Buying a bike on a whim

As advertised the NC30 beckons

With the option of a free track day I was looking forward to a cheap weekday event on my Honda VFR750 RC24 with either the Yamaha RD250 or possibly a RAF Classic Racing Team XJ600. However serviceability and a chance browse of the CRMC sales page lead me to emptying my bank account again instead.

A hurried browse round saw this very well priced and turned out VFR400 NC30 slung in the back of my van after a far too short chat with the lovely Michael Wale. I had places to be and this bike better be as good as it looks!

less than an hour after she was picked up

I had an evening to have a quick look over the bike in the paddock for the RAFMSA motorsports event at Mallory park, change pressures and make sure nothing was glaringly wrong with her. I also had beers to drink and people to chat to so not much of that got done at all.

As it turned out she was in great nick and unlick the 750 she was pretty quiet. So whilst the noisy boy sat on the naughty step, I hoped on the little 400 for the first, session of the day. Despite being damp she felt solid, only let down by her rider.

Hero or maybe sort out your shock

Subsequent trips out brought on confidence and ignoring the faster riders on much faster machines (okay and faster riders on similar machines) she was doing well. However a slightly wriggly back end, a lower power band than expected and probably loose head race bearings were noticeable.

The head race bearings were only noticeable at slow speeds. I'm not sure if it was sprocket choice but the power felt fine, it was just glancing at the tacho and seeing the puff run out at around 12-13k rpm seemed a bit off the 15k red line.

Ignoring that, the rear tyre was the biggest issue, more so as I pushed harder. After listening to some waffle in the paddock I went straight to blaming the rear tyre choice of an Avon Storm. With some hindsight and chat with Andrew Green, I will take a look at the rear shock setup first.

That was a small issue though. Otherwise the bike felt good. I wish I could have pushed it a bit more, I actually was faster earlier on in the day so I was clearly spooked by the slippery rear tyre. 

This will be solved with a suspension setup and maybe finally going and getting a crosser. More money....