Brad’s Honda CBR400RR

Brad and I originally met in 2020, when his CBR was boiling batteries and generally misbehaving. The reason wasn’t hard to discover: the second hand loom had been hacked and repaired in spectacular fashion. Building a new one from scratch was going to be financially difficult so I repaired the carnage and hoped for the best.

Three years and many happy rides later, Brad was back. The bike was reluctant to run, and had actually died on him at least once. What could it be?

The loom repairs seemed to be holding up OK, but the harness itself was lumped into the left side of the fairing with no secure fixing. We agreed that I should check all the flappy bits for attritional damage, re-wrap, and fix it safely afterwards. If that didn’t sort things out, I could delve further.

It made sense to sort out a poor dash wiring repair, but the intermittent ignition problem seemed to be HT leads going so stiff they were pulling the HT leads off the plug. After 30 years they stop being leads and start being springs. Conversely the little wire springs in the plug caps lose their tension, so their grip on the plug becomes hit or miss.

Once I’d figured this out, the bike ran nicely. Brad said he could fit new leads and caps, so that sorted it. It’s a real pleasure to fix such a cherished machine.

The bike’s biggest problem is being kept outside. These CBRs were new in the early 1990s, but they are getting pretty elderly these days, and you can’t look after something like this while kneeling on gravel. Brad reckons he’s found a container unit that will serve as an affordable workshop. To my mind that’s a better use of money than getting me to build a whole new loom.