HONDA CBR1000RR-6/7
Bertie Simmonds on why this machine is a classic next year…
Hmmm, turning over very slowly – battery is obviously a bit past it – but eventually it coughed into life: and kept coughing, or at least spluttering. By the time I got into third gear it was obvious there was something not right – a big hiccup in the power delivery every time I wound the throttle on, and it was hunting and shunting on a neutral throttle, too. I suspected degraded six-month-old supermarket fuel and maybe some residue in the system.
With no scope to investigate properly, it was time for an Italian tune-up – rag the hell out of it for a bit and see if that cured it. It certainly made it better, so I decided to top up with some fresh super-unleaded and hope for the best. I stopped at the next pumps I saw, and decided to add a splosh of injector cleaner as well. Hit the starter button and... whumpf, whumpf, whumpf, nothing. Battery as flat as a flat thing that's had a heavy flat weight dropped on it.
Have you ever bump started quarter of a ton of BMW on a flat road, on a hot day? I don't recommend it: at least, not unless you can find someone else to do the pushing, which I couldn't. After three or four goes I was a sweaty, swearing wreck. After another two I was on the verge of cardiac arrest, tears or both, but so angry that a squirt of adrenalin gave me just enough extra speed to turn the big twin over once, twice, three times and then catch and fire. I whipped the clutch in and revved it up and nearly dropped it as my legs were so wobbly...
Most of the way home flat-out in second gear and the throttle response was getting better with every mile, so there was obviously nothing fundamentally wrong, but when I got home, parked up and switched off, there was still no response on pressing the starter button, so I'd need a new battery before Mr. Man turned up the following day. Or would I?
First off, I tried jump starting it from a healthy car battery. Again, it behaved as if the battery was flat – looked like the starter motor itself was at fault. So I connected it straight from the battery to the solenoid terminals to see if it was a wiring fault – same symptoms, so definitely the starter. Fortunately on these boxer twins, the starter is easy-peasy to remove – left-hand fairing lower off, small plastic cover pulled away, and there it is, more like a car starter than a conventional bike unit. Disconnect the battery lead, couple of allen bolts and it drops into my hand. And straight out again – bloody hell it's hot...
Once it cools down I whip the end cap off to look at the brushes – I've heard these are prone to problems, but these look like new. On the other hand, I can't turn the shaft at all – it's solid, so presumably something's come adrift in there. Valeo don't want people poking around in their windings, so the steel casing is rivetted on to the nose section. Nothing a bit of drilling won't deal with, so I set to, and once I can separate the two
halves it's immediately obvious what's up – half of the main magnets, which are supposed to be attached to the steel casing, have detached themselves, broken up and wedged everything solid.
With no time to order a new starter, I've got no choice but to clean everything up (ever tried cleaning metal swarf off a magnet? Not easy!) Then, glue what's left of the magnets back in place with JB Weld and hope. While I'm waiting for the glue to go off, I remove the enormous Givi Trekker top-box (which I might want for something else in the future) and brackets, and refit the original, rather odd-shaped BMW box, swap the high power SW Motech spotlights for something that puts less strain on the charging system, and get on with some of those little tidying-up jobs I mentioned earlier.
Next morning, turn the key, cross fingers, press the button and hope it works. Amazingly, it does and she spins over a treat. And the suspect battery turns out not to be suspect at all, which is a relief.
The prospective buyer duly turns up, completely fails to ask any sensible questions about the bike, and prepares to hand over the pre-agreed asking price. I didn't want him taking it away and then bringing it back later, demanding his money back because he'd found something wrong with it (French consumer law is heavily on the side of the buyer, so he'd have been within his rights), so I had to more or less bully him into taking a test ride, explaining that he might not like the heavily modified suspension (a modified and re-sprung GS1100 rear shock and rebuilt front shock leave it sitting considerably higher off the floor than standard and sharpen up the steering to a point some people might not appreciate), the rattly brakes (I converted the Brembo discs to fully floating spec some years ago) and the inevitably slightly baggy feel of something that's covered so many miles.
He comes back 10 minutes later perfectly happy: “It's got a bit of a misfire, but I'm sure that's nothing serious,” he says. I explain about the iffy fuel and the Italian tune-up and suggest it'll probably get better on its own, but that ideally it wanted a full service and everything cleaned out properly. I also ’fessed up to the problem with the starter, and knocked off the price of a pattern replacement to sweeten the deal. (The original asking price assumed I'd be changing the oil and filters and a few other bits anyway, which I'd not got round to, so it didn't actually cost me anything.)
He went away happy, and although I was a bit sad to see Flossie depart down the lane, the healthy wad of notes in my back pocket cheered me up no end, and I started plotting how I could spend it on improving the CX500 to take Flossie’s place as daily load-lugger. Then I got a tax bill: Arse, all gone in an instant. Right then, what else can I flog? Ah yes, time to resurrect the little Ducati 400SS...