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Impression Kreidler Florett RS
Like in flight
Those were the days when motorcycles with 50 cubic centimeters were real motorcycles and the youngsters who strolled on them were real motorcyclists. In the middle between playing cowboys and getting married, the first great freedom, the excursion to the quarry pond, the daily round through the homeland. Guys your fifties. The best thing is a Kreidler RS 50, because with her hair nicely coiffed, she easily handled all the clicks with the bride on her back.
Saturday was the day of the big fight. Saturdays were screwed, tinkered and tinkered. “I love you, yeah, yeah, yeah,” the Beatles trumpeted tinny over the radio in the Beatclub, half the residential area had lined up in front of the workshop, in oily overalls and ripped jeans, half a dozen mopeds, twice as many “mechanics”, but only half as many girls in bell bottoms and cheeky mini dresses. Was also sausage, the Saturdays were about more important things. About power, revs, speed. Still lukewarm mufflers lay abandoned on the asphalt, nuts, bolts and screws rolled around between tool boxes and cardboard boxes, carburetors dangled as if strangled on the throttle cable.
Downstairs in the workshop basement a razor-sharp milling cutter screeched through the aluminum, only interrupted when the master carefully checked his work in the glaring light of the converted bedside lamp. “The cylinder goes like a pig, watch out.” The audience listened quietly and tightly to the man with the cutter and grinder glasses: the local performance guru. He had what others dreamed of at the time: a filigree dentist’s milling cutter with which he could dig large and larger exhaust and transfer channels into the tiny 5o-cylinder. And he also knew how ?? s okay, was after all a 50s racing driver with laurel wreaths on the wall. We are not. We dug senseless holes and corners into the sensitive engine part with round files and sandpaper, polished the same holes and edges again smoothly and managed it within a few hours without any plan, but with passionate devotion, the beloved moped from a brisk 5.3 to 3.5 PS to hairstyle back. And why all the uprising? To finally brush off the miserably fast Kreidler RS - or at least not to burst hopelessly out of the slipstream.
The things were hated and loved. Loved by everyone who had one, hated by everyone who was in constant combat with their Zundapp, Herkules or Garelli against the Kreidler Armada. The Japanese involved in racing had no chance in the everyday street fighting at the end of the sixties, and only Honda held the position against the overpowering Europeans with the beautiful but weak-chested four-stroke SS 50.
Kreidler, on the other hand, raced towards the world record with a cigar-like construction and a revamped 50cc racing engine: 210 km / h, driven on the dried up salt lakes of Utah / USA. Kreidler also raced at the front in the road world championship, but only won the first of a total of seven world championship titles in 1971. All of this based on the idiosyncratic engine design with a horizontal cylinder. And: Kreidler drivers switched on a claw-type gear that was extremely precise for the time, while the competition still had to grapple with wobbly draw-wedge switch boxes. But: Kreidler drivers were blasphemously beaten with their “sheet metal frame” and “bicycle fork”, because others drove solid double tube frames and front forks with two bridges. However, this did not change the fact that the RS from Kornwestheim had the majority in front of the schoolyards and factory gates. Some slimmed down, polished and clearly styled like racers, others chugged with mud flaps, leg shield and windshield defaced, every morning at four for the shift and back at noon. Dirty, too salty, not loved, just used.
The Swabian two-stroke ratchet cost 1,400 marks in 1968, so there was nothing to be done with an apprentice fee of 110 marks a month. And the criminal energy was missing to crack the machine. At least for me. So there was nothing left but to drive the Kreidler boys to the sheet metal at least in the corners with a heavily applied DKW 159 TS.
Thirty years later, time flew by, stuck? I have an original Foil RS under my butt. As narrow as a balance beam, the chrome tank between the knees, a short, slightly cranked handlebar and the “cockpit” made by VDO right in the field of vision. “Well, my old boy,” the slim red winked at me, “it never worked out for us back then. Unfortunately. ”But now. She knows the way out of musty Stuttgart, with almost seventy things we climb the edge of the kettle, up to the old Solitude racetrack. There where the never-ending motorcycle affair began with a curve dance in the ditch that was performed at breakneck speed in front of the assembled team, but unfortunately did not stand up.
The good foil leave ?? I’m healing, turn the gas down The slim moped sails elegantly through the shadow curves, trembling with speed and exertion all over. The shot glass motor does not like half measures, it has to be thrashed and beaten, speed means power and speed means shifting, so that the boot glows. Then something stirs, something like dynamism comes into play and the heavenly pleasure of driving a moped. Always towards the south, Wurmtal, Nagoldtal, Black Forest. Like back then. Awesome, how the lying engine buzzes and chirps, shifts gears in miserably long gearshifts and, when the going gets tough, shimmy out of the hairpin bends with a dragging clutch. But the hour of the 50s Kreidler is coming. Downhill. Our favorite discipline. Even if the small drum brake only works with screw clamps, the gas remains tight, no matter what happens. If you brake, you are cowardly, and if you twitch, you lose. And only the losers lose. Back then you had no other chance than to let it stand. Especially against the Kreidler drivers. The dogs. With ready-made and ready-made tuning parts from the “racing set” costing 300 marks, completely illegal, but as fast as an arrow, properly screwed specimens brought it to over 10 hp and a brisk 130 knots. The slipstream came to an end pretty quickly for us DIY enthusiasts.
Kreidler drivers without any connection to the racing scene – the racing kit was only available on presentation of the B license, known at the time as an ID card – used the first and popular tuning stage: 20-series Dellorto carburetors including intake manifolds for just under 70 marks. It was screwed on in three and a half minutes, looked razor-sharp and actually brought more pressure and speed. Seduced, however, spiteful contemporaries and demoralized opponents to snap small eighth screws or the like directly into the open aluminum funnel. The cylinder and piston usually crumbled into irreparable scrap on the first attempt at starting. Nasty sabotage like that, then you’d better starve to death fairly in the slipstream.
Thirty years later, the myth of the Kreidler high-flyer is put into perspective, the speedometer needle sways laboriously towards 90, loses the desire for more with the smallest bump and forces the old bones back into the typical jackknife position. Flat on the tank, we break through the sound barrier jubilantly: 100 km / h. The 50s engine goes wild, turns dizzy, whimpers for mercy. Keep your head up like a braking parachute, we get stuck with 80 things. Nice too. Wouldn’t have happened to us earlier, because back then moped life was one single race. Against the RS, against the buddy, against the wind and against the weaker self who wanted to turn back the gas. Today there is no opponent in sight and the youngsters are sufficiently cooled with a dozen broken bones. Today we swing in large arcs through the autumnal Black Forest, smell felled wood and musty forest floors, feel the cool freshness of the gurgling streams. The grin behind the face mask is getting wider and wider, I feel the pleasure in the wind, in the cold, in the warmth, in the drug-like effect of burnt two-stroke oil, in the crackling cylinder motorcycling. With 5.3 HP and tires in the size of a cutting disc. Sheer power and eight-piston brakes, aluminum frame and digital engine management, everything is nice and nice, but not now, please. Now the nostalgia and memories are alive, the moments and people come back to the buddies from back then. Those who, in their youthful curiosity, have dared too much and lost everything. Their fate earned us the necessary respect so that the first trip with the moped, with ten marks in the pocket alone to Hockenheim and back, turned into an adventure with a happy ending.
D.hen with a moped, regardless of whether it was Kreidler RS or Heinkel Perle, the world was only half the size and the annoying bus schedule was meaningless. With a moped it was clear: The quarry pond is the beginning and not the end of the big wide world.
Technical data – Kreidler Florett RS
Engine: Horizontal single-cylinder two-stroke engine, 49.9 cm3, bore x stroke 40 x 39.7 mm, compression 1 to 11, 5.3 HP at 7250 rpm, mixture lubrication 1:25, oil bath clutch, five-speed dog gear. Chassis: Pressed steel frame closed, telescopic fork with a fork bridge, spring travel 110 mm, tubular steel swing arm with two spring struts, spring travel 95 mm, drum brake front and rear, O front 150, rear 116 mm, ready-to-drive weight 80 kg, constant speed 80 km / h. Construction time: 1967 ?? 19xx. Price: (1968) 1400 marks.
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