Arrow

Nov 27th 2024

Arrow was my first motorcycle! A 2014 Honda CBR 125R. This is the JC50 model, which is fatter, bigger, and has a slightly better look than the JC39 model (imho).

I purchased it from a guy named Don who had it for a couple of years. He'd been riding motorcycles for all his life. He joked that you start out on a small cc, then upgrade up and up and up, and then you get older and then your bike cc starts going down and down again. I thought that was funny.

Anyways, he has this guy locked up to a (maple?) tree outside his house on the lawn. Unfortunately, the acids in the leaves left quite some rust, especially on the forks. They were pitted. I took the bike anyways for $1500 CAD, which I thought it was a good price. It had only 8676km on it, and a new engine from a JC39 which crashed.

I immediately went to work cleaning the bike. I did the brake fluids, flushed the gas (it ran way better with new gas in after!), and did some minor fixes. I knew the that forks wouldn't last long with the pitting, but I was hoping some steel wool + new seals would fix it (they did not).

After the initial setup I practiced and practiced for my motorcycle license. In BC, the rules are that you get an initial license after you take your motorcycle lessons. Then you can ride around on any bike, but you cannot ride at night and you cannot take passengers. I didn't like the former or the latter, and I also wanted to get the cool full license and be statistically safer, so I spent a LOT of time practicing around the neighbourhood. Neighbours loved me!

I made a lot of notes every time I took the bike out to focus on what I was lacking. Thankfully, I got over the learning curve pretty quickly so I could focus on getting cars not to hit me. I put on 1326km before getting my full license, on my first try, on April 4th, 2023.

I took the test on a rented CB300F, which had a bit of a learning curve because the posture was not what I liked. The handlebars on that one were much wider than on Arrow. You also had to sit much more upright, and at this point I already got used to leaning forward a lot.

Eventually I replaced the almost 10 year old rubber. I decided to go both tires, and get them both replaced by hand. I used spoons off Amazon, and honestly the entire ordeal was a nightmare. One of the tires (the front) wouldn't come off, and I was worried about using too much force on the rim itself while getting it off. I ended up getting a dremel from Home Hardware and cut the metal wires to get the tire off.

Balancing the front was easy, but the rear was more difficult. I ended up putting more weights than I needed because I just couldn't find the balance mark that normally indicates the heaviest point on the tire. Oh well.

Oh, and the entire time the bike was outside, precariously balanced in a tripod configuration with a car jack. I think I heard some of the neighbors thinking I was crazy. Gotta love living in Vancouver, where the city milks you dry because you can't afford a house with a garage, so you have to do all of your car/bike maintenance with a mechanic, which means you spend a bunch of money and now you can't afford a house with a garage.

Never again.

Also I kept up logs of how much fuel the bike took. I used it as a commuter for a ~23km trip 2x, three times a week.

Eventually the forks leaked again, even after replacement of the seals. I decided to order new stanchions and replace them. Nightmare! Again the bike was left outside on a car stand. Taking the old rusty tubes out and putting new seals in was very easy. Putting everything back together was not.

The hardest part was that the entire assembly was held together with a single bolt on the bottom. The torque spec was only something like 20ft-lbs, but without proper compression on the spring, the bolt would just rotate. Even once I got it on the bike, I couldn't put the full torque on the forks. Eventually I got some straps and compressed the fork right on the bike, and only then did the forks properly seal on the bottom.

Also, some cheap plastic boots around the forks kept them free of rock chips. I was very proud of my work.

One day, the worst happened. We were at the airport, plane-spotting, and I got a call from my landlord. She says that our neighbor backed into the bike and the bike was on the ground, and she (the neighbor) couldn't pick it back up.

I didn't think it was a big deal until I got back home. The bike was hard to pick up because there was a car right behind it. Picking it up, there was a bit of gas come out of where the tank was.

She was nice enough to offer to pay. I did a tally of the damage, and I thought it was superficial at first, like $650 without labor. But then I did a double-take the next day...

There were ~2ft long gashes in the pavement below the bike, and there were rubber-spots/marks as high as the front axle. Forks were bent. She didn't just knock the bike over, she fucking rode over it!

I was so mad. All that work making this bike mine, babying it, changing it's oil, etc etc. Ruined in a split second by some driver who a) didn't walk around her vehicle to check for obstacles like ICBC tells you in drivers ed' b) didn't bother to stop when the bike fell.

Up to this point, my driving/riding record was spotless. I thought to myself, "surely, it's time for an accident." I never thought my first motorcycle accident would occur when I'm not on the bike...

I didn't want the bike after this point. If anything else was damaged and she paid me out of pocket, I might regret it if I went to ICBC. So I made a claim. They paid me $1,842.33, which I grumbled about, but I couldn't even find a JC50 to compare it in price.