Day 1. Previous owner Paul had already bought an exhaust, stretch kit and lower seat frame.
Stripped plastic panels, frame brace with forward pegs, new exhaust. Painted. New seat frame. Low and flat handlebars, removed blinkers and put them on the sides of the battery box. New seat, fat rear wheel and tyre, painted mid section of frame, new front-end (brakes, wheel and shocks), JDM headlights.
It’s always nice to see before and after pics :)
This morning I dropped in to Racecourse Motors to get the guys there to swap my front tyre for me. They’ve got a really nice and neat scooter shop across the road from the Randwick Racecourse which is pretty close to where I live.
I spotted this strange Zoomer like bike. The seating position with the pegs forward actually wouldn’t be too unlike my Zoomer.
Old wheel left, new right. The guy that greeted me was a champ. He swapped the tyre over in no time and it only cost me $20.
NCY rotor installed. Kinda ugly. A plain cross drilled completely round rotor would have been nicer.
Braided line is pretty long (a LOT nicer than having the crazy long drum brake cable before though) and I’m still not sure I’ve routed it the best way.
Other side. Glossy black wheel suits the rear wheel now and this new alloy wheel with tyre weighs the same as an original steel wheel without tyre.
Super happy with it!
I’ve installed everything. Just need to buy some brake fluid. I’ve had issues with spacing the front wheel. The kit came with everything I needed, except the speedo housing and the wheel doesn’t sit flush against the stopper on the fork (to stop it rotating) as I had to use a spacer on that side to centre the wheel. It’s not rotating at all though, so it works fine, but it’s definitely not designed to work this way.
Couldn’t help myself, started ripping into the Zoomer right away. I grabbed a trusty milk crate, put a sheet over it and lifted the bike up onto it. Bit tricky to do on your own, but the Zoomer’s light enough. Taking everything off is a little annoying but I’ve done it enough times now to do it pretty quick.
Right at about this time Christina yelled out from upstairs “LUNCH TIME!”. Usually I’d be shitty as I was in the zone working on the Zoomer, hands covered in grease, but hey Christina made me a B’day pie! Pie’s are one of my fave foods of all time. I love a good pie, this one had my name on it too! Mmm mmm, it was delicious!
Tummy satisfied, head buzzing on a nice glass of red I got back to work. New front brake caliper to replace the OEM drum brakes. I hate it that it’s annodised red. Thought about stripping it down to bare metal, but I’ve decided to leave it as is for now.
I bought an axle puller for giggles. Didn’t fit on the OEM forks but with a little dremel work they fit on these new ultra-low forks perfectly.
Front brake master cylinder and throttle (grip not installed yet).
As far as I can go for now. Notice how much bigger the new brake lever is, so ugly! Waiting for a starter switch (I can kick start though) and tomorrow I’ll get the tyre fitted to the new disc brake front wheel.
This all came in the mail today for my Honda Zoomer. New ultra low forks, front disc brake upgrade and new front alloy wheel too. Happy B’day to me :)
Last night on my way out the door to go to Mothers Day dinner I saw a huge stream of email messages in my inbox from the BMU members. I was cc’ed in a little late and couldn’t quite make out what they were talking about except I read the words: Jing, accident, hospital.
I had to duck out so I didn’t have time to make sense of any of it. I grabbed my phone and saw a message from Clifton which explained that Jing was riding his road bike out at the royal national park and had a bad accident. Both his arms were broken, internal bleeding and he was in hospital. I called Shirley, Jing’s fiancee, and she filled me in on everything whilst I was in the back seat of Mum’s car on the way out to the restaurant (I was meant to be driving!).
Today I thought I’d visit Jing at St George hospital. Hospitals are scary haunted places. Getting past the entrance is hard enough for me, getting into a lift even worse. I tracked down Jing’s room, saw a bed with his name on it, but he wasn’t there (freaky!). I then found out he had been moved. After going into another room full of strangers (I went into the wrong room) I was directed into the right room by a nurse but again, Jing wasn’t in there! The nurse said he could be getting an assessment, but it turns out he was in the bathroom.
It was amazing to see Jing up on his feet. Both his arms were in casts and his face was pale and sweaty from the drugs (he’s been loaded up on morphine and other pain killers). He told me how the accident took place, that he wasn’t even doing anything but rolling down a straight bit of road, he was riding one handed, hit a bump and flew into a metal guard rail stomach first. When he got up he realised his arm made an “S” shape, then a pain like he’d never felt before came over him and he soon found himself screaming.
His surgery went for over 6 hours. He has broken both arms, one in 3 places. He has broken some of his pelvis, fractured his hip. He’s got internal bleeding and initially the doctors were afraid he had a hole in his bowel, but whilst I was visiting a young doctor surrounded by his junior minions explained to Jing that the impact was so hard that his lungs ‘popped’ and that created the pocket of air in his back (which they previously thought was an intestinal gas pocket of air). So surreal.
The poor guy has had a lot of time to think everything through, the incident, his future of riding and his doubts about the later. If you know Jing, you’ll know he thinks a LOT (his blog is even called Thoughts…), and with this accident being so fresh its only natural for him to go through mental wars right now.
On my way out I ran into Timmy, who was on his way up to see Jing. He’s got a lot of support and I’m sure with a bit of time and healing he’ll be feeling more alive than ever.
Brooks goodies always come very well packaged.
This tool bag is originally designed to be hooked up onto the rear of your bicycle saddle.
I’ll get to grinding down those ugly indicator tabs once I buy myself a grinder!
Zoomer in the city.
I counted 5 L platers.
Steve’s ugly looking Supermoto.
Zi’s SR is looking great.
Nelsons 125cc race bike.
Zi invited me out for a ride with the boys last night. “The boys” has gone from a handful of us to a facebook group 48 members strong. The idea was to meet up in Chinatown then make our way to Palm Beach (that’s a long way away for the little Zoomer!).
I checked out the facebook group and quickly realised that most, if not all of these guys own race bikes. That and the distance put me off the idea of the cruise to Palm Beach, but it was a nice night out so I at least went for a blat through the city to meet them at Chinatown before they headed off.
The Zoomer got a LOT of positive attention last night. People on the side of the road were giving me the thumbs up and once I parked it everyone seemed to flock towards it and some even helped themselves to hopping on it (probably not something you want strangers to do when parking your bike?!).
Lots of Q&A, laughs and ultimately despite not being powerful enough to go for longer rides I’m just happy to be owning and riding something a little different. :)
So… this little hole on the plate that holds my speedo has been bugging me for some time now. In the US they use this hole to hold an indicator light which my Japanese Zoomer doesn’t have.
I gathered some parts together from my parts bin. A Niner Bikes YAWYD (You Are What You Drink) beer bottle top cap, a funky spacer from Battle Scooter, a bolt + nut.
Perfect fit!
Of-course I’ve just run to the fridge to carefully crack open a cold Asahi, yeah… hole no more! RPRSNT!
Bought some black DEI exhaust wrap to wrap my header.
All that experience from wrapping up road bike handlebar tape paid off nicely :)
Bags of quality allen head bolts to replace all the ugly OEM hex bolts all over the Zoomer.
Lots of bolts on the engine replaced.
Took the gold forks off (might be selling them to another guy in Australia with a Zoomer) and put my stock black forks back on for now (they bottom out when you sit on the bike ahaha). My new front end is still on back-order (lower fork, disc brake set-up + new alloy wheel).
PS: Excuse the crappy pics! Better pics when there’s more light!
