After visiting the Isle of Man many times and seeing these little 400's restored I was totally in love with them and had to buy my own. They were never imported or destined for South African market, but some guys imported them and it's actually a grey import hence Honda South Africa does not have any parts for them. I wanted mine to be original as it came out of the factory in 1991, that's when I stumbled across Wemoto on the Internet and placed my first order to start the restoration.

After a year and six months she is done, and nearly ready to come home. The night I picked her up I was so excited that I never checked the belts when tying her down in the van, obviously she tipped over and I broke some more parts on the already tatty looking VFR.
The damage nearly broke my heart but yes, I learned my lesson. Always tie it down yourself and recheck!

I started stripping and ordered the first batch of spares from Wemoto that I needed, it came super-fast and work commenced.
First - rebuild the clocks to brand new.

Time for some stripping.

The wiring was a mess and I had to redo it all to the original specs.

Redoing all the plastic bits to get everything back to original.

Notice the Wemoto yellow box on the left with all the "GOODIES".
New paint job, wheels calipers and front forks redone back to original, fork oil and seals replaced. Slowly coming together!

Calipers and discs looking amazing!
I decided to put the twin stack Tyga exhaust system on and what an amazing difference this made! At first I was extremely gutted as the pipes looked too long but Tyga convinced me that this is era correct and I couldn't find the original silencer anywhere. If one does, the price is out of the roof. So I kept the Tygas on and she sounds like a dream come true.

After putting it all together we noticed some of the screws and nuts didn't look right. Funny how when you're done you start seeing all the bad bits better. So we stripped her again, all the nuts and bolts, every little thing. Vapour washed and it looked brand new!

Finally she is done! I am waiting for the last bits from Wemoto which Dan is sending today, FREE of charge, 3800 miles to the South African post office. It seems they lost my parcel (please note it arrived in South Africa on the 10th of January). After chatting to Dan in customer service, he is resending everything on their account free of charge. Not their fault or problem, never heard or seen anything like that.

Thank you Wemoto for helping me restore this dream bike back to its former glory. It is going into my living room and I will send you pics when she is on her carpet next to the NSR250 and SP1.

...And thanks very much Allan for ordering your parts from us. We are really happy that you're pleased with the service and congratulations on a fantastic project and what a great end result! Cheers, from all of us at Wemoto.

Anyone else out there got a great project to share – we'd love to hear about it. Let us know at [email protected] or drop us a message on Facebook.