I dig this bike!: Pa stoked after finding buried bike in yard
A Ruyterwacht father got a very unusual Father’s Day gift when he discovered an old motorcycle buried two metres deep in his backyard.
Waheed Mulder, 47, got the skrik of his life while digging a grave for Simba, his boerboel who passed away following a long illness, when he uncovered the 1980s Suzuki, buried upside down, on Sunday morning.
“After digging the hole, I saw the tyre and thought it was a water pipe or something, but when I dug more, I saw the rim,” he says.
“It was more exciting and also what if there was someone buried with it because who in their right mind would bury a motorcycle?”
Waheed and his family spent about seven hours trying to dig up the motorcycle, which they eventually did after hauling it out with his bakkie.
“I started around 12pm because the dog passed away at 10am. I just used a spade and a chain to pull it out with my bakkie,” he explained.
Waheed has since tried to piece some of the broken bike parts together.
The motorcycle has since been identified as a Suzuki GSX250E, which was manufactured in the early 1980s.
According to globalsuzuki.com, the bike features a 250 cm³ air-cooled 4-stroke 2-cylinder DOHC engine equipped with Twin Swirl Combustion Chambers (TSCCs) mounted on a semi-double cradle frame designed for superlative handling.
Waheed has been living on the property for the past 18 years and claimed that the previous owner lived at the house for 30 years before they moved in.
“I’m not sure what was the reason for burying a bike, and I’m here now for 18 years, so it can be people that were living here before me, or I don't know, but who will do this?” he said.
His wife, Shandre Mulder, described the discovery as an adventure for their children.
“My son was helping him dig out the motorbike, we dug until sunset. We were going to give up, but we decided to get it over and done with.
“At first we thought it was a Chopper and we were quite excited. It was a bit of a struggle to get it out,” she said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of theories have been proposed by the Mulder family about how the bike got there, why it was buried in concrete, and whether it has anything to do with an old crime.
Waheed said he would hang onto the wreck to see if he could find out more about the bike.
The owner of Wrench Monkey Cape Town, Grant Rossouw, said that the Suzuki model is no longer manufactured.
“They haven’t made those for a very long time. They made the 250 and the 400, they were twin-cylinder bikes,” he said.
Grant explained that a bike’s value in this day and age varies depending on its condition.
“Mobile ones will fetch a little bit of money, depending on the condition, maybe. If it is buried in concrete, it must be destroyed by now,” he said.
byron.lukas@inl.co.za