Editor note: Mark Zweig of Janus Motorcycles has been sharing stories from his younger riding days, and we’re grateful for the glimpses back into his moto yesteryears. As Mark recently told us, “I wish I had made more photos of those old bikes. Photo development was expensive back then for us, and we spent all of our money on our motorcycles.” So we’ll share what photos Mark has, and supplement where we need to with shots of similar bikes that he sends us, from an age before smart phones with built-in high quality cameras.

Sometime back in 1974-75, I was in high school and bought myself an almost new 1972 Suzuki TC125 Prospector. It’s gorgeous metallic red and white striped tank was without a scratch, and still had it’s luggage rack, gargantuan taillight, turn signals, dual mirrors, and chrome fenders all intact, with probably no more than 500-600 miles on it.

For those who don’t know anything about these, the Suzuki Tc-125 motorcycles were typical street/trail “Enduro” type machines of that era- a single cylinder, oil-injected two stroke with a high mounted front fender and motocross handlebars. What made this particular model so cool was it’s dual range 4-speed transmission, which effectively gave the bike 8 gears.

Time to strip it to rip it in the dirt.

Back in those days, if you bought one of these motorcycles and planned to ride it in the dirt, as soon as you got the bike home you would start stripping parts off it. I pulled the mirrors and turn signals and tossed them in a parts bin. Off came the rear rack and chrome fenders, which I replaced with a brand new set of white Preston Petty “Mudder” fenders for and aft—the rear Mudder had an integrated taillight that I thought was so cool. I also laced up a new 21” rim and spokes for the front wheel. I put on a new set of Nitto knobbies and some white number plates in place of the stock side covers. I changed out the grips (stock grips on Japanese bikes were horrible back then), put on some serrated metal footpegs, added a metal “rock guard” (think cage) on the headlight and another white number plate with a cutout over the headlight.

While I had a pretty decent street/trail machine by that point, what really made it cool beyond cool was the $125 Suzuki factory hop-up kit that I picked up from my local Suzuki dealer where my friend Dave Rozier worked as a mechanic (he’s called “Hodaka Dave” today—look him up). What a bargain! It came in a single box and included a different cylinder, piston, and head, along with a larger carburetor, performance air filter, and a beautiful downswept expansion chamber. To say this “kit” transformed the little motorbike is a huge understatement. Suzuki claimed it would take the bike from 13 to 21 hp, and my “seat of the pants” dyno confirmed that was real.