The pupil’s tale…
The Year 11 students on the Honda K4 project are: Kane Good, Ben Sitton, Matt Aldred, Henry Garrod, Alex Boughton, Sam Johnson, Curtis Mayhew, Oliver Webb, Scott Sewell and Grisha Romazanov. All are aged between 15 to 16 and one of them – Ben Sitton – has given CMM his take on the restoration. “I began engineering in Year 10, as part of one of my selected GCSE options. Not long into my first year, Mr Burgess presented us with a project for our class to complete. The project was one of the members of staff’s motorbike, a Honda Cub. It needed repairing, and the kind member of staff gave it to Mr Burgess to give to his class of inexperienced, unqualified, under-prepared engineering students: us! “We worked on the bike for at least six or seven months and it was when we neared completion of the bike that Mr Burgess informed us of a potential trip to David Silver Spares. Mr Burgess had arranged for our class to visit the offices and warehouse and his then under-construction Honda Vintage Motorcycle Museum. The trip was extremely enjoyable and informative, an adventure worthy of re-telling in its own right, so do visit! “Towards the end of the day, we were also made aware that Mr Burgess had arranged for us to take back one of Mr Silver’s vintage
Honda motorcycles to work on in a similar fashion to which we worked on the Cub. We were happy to hear this; however we did not expect the bike to be a high quality bike, such as the 350 twin! “When we came back from our half-term, the bike was there waiting for us in our workshop. The initial glee was apparent as we checked the bike over; wondering among ourselves how Mr Silver had ever allowed us to borrow such a high quality bike. We asked the teachers about some of the bike’s mechanical features, taking pictures of it to share on our various social media accounts. After all, it was a very nice bike, or as Mr Bloom puts it, a ‘wheelie nice bike!’ “Once we had had our fun time, we set about beginning this project. Mr Burgess, determined not to have a repeat of the Honda
Cub, where every other minute some irreplaceable part crucial to the bike’s structure or function went missing, so he assigned us all a role on the bike. I was allocated the title ‘head of communications, data recording and publicity.’ It certainly had a nice ring to it, unfortunately I was prone to incompetence and so perhaps there was a more deserving person of such an official title. It was now my job to log every action my classmates performed on the 350. If Ollie did something to the wing mirror, I wrote in my logbook that Ollie did something to the wing mirror at whatever time. “Another part of my job was to communicate with David Silver himself, providing regular updates and pictures of the bike. It was also my task to organise photos taken of the bike, and then create photo sheets detailing part type and assembly/ dis-assembly procedure. I developed an efficient system for sorting photographs into ‘clear’, ‘blurred’ or ‘I can’t tell what that is because it’s so unclear.’ So you’ve got the best ones here! It is also my duty to write all articles for the school and press. “Within the first two or three weeks, our class managed to disassemble the bike down to the bare essentials. All the parts were then sorted accordingly into various jars, pots and boxes. Parts that needed re-chroming were sent off to a professional chrome company as we did not have the facilities to chrome the parts ourselves. We also sent various green parts off to be repainted and re-sprayed, as some were chipped. “Grubby parts were cleaned by the hands of our class for weeks on end; the disassembly and current assembly we are performing as I write this, were nowhere near as lengthy as the period of time we spent cleaning. Nevertheless, it was a necessary part of the bike’s completion. As of now, we are currently re-assembling the bike. The chrome parts and the green parts have returned, shiny and good as new; the various bolts, washers and nuts are clean, and everything is efficiently organised. We have still had a few organisation hiccups, but that was to be expected. “Our group works well as a team, and we are sure it will not be many more weeks before the bike is back together again. Mind you, not that quickly, as it’s much quicker to pull something apart as it is to put it back together. We look forward to completing the bike, as we have worked very hard on it; however we are enjoying the process of working on the bike. “I’m sure there will be more to write about as the assembly process continues, and I look forward to seeing what time has in store for us – although hopefully it’s nothing catastrophic, as although it would make a good piece of drama to write about, the bike is probably worth more than our class put together!”