This guy just would not stop talking. A long stream of anecdotes to convince me that the 1987 Honda VFR1000R was the only possible motorcycle I could want to buy. He had not yet named his price. I knew it would be high - every sentence contained the word classic at least once. The revelation came only after he took me for a test ride on the 1000cc V-four.
“Look mate,” he said, “I'll start off in second gear to show you how much bottom end torque she has.” It was impressive, rolling off two up with hardly any throttle. On a brief motorway blast he claimed to have put 150mph on the clock but my helmet rode up under the wind battering until my chin piece had obscured my vision.
Back at his impressive residence, he finally revealed that he thought £4750 was a fair price. "Very rare machine, indeed,” he intoned, “be worth more than a Vincent in a few years time.” He came down to £4250 but I left him my telephone number, telling him to give me a ring if he didn’t get any takers. Asking high prices is always worth a go, but I was not surprised when he rang up two weeks later. That was how I came to own a pristine looking, 13000 mile, big Honda V-four for £1450.
That guy was quite a con artist. The reason why he insisted on taking off in second gear was because first gear was on the way out, making an awful graunching sound. Oh well, I consoled myself, that for a 120hp, 150mph motorcycle the VF had been very cheap. I then discovered that fourth was in a similar state to first and that the clutch made an alarming ringing noise when pulled in and the engine revved.
The gearbox problems were no great shakes, despite its power the engine knocked out an amazing amount of torque at the lower revs and would still be usable with just a two speed box. I was able to pull off in third if I had a mind to slip the clutch and fifth would pull from as low as 25mph. The gearbox action was typical Honda, sloppy and prone to the occasional missed change but it wasn’t so bad that you couldn't adapt to its nastiness.
Arriving home revealed a rather large oil leak coming from the back cylinder head gasket and, sure enough, the oil level was down below the minimum mark.
Charmed by this quaint way of greeting its new owner, I kicked the engine with my boot and stormed off inside to study the workshop manual that came with the bike.
This was frighteningly oil stained next to the bits on cylinder head disassembly. One attempt at reading the technobabble that accompanied removal of the rear head was sufficient for me to conclude that buying a water-cooled V-four engine with sixteen valves was not going to make life easy.
After a couple of hours removing various bits of plastic, wiring, tubing and the petrol tank, I gained access to the cylinder head bolts. These were torqued down with vicious force and a layer of Plastic Metal spread around the offending gasket. The seepage was greatly decreased, oil consumption becoming an almost reasonable 200 miles per pint.
Unfortunately, the plastic panels and fairing proved so difficult to put back on that I broke off a couple of lugs and cracked the GRP around their mountings. A day’s delay whilst the Araldite set further added to my mounting anger and frustration. I managed to break off a different fairing lug but used Superglue on that one for an instant repair.
Once reassembled I roared off down the road in full retributive mood. Coming across a capitalist lackey on a new FZR1000 I showed him a clean set of exhaust pipes by droning past him at about 125mph. The next thing I knew I was being stomped upon in anger, the Yamaha's back end vanishing up the road like I had slammed on my brakes. Right, you bum, race time.
I gave the engine everything it had, wrapped myself around the petrol tank and took my life in my hands. I had slowed down the rate at which he was disappearing but had not made much progress. Then I saw his tail light come on and thought, I'll show you, wimp! Within seconds I was roaring past the impertinent whipper-snapper with something like 140mph on the clock.
The reason he had been frantically braking was the presence of a sharp left turn. I was on the triple discs in an instant, taking the bike right over to the wrong side of the road, hoping like hell that an artic was not going to take that moment to come around the corner.
Hurling the top heavy beast over as far as it would go, with the chassis still wound up from the harsh braking, I felt something scrape down, a shudder running along the whole length of the machine. Luckily, the corner wasn’t as tight as expected, by hurling the bike right across the road, back to the proper side I straightened the bend out sufficiently to avoid becoming another accident statistic.
The chassis reacted to this sudden manoeuvre by jumping about a bit on its springs, the back tyre hopping around and when I finally let the brakes off and used the throttle the handlebars shook in my hands for a couple of seconds. Still, I was impressed by the way the 600lb mammoth had responded to such desperate manoeuvres and the FZR stayed way back after I had revealed myself as a suicidal maniac.
Handling ability was capable as long as the suspension was wound up to maximum and the spine rattling ride endured. If it was never entirely stable in the Ducati mode, it was never frightening in the Kawasaki H1 manner. Versatility was its calling card. Capable of busting a gut acceleration wise the motor would also amble along mildly below 6000rpm in top gear if that was your game. Given its huge size and power, fuel was acceptable at 35 to 40mpg and the rest of the consumables were no worse than many a middleweight four.
Motorway cruising was a laugh a minute. In fact, the bike was quite happy to do two miles a minute all day long. The large fairing provided adequate protection from the raging 120mph gale thus produced. Even in the wet I could cover huge distances at high speeds, reassured by the grip produced by the Metzeler tyres... although when they were down to 1mm (after 2750 miles) the bike seemed to twitch from one minor road surface irregularity to the next.
The riding position became most tiring after ten minutes in town traffic, too much pressure on my wrists saw to that. I was thankful that the bike could be dumped in third gear for the duration, rolled along on the throttle. The brakes were very sharp from speed but a tad too vicious for smooth low speed work and, occasionally, in the wet near lethal as they would lock up the front wheel solid. Pad life was about 6000 miles, but in the 14000 miles I did in two years the calipers never hinted at seizing and the discs did not become dangerously thin.
Engine problems were mostly related to the oil leak which needed additional layers of liquid gasket smeared around the outside of the head, and the gearbox which became increasingly crunchy with age. By the time I sold the bike second gear had started leaping into neutral. The clutch eventually slipped away to nothing but needed nothing more than a new set of plates.
The arcane art of setting the valves up was left to the local Honda dealer who did them every 5000 miles and charged me £100 cash for the privilege (he also set the carbs, but they did not seem to go off so I didn't really see the point). With gear driven cams I did not have to worry over tensioners and camchains, although some cams have been known to wear away. Regular oil and filter changes I managed to do every 1000 miles. The thing with these V-fours is that if you neglect any one area, they won‘t last for very long.
The finish was a case in point. Unless polished up at least once a week the paint would fade, the chrome rust and the alloy blemish. Having ridden the bike through two winters, I can tell you all about salt rash. By the time I'd finished with the bike it looked horrible and only fetched £950 - think of the depreciation if I'd paid what the owner had originally wanted!
Tom Hemmings