400’s or bust!

A dear friend has been and thinking about and threatening and wanting to get a bike for a long time now. A few years in fact. He was even thinking of buying my VFR, as I kept on thinking about - and threatening to - sell my bike. I never did; the thought of parting with was just too painful. However, I was in desperate need of money, especially for decent computer equipment as I was serious about getting my own bike magazine of the ground. And being a freelancer meant I had very little income, and the bike suffered as a result; I didn’t have money to service it. Luckily it is a Honda…

Anyway, my friend Lester has been riding a Vespa look-alike built by LML (an Indian manufacturer) patiently for years, and felt it was time for something sexy and fast.

And he potted a beauty; Honda’s little CBR400 NC29 screamer in absolute red-blue-and-white original condition and very clean. A 1993 model with 16 000km on it.

I am proud to say he selected me as part of the investigating committee to inspect his potential purchase. We all liked it the first moment we saw it. The deal was done!

We promptly had our first ride together one Sunday. Not a breakfast run; this was a “lunch run”, and a slow one at that. I actually forgot how nice it is to ride with another biker. I am always alone on my rides, having given up on rounding up my busy, preoccupied-with-their-families-and-career friends who never has time to go on a ride. Why they have bikes I don’t know! Or maybe I just like riding alone. However, it was different and that made it fun.

We cruised at about 90kph most of the way; over Boyes Drive and onto Gordon’s Bay, where we turned back after some fresh fish and chips at Ooskus Fisheries.

On the way back, there was a huge pile-up of traffic as they were busy clearing the road after an accident. I was getting anxious, as I had an appointment that I was gonna be late for. We filtered our way to the front, and the traffic cop let us through a small gap.

What I saw then I will be lucky to see again in my lifetime. The normally crowded, jammed-up N2 highway was as empty as far as the eye could see. I am talking four lanes of open space disappearing into the horizon.

What came next was only natural. I hooted and waved goodbye to Lester, and opened the throttle. Wide.

“I was late for an appointment officer.”

Fortunately I didn’t have to utter those words. I enjoyed that stretch for 3 to 4 minutes, before catching up on cars that were coming on through the on-ramps.

And I made my appointment with time to spare.

It was a truly special ride.

And Vernie too!








Now, this was a bit of a surprise. Three weeks after Lester bought his bike, Vernie bought the same model, with the same colour-scheme! His’ is slightly cheaper and not as clean, but there is nothing wrong with it. Vernie and Lester does not know each other.

Now, Vernie never expressed interest in a bike. He phoned me up on advice for a bike, and had it within a few days. I didn’t think he would actually do it.

That also meant that he cant actually ride. I rode the bike for him from the showroom to his home. And last weekend he got on it for the first time, and I got him to practice clutch control and gear-changes. I can drive a car, and that helps in terms of knowing how the control works. He got the hang very, very quickly and within minutes rode the bike slowly around the building for a while.

Next we have to get into the open, to get him used to the speed and power, but he doesn’t even have a helmet yet!

The virtue of a 400cc bike

I have two more friends, Nabiel and Sean, that has been talking about getting bikes for years now. They are as fanatical as I am, but I don’t have their patience. I spent all my money on a bike, even if it means going without food, while they prioritise other things, like family. Ok, maybe they are not as fanatical as I am!

Sean wants nothing to do with 400cc bikes however, and will probably get the latest R6, ZX-6R or CBR600RR. Lately he has been talking about a K6 GSX-R750.

Nabiel is more open. He will even go for an old CB900F in very good condition, something Sean will also never consider.

Personally, I have nothing against older or smaller bikes. My experience with them is tainted because I seem to have an innate ability to fall in love with a lemon. My FZR400 and Katana 750 being particular good examples.

But get a bike in good condition, that is looked after, serviced on time and kept clean, and these bikes can be as much fun as a newer model. It all depends what you can afford and the reason you want a bike. I think Sean likes to be scared witless on weekends, while for me a bike has to more practical, being my daily and only means of transport.

My only reservation about a 400 is that I will find them slow for a lot of the time. On my way to Namaqualand I did 190kph for long stretches of road (I paid the price in fuel consumption and tyre life!). A restricted 400 tops out at 180.

I also prefer the easy mid-range torque of a bigger engine, instead of having to rev so hard to get anywhere with a 400. It is certainly embarrassing to work so hard to keep up with turbo-charged Audi’s and compressored Merc’s on a mission.

But you get a 400 for its cornering ability, not topspeed. Besides, some derestricted models, like the NC30 and ZXR400 has been taken to a not unrespectable 230kph.

On general, there is a prejudice as well against 400’s. Not real bikes, or ladies bikes, or too slow; blah blah blah. I think it is mostly arrogance or ego speaking. It is all good if you have lived on open-class superbikes for most of your biking live and can afford to continue to buy them, but a lot of us are not that fortunate. A 400 is what introduced many of us into serious biking. Besides, few bigger bikes can provide as much a thrill through a set of tight twisties. Faster maybe, but not always more fun.

And the NC30 or 35 has been described as the bike you get after your R1. It hones and refine your riding skill like few other bikes can. The Aprilia RS250 is perhaps the only contender.

More valid concerns about 400s is that they are grey-imports, hence parts are difficult to find for certain models, and mechanics don’t always know how to fix them.
But if you see the atrocious customer service and back-up you get from even (some) official importers, going grey is not necessarily always the evil it is made out to be. Parts unavailability and untrained mechanics is not only limited to grey bikes. This argument is even more valid once you enter the second-hand / used market.

When we (me and my then colleague, Darren) published a series of articles on grey bikes on cartoday.com, we were attacked by Honda South Africa for supporting the sector. How could a reputable publisher support unofficial imports, especially considering the poor service and reputation.

In our defense, these bad dealers are actually selling official imports as well, and their bad business reputation had little to do with the fact that it was grey bikes that they sold. As a journalist, my notion was to help the reader and consumer make the best decision. And grey bikes were not suddenly going to disappear of the market; so as they would continue to be imported, the more useful approach was to support the reader in making a choice. People will continue to buy them, no matter what. So rather help than preach abstinence. As a matter of fact, there were rumours afoot that Honda SA were busy working behind the scenes to get the motorcycling market regulated and protected in the same way the local car industry is.

To the very least, bikes should be homologated for South African conditions, something I agree with as it is more about safety than protecting markets. Parallel imports are an even bigger headache for Honda, and these parallel importers don’t adapt bikes to local spec (kph clocks, headlight dipping the right way, fuel requirements, etc.) when they bring them in, which should be addressed.

If the car industry was as open as the bike industry, we would be driving used Toyota Supra’s and Skyline GTR’s for the price of a new Citi-Golf; which is in fact, what they do in our neighbouring countries. But our neighbours don’t have car manufacturing industries, and we do, which is why the market is so tightly regulated, to protect the industry. And since we don’t manufacture bikes here, government couldn’t be bothered to impose restrictions on importers.

Good for us!

A local Kawasaki (official) dealer, has the approach to service grey bikes, because for the newcomer into biking it is just a Kawasaki. He or she doesn’t care about it being a grey bike, as long as it is taken care off. Refusing to work on it or to supply parts, means that the new rider might never buy a Kawasaki again. It would have been easy to go, “sorry we didn’t sell it, so we cant help you. Go back to the dealer you bought it from”. This Kawasaki dealer knows the importance of protecting the brand.

This is a sensible approach that I agree with. What is a headache, is when importers bring in bikes that are so rare and technologically different, that no one can provide support for the bikes, and my Suzuki GSX400FW is a case in point here.

So our features on grey 400’s were designed to inform readers about the pitfalls of buying grey, because fact is, they will buy grey, if only for the affordability fact.

As a Topbike journalist I can no longer air my opinions with impunity. I am part of a bigger whole now, and that whole (Topbike magazine) has as one of its founding principles to give exposure to the products of AMID (Association of Motorcycles Importers and Distributors). So we will never test a bike from a grey or parallel importer. Regardless of what I think, it seems that other magazines are happy to test grey and parallel bikes, so Topbike enjoys a useful (and perhaps delicate) support from the official guys.

When it comes to parallel and bigger grey bikes (like Suzuki's 750 Bandit or GS1200SS), I agree wholeheartedly with AMID’s plight. When it comes to 400cc grey bikes however, I feel it is a completely different segment of the market, that has little impact on official sales.

Back to Lester; for the same money he spent on his NC29, if he had to buy an officially imported bike, Lester would have had to consider something like the Honda CBR125. I know which one I would go for. No contest.

I rode the CBR125 and I took Lester’s CBR400 for a spin. The build quality of the 400 is much better. In fact, it is much better than a lot of bikes, and it feels solid and smooth.

Which shouldn’t be a surprise. These bikes were the top-of-the-range models for many years in the domestic Japanese market, so the engineering, design and manufacturing effort that went into them were top-class. When they were first imported new, they cost as much as the open-class superbikes!

Our 400 article links:

So, you want a 'grey' bike?

Seeing grey

Selecting grey

Grey bikes: Honda’s pocket rockets

Honda’s pocket rockets Part 2

Servicing and tuning your NC30

Bandit lunacy

My FZR400

The FZR was my second 400 after my first bike, the Suzuki GSX400FW. Both were yellow and both were a nightmare.

My test-ride on the FZR was convincing. It had that big-bike feel with that enveloping, sitting-in-rather-than-on experience that I prefer. It sounded great, with that faint whistle from the exhaust. I was in a trance.

The problems started the very next day. Fowled plugs. Turned out it was running rich and it was an incurable disease. Than it started overheating. Then it leaked coolant. It would not start. Then it would start but not run smooth. And it was unfixable.

This was particularly disappointing, as I bought it from a close friend who moved back to the states, and he had the bike for a long time.

How all of these problems never transpired with him is a mystery.

I eventually swopped it for a CD200. Then the FZR got stolen from the guy who swopped it. (He eventually got it back.)

The bike did run well at times, and I would go on my long, solitary rides. But there was something missing from the FZR; it lacked that X-factor. It had no soul or charisma. Maybe it was just my example, but it left me feeling indifferent. It might be for this reason that the bike is not as highly rated as the other 400’s. It might also have something to do with the mechanical condition that the bike was in, and I will have to ride other examples to really know. It was certainly light-years away from the experience I had with that test-ride.

In retrospect, when I had that test-ride, I was starved of a bike for many months; my Katana being stolen. Any bike would have felt good.

But it also highlights one of my concerns in life. If you are going to spent the next half-a-decade paying a vehicle off, a quick ride around the block is not enough to make a decision on. At least a weekend, to get an idea what it is like to live with.

The same with buying a house; only after you moved in you discover the annoying neighbour’s dog and the noisy railway close by. You will only discover those things if you “test-live” in the house for a few days!

Anyway, the FZR is a memorable bike, but for all the wrong reasons.





MY GSX400FW

My first bike. Finally having a decent-paying job, I could afford what I considered to be a “proper” bike – a 1984 Suzuki GSX400FW.




Eddie’s Bandit 400

This is Eddie’s second Bandit 400; he does seem to love them. I never did in the beginning, but my frame of reference was my ZX-6R, so the Bandit was always going to feel inadequate.

Eddie had a GS400 for years, and felt he needed something racier and quicker, as is always the case.

His first Bandit is a good example of how unscrupulous local bike dealers are. It was sold straight out of the crate from Japan; not even dusted off. That should have been our warning sign. The bike had (among other things) an electrical glitch that caused it to cut out. It would cut out during a ride, very annoying, but even more dangerous, as we were about to discover. It went back a million times, and it was clear they were not committed to sorting it out.

Then one evening we went somewhere on the N2, and I was racing ahead on my GS500 (the bike I had before I got the ZX). Soon I realised Eddie was no longer behind me. I slowed down, but he wasn’t catching up. Then I pulled over and waited, wondering how slow he must be going.

A car stopped next to me; the driver asking me if I was waiting for my friend. My heart sank as I answered yes. The driver explained that there was a bike accident behind us on the bridge.

With my head zinging I rode back in the opposite lane, and from the other side I could see the pile-up of cars and flashing lights. It looked bad. I didn’t want to see what I was about to see.

I found my way back onto his lane, and first saw Bandit lying down in the road. Then I saw Eddie sitting dejected next to the road, in shock with tears in his eyes. The paramedics were attending to him.

The bike cut out again on the inside lane of the N2. A bakkie hit Eddie from behind, not being able to stop in time. The impact threw him clear across the outside lane, onto the side of the rode. That probably saved him from grave injury, if not his live. His body did not hit anything. If he just fell onto the road, a swarm of cars would have ran over him.

We have always been fortunate never to be severely injured in our accidents; the bikes always came of worse.




Live was much easier with his second Bandit. And I liked it better than the first one, partly because of the fairing. It makes it nicer looking (for me) and more comfortable to ride, being protected from the weather elements.

He has now sold it, and is looking for another scrambler (he had an XT500). His racy days are over he says. He is going to look for fun in the mud and dirt, and gets a dreamy glint in his eye when he speaks of XT’s and XL’s.