I told Tom I was looking for a bike to
break the tedium of riding into work on a Puch
Maxi. I didn't want to spend much. Tom had two bikes, and
offered me the two stroke. I wasn't excited by the idea, and Tom
then offered me the 400 for the same price as the two stroke.
There then followed a bizarre bidding contest in which I tried to
beat Tom up to a sensible price, while Tom continued to beat me
down to £150, which was a ludricous price for the bike.
A new set of plugs cured the misfire. The engine sounded as if a lucky charm bracelet of nuts and bolts was being used instead of a camchain, but Gabby, who had worked as a motorcycle mechanic, thought it might last a little longer. The clutch was as heavy as Harley, and Gabby said they were all like that.
These bikes have been extolled as classics. I thought it was a
horrible bike. When the engine warmed up the clutch would drag
and the gears had to be banged through. With the heavy clutch I
was constantly fighting the bike and the gears through the London
traffic. It vibrated, not the vibration of an out-of-condition
engine, but a high-frequency buzz that left my hands and feet
tingling for an hour. Jan and I went to Cambridge on it, a simple
journey I had done dozens of times on the Ducati.
On the Honda 400 I felt as if I had ridden to Scotland and back.
It went well enough - it had tremendous power surge and would
accelerate like a sewing machine to the red line.
I was rammed while filtering through traffic on the Mile End Road. A woman pulled out from the left through the two lanes of traffic, and despite the fact that we had eye contact and I had given no sign of slowing down, she thought she had precedence. I can follow her reasoning - she was in a car. She rammed me side-on, and the front of the car rode up over the bike. I executed an impeccable forward roll onto the Mile End Road and found myself on my feet without a mark or a bruise. The bike was also undamaged. Tom had added a blue fibreglass fairing to the bike, and it must have been designed by a marine engineer. The front of the woman's Metro had been pushed up where it had ridden over the top of the bike.
This was the second time in 29 years of riding where an insurance company became involved - the first time was the CD90, and the woman involved then was taken to court.
I can't remember how long I kept it or why I sold it. I probably just didn't like it. Or perhaps it was because Owen was born in 1985, and there didn't seem much point in running a bike that might need an engine rebuild.
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Copyright © Colin Low 1997