Back in July 1984, in ATG issue 98, there was an article on a hybrid Moto Morini 350 "Wallaby".
It started as a Strada and had various Yamaha and Camel parts fitted.
Strada frame and engine
pair of marzocchi forks for YZ125 (35mm stanchions)
DT250MX front wheel, fits straight in the above forks
XT500 rear wheel, fits with a little fiddling
genuine Camel tank (fibreglass)
two Maestro side panels
two Stillmotor plastic guards
pair of Renthal bars
The creator and then owner made serrated footrests and shortened the standard brake pedal by 3". If any of you know what happened to this bike (which would now be 40 years older) please let me know, I was asked about it a few months ago and it'd be great to learn more.
PS: There's a similar hybrid Strada + Kanguro front end, etc. owned by one of the club that graces the June page of this year's MRC calendar. It performed very well during the Spanish TET trip in September 2023. Hybrids can be fun
Thanks Julian, I'd like to see pictures of that too. I think the Wallaby title is perfect too and should be applied to a 250cc trail bike. An alternative view is that Wallaby having been used on this 350 special is not to be applied to any 250 special we may create-but the hell with that I'm now committed to doing it anyway and will risk any copyright or trademark infringement threats too. The nay-sayers have suggested the title of 'Wabbit' for any 250 trail special but I will ignore them.
All donations to the rest home for old Camels, Leicestershire.
Steve Brown wrote: ↑21 Jul 2024 22:29
Thanks Julian, I'd like to see pictures of that too. I think the Wallaby title is perfect too and should be applied to a 250cc trail bike. An alternative view is that Wallaby having been used on this 350 special is not to be applied to any 250 special we may create-but the hell with that I'm now committed to doing it anyway and will risk any copyright or trademark infringement threats too. The nay-sayers have suggested the title of 'Wabbit' for any 250 trail special but I will ignore them.
Technically it's closer to a 240cc trail bike, but I'll let that go. That is unless you're planning to sneak in oversize pistons in your edition of the mob of wallabies. BTW a young wallaby is called a joey so we could also trademark that for the 240c model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallaby
A quick update from me and my Wallaby/Joey project...
I bought a couple of incomplete Honda XR125L's at a local auction house. Their front forks are 31mm diameter - slightly thinner than the 31.75mm (1 1/4") ones fitted to the 250 2C. They have more travel, roughly 6" and a 19" spoked front wheel with a 17" spoked rear wheel. The offset of the fork yokes differ by just over 20mm, the yokes of the XR125L are shorter i.e. the steering stem is shorter, by roughly 62mm.
I've decided to have the steering stem of the Honda yokes extended and a local motorbiking engineer has kindly offered to do this as he used to do similar work over the years. He's planning to machine in a stepped insert in suitably high tensile steel and weld it with high tensile rod. All this seems suitably overkill and encouraging. If fortune smiles then I may have the yokes back by this weekend, more realistically I'm guessing another week or two. I'm using a bare 125H frame for initial measurements - these share the dimensions of the 250 2C headstock and both the 125H and 250 2C share top and bottom yokes (albeit one is bare aluminium and the other painted in my experience).
I've yet to decide what to do about the rear swingarm/suspension. The XR125L has a basic vertically mounted monoshock. I also need to compare how the XR125L's rear wheel would work in the 250 2C's swingarm in terms of wheel spindle, spacers, brake torque arm and cable/rod, etc.
More updates once I've had a go with fitting the XR125L's front forks. I'm making measurements as I proceed with this and will add these here when I've made more progress and got a better idea of the overall mixture and fit.
