Head and Shoulders

I finally got my headers back from CIC. Not cheap, but the finish and quality is fantastic. I'm really happy with the result.




I also got some other pieces teflon coated for the bike, just to tidy it up a little bit and keep the surface finishes consistent.

Contract Law and Other Such

I recently took three weeks off work to complete two more units towards my double masters. For two weeks, the classes were from about 8am till 12:30pm. This meant that I could wake up, go to class, head home for lunch and have a lie in the warm spring sun.

Three weeks of that certainly relaxed me. The life of a student is never really that hard. You use your brain for 50% of the time, and the other 60% is relaxation. I was starting to enjoy it too much!

Having such a good time made me a bit sad however, as I wasn't really looking forward to going back to work. After many a long discussion with mum and dad and Robin, I decided that I would resign from work and continue my studies in 2010 alongside some part time work.

It's a bit of a scary situation with a mortgage on the side, but I need the break after 5+ years of solid work with only the occasional holiday. The reason I started studying in the first place (June 2009) was that I was starting to idle at work anyway.

It was a tough call, but I'm on the home stretch now, with less than two weeks left in the office and still no replacement or assistant to do a handover for.

This week is also important as exam results for Contract Law 601 and Socioeconomic Impacts 601 are due out at 5pm today. I'm thinking I got a minimum 70% for each of them, but I would like to keep my grade point average over the 75 mark. Here's hoping!

Failures

As you can see, I never got to finish my blog about Thailand... how awesome the whole week was. There are three reasons mainly, the first being that I couldn't find the time to write, the second being that if I had time to write, I had lost the desire to write, and the third being that I have had catastrophic hard drive failure and it is currently being attended to by forensic data recovery specialists.

*le sigh*

I hope that the invoice for the recovery will only be a few hundred dollars...

Meanwhile, I can't sleep (its about 2:30am) and I'm backdating some work Robin and I have done on the Honda CBR400RR.

Plastic Fantastic

Robin fitted up some of the fairings today so we could get an idea of what the bike was going to look like and to also assist with getting the tank painted to suit.


Our mate Potato came over to offer some advice on a colour scheme and we agreed on a white tank, with black near where the legs go and simple plain black Honda wings. Potato does some great work and he has priced the tank up for me, plus some plastic welding and a respray of the air ducts for around $400.

That night I jumped on Xtreme Decals and picked up a set of wings for about $15 delivered.

The Engagement

The engagement was held at the lovely Windsor Hotel in South Perth on November 26th. All our friends were invited to this lavish event with beers flowing and food platters ahoy!

Robin, Mum, Me and Dad

The week prior, Jess and come out with Robin and I to organise some decorations and they looked stunning! There were diamonds and beautiful bouquets and my favourite part, the word "LOVE" on the table in big letters.

When Robin and I arrived at the Windsor, there was a massive canvas print of Robin and I from Thailand on one side of the room, and an elaborate stand with details of our engagement party on the other.

This was also the first time that our parents had met. It wasn't a long visit, but I think that everything went well. I had good vibes from everyone all night.

Mum and I

The Singapore Room at the Windsor

My mate Jess (did such an awesome job) and I

Posing with guests

Robin and I were incredibly impressed with the turnout considering it was a school night (Thursday) with about 60 people coming to visit us during various stages of then evening.

The night wrapped up around 11:30pm after two pints, much banter and many smiles and hugs.

The Pipe

I was looking around at getting an Akropovic, or maybe even going back to Roo Racing, but I wasn't in the market to drop another $700+ on a pipe for the bike.

It was on eBay where I stumbled upon an English company called Fuel Exhausts. They do a bolt-on pipe for the CBR400 with all the hardware and clamps, for about $500 delivered. I ordered online that very day.

The styles they had meant that I could buy a "new-look" design so the bike didn't look as dated. I ended up ordering an oval pipe with blue coloured titanium exhaust.


The pipe has not been bolted on yet as I am getting the headers ceramic coated, but that's another story :)

Ying Yang Plastic

I had a mate once refer to Chinese fairings as "ying yang fairings" which made me giggle.

eBay was the source of the fairing kit as trying to buy from an Australian so-called distributor was a joke. I picked a set of Konica Minolta fairings for about $500 delivered. At first I wasn't keen on the blue/black/white/gold colour scheme, but after seeing more and more photos of replicas, I was beginning to see the potential of this new creation.


Once the tank is painted, the Dremel will need to come out and there will be many beers consumed trying to get these to fit well. At this stage, the front of the tail piece may need some work, and the front fairings near where the indicators sit will need some loving.

The reason for the ill fit is that they are vacuum pressed and will always form around the original shaped fairings and be a few millimeters larger than factory fairings. Believe me, I'd rather they be too big and have gaps, than be too small and not fit at all!

Other than that, the finish on the fairings is actually really good for the price. The paintwork was done professionally and the pinstripe (gold) is very smooth and accurate. I'm looking forward to getting them on the bike.


For now, only a photo from eBay of the kit and Robin taking to the box with kitchen scissors.
I will take some progress fitment shots soon.

LED Burners

I picked up a pack of these from Victoria for about $133 delivered.

No joke, I got them in 24 hours.

Ecliptech make three different versions of their brakelight kits for the Honda CBR250RR/CBR400RR, but I went for the "burner" look so they are extra bright.


Fitting them was a bit of a pain in the ass. It's not a matter of pulling the tail off and whacking them in. You need to drill through the lenses. And considering its a 1992 vintage, the plastics tend to be fairly brittle. Robin did a very good job at getting the backing plate onto the lens with only the tiniest of cracks. I think he would have spent an easy 40 minutes drilling at about 10rpm to make sure the lens didn't crumble.

Here's the before photo (tail light only), you can barely tell they are even on
And with brake applied
Now with the LED brakelight (tail light only)
And with the brake applied

The Evolution of the 400

Here is the first (well, maybe not really the first) installment of a new series called "The Evolution of the 400" in the attempt to make it more desirable and road-worthy.

Don't get me wrong, the CBR400RR is registered and has no mechanical faults, it just looks tired.

So, let me start off with a list and I will work from there.

• 4 x orange lens factory indicators
• Konica Minolta fairing kit
• Re-painted tank
  
• LED burner brakelights
• Pazzo levers
• Driven grips and bar ends
• Rearsets
• Barnett clutch kit
• Fuel Exhausts titanium muffler
• Front fender mounting
• Rear brake fluid reservoir
• Fuel hose
• Lightech pickup spools
• Ceramic coated headers
• Teflon heel guards and screen brace
  
• Keiti tank pad
• Recovered pillion seat
  

As I go, I will post up links of what I have purchased and hopefully photos of how they have turned out.

One thing that I have noticed over the years is that, even though factory parts are hard to come by on a grey model (import) bike, the beauty of this is that the CBR400RR was huge in the UK and in Singapore, and those markets are full of awesome aftermarket parts like exhausts and fairings and rearsets.

It is a little more difficult to match things up like levers, where I had to use a clutch lever from CBR600F '99-'00 and a brake lever from CBR600F '87-'98.

The Wind-down

There were only two days left on Ko Samui for us, so Robin and I decided to do some more sightseeing of "the essentials". We headed to the Zoo and Water Park on the south part of the island.

We saw an awesome bird show, tiger show, seal show and even some otters performing tricks.




The next day we decided to try and find a bay near the yacht club and go for a swim. The water was crystal clear, no jellyfish or anything creepy in the water, just some small fish and I even saw a Nemo!

Joel and I swam out to do some bombies off the rocks off the coast and then headed back to wade in the calm waters of the bay. The water was so warm....


In the evening, we saw some interesting creatures...

The Day the Sun Shone

After spending the entire day indoors, Robin looked a million times better on Tuesday. It was a beautiful day as now the sun had come out after a couple of overcast days. It was going to be a great day.

While taking a taxi from the airport to our resort on Sunday, Robin and I had eyed off a shop that hired "big" motorbikes instead of scabby scooters. It was now the mission of Joel and Robin to retrace our steps and try and find this place so we could go for a cruise around the island.

While the boys were away, Jess and I went for a walk down the main strip of Lamai checking out the shops and having a cocktail. We then headed back to the resort for a dip in the pool. It was magical! The water was so warm and delicious.


It took about two hours of faffing about, but we had the goods. $30 a day, two Hooooondas on an island that has a 45 km/hr speed limit.

No rules, no helmets and no real plan, we set off to head clockwise around the island, stopping where we felt and taking the road less travelled.

Our first stop was to get some tourist stuff out of the way, the 80m Na Muang waterfall complete with elephant rides.

We didn't do the elephant thing (they smell pretty wicked) but the climb over the steep hills was pretty epic. It was stinking hot and the humidity was in the high 90's. When we reached the waterfall, I climbed up one of the rockfaces and enjoyed the breeze coming down and washed the sweat off my arms and face. It was so hot!

It was time to kick-on and we did so by heading south. We headed towards the coast again and followed one of the secondary roads off the main highway to Bang Kao . The roads were twisty and the scenery was green and tropical. Robin tried a few wheelies in the straight parts but the bikes were too clapped out to even lift the wheel. The maintenance on the hire bikes is next to nothing. They get fuel, and that's about it. Bikes with 7,000km on the clock have the rattles of bikes that should have been around the clock...

Let's race!

Jess and Joel still kept up on the scooter

Robin hit the anchors near a small restaurant on the side of the bay where the serve "Noname" for 70BHT. I later found out that it was a soup, more like a clear broth made of chicken stock, rice and some vegetables.

I'll have the noname please. Mmm, very appetizing.

The beautiful view, and not another tourist to be found.

After our home-cooked Thai lunch and icy cold Cokes we jumped back on the road and got lost and followed a road to a restricted area which we found out to be the Naval Base at Laem Chon Khram. We did a U turn and went back up the road we came down only to notice that we were travelling along the coastline and there was a beautiful beach through the palm trees. Now we were off-road! Robin managed to bury his CBR1000RR in the beach sand whilst taking photos. Jess, Joel and I were off in the ocean, enjoying water the temperature of a bath, without jellyfish or any other sea animals and all with the seabreeze. It was delightful!

After shaking the sand off ourselves (and off the bikes) it was cruise time again.

We headed up the west side of the island and then across the top towards Phra Yai where the Big Buddha is.

The view from the Big Buddha was breathtaking, but little did I know that what was about to happen next would leave me... speechless.

Robin grabbed my hands, looked into my eyes and asked me to be his wife. I don't remember a lot of what happened next, but I do remember asking if I could sit down and saying something along the lines of "wow, this is the sort of thing that happens to other people"! I cried for ages but you couldn't have wiped the smile off my face. I finally said "YES!" and cried some more. Robin had surprised me like never before, and with the most pleasant surprise ever.

About 10 minutes after we walked down the Big Buddha hand in hand (and still in tears)

The day was not over yet! If you thought you couldn't possibly cram more into your average Tuesday, then you are mistaken! Bar Ice was next, near Chaweng, but not before an ice coffee at Starbucks.

It was a very cool -7 degrees Celsius at Bar Ice, but the flavoured vodka shooters went down a treat.

When we left Bar Ice, the sun had set and night had set upon us. Jess and Joel had decided to retire for the night, but Robin and I decided to celebrate our future as fiancees and rode to The Cliff Restaurant. We had seen in the magazines and heard around the traps that The Cliff was "the" seafood and grill restaurant to eat at in Ko Samui.

Robin and I decided on the seafood platter of the day. Even though we were quite hungry and had strong appetites, this meal would have sufficed a table of four. There was squid, fish, deep fried crabs, oysters and bugs, all with a crisp salad and delicious spanish paella. Lucky we didn't order and entree or any side dishes. Dinner was topped off with a Tiger beer toasted by candlelight and a sweet kiss.

When we got back to our bungalow, it hadn't sunk in yet. I just went to sleep in a happy daze next to my man with a full belly and a smile on my face.