Hello Boys and Girls
I thought it was about time that I introduced myself. I’m Mark living on the edge of the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, and joined up with the club at Stratford this year. The aim of joining was to find a good original or restored bike, as I didn’t want yet another project. I’m currently gathering the bits to restore a couple of VF1000R bikes, one of which, it turns out, used to belong to a chap in the club, Paul Ashworth.
He just happened to be sitting at the end of the club stand at Stafford when I mentioned, whilst filling in the application form, that one of the bikes I was restoring came from the Isle of Man with a blown up engine. Paul looked up a little surprised and said that he used to have one of those! I laughed and said that I bet his wasn’t pink with black stripes….and then he looked even more surprised and said that it was!
So having joined the club and got access to the forum, I spotted Nat’s advert for his CB1100RD. After a couple of long chats and many detailed photos we did a deal over the phone subject to seeing the bike in a couple of weeks. I’ve bought a few things in the past from photos which have always have turned out to be a disappointment, and I guess I am a bit fussy. But there were no such issues with Nat’s bike as it is in stunning condition, and a real credit to the guy for carefully balancing the originality and restoration. The bike looks like a mint, original machine with a tiny bit of patina on the un-restored wheels, callipers etc. In all, it looks like a 1 year old bike, except for the fairing which look new….probably better than new.
I’ve had the bike a couple of weeks now and can’t stop drooling over it! It has also come home as it’s a ‘DD’ registration, first registered in Gloucester. So I will be riding up and down the roads in Gloucester over the next few month fully expecting someone to jump out saying…that’s my old bike!
So that’s my intro. I’m very interested in originality, so will be asking some dumb questions over the coming months and years. The first I have is about frame numbers…is there a list or structure of frame numbers in existence for the B, C and D bikes?
Mark Kempson
