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Montesa 414. The BIG M!
History Page "A crowd gathers quickly around a Montesa 414.Usually it's composed of guys chewing their lips pensively, like a bunch of local hoodlums confronting a new gun-slinger in town. The seldom-seen Montesa is an unknown quantity. And if there's one thing a motocross rider who has carefully assesed the strengths and weaknesses of his opposition doesn't relish, it's another variable in his race day equation. Especially a variable powered by a massive engine with the same exterior charm as a land mine......." Cycle News 1979 They also said......... " The Spanish underdog with a knack of winning races while driving its rider to the brink." I've been to the brink several times with my VF 414. I hate it's guts sometimes! It's like when you're a young man going out going out with a woman who's not the prettiest girl in the street but she locks the bedroom door whenever you walk in with her........ You know she's gunna cost you a fortune. You know she's gunna hurt you. You know she's gunna break your heart!! It's funny how time puts things out of perspective. I had a VE 414 in 1981. Already obsessed and defending Montesa's when everyone else was rubbishing them I somehow managed to trade everything I had plus a pretty large sum of money on it. I think I was lucky to get a dozen laps of my local track on it. In all fairness it wasn't the bikes fault. I had no funds or idea on how to maintain such a beast. I do remember that is how I collected my first 414 piston! And it's funny how I forgot how hard it was to get bits for them even when the importer was still in Geelong (Lyall O'Brien) or trying to find someone who had any knowledge of them! However over the last 28 years or so, the only bike that kept jumping out of the fog of the past was that damn414! (There's been plenty of bikes). And why the hell didn't they just call it a bloody 420!! Jump forward to May 2006 when I happened to be surfing bike for sale sites out of sheer boredom. There, staring at me was VF 414. Don't look. keep going. You definatly don't want to get involved with her again! I had a fair idea that they were pretty rare (turns out only 21 VE/VF's were imported into the country) so a month later, when I went looking for it again, I was very suprised to see it still there. Things went through my head like, maybe, this is meant to be........ I thought, can't hurt to ring the guy..............just for old times sake...........just so's he can let me know what a great bike it is........ A fool and his money are soon parted and after much drama the said memory arived in all its glory. As they wheeled it out of the hugh furniture pantech (unwashed) my heart sank. My eyes went straight to the cable tie holding the air-boot onto the back of the carb. Which shouldn't have mattered so much as the air-boot itself was deteriorated so badly you could poke holes through it with your fingers. Which was when I also remembered the guy telling me that one of his mates had been having a good 'ol blast on her just a week prior to shipping and all the tracks over here had been pretty dusty up till that point.......great! Thankfully, I'd already made contact with Jared Bates at Southwest Montesa in Arizona, so I had a heap of parts winging their way out from The States and within a few weeks, I managed to get a ride of the beast. I was as happy as a pig in the proverbial! I knew it had along way to go but as I lapped around Monza Park with wallowing suspension, a split frond guard and the rear one gone all together I knew I'd done the right thing. I knew I was gunna cop a lot of stick for buying one ("here comes the two dinosaurs") I knew it was gunna cost me a fortune to get it to how I wanted it. I knew at times I'd want to empty the contents of the fuel tank all over it and throw a match at it.......... After owning the bike twelve months now and racing it on a couple of occasions I've become very comfofrtable with the bike and have made a few observations...... It's an absolute joy that so many Montesa parts are interchangable! Bits between the 360 and 414 are an example and I'm quite often swapping motors, wheels and even the frame once! They are so basic that even a mechanical ignoramace like myself can pull one down to nothing and put it back together, no worries! It is a very fast bike that handles exceptionally well. A joy to jump and it flys so well! At a race meeting people still gather around it as it is an unknown quantity. It's still the new gun-slinger in town............ Email:
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