gel battery into the fake oil tank that only housed the ignition. This would make the bike look much more custom and cool.

The bike was very cool but was actually painfully slow, the little 125cc engine didn't develop much power at all. The tiny 125cc Honda Rebel-inspired engine didn't look all that good either in my opinion and I thought, that after riding for some time I could swap the engine and fit an XVS 650 or a Vulcan 800 V-Twin in its place.

However; I hardly rode the bike unfortunately, as I had changed my mind and decided to do the full direct access, riding this was not going to help me with my MOD1 test so I chose not to ride until I'd passed that.

When I did pass my MOD1, I saw a Ducati Scrambler Classic which I couldn't resist so after passing my MOD2, the bobber remained unused.

Having the Ducati really highlighted the quite low quality of the AJS, it's a Chinese-made bike and was made to a budget, which is fine, but it did show to be honest. Don't get me wrong, for the money, this was a cool bike and did look really rather good but next to a high-quality machine, it was noticeable and hard to live with at that point. For a custom 125 I don't think you can beat the look of this though.

I could've worked with the bike, but that would mean spending way more than it would ever be worth, I think it would also be a shame as well, so I decided to move the bike on, with a view to purchasing a large capacity bobber in the future, either a Harley-Davidson or an Indian maybe.

The AJS Bobber 125 went to a chap called Pedro in London, I hope he enjoyed having it.

Thanks for reading, help me out by buying me a coffee.