Anyway money had to be diverted to the car fund, a replacement car was quickly found, a tidy Alfa Romeo GT 1.9JTD full MOT £750 this obviously left less for my new bike, I could have still probably bought a Bird but I’d rather have paid a little more for a really nice one rather than less on a high mileage nail.
This brings me to a good alternative to the bird, the CBR 10000F, strong performance (not in the same league as the Blackbird but more than adequate for my needs), obviously Honda reliability and above all they are very very cheap at the moment.
So after a brief search I came across a likely candidate, K plate ’92 model with 59000 mls full MOT, aftermarket exhaust (Viper) and on inspection everything seemed is decent order and the engine sounded smooth and quiet and all this for £550!!! So all’s good, not quite the bodywork was f%%king awful, it looked like it had been painted by Stevie Wander!! But for the money I couldn’t really complain and figured the paint could redone, this is where the story takes an unexpected turn, I’m chatting about bikes with the seller and ask him what’s under the bike shaped cover in the garden, he says Oh it’s another CBR pulls to cover off to reveal a partially dismantled G reg. It’s obviously been there a while the exhaust is rotted through, chain red with rust and most of the plastics missing, so what’s the story I ask? Apparently this one was his previous day to day bike when one day it wouldn’t start so he stripped some of the plastics had a brief look at it couldn’t find the issue so rather than investigating further just throw a tarp over it and bought another!! Anyway it turned out this one was also for sale and after a bit more haggling we settle on £700 for both. So now I’m the owner of not 1 but 2 CBR 1000s, while I’m loading them in the van he’s off rummaging about in various out houses and sheds turns out he as all the OE plastics for the non-runner and they are in a damn sight better condition than those on the running bike result.., When I get home and have a look in the cold light of day I decide the best plan is to swap the plastics. This proved a fairly simple job no broken fasteners and once complete I have a quite tidy 59K bike that I’m not ashamed to be seen on.
Here it is in all its glory…
at the end of the day it's a 30yr old bike but it can still pick it's heels up if required (gabbi cab attest to how fast it is...) apparently it was (albeit for a brief period ) the worlds fastest bike, but as I said it's a 30 yr old design and it shows big time, the first tihing you notice is the weight god it's heavy, the brakes, suspension are all very poor (the brakes are downright dangerous) all that said it does the job I need it to, basically to allow me to take the youngster out and he loves it (note top box to stop him flying off the back... first bike I've ever had with a top box..) but this tread isn't about this CBR it's about the other one and the other bike is a different story ….
I thought originally I’d just break it or keep it for spares but having stripped it down to get look at the 'bones' beneath it's not that bad certainly better than you'd expect for a bike left outside for any length of time and it’s only done 39K mls so I decided to give it a chance, my thinking was if I could get it running it must be worth doing something with. So after a bit of messing about temp fuel supply, battery etc some popping and farting the thing fires up no problem and settles to reasonable idle, result. The problem appears to have been the ignition switch, when I was transferring the bodywork over I decided to swap the ignition barrel as well so the ign, fuel cap and seat lock were all the same key, rather than 3 different ones, anyway once I’d swapped them all over the bike wouldn’t start (no ignition) so I quickly worked out the ignition switch was faulty, this turns out to be the reason the first bike stopped running. I now have two running bikes one I can use as required and the other I think is going to be my next project.
I’ll try to transform this into something interesting, the plan is to modernise it and of course lighten the bloody thing, the forks are 41mm so I'm pretty confident I can use the Storm forks,wheel and brakes, admittedly not the last word in performance kit bit a missive improvement over OE.
I've already started adapting the rear end to take a CBR 600F4 sub frame, rear plastics and seat.
rear sub frame chopped off
CBR 600 one offered up, it look like it will work I now need a seat and plastics before I fabricate some brackets to allow it to be bolted on
The next job will be to look at the front see if the VTR forks etc will bolt on.. Watch this space
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Big old barges 
