bforshaw
CJ250t (1978)
Scoured the site for the last few years, constantly reading project builds hoping to do my own at some point.
Previous bikes include a good old CG125 and a Beemer 650...had to sell her a couple of years back to buy a cage though. New job, more driving not really the kind of job where you can dash up in your gear helmet in hand.
Gutted.
You can imagine how chuffed I was to find that almost everyone at my new employer are bikers.
One in particular kept me sane whilst I was doing my 6 month induction/training feeding me with Bike Magazines. He is a classic Italian bike person, but had a '78 Yellow Honda CJ250T for a runabout. 2 owners since new, he was the second! Only done 12k and about as original as is possible. I snapped it up for £800.
This was my trusty little ride around at weekends whilst I was in London during the week. Always wanted to do a Cafe/Brat rebuild but couldn't face tearing a part such an original bike. It even had its original number plates!
I rode, serviced and enjoyed the bike for around 6 months. I live in the Peak District so the stone cottages rarely have garages. The bike lived under a cover out front. It was perfectly covered and it got ridden most weekends. The weekend before it happened I had fitted the newly chromed forks and the brand new exhaust muffler I had sourced from Germany.
Normal Tuesday morning, got up about 5:30 as I had a drive to Nottingham for an Audit. Got changed, had breakfast, grabbed my gear and walked out front.
My front garden is a small cottage type garden with stone walls and a brick herringbone patio. The bike usually stood in the centre, locked with a disk lock and beast of a chain. After all it's a 70s bike, not really attractive to thieves I thought.
When I walked out the first thing that struck me was the pedal bike sat in its place. I thought that's strange, where's the bike. It took a few seconds for me to realise.
As soon as I did I booted the mountain bike over my wall in a rage, ran back inside dropped my bag, grabbed a kitchen knife (daft I know) and went for a drive to some wasteland just down the road thinking they will have taken it there.
It wasn't there. It wasn't anywhere, it was lost. My little, slightly frumpy and very rare Honda was lost. I could only see red, was massively angry and probably did more than my fair share of swearing on the phone to the rozzers.
They were their usual helpful selves...Ie Useless.
The usual mix of sorry, we will look...etc.
About 3 days later it was found...
I was a mixture of sad/happy/angry, the anger was made much worse when the lady from the recovery company informed me of the £150 charge for the privilege of having it stolen.
After much complaining I paid and picked her up.
She was in a sorry state....quite badly bashed up. The seat had been pried open and the electrics savaged, the seat pan was torn and bent, the headlight ignition bracket was smashed and bent and it was full of mud, grass and s*#t.
Previous bikes include a good old CG125 and a Beemer 650...had to sell her a couple of years back to buy a cage though. New job, more driving not really the kind of job where you can dash up in your gear helmet in hand.
Gutted.
You can imagine how chuffed I was to find that almost everyone at my new employer are bikers.
One in particular kept me sane whilst I was doing my 6 month induction/training feeding me with Bike Magazines. He is a classic Italian bike person, but had a '78 Yellow Honda CJ250T for a runabout. 2 owners since new, he was the second! Only done 12k and about as original as is possible. I snapped it up for £800.
This was my trusty little ride around at weekends whilst I was in London during the week. Always wanted to do a Cafe/Brat rebuild but couldn't face tearing a part such an original bike. It even had its original number plates!
I rode, serviced and enjoyed the bike for around 6 months. I live in the Peak District so the stone cottages rarely have garages. The bike lived under a cover out front. It was perfectly covered and it got ridden most weekends. The weekend before it happened I had fitted the newly chromed forks and the brand new exhaust muffler I had sourced from Germany.
Normal Tuesday morning, got up about 5:30 as I had a drive to Nottingham for an Audit. Got changed, had breakfast, grabbed my gear and walked out front.
My front garden is a small cottage type garden with stone walls and a brick herringbone patio. The bike usually stood in the centre, locked with a disk lock and beast of a chain. After all it's a 70s bike, not really attractive to thieves I thought.
When I walked out the first thing that struck me was the pedal bike sat in its place. I thought that's strange, where's the bike. It took a few seconds for me to realise.
As soon as I did I booted the mountain bike over my wall in a rage, ran back inside dropped my bag, grabbed a kitchen knife (daft I know) and went for a drive to some wasteland just down the road thinking they will have taken it there.
It wasn't there. It wasn't anywhere, it was lost. My little, slightly frumpy and very rare Honda was lost. I could only see red, was massively angry and probably did more than my fair share of swearing on the phone to the rozzers.
They were their usual helpful selves...Ie Useless.
The usual mix of sorry, we will look...etc.
About 3 days later it was found...
I was a mixture of sad/happy/angry, the anger was made much worse when the lady from the recovery company informed me of the £150 charge for the privilege of having it stolen.
After much complaining I paid and picked her up.
She was in a sorry state....quite badly bashed up. The seat had been pried open and the electrics savaged, the seat pan was torn and bent, the headlight ignition bracket was smashed and bent and it was full of mud, grass and s*#t.
