Between the snow and spells sub zero temperatures I’ve been chucking a few miles on my Honda DireBlade.
I haven’t been anywhere particular, just mooching about like you do when you’ve got some time to kill and a new ( to me) bike.
I had to ditch the top box for the time being, a long story short is it’s a right pain in the arse to get on and off the bike with the position that I’d mounted it. My dog can swing his leg up higher than I can, one attempt at remounting the Blade at the petrol station resulted in me passing wind! I’m not overly convinced that I got away with it either, the old boy filling up his Nissan Micra gave me a right old funny look.
The top box will return, hopefully my flatulence won’t. Place your bets!
Awkward moments on the Tesco forecourt aside there’s not too much to report back, that might be dull for you to read, but from where I’m sitting, yes I said sitting it’s a very good thing.
This is after all a bike I purchased blind over the internet from a geezer I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have been that shocked to discover a few characteristics that might have slipped his mind.
The engine is a peach, it starts first prod, only needs a whiff of choke and will happily tick over off choke before I’ve even put my my lid on.
On the move it gets even better! The bark from the iffy looking four into one is delicious, not overly loud, but a vast improvement over a standard zorst. I bought a Yamaha Fazer 1000 late last year, great bike and all that but I couldn’t be doing with the sloppy gearbox, it was so bad I thought it was poorly, after doing some research I discovered it was a case of they all do that. Result was I sold it on.
This old Blade comes with the slickest box of cogs that I’ve experienced for a while. The clutch is light and despite the clutch cable looking older than it probably is it works spot on.
So far, so good.
All of the electrics work, so they should it passed it’s MOT test a few weeks back. The curse of any old 90s Honda is the charging system, if an old Honda for sale sports a new battery it makes me wary! The battery on my Blade looks pretty old, which strangely gives me comfort. Touching wood, and not touching cloth like I did at the petrol station I’m pretty confident that the charging system is doing its job.
Another area that pleased me are the brakes, no not the look of the gash Galfer wavy discs, but the way they work. The fluid in the remote master cylinder looks fresh, and despite the calipers looking manky they really work well.
There’s no juddering or any other issues that I would fully expect to find on an unloved 20 year old bike.
Looking for trouble often results in finding it, so I’m accepting my bike rides much better than it looks.
With my summer gloves dusted off I’m about set for clocking up some miles on the once trendy semi digital dash. I’m really looking forward to wearing out the tyres and adding plenty of miles to the DireBlade, now where’s my drill and that top box.
