My CB-1 rebuild
In January 2018 I was asked by an ex-colleague if I would be interested in an old motorbike he wanted to get rid of.
I said yes and arranged to pick it up. It turned out, it had spent the previous seven years sat in his garden under a tarpaulin.
At this point I didn’t really know what a CB-1 was. For those of you who don’t know, it is a grey import, built in only 1989 – 1990 with a 400cc straight four, gear driven cams and a 13500 rpm redline!
Some money was exchanged, I returned home with it, and started the stripdown.
My aim was to get it back on the road within a year.. fast forward two and a half years, and with the help of a certain Coronavirus lockdown I’d finally finished!
As soon as I could, I booked it in for a MOT, hoping that I hadn’t missed anything silly.
I got the call that the MOT was done, sadly it had failed – on a dragging rear brake. Strangely I had felt that it had excess travel, and had adjusted the master cylinder pushrod, turned out I had over adjusted it. An hour later I returned for a retest, this time it passed!
I have now done 100 miles on it, in a week, mostly in the evenings, and I never fail to get off it without a grin on my face, It is very different from my VFR750FL but is extremely enjoyable to ride, very chuckable and with a glorious howl from the exhaust at high revs.
Tony Surridge
