The VF series of motorcycles from Honda are probably my all-time favorite bikes to ride. While talking with my son about these bikes the other night, he said, “Dad, do you work on those?” followed by “I thought you didn’t work on sport bikes?” Well, let's see here. I don’t really consider the VF series bikes to be sport bikes. I had a VFR750 for about 13 years and always considered it a “sporting bike” but not a sport – racer boy type of bike. It’s more of a mature rider’s method of getting from place to place quickly and in a technocrat’s modest style. Lovely bike!
My first VF series bike was an '82 VF750 Magna. (I think my son has a picture of me on it atop Navacerrada in the snow on the website.) I bought it with no miles as a police scrapper. It had been stolen new, abandoned, and rotted on a river bank for 6 months. I bought it cheap, spray-painted over the oxidized aluminum, and rode the bejeezus out of that bike. I spent six years on that bike, saw most of Europe, dated and married my wife, and did all my shopping with it. It was a daily ride to work bike and weekend tourer. I went five years without a car, and it wasn’t until my wife started complaining the baby bump was pushing her off the back of the seat that I broke down and got her a car. With nearly 200K on the odometer and sloppy cam chains, we parted ways, and a year later I heard she finally died.
One of the more recent bikes I worked on was a '96 VF750 Magna. Although stretched from '82 and with a chain final drive, I fell back in love with the linear power and Jekyll/Hyde personality. Down low, it pulls with tractor-like grunt, with an offbeat firing and almost mini-SBC sound. As it gets into the midrange, it starts sounding like an old-school UJM, but then comes on like a screaming banshee at the top end. You have to love these V-four engines for sure.
So, this particular bike had been sitting for a few years. When you dumped gasoline into the tank, it ran right through the carbs and out the overflow tubes. Obviously, bad floats or stuck needles. No one wanted to touch this bike, and so it landed on my bike lift. I found a number of other issues with that bike, but it was exciting to know that I was going to bring one of these neglected beauties back to life. Granted, I knew right off that there is A LOT of work in taking out and rebuilding those four wedged-in carburetors, at least if you’re doing it right, but the end result was going to be worth it. And it was!
So this kind of comes back full circle to my son’s questioning. When I talk about not wanting to work on sport bikes, I need to clarify that. If you look like a Doberman humping a Chihuahua when you sit on it, if it’s got 20 sensors, tip-over switches, fuel injection, and an hour of plastic removal, well then, that’s what I’m talking about. If you’re riding a classic UJM-based sporting bike - think GPZ550, early Ninja, Interceptor, or any of the other early “Sport” bikes - then yes, I’ll take care of them. Another way to think about it may be; if it shared an engine with a “Cruiser” like a Yamaha Maxim, for example, then it’s probably what I’ll do.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I can handle any of the newer stuff. I may not have written the book on modern EFI and digital performance, but I was certainly involved in it long enough, to the point of teaching it for a number of years as well. At this point, though, it’s a younger man’s game. Buying up and storing the additional tools, maintaining the software, and dealing with customers who can afford the bike, but not the upkeep, just takes the fun out of it. Give me a carburetor, a comfortable riding position, and a tenured rider, and we’re in the ballpark. Don
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