The one good thing that can be said for the Honda VF1000F is that they can be picked up cheaply. In recession hit Britain I was able to buy a 1986 runner for a grand. It had 42000 miles on the clock, looked very scruffy but the engine was as quiet as only a water-cooled vee four can be. Evidence of mechanical rectification was the fact that most of the screws and bolts were well mangled.
First impressions were of mass and a very strange gearbox. At 550lb it's an extremely difficult bike to hurl around and trying to push the machine backwards is only good for the profits of truss manufacturers. And it had the worst gearbox I’ve ever come across. It needed a heavy boot to engage and more often than not fell out of the lower gears. Fortunately, as soon as you get it in fourth or fifth the gearbox can be forgotten.
Power delivery is a delightful amalgam of a rev crazy four and lazy vee twin. Below 7000rpm it flows in evenly and smoothly... if you were never going to break the speed limit there would be no need to go above 6000 revs. Once 30mph is up, the heaviness of the handling fades away a little and it bounced through the traffic on its worn out suspension with something approaching elan.
Beyond 7000rpm the power flows in rapidly. As seven grand equates to over the ton and the bike has a top speed of 150mph, it's dead easy to lose one’s licence in using all of its 120hp, which is developed at the very heady heights of 10500rpm.
All this I managed to find out in the first few days. After 420 miles the silencers disintegrated and fell off. I had noted bits of rust but had not realised they had so fully rusted from the inside out. These big vee fours were never very popular, so despite their mechanical problems they are very rare in breakers. I soon found out that if you fit non standard silencers it completely wrecks the carburation. I stuck with them for 510 miles until I became so fed up with the flat spots and the need to frantically crunch up and down the aged box, that I handed over two hundred notes to a back street dealer who acquired a new exhaust system from dubious sources.
I had the bike for a year and there were spots of rust showing through the silencers after six months and I reckoned that they would only last for a month or so after I sold the bike. What a rip off! Another chronic problem was sticking calipers, the rear needing attention every 3000 miles, the fronts every 5000 miles. Perhaps because the brakes worked so erratically, the pads themselves lasted very well, not needing replacing in the 13,400 miles I managed.
To be fair to the brakes, the one time I really needed them when a Volvo swerved into my path in the fast lane when I was doing 120mph, they crash stopped the weaving mass in as close to an instant as you can get. Sheer adrenalin rush must’ve given my right hand superman muscle which overcame any residual reluctance to work the brakes might’ve entertained.
It is a great motorway cruiser. For any speed between 60 and 125mph all you have to do is stick it in top and play with the throttle. In a straight line stability is good and comfort excellent. On long. 100mph plus sweepers the rear end wriggles around a bit but I have done stretches of mildly curvaceous motorways at 120mph plus speeds without any undue worries. With my Walkman turned up high, my mind rings with heavy metal music and the sheer speed of my journey across the countryside.
After a year I had successfully adapted to the effort needed to hurl the beast around town. Massive tyre burning sessions were all the rage with my more bestial mates and I soon found out that the VF could out smoke them all. Destroying eighty quids worth of rubber of an evening was bad enough, but the abuse also burnt out the clutch. The local dealer having had to sack most of his employees due to lack of sales, threatened to make me his friend for life when I ordered a new set of plates until I deflated him by demanding a 10% discount (which I got).
Almost every screw associated with the engine cover behind which the clutch hid stripped its thread in the engine, snapped off or had to be drilled out. Araldite is wonderful stuff for repairing damaged threads.
Every 3000 miles I took the bike to a mate who used to be a Honda mechanic, he’s one of the few people I know who can deal with complex beasts like these vee fours. He charged me a hundred notes a time which I felt was money well spent for peace of mind.
The engine always rumbled into life first press of the starter, quickly settled down to a stable tickover and generally gave the impression of being bullet—proof. The top ends are very fragile and need frequent maintenance to avoid self destruction. Even with 3000 mile engine services, after just 2000 miles the edge went off the performance and fuel consumption dived dramatically.
I obtained a best of 50mpg, but more normally it was around 38mpg and could go down to 30mpg, and on one long thrash with an engine in desperate need of maintenance, 26mpg.
If that wasn't bad enough, tyre wear could also be atrocious. I wore out one set of tyres in 2750 miles... after trying various makes I found MP7s gave the best compromise between grip and wear — the rear lasted 4500 miles and the front 6500 miles. As the only way I could afford to keep the bike in tyres was to buy 'em by mail order, I could be heard swearing and cursing my head off for miles as I struggled to fit them. The rims ended up as scarred and pitted as my hands were bruised and bloodied.
This tyre changing ability came in handy when I had one tyre deflate at 100mph out in the country. The whole bike went into the most horrendous wobble and l was all but spat off as I tried to hastily lose speed. The VF always gave the impression of being a little edgy as soon as the tyres showed any sign of wear — to be fair to the bike it didn’t have much help from the suspension. At both ends it was too soft and lacked any damping. When the tyre blew there wasn't any reserve of stability left and it just went into a nasty wobble that had both ends bouncing around every which way.
It happened outside a farm owned by an ex motorcycle racer who put me up overnight whilst I awaited delivery of the tyre next day (an amazingly quick COD delivery from one of the mail order companies). As a reward for his kindness I let him loose on the VF. He came back swearing his head off at the machine, something to do with the gearbox and the way the bike fell into corners at low speeds, I think. He said something about Jap crap and that he'd prefer his old Triumph Thunderbird any day. We departed less friendly than earlier — if there's one thing that really pisses me off it’s old codgers who criticise Japanese bikes.
The good points about the VF1000 are its high speed comfort, effortless and abundant power, and brutal looks. The bad points are its excessive mass, terrible fuel consumption and dubious engine reliability and longevity. I don't know the history of my machine but suspect that it had earlier had a lot of work done to sort out the top ends.
Overall, a very usable machine if you do a lot of high speed touring, but limited in almost every other aspect. If you buy a cheap 'un that doesn't matter very much because it’ll leave you plenty of money to pay for consumables. For a grand you won’t find any other bikes that can match the VF's muscle. I sold mine for £1400, my memories are fond enough but I probably wouldn't buy another unless it was the kind of bargain you could not refuse.
A.J.L.