Scottish Honda 400 Four - Completed
I have admired these bikes ever since my friends Keith and Anita Horsfield bought a brand new one back in 1976. What a fantastic machine - with a sky high red-line (compared with my old 250 BSA) and everything properly finished off and fitted.
It was a very long time before I was converted to Japanese bikes, when in 1990, there was an advert in
Old Bike Mart, from a chap on the Wirral selling 2, and loads of
spares to go with them. I bought the whole lot and started to collect some of the
more difficult to obtain parts from David
Silver.
A couple of years later, a colleague at work told me of another, which his neighbour's son had just fallen off - this had to go, and it too came into
my stable. This had a lot of good new parts on, plus some tacky instruments,
indicators, seat unit and an aftermarket 4 into 1.
Some time later, during yet another casual visit to West Coast Motorcycles, another imported 400/4 appeared, slightly scruffy - but all of my good stuff would go on it to make a tidy example.
Very recently events have taken another turn, in that my Nephew's Father-in-law has sadly passed away and there is a 400/4 lurking in
his shed in Scotland, which they want me to have - to restore. So now there are 5!! I think I need to retire to get some of this work done!
Having made some of the few special tools needed for dismantling 400's, I have really enjoyed working on these lovely little bikes. They are light to handle (compared with my 1500
Wing!) and most parts are still available - there is very little coloured paintwork, so you can have a change of colour as the mood takes you!
Well, I finally managed to get up to Scotland to collect the 400/4 which had belonged to my Nephew's late Father-in-law, Dick. I had thought that as it was dismantled into 'large lumps', Christine and I might go up her Civic to collect it all, but this proved to be difficult to arrange around work etc. In the end, Peter (VJMC North Lancs section co-ordinator) came to the rescue with his trusty P100 pick-up. We left sleepy Southport at around 6:30am and had a steady ride up the M6 and onto the A7 beyond Carlisle. Rumbling tums halted the journey in Langholm for a quick coffee (well, that's what they said it was!) and a rather nice bacon toastie. My turn to drive now, so I picked the B709, that lovely motorcycling road through Eskdalemuir, Traquair and Innerliethen, and on to Peebles before negotiating the Big Bridge and out onto the M90. We arrived as planned in a sleepy little village in Fife, where a welcoming cuppa awaited. Suitably refreshed, we made our way down to the shed to view the remains of the 400/4. Dick had bought the bike in 1982 and ridden it regularly (as had his wife, Kate) until 1986, when it was put out to grass in favour of a BMW boxer. The intention had been to restore it to its former glory, so it was dismantled into the aforementioned large lumps and stored in the back of a wooden shed. It was in quite a sorry state when I saw it, probably much worse that when it first entered the shed - the main thing was that there were many cloths and sheets wrapping various parts, which had held the moisture and wreaked havoc with the metalwork. The head had been removed and paper bungs had been placed in the cylinder bores, and these were also damp, causing the pistons to develop an affinity to staying put - yes, it was seized! It did, however, seem remarkably complete and un-tampered with, so I am fairly confident that it will live to fight another day.
We all retired to the local pub for a wonderful meal and then returned to the shed to set to work filling the pick-up with the remains of what had been a quite tidy bike.
Peter dragging the partly dismembered motor from the shed
Ready to unload the various boxes of bits - quite an interesting number if you are that way inclined!
The start of the build up:
