My History Page

My History Page

Here are some pictures of bikes I have owned in the past 20 years.

This is the only picture I have of my old Honda CB400 Twin. It was a horrible bike that I was glad to see the back of. In the background is my XJ750-P before I restored it.

This is my old XS400 Special. It was a 1980 model that I owned for 1 year from 1982. It was a nice wee bike but I just needed something more...

I found a reason to replace it in the form of a mob of 25 sheep on a blind corner at 80km/h in the dark!! The damage doesn't look too bad in the picture but cost 1/2 the value of the bike to repair. It was never the same again :-( If you are curious the crash killed 3 sheep outright and the farmer had to put down 3 more. The one I hit first was cut clean (NOT!) in half and was sprayed all over me. The doctors in the emergency room thought all the blood and guts was mine and cut off all my new wet weather gear! I was only slightly injured. If you look closely you can make out the front brake master cylinder, by the angle it shows where the handle bars were bent to after I summersaulted over them pulling the bars over with me.

Now this is when I found the model I liked;

This is my 82 XJ550-RH (Seca) that I got in 1983. It was a great bike and I don't think any of my bikes have been as much fun. They were the fastest bike of their class when they came out (later taken over by the GPZ550) being capable of 200kmh+. It was very light and nimble and loved to have the front wheel off the ground at the least provocation.

This is the 1986 XJ600 I got for my wife Bronnie to ride. It was in quite bad shape when I got it so I stripped it down and fixed everything I could afford. Unfortunately it never went quite right and later investigation found serious wear in the engine so I sent it down the road before it failed completely. As it happened the new owner once told of its problems was happy to pay to have it repaired.