1989 Kawasaki AR80
My first bike, I got this free of charge from a friend with the intention of getting it up and running as quickly as possible. However, when I started working on it I discovered more and more things that could be improved upon so I decided to attempt a total restoration.
The restoration effort started in 2007 and has been going on and off since then. No progress has been made within the last couple of years due to me moving away to attempt university.
This was the first bike that I ever legally had on the road. I got it because the AR80 was in pieces and I really needed a form of transportation. Everything I did for this bike was done solely to keep it on the road, and I learned a lot from it.
I owned this bike from March 2007 to April 2008.
1991 Honda BROS 400
I got this in March 2008 shortly after acquiring my restricted license. This was the bike that got me into modification and tuning. I started with a slip-on exhaust and progressed to handling tweaks. There were some big plans made for this bike and it went through several changes in appearance. The picture shows how I liked her best, not long before I traded her in.
The BROS was traded in during September 2009.
Not content with one restoration project I had to have another, so I picked this up by chance for not a lot of cash in May 2008. My initial thought that was that this bike would make an ideal replacement or addition to the BROS for when the restriction period expired on my license. Unfortunately, when somebody sells you a bike cheap it’s usually because it needs an awful lot of work doing to it, and that definitely proved to be the case with this bike.
Several attempts were made to do something with this bike, but due to one reason or another it never quite happened and I ended up selling it to a friend in September 2012.
1995 Yamaha FZR600R
I bought this in September 2009, partly funded by trading in the BROS. Compared to the BROS this is an altogether different beast, it is much heavier, a lot faster, the brakes are very good, but it is hard to ride.
Truth be told I hated this bike when I first got it, and it took months for me to get used to it. I had it right briefly just after fitting the cartridge forks, and then the Nitron shock absorber broke.
This was the bike that I did my first trackday on at Pembrey, and my second at Oulton Park.
In August 2011 I thought it would be a grand idea to have a second bike as a cheap run about, especially with winter coming up and my FZR still looking relatively clean and well loved. So I got this.
I bought it cheap (remember what I said about cheap bikes), and thought it would be very easy to get back on the road. It was in a way, but I only got about 180 miles out of it before something went wrong (primary chain tensioner) which required me to take the engine out.
It shouldn’t have posed as much of a problem as it did, but this was before I had a dry garage to work in, and thus I ended up using the FZR through the winter months anyway, which is probably what led to the shock absorber breaking.
Now that most of the kinks have been worked out, and most of it has been rebuilt properly, I am actually enjoying this bike.
1993 Suzuki GSXR750WPI got this on a whim in September 2012 to replace the FZR. I’m still not sure where I’m going with this bike, other than keeping her on the road. So far I’ve replaced the brake lines with braided lines, and swapped the grease contaminated old pads with a fresh sintered pair from Bendix, which I haven’t had the opportunity to test yet thanks to the weather.
Once the weather starts improving and I can get a feel for the bike then I’ll know what to do. I have a few ideas already so watch this space.
