Early in the summer, my son had a Bus-Headbutting incident when a local country bus pulled out of a side road to cross a main road without seeing him. The worst sort of SMIDSY accident. The bus was so close that he hit it straight and level, and was pole vaulted off the bike. Amazingly he was pretty much ok, but the bike is a right off.

Smashed

The frame engine hangers shattered, the big frame weld on one side exploded and everything in front of the engine is destroyed.

So the challenge was to get him back on the road cheaply. By chance we came across an old work colleague of mine who had the same model CBR400RR growing spiders, mould and rust in his garage. It hadn't moved in 7 years after a couple of small accidents and being knocked over while parked. So this summer we've been resurrecting it.

Rebuilt

Doesn't that matt black look good? Perhaps the biggest hassle in all this was cleaning the inside of the tank. The petrol remains were turning to varnish and took an awful lot of degreaser and washing out. The fork seals were quite a challenge. And of course there were loads of japanese fasteners that were turning to cheese. But in the end it's quite a result. With the good carbs from the old bike along with the fuel supply bits, it started straight up without even changing the plugs. And as far as I can tell it's not using much oil and revs out nicely (ahem!) once we added the Japanese derestrictor black box.

Now, does anyone need some old CBR400RR bits?


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[ 19-Aug-06 9:00am ] [ ]