HONDA CB1000R
THIS MONTH I HAVE BEEN MOSTLY… Eating, hanging and enjoying festivities.
Keeping in mind magazine production schedules means that the earliest you will be reading this is February, as I write we have only just returned to work from the Christmas break – not an easy time for me to add miles, what with family commitments and gargantuan hangovers. The Honda has been underused but well loved as it sat cosy and warm in my garage for the majority of the period.
The want to get out could not have been more intense, indeed the traditional Christmas Day jaunt, making the very most of the empty open roads also eluded me. This was impossible for me this year. You may think it some kind of a gag but I genuinely ruined the Christmas dinner by turning the fridge up too high (which is also in the garage), and froze all of the meat solid as was discovered the morning of the 25th. Popping out for a quick blast would, I can assure you, have led to castration followed by a frying pan induced coma and swift divorce.
Having been forgiven I did get out a few times to reacquaint myself to the big Honda and take in a few early morning frost painted landscapes. Though I have hardly put in the mileage to bed in the Michelin Pilot 5’s they have delivered all that I have asked for so far, although more mileage and the more adverse weather that we are expecting will give them a proper test. I have to admit as well that the heated grips have made frosty rides all the more bearable, with five settings from a moderate warming glow through to the sort of heat you need a leather glove on to prevent third degree burns.
As you may be aware I was not the first keeper of the Honda, my parting friend Martin did his bit before leaving though, fitting an SP end can which added to the styling and grunt of the 2006 Fireblade engine. What this meant of course was that I never experienced the OE silencer, which I refitted for my festive jaunts to get the base feeling. Now the SP engineering can was a great addition, but Honda were careful with the aesthetics of their exhaust, and although you can (and I would) potentially live with it, it’s all dependent on what you were going to use this Neo Sports Café machine for. You wouldn’t just fit a Moto2 style pipe on for cruising.
However an opportunity has come my way to have one of the first all new ‘Red Power’ silencers fitted by Scorpion Exhausts. I really could not say no to this as they are so new that I only managed to sneak a couple of pics of prototypes when I visited the factory and manufacturing base in Ripley. While there I rolled the CB out of the van
(I am afraid) so they could take a few measurements, ran a base power run in their state of the art dyno room with the bike as standard and should have it all fitted, re-dyno’d and ready by the next issue. So look out for that, I am pretty excited by it.
All in all, there hasn’t been much riding this month, but there’s plenty of planning for the next few to add a further layer of polish to the ride; I just hope that Honda let me hang on to the bike long enough to reap the rewards. I have only had it for three months, but Fast Bikes has now had it for seven so the clock is certainly ticking.