IN THE GARAGE

Spurred on a spurt of utter frustration with the amount of crap in our garage, my dad Simon and I cleaned up most of the garage last weekend. When I say clean up, I mean destroyed the place and threw out a tonne of useless mess and made more space. How good it feels to have space! Simon’s VFR400 has a bit of an issue at the moment with it running roughly and the first culprit was the carbs so this weekend off they came for a clean and a reset. Hopefully some new rubbers and a clean of all the insides will help it along.

I pulled the radiator out (I accidentally put a few holes in it) and cut the outlet off for the new radiator which I bought yesterday. I’m also (unfortunately) getting rid of the  factory fan in favor of twin electric fans and an alloy shroud which I have also bought already. I just need to get some fans, wire them in and modify the outlet again. Below is a photo of the damage. I was thinking someone who was good with a TIG and was on a budget for some car build could cut off the broken half and weld up the tanks to make a cheap radiator. If that’s you, please contact me.

Speaking of TIG welding… Simon purchased a really good AC/DC TIG welder last year and I haven’t put in the time to learn it yet. This may be due to my first attempts being on alloy and well, that’s really hard to start learning on haha. Today I cleaned up a bunch of scrap mild steel and welded it all together. Damn! I’ve always known it but TIG kills MIG, I never want to MIG again! I’ve set up a little area to practice so I might start putting in a few hours here and there to bring my skills up. Preliminary attempts look promising.

Dad’s VFR400

About 200 years ago, my dad sold his bike to buy a fridge and completed his embrace of family life. After being motorcycle-less for so long and after many many hours put in encouraging his return to his teenage years, he FINALLY owns another bike!. This time it’s not a single cylinder thumper but a V4, 400cc twin cam, 59HP Honda VFR400, every teenager from the 1980s wet dream. She snarls like a cougar, moves like a super model and makes me embarrassed to ride a CG125 but it’s good to have another sports bike in the garage.

My dad’s 60 years young but grins like a 20 year old and I’m incredibly happy to see two passions reunited at last. Here’s to being a guy and buying dangerous toys that fuel our soul.