BRUCE HONDA CBR1000RR SP
THIS MONTH I HAVE MOSTLY BEEN… “Getting my hands dirty.”
Forget what it says in dictionaries – jealousy should categorically be defined as the feeling of utter desperation, frustration and anger one experiences while watching other bikers go out for a sunny Sunday blast while your Blade’s in pieces. Mine hasn’t turned a wheel this month, which has left me pulling my hair out.
It’s not been through a lack of trying, but my attempts to plug the holed radiator with rad weld rewarded me with little more than a big pool of coolant on my garage floor and ten minutes of exercise mopping it up. Fair enough, I was maybe being a little optimistic with hoping to plug the rad, but I was also bloody desperate to get out on the Honda as withdrawal symptoms kicked in like a pair of size 13 Dr Martens to the shin. I’ve ridden a dozen other motorcycles since the Blade signed off on sick leave, but none of them have been able to provide the epic level of joy offered by the Honda this past season. It’s such a good road bike and I’m hell bent on getting it back to form for some late season scratching.
To help me do just that, I popped to Honda Racing yesterday (just a stone’s throw from our office) and nabbed a spare radiator that’d been discarded from an SP2 that’d been built into Dan Linfoot’s superbike. I should’ve asked if they had any more ‘unwanted’ bits while I was at it, but I’ve never been the sharpest tool and missed that opportunity wholesale. Still, I got what I needed and that allowed me to get cracking with the Blade’s revival. It was a fairings-off jobbie (again) to gain access to the radiator, which needed its dual fans un-attaching and the factory fitted hose clips snipped to get the item removed. There is a proper tool to remove the crimped clips, but I didn’t have it and a hammer turned out to be an ill-fitting substitute, so I cut them off and replaced them with jubilee clips.
From there on in it was plain sailing and after several hours of stumbling around on my knees, I was finally able to fire the Blade back into life and hear the endearing boom of the bike’s Scorpion end can. Man, it sounds good and I’m hoping to hear a lot more of it once this issue of the mag’s gone to print and I can allowmyself a bit of ‘me’ time. Well, ‘me plus Blade’ time that is. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do and I’m still gagging to get the bike out for a blast around Cadwell before the earth stops spinning. I’m just gutted I’ve not managed it so far this year, but it’ll very much be the icing on what’s proven to be a very tasty cake. I’m not entirely sure when the Honda and I are going to go our separate ways, but hopefully I’ll get another couple of months in on it before that happens. I just hope there are no more calls to take the bike’s fairings off because, as simple and easy as it is to remove them, I’m bloody sick of seeing this Blade without its clothes on. I’m not against getting my hands dirty, but I’d far soon be out riding than fixing. Wouldn’t you?