My mate had one back in the day. He worked the spanner’s at Gordon Pantiles in Gorseinon (Swansea). We had many a good weekend camping with our girlfriends together. Him on the z400 and me on my z250A. There wasn’t much between the two bikes power wise iirc.
Yeah the 400 only left the factory with about 35hp and mines probably lost a few of those over its life . The 250 is a very rare bike to find these days.
Spanked it around northern France, on the only dry day of a ten day trip. Biking nirvana. Home tomorrow, and absolutely gutted.
Ain't it funny that bikes at the bottom of all of the headline categories, power, handling, price, cache etc are often the favourite ones to ride.... they seem to have an unquantifiable quality that just makes you feel good.
I've had quite a few 400's (VFR's, FZRs, and a GSX twin) and while you're often wishing for a bit more power, one day you get a litre sports bike and after the initial rush it's kinda "meh". I was disappointed it didn't automatically turn me into Rossi, which is what those ads promised...
Possibly because the lower capacity have you riding better as you can’t compensate with the extra CC.
In the interests of being open and honest I’ve made the mother of all fuck ups today and I’m absolutely gutted that I’ve been so stupid. Built the Nsr top cylinder up today, coolant in, tank on, 3rd kick it fires ups so I let it warm up as its first heat cycle. Give it a final gentle rev before I shut it off and it seizes so I go off into the house for a massive mardy and an hour later come out and manage to free it up, exhausts off I look up into both cylinders and it’s the front one that’s gone so I take it off and find a piece of metal embedded between the cylinder and piston (both are scrap). It was the circlip that pinged off when I was assembling the front cylinder and I was certain I saw land on the lawn, I spent over an hour checking the crank just in case and even had a magnet in there looking for it. I’m a fucking idiot, I was only saying the other day some people shouldn’t be working on engines and it turns out I’m one of them. Off to sulk now and start a go fund me for a new cylinder and piston.
I did say it's fighting you all the way, so what's the score now bike 25 you 0, bit of bad luck that leave alone until next year? or start a bonfire.
Went out on the Baby R (first time since last year) as the Big R is still swimming in green sludgey oil. Forgot (not really) what a peach that bike is. Here’s a couple of gratuitous shots…
Bike looks lush, so wish I could have kept my 749. They look so much better IMO than the 916. However I feel I must point out the Blue lid on a Green bin really is a bit much for my eyes to bear witness to.
Finally got round to fitting the graphics kit to the GasGas as I wanted to calm down from it’s factory finish. The kit is very well contour cut to the panel shape.
Cleaned the 749 rolling chassis and added it to the bike side of the garage, managed to find some grey touchup for the frame, and sorted out a new rear hub assembly for the radical project.
